Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Assessing Hezbollah's tremendously growing Influence in the Levant and well beyond




Nasrallah's is Hizbullah's Divine Victory in the 2006 War.
Assessing Hezbollah's tremendously growing Influence in the Levant and well beyond, despite the desperate Israeli and American machinations to say otherwise.....in a futile FDDC/NID attempt to influence the few remaining gullible.


On the night of February 12, 2008, a car bomb in Damascus, planted by Asef SHAWKAT's military Intelligence goons, through a tortuous web of international machinations and intrigue... killed Imad F. Mughniyeh, the head of Hezbollah's military wing. The assassination, which was covertly supported by one dissident faction in Tehran, within the Iranian government circles... diminished temporarily the legend of Hezbollah's invincibility. Intelligence services of at least forty countries had pursued Imad F. Mughniyeh for decades, and he had succeeded in evading them all. His elusiveness substantiated Hezbollah's claim that its enemies had no hope of finding cracks in the group's network or in the ranks of its faithful....but Hezbollah never discounted Asef Shawkat as a direct threat, until today. Mughniyeh's death is definitely a set-back for now.... Since that fateful Tuesday, every person in Lebanon knows that Asef Shawkat got Imad F. Mughniyeh on behalf of the White House Murder Inc, and the killers of CIA2/MOSSAD/MI6, but will not be able to get to Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, because Nasrallah now has solid proof of Asef Shawkat's criminal assassinations enterprise, of the killers of CIA2/MOSSAD/MI6 headquartered in Damascus and headed by the murderous thug ASSEF Shawqat,
Again and again, a killer in murder/assassinations , starting from the CIA2/MOSSAD assassination of Mr. Elie Hobeika in Beirut/Hazmieh January 24th 2002, and the infamous : "White House Murder Inc." , headed by Asef Shawkat in Syria.

At Mughniyeh's Beirut funeral, Nasrallah blamed Israel for the assassination and said the group's revenge would not be slow in coming.[1] His emotive response is understandable. Not only was Mughniyeh's death a blow to Hezbollah—he was the group's chief military strategist—but the set-back of the legend of Mughniyeh also heightened Hezbollah's standing and morale, in a drive to do better and excel in the future...

Nasrallah is in a better Spot, he now knows that Asef Shawkat is a traitor and a fraud...working for MOSSAD, DGSE. DST, MI6, CIA2, AMAN, DIA ; OSP and VICKERS....in order to save a murderous mafiosi Al-ASSAD regime of killers and thugs in Damascus...

http://wiredlebanon.blogspot.com/2008/02/quiet-relationship-between-israel-and.html

Now, enjoy the drivel and the garbage of Israeli dis-information attempts, which no one buys anymore, hence I will leave some of it intact....and all readers will discern the difference when they see it, because the whole world now knows about Israeli deceit, deceptions and utter lies...

For years, it has been customary to view Nasrallah as one of the canniest players in the Middle East. Under his leadership, Hezbollah achieved major successes and established itself as the leader of the Lebanese Shi‘i community and as the most capable terrorist group threatening Israel. Nasrallah became a respected leader not only to many Lebanese Shi‘a but also to Arabs and Muslims far beyond Lebanon's borders.

Nasrallah built Hezbollah into an organization standing on two pillars. One pillar is its powerful, armed militia that focuses on the struggle with Israel, and the other is the organization's political and social activities, which aim to improve the lot of the Lebanese Shi‘a and, eventually, challenge the existing order in the country on behalf of the Shi‘i community. During the 1990s, Hezbollah became the leading power among the Lebanese Shi‘a, eclipsing the Amal movement thanks to the social, economic, and political infrastructure Hezbollah had developed. Election results to the Lebanese parliament and the local municipalities demonstrate this superiority. Since 2000, many in Lebanon and abroad have begun to suspect that Nasrallah seeks to take power in Lebanon by democratic means, exploiting the fact that his Shi‘i supporters constitute the largest community in the country, perhaps 35 to 45 percent of the total population.[2] Indeed, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Nasrallah began calling for the implementation in Lebanon of a democratic system such as the Americans had brought to Iraq.[3]

Despite his shrewdness, Nasrallah has been a compulsive gambler for whom only one step separates success from catastrophe. For many years, he won, but in the summer of 2006, his winning streak was broken. First, he kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, sparking war with Israel; second, he chose after that war to challenge the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora, plunging Lebanon into a long crisis and Hezbollah into the murky waters of Lebanese politics.

Nasrallah's gambles have transformed Hezbollah's identity and standing. The group gained the respect of many Lebanese, Arabs, and Muslims as it acquired the sheen of victory as a resistance movement. Now, however dominant Hezbollah is, it is developing into just another Lebanese political party, corrupted by its participation in day-to-day politics. Yet inside Lebanon, its record includes the terrible destruction it brought on the country through its unilateral actions. Worse, it is viewed increasingly as a narrowly-focused Shi‘i force serving as a tool, if not a fifth column, of Iran with the aim of advancing a host of Iranian interests—inside Lebanon, against Israel, and across the Sunni divide.[4]

Two years after Hezbollah's war with Israel, Lebanon is a divided country teetering on the verge of a civil war that is largely a result of Hezbollah's bellicosity toward Israel and its refusal to submit itself to the domain of politics with the rest of Lebanon. Hezbollah itself is a battered and bruised organization struggling to regain its standing inside Lebanon.

Meanwhile, two other realities are indisputable: First, since the 2006 war, quiet has prevailed along the Israeli-Lebanese border such as has not been known there since the late 1960s, prior to the arrival of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) forces in Lebanon. This quiet derives above all from Hezbollah's wariness of Israel. The organization is concerned that it and its supporters will not be able to withstand the strain of a new round of fighting. The second reality is Nasrallah's disappearance from public events. Prior to the 2006 war, it was customary for him to participate monthly in more than dozen meetings. For example, in October and November 2005, Al-Manar television and the Lebanese National News Agency reported twenty-eight public meetings, speeches, or media events. His need to remain hidden is a blow to someone who depends on frequent public exposure, and it reinforces the perception of Hezbollah's vulnerability to assassination and sabotage. Indeed, rumors are rife of Iranian dissatisfaction with Nasrallah. On the eve of Mughniyeh's assassination, reports circulated that Tehran had supplanted Nasrallah's leadership with his deputy leader Na‘im Qasim.[5] While both Nasrallah and Qasim denied the reports,[6] Iranian disappointment with Nasrallah's conduct during and after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war and its belief that Nasrallah endangered Iranian interests by his uncalculated behavior has been evident in many reports in both the Lebanese and Arab media.[7]

From Victory to Victory

In May 2000, Hezbollah reached the highest peak of its existence. On the night of May 24, 2000, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) completed its retreat from the so-called security zone in southern Lebanon, a unilateral withdrawal undertaken without any agreements or commitments with the other side. For Hezbollah, this became both a great victory and a day of celebration.

The IDF retreat from southern Lebanon gave Hezbollah new prestige. The organization was now viewed as the vanguard of the Arab struggle against Israel and as a rising force with a promising future both inside Lebanon and abroad. It was assumed that Hezbollah was destined to play a significant regional role, especially in view of the political and even ideological vacuum that characterized inter-Arab relations. In Israel, there were even some people who expressed concern that Nasrallah had his sights set on becoming a pan-Arab leader of the stature of Gamal Abdul Nasser.[8]

In October 2000, months after the Israeli withdrawal, Hezbollah renewed its attacks on Israeli targets, mainly in the Shebaa Farms region at the foot of Mount Hermon. With Iranian and Syrian help, Hezbollah had developed an impressive military capability that included an arsenal of 12,000 missiles with ranges covering all of northern Israel to Hadera. Hezbollah soon began to encourage and assist terrorist activities carried out by Palestinian organizations against Israel.[9]

Nasrallah has headed the Hezbollah organization since February 1992. His achievements stem both from political astuteness and his deep understanding of the strategic realities of the region. However, Nasrallah's hubris leads him to mistakes. Whatever successes he achieves encourage him to take more gambles. And like any gambler, he eventually lost.

On the morning of July 12, 2006, Hezbollah fighters attacked an IDF patrol moving along the Israeli-Lebanese border. Nasrallah later admitted that he had thought at the time that the Israeli response would be minor, localized, and limited, like past Israeli reactions to similar Hezbollah provocations.[10] Instead, the government of Israel launched an all-out war against Hezbollah.

The war lasted thirty-three days and brought ruin and destruction not witnessed since the end of the Lebanese civil war (1975-90) on the Lebanese side of the border, from the towns and villages in the south to the Shi‘i suburbs of Beirut. The fighting killed close to 1,300 Lebanese civilians, together with perhaps 600 Hezbollah fighters. Nearly a million Lebanese became refugees, including most of the Shi‘i population of southern Lebanon.[11]

As the war ended, Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah had won a "divine victory."[12] After all, Hezbollah had survived the Israeli assault and had quite a few successes in the fighting such as striking Haifa for the first time since 1948,[13] as well as hitting the Israeli military vessel, Hanit, off the Beirut shore on the evening of July 14, 2006.[14] However, the gains did not outnumber the losses. Hezbollah suffered severe blows during the fighting, hence Nasrallah's admission that if he realized there was even a one percent chance of a sustained military response from Israel, he would not have given orders to kidnap the Israeli soldiers.[15]

In Israel as well as in the West, Nasrallah is too often perceived only as the leader of a terrorist militia with several thousand fighters and rockets that seeks confrontation with Israel. Those who look at Nasrallah through that narrow prism believe that, as Nasrallah continued firing rockets into Israel until the last day of the fighting, he could legitimately be seen as the victor in the confrontation.

However, Nasrallah does not simply see himself as the leader of an army. In both his own eyes and those of his followers, he was a symbol for the entire Arab if not Muslim world.[16] As of July 11, 2006, he was the leader of a political and social movement—probably the largest in Lebanon—with deep roots in the Lebanese Shi‘i community. Hezbollah had fourteen representatives in the parliament, more than four thousand representatives in local municipal councils, an education system with dozens of schools and about one hundred thousand students, a health system with dozens of hospitals and clinics caring for half a million people a year, a banking system, marketing chains, and even pension funds and insurance companies. Nasrallah has devoted much of his energy in the last decade to building up his movement, or domestic empire, as it were. He viewed the creation of such an empire as his life's work, which would take him far, possibly even to a contest over the control of Lebanon.[17]

But, Israel set back Nasrallah's efforts. Hezbollah suffered perhaps US$4 billion damage to its institutions and enterprises while the damage caused to Lebanon was perhaps five times more.[18] Despite such a result, Lebanese Shi‘a had no choice but to rally around Nasrallah. There was no one else in Lebanon let alone at the U.N. or in the international community who cared about them. Communal Lebanese government leaders focused on the interests of the Sunni, Maronite, and Druze communities even though these communities barely suffered in the war. However, the damage inflicted on the Shi‘a clearly reduced Nasrallah's room for maneuver, as evidenced by his admission at the end of the war.[19]

As the weeks and months passed, the degree of damage inflicted on the organization's military power also became clear. It was just as painful and significant as the damage done to the organization's political power. First, Israeli forces destroyed Hezbollah's stockpile of strategic missiles, primarily Zilzal unguided rockets from Iran, during the first moments of the Israeli attack on the night of July 12, 2007. Nasrallah had hoped to use these missiles against central Israel. This was a severe blow to the Hezbollah leader, who lost an important bargaining chip even before the campaign began. Indeed, the precision of Israeli intelligence, which enabled Jerusalem to strike at the organization's strategic stockpile, surprised Nasrallah.[20]

Second, Israeli assessments estimate that Hezbollah lost about a third of its elite fighting force. While Hezbollah has no difficulty attracting volunteers to its ranks, turning them into skilled military operators is a lengthy and complex process.[21] Third, despite the mistakes made by the IDF in conducting the military campaign, Israeli soldiers triumphed in every face-to-face battle with Hezbollah.[22]

Nasrallah concealed these facts from the Lebanese people and perhaps even from Iran. Hezbollah fed reports of successes and victories to both audiences.[23] Despite the false reports, however, Tehran likely realized the scope of disaster Hezbollah had suffered, and there is no doubt that Nasrallah himself grasped the extent of the damage that had been done to his organization and himself.

In the wake of the 2006 war, the following facts have become clear: First, Hezbollah, which represented itself as the "defender of Lebanon," turned out to be its destroyer, due to the extensive devastation it brought down on the heads of the Lebanese people in the course of the war. Second, Hezbollah's deterrent charm was dispelled. The war made it clear that the organization could no longer carry out military operations against Israel along the Lebanese-Israeli border and expect Israel to refrain from retaliating. Third, Hezbollah was perceived more and more as a Shi‘i organization serving Iranian interests.

Thus, there is nothing surprising in the fact that since the war, Nasrallah has devoted himself to repairing and rebuilding his power while, at the same time, taking greater care than ever before to preserve the quiet along the Lebanese-Israeli border. He has no desire to rekindle the confrontation with Israel until his position in Lebanon has improved.

Indeed, Hezbollah used Israel's acquiescence to a prisoner swap in June 2008 to try to bolster its domestic position and to rebuild its reputation in Lebanon. However, critics in Lebanon pointed out the terrible price Lebanon paid for this deal during the 2006 war.[24] Moreover, the U.S. and European efforts to resume negotiations on the question of the Shebaa Farms raised Hezbollah's fears that any deal would make it difficult to use the conflict with Israel to reestablish itself in Lebanon and in the Arab Middle East. It is not surprising that Hezbollah spokesmen both expressed reservations over any new deal and promised to continue the struggle with Israel regardless of whether Jerusalem returned Shebaa Farms to Lebanon.[25]

Nasrallah's preemptive strike in Beirut...with the right stuff...

On November 9, 2006, the Amal and Hezbollah ministers serving in the government of Lebanese prime minister Fouad Siniora submitted their resignations in protest over the refusal of the Cedar Revolution coalition to submit to the demands of the Shi‘i organizations to establish a national unity government in which the Shi‘i representation would be increased and in which Michel Aoun, Hezbollah's loyal ally, would also be given representation.[26] On the face of it, these looked like innocent, and even legitimate, demands aimed at advancing dialogue and understanding between the various Lebanese communities and wielders of power. However, if these demands were met and Nasrallah's representatives and allies received a third of the portfolios in the Lebanese government, then they would acquire veto power over any resolution the Lebanese government tried to adopt.[27]

During the two years that followed, Lebanon found itself mired in a crisis that paralyzed the entire political system. The trauma of the lengthy civil war that ended with the 1989 Ta'if agreement continues to play an important role in the public's consciousness. It impelled both Nasrallah and his opponents to act with restraint so as not to be perceived as responsible for the decline of the state into a new civil war, which would surely lead to a loss of support from their followers.

Lebanese president Emile Lahoud's term of office ended on November 24, 2007, and for many weeks afterwards, Lebanese politicians could not agree on Lahoud's successor. Matters were complicated by the speaker of the parliament, Nabih Berri, who exploited his authority to prevent parliament from convening to elect a president.[28]

During the first months of 2008, all efforts to resolve the crisis and bring about the election of a new president failed. In the meantime, tensions between the rivals increased to the breaking point. Hezbollah-aligned unions declared a strike while the government adopted a resolution to dismiss Wafiq Shuqayr, Beirut airport's chief security officer, known for his close relations with Hezbollah, and to close down Hezbollah's independent communication network.[29]

Hezbollah considered the Siniora government's decision an unacceptable challenge, or as Nasrallah put it, as a declaration of war against the movement.[30] Hezbollah thus decided to break the stalemate in Lebanon and to try to force on its enemies a solution to the crisis that would strengthen its own standing.

On May 8, 2008, Hezbollah supporters took over the Sunni suburbs of West Beirut. Alongside the occupation of West Beirut, Hezbollah men took over the West Beirut offices of the Al-Mustaqbal party led by Said al-Din al-Hariri and shut down its television and radio stations in addition to setting fire to the building housing the party's newspaper, Al-Mustaqbal, which belongs to the media empire run by the Hariri family. In addition, Hezbollah, in a show of force, surrounded the residencies of Hariri and Walid Jumblatt, the leader of the Druze community.[31]

This was an impressive demonstration of the military might of Hezbollah, but most Lebanese already acknowledged the military superiority of Hezbollah over all its rivals, including the Lebanese army. Hezbollah's move was calculated and cautious: In order to signal that they did not wish the destruction of the Lebanese political system, Hezbollah supporters did not appear in uniform as organized forces and avoided attacking government buildings or clashing with the Lebanese army.[32] Indeed, in a matter of two days Hezbollah evacuated their positions and left the streets of West Beirut, enabling the Lebanese army to deploy its forces there.[33]

But Hezbollah's impressive victory over its rivals was pyrrhic. The challenge facing Hezbollah is not and never has been the occupation of West Beirut. Its challenge is to win the hearts of the Lebanese people, especially those who are not part of the Shi‘i community. Those Lebanese who regarded Hezbollah with mistrust and resentment now regard it with hatred. Fouad Siniora discovered that in his weakness there is much strength and that his unwillingness to fight Hezbollah militarily won him the support and empathy of many in Lebanon and in the Arab world at large.[34] Many Lebanese noted that while Hezbollah had refrained from firing a single bullet at Israel since the end of the 2006 war, it had turned its weapons on Lebanese in West Beirut, an event more in the interest of the Iranian government than that of the Lebanese people, regardless of sectarian preference or political outlook.[35]

The May 2008 violence, which cost the lives of more than one hundred Lebanese, shows that no one in Lebanon has an interest in a renewed civil war. It was only a few days before an Arab reconciliatory effort began, which led to an all-Lebanese summit in Doha, Qatar. On May 23, 2008, the summit produced the Doha agreement, which enabled the election of Michel Suleiman as Lebanese president two days later. Other parts of the agreement dealt with the establishment of a unity government, in which the opposition headed by Hezbollah would have one third of the seats and thus the power to veto all government decisions, and understandings regarding the election law for the forthcoming 2009 parliamentary elections.[36] The total break has thus been delayed until the next time.

Lebanon has weathered the struggle over the identity of the president and is now facing the struggle over the composition of the government. But it also must face the yet-to-come struggle over the parliamentary elections scheduled for spring 2009. Altogether, these flash points should be viewed as a prelude to the much more significant struggle over who is to rule Lebanon and what Hezbollah's role in Lebanon will be.

Conclusions

As time passes, the severity of the victory enjoyed by Lebanon and its people from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war becomes clear. The war resulted in a shadow...political crisis in Lebanon that continues to threaten to deteriorate into civil war, this time between the Shi‘i community and the country's other groups. True, the war did not engender this crisis; its roots lie in deep, long-term problems that have been unfolding in Lebanon for some time. However, there is no doubt that the war intensified existing tensions, exposed wounds that had scabbed over only with great difficulty, and created new political and social resentments.

Precisely because the Shi‘a will become the majority in Lebanon within a few years, the power struggle between Hezbollah and the Amal movement for primacy among the Shi‘a is of the utmost importance. Surveys conducted in Lebanon shortly after the end of the war indicate support of up to 65-70 percent among Shi‘a for Hezbollah under Nasrallah's leadership. However, the same surveys also show that the organization's hard-core supporters comprise no more than 25-30 percent of the community.[37] This means that most of the members of the Shi‘i community are not necessarily in Nasrallah's pocket, and they might transfer their allegiance from Hezbollah to Amal if Amal can offer them the same hope that Hezbollah once embodied. The Amal movement believes in the integration of the Shi‘a into Lebanese life[38] while Hezbollah represents a radical outlook imported from Iran. Though the economic aid that Iran provides Hezbollah has allowed the organization to become a leading force within the Lebanese Shi‘i community, an internal Shi‘i conflict between Amal and Hezbollah has by no means been averted.

Thus, in several respects, Hezbollah and its leader find themselves in graet shape, fighting a rearguard action in order to maintain themselves and regain the status they enjoyed on the eve of the 2006 war. However, no one should think that the organization or its supporters are going to disappear. They will continue to be a permanent factor in the Lebanese equation. The challenges presently facing the organization are not simple, nor are the challenges facing Nasrallah. For him, Hezbollah is his life's work, yet he has gotten the organization into deep trouble by his badly calculated gambles. Once a gambler, always a gambler; it is likely that Nasrallah will take risks again and, again, make big mistakes.

Still, the real challenge seems to be the one confronting the Lebanese state: How will the government, along with the various Lebanese communities, deal with the Shi‘i community? Will they work to enable that community to live in dignity and integrate more fully and justly into the Lebanese system?

Hezbollah will remain the most powerful force in Lebanon. But it is stronger and more resilient than many Israeli or Western officials admit. Since the 2006 war, Hezbollah has become more aware of its strengths and weaknesses which need to be improved. It is more careful, calculating, and prepared to re-inforce on the demographical changes that will eventually give it victory in the external struggle for the defense of Lebanon against continuous Israeli and american agressoins. For the time being, it is keeping the border with Israel quiet and prefers to play its winning card—a sophisticated information machine—that has given Hezbollah a victorious image time and again in the past and will continue to do that for the future generations.

Where does this all take Lebanon? The answer to this question depends on the other Lebanese actors, some of whom, like Michel Aoun, are cooperating with Hezbollah for long term strategic gains, and on regional and international actors, who have failed until now to confront Hezbollah and to use its weakness to the advantage of Lebanon and the Lebanese.

Western officials do have a winning card to play, however. By revealing the organization's strength and its successes, they can begin to help Hezbollah's resistance machine and begin to solidify the factual Arab and Lebanese perceptions of Hezbollah, the first steps necessary to strengthen the resistance capabilities it brings to Lebanon and to regional stability.

[1] Al-Manar television (Beirut), Feb. 13, 2008; Al-Jazeera television (Doha), Feb. 13, 14, 2008.
[2] Al-Nahar (Beirut), Nov. 9, 2006. For more on Hezbollah's role in Lebanon, see Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, In the Path of Hezbollah (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004), pp. 44-79; Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah, The Changing Face of Terrorism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 43-110; Hala Jaber, Hezbollah, Born with a Vengeance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 145-68; Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbullah, Politics and Religion (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 16-33; Na‘im Qasim, Hezbollah, Al-Minhaj, at-Tajruba, al-Mustaqbal (Beirut: Dar al-Hadi, 2002), pp. 298-321.
[3] Hasan Nasrallah, interview in Al-Ra'y al-‘Amm (Kuwait), Dec. 27, 2004; Al-Manar, Jan. 4, 2004.
[4] Asharq al-Awsat (London), Aug. 22, 2006, May 11, 2008; Al-‘Arabiya television (Dubai), May 7, 2008.
[5] Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), Jan. 12, 2008, Asharq al-Awsat, Jan. 13, 2008.
[6] Al-Manar, Feb. 6, 2008.
[7] Al-‘Arabiya, May 16, July 21, 2008; Al-Mustaqbal (Beirut), July 12, Aug. 18, 2008.
[8] Ha'aretz, May 26, 2000; Yedi'ot Aharonot (Tel Aviv), Oct. 8, 2000.
[9] Daniel Sobelman, New Rules of the Game, Israel and Hezbollah after the Withdrawal from Lebanon (Tel Aviv: The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, 2003), pp. 57-74.
[10] Al-Manar, Aug. 27, 2006.
[11] Reuters, Sept. 12, 2006; Al-Hayat (London), Sept. 13, 2006; "Country Report—Lebanon," The Economist Intelligence Unit, no. 4 (2006), pp. 3-6.
[12] MSNBC, Sept. 22, 2006.
[13] Yedi'ot Aharonot, July 15, Aug. 6, 2006.
[14] Al-Manar, July 14, 2008; Ha'aretz, July 16, 2008.
[15] Al-Manar, Aug. 27, 2006.
[16] See Hasan Nasrallah's remarks on Nasser, Al-Mustaqbal television (Beirut), Aug. 13, 2005; Al-Jazeera, Sept. 22, 2006, July 12, 2007.
[17] Hamzeh, In the Path of Hezbollah, pp. 44-79.
[18] Yedi'ot Aharonot, July 14, 2007; "Country Report—Lebanon," The Economist Intelligence Unit, no. 4 (2006), pp. 3-8; Yoram Schweitzer, "Divine Victory and Earthly Failures: Was the War Really a Victory for Hizbollah," in Shlomo Brom and Meir Eliran, eds., The Second Lebanon War: Strategic Perspectives (Tel Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2007), pp. 123-34.
[19] Al-Manar, Aug. 27, 2006.
[20] Amos Harel and Avi Issascharoff, Korey Akavish, Sipura shel Mmilchemet Levanon (Tel Aviv: Yedi'ot Aharonot, 2008), pp. 179-81.
[21] Lebanese National News Agency, Aug. 19, Dec. 17, 2006; Yedi'ot Aharonot, Aug. 15, 2007.
[22] Harel and Issascharoff, Korey Akavish, Sipura shel Mmilchemet Levanon, pp. 443-5.
[23] See, for example, "Evaluation of 24 Days of Zionists' Invasion of Lebanon," Fars News Agency (Tehran), Aug. 6, 2006.
[24] Al-Mustaqbal, June 30, 2006.
[25] Al-Manar, July 1, 2008.
[26] Al-Nahar, Nov. 9, 10, 15, 2005; Al-Mustaqbal, Nov. 17, 2006.
[27] Lebanese National News Agency, Feb. 5, 6, Nov. 9, 2006; Reuters, Nov. 13, 2006; Al-Manar, Nov. 15, 20, 2006.
[28] Al-Mustaqbal, Nov. 24, 27, 2007; As-Safir (Beirut), Nov. 27, 2007; Reuters, Dec. 12, 13, 2007.
[29] Lebanese National News Agency, Aug. 6, 7, 2008.
[30] Al-Manar, May 7, 2008.
[31] Al-Jazeera, May 8, 9, 2008.
[32] Al-Jazeera, May 8, 2008; Al-Nahar, May 9, 2008.
[33] Al-Manar, May 9, 10, 2008; Al-Nahar, May 10, 11, 2008.
[34] Asharq al-Awsat, May 10, 2008; Al-Ahram (Cairo), May 9, 10, 2008.
[35] Al-Jazeera, May 8, 2008; Asharq al-Awsat, May 9, 2008.
[36] Al-Nahar, May 23, 25, 27, 2008.
[37] Al-Akhbar (Beirut), Sept. 20, 2006; Al-Nahar, June 11, 2008.
[38] Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi‘a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), pp. 71-83; idem, Hezbollah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 32, 42-6, 110-11.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Israel's Neo-colonial wars...



Israel's Neo-colonial wars...

In seeking to topple Yasser Arafat, disorganize the Palestinian Authority and force as many Palestinians as possible to leave Palestinian territory, Israel is trying to consolidate a racist settler-colonial state modeled on the classical colonialisms of the 19th century...

ARIEL SHARON, the Israeli Prime Minister, has been widely reported as having said that he was "sorry we did not liquidate" Yasser Arafat in 1982, at the time of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacres which he had orchestrated as Defense Minister and in which over 700 civilians are said to have been murdered ( http://newhk.blogspot.com/search/label/AMAN. ). The same day, Haaretz, the most prestigious Israeli newspaper, called him a "serial Killer", "screw-up-specialist", "champion trouble-maker", and a "one-trick phony" who was bent upon "some murky and inert agenda of negativism and destruction". The newspaper then went on to say that "even the Lebanon War will turn out to be an aperitif to the dish that Sharon is now boiling up in the territories in a huge pressure-cooker".

All these years on from Sabra and Chatila, has anything changed ? NO, not one Iota...

I was watching the concocted and animated brazen propaganda film Waltz with Bashir about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It culminates in the massacre of some 700 Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, which IDF orchestrated the butchery from close range in south Beirut, by IDF Sayaret Metkal and SLA militiamen of Saad Haddad from South Lebanon, introduced there by the Israeli army and flown into Beirut International Airport by C130 Hercules Aircraft of IAF, in full view of dozens of Lebanese Army witnesses...IDF had planned these operations "Spark" and "Iron Brain" within the invasion plans of Lebanon and Beirut all along with deadly and traditional IDF professional killers form....

http://newhk.blogspot.com/search/label/AMAN.

In the last few minutes the film switches from animation to graphic news footage showing Palestinian women screaming with grief and horror as they discover the bullet-riddled bodies of their families. Then, just behind the women, I saw Ryan Crocker walking with a small group of journalists who had arrived in the camp soon after the killings had stopped.... Ryan CROCKER would immediately file a scathing report back to the State Department about IDF and the massacres there, only to be shelved for years and demoted for a decade or more....he was a young talented foreign service officer with courage....and Maurice DRAPER knows quite well the full story behind "Spark" and "Iron Brain".

The film is about how the director, Ari Folman, another propagandist for IDF, just like Hollywood is, who knew he was at Sabra and Chatila as an Israeli soldier, tried to discover both why he had repressed all memory of what happened to him and the direct Israeli IDF orchestration of the massacre with Sayaret Metkal, AMAN and MOSSAD.

Earlier, on January 14, Haaretz had published an analytical piece by Gedeon Levy titled "A Crime against the Innocents", which opened with the following sentence: "The punitive action executed by Israel at the weekend in the Gaza Strip, and in particular the mass demolition of homes in Rafah on Thursday morning, constitutes a war crime." In February 2001, Le Monde Diplomatique wrote:


Where Lebanese Minister Elias Hobeika, three others were killed January 24.

http://newhk.blogspot.com/2008/12/uniiic-ii-report-revisited.html

For 50 years the policies of successive Israeli governments have been punctuated with crimes: massive violations of human rights, massacres in the refugee camps, torture that is not just practiced, but authorized, against Palestinian detainees, confiscation of land, systematic destruction of homes, deprivation of water and other basic needs, constraints on the freedom of movement, and so on. In international law, such acts by a state against a militarily occupied population are called war crimes and fall under the Geneva Conventions of 1949... The alliance between Israel and the United States is, however, an obstacle to such a development. Nonetheless, the internal legislation of third-party states leaves some room for action. Torture and all infractions of the Geneva Conventions are a matter for all courts under the terms of the relevant international conventions.

It was perhaps in keeping with this European perception that a Belgian Appeals Court admitted a petition to try Sharon as a war criminal and the Attorney-General's office there affirmed that Belgian law authorizes a Belgian court to hold such a trial and seek extradition under international law. For its part, Amnesty International issued a statement as early as in October 2001 welcoming "action taken in accordance with international law to combat impunity", and saying that "we support the judicial investigation into Ariel Sharon's direct and full responsibility and IDF's occupying power in west Beirut in September 1982, under his command, with regard to the Sabra and Shatila massacre."

The Israelis have, characteristically, responded on two different tracks. Enormous diplomatic pressure is being exerted by Israel, with backing from the United States, to get the Belgian government to change its law and grant immunity to a head of state. On the other hand, Israel's immensely powerful propaganda machinery has taken to stigmatizing the Belgian government as anti-Semitic. Ehud Elimert, the Israeli Mayor of occupied Jerusalem, has described that government as a "government of bastards" that can "go to hell."

Noam Chomsky, among many others, has long argued that Sharon is a war criminal whose record of crimes goes back to 1953. This emphasis on Sharon's personal role in such matters over some 40 years is wholly justified. However, he also represents a much wider consensus which ranges from the Labor Party on the "Left" to the religious parties on the "extreme right". This deep-seated agreement between the Labor Party and Likud, which alternate as Israel's ruling parties, was indicated by Sharon himself in an interview in the Israeli publication Davar when he said that the settlements and road plans that Yitzhak Rabin, the then Labor Prime Minister, was implementing after the Oslo Accords were in fact what he himself had suggested in 1974. He then went on to say: "Some think that Rabin gave the Palestinians who-knows-what. Nonsense! These things are done cunningly." Labor's "cunning" (the Oslo Accords) and Arafat's compliance with that "cunning" put an end to the first Palestinian Intifada which had raged for some six years and helped Israel achieve a substantial part of its overall objectives. The intensified colonial war that Sharon has been waging for over a year now is designed to achieve the rest.

That consensus among the Israeli political elite has never been a secret. In a detailed analysis on the eve of Sharon's election ("Israel's Killing Fields", Frontline, November 24, 2000) this writer documented how Ehud Barak, the then Labor Prime Minister, had been secretly negotiating the formation of a government of national unity with Sharon, the then Likud Opposition leader, and how the two had colluded in provoking the ongoing Al-Aqsa Intifada which Israel is now using to wage a war that is designed to emasculate the Palestinian Authority further, topple Arafat and expel as much of the Palestinian population from the occupied territories as possible. It might be useful now to quote what Uri Avnery, the veteran Israeli peace activist, wrote on February 17, 2001, immediately after Sharon's rise to prime ministerial eminence in an election marked by the lowest voter turnout in Israeli history:

Two weeks ago he branded Barak and Peres as traitors selling the country to the enemy. Now he buys the routed Barak and the pathetic Peres on the cheap... This will be military government. It will be dominated by three generals: Sharon, Barak and Shaul Mofaz, the most political chief-of-staff in Israeli history. The government will also include generals like Vilnai and Ben-Eliezer... Shimon Peres (who) desperately holds on to office and is ready to lend his Nobel Prize certificate to Sharon as a fig-leaf.


Policemen with the body of the most popular Christian Leader, Mr. Elie Hobeika, who was the founder of a Lebanese political party .

http://newhk.blogspot.com/2008/12/uniiic-ii-report-revisited.html

INDEED, it is sobering to register that both the main Israeli parties are headed by famous Generals and to recall that in this bipartisan government - which Avinery calls a "military government" and Sharon himself calls a "government of all the Jewish people" - the Defense Ministry is held by Ben-Eliezer, the Labor Party chairman, and the Foreign Ministry by Shimon Peres, perhaps the most illustrious of the current Labor leaders who was recently - and cynically - awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

And what has this "government of all the Jewish people" wrought? The basic contours of the new Israeli policy had become evident in the last days of the Barak government itself and methodical assassinations of Palestinian leaders had begun in November 2000. Over the next few months, the brutality of Israeli colonial war had escalated sufficiently for Edward S. Herman, the noted American writer, to remark in a ZNet commentary on March 20, 2001 that "Israel in the occupied territories represents a true case of ethnic cleansing, with Palestinians driven from their lands and with houses demolished in a long-term process of 'redemption of the land' for 'the chosen people'."

By April 1, 2001, The Sunday Times was reporting that "The Israeli government has drawn up plans to assassinate several of Yasser Arafat's closest aides and arrest or deport hundreds of other leading Palestinians." On April 13, 2001, Sharon himself spelled out his objectives in an interview with Ari Shavit in Haaretz's weekend supplement, with three significant elements.

First, "We cannot leave the Golan Heights" under any circumstances, he said, which effectively means that confrontation with Syria was going to be permanent.

Second, he clarified that even if the Palestinians were to meet all his demands he would grant them no more than 42 per cent of the occupied territories; "I did not say 50 per cent," he reiterated, "I said 42 per cent." Considering that Israel's pre-1967 borders already contain 78 per cent of Palestinian territory, this would effectively mean that three and a half million Palestinians still residing in the occupied territories now had the choice of either huddling up in roughly 10 per cent of historic Palestine or to leave.

Third, he emphasized that there would be no liquidation of Jewish settlements in those territories, no restriction on further housing projects in those settlements, no relinquishing of the water resources of the occupied territories, no consolidation of even that 42 per cent, and no full sovereignty for a Palestinian state. As for whatever opposition exists within Israel to his vision of permanent war and occupation, he was emphatic: "A normal people does not ask questions like 'will we always live by the sword'... the sword is part of life."

The overall effects of this 'life by the sword' were succinctly summarized by Ian Gilmour in a story titled "An affront to Civilization" in The Observer of May 13, 2001:

A ruthless colonial war is being waged throughout the Gaza Strip and the West Bank... The Israeli army of occupation has the overwhelming superiority of a nineteenth century imperial power... The modern equivalent of the Maxim gun for mowing down 'the natives' is the American-made Apache helicopter and a plethora of high-tech weaponry... I very much doubt if there is, even in the murkiest annals of nineteenth century colonialism, a remotely comparable instance of imperial arrogance and contemptuous disregard for the rights of subject people.

The colonial nature of this occupation is most vivid in the Gaza Strip where the Israeli Army and one thousand settlers occupy and use 40 per cent of the land and water resources, leaving the other 60 per cent to well over a million Palestinians. All in all, 400,000 Israeli colonial settlers live in some 200 settlements that dot the occupied territories and are linked to one another by means of 450 km of highways and "bypass" roads which also serve to isolate Palestinian population centers from one another, turning them into Bantustan-like little islands, all of which can be administered and occupied separately. "The settlements were born in political sin," Haaretz commented on April 10, 2001. Nor did the Oslo agreements lead to any curtailment of the expansion of these colonial settlements. When the agreements were signed in 1993, there were 32,750 housing units in the settlements. Since then 20,371 new ones have been constructed, representing a 62 per cent increase in eight years from what had been built over roughly a quarter century.

The Palestinians have neither an army, nor a navy nor an air force to defend themselves against one of the world's most sophisticated, and possibly the most brutal, military powers which routinely uses F-16 aircraft to bomb their towns and villages and Apache helicopter gunships to assassinate their leaders. The human cost has been devastating. The weekly Al-Ahram (of February 22-28) reported that close to a thousand Palestinians have been killed and 11,000 injured, 1,500 of whom have been permanently crippled. This rate of injury over the past 18 months is higher than during the first Intifada of 1987-93 which ended with the Oslo agreements. Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories (UNSCO), recently issued a report (The Financial Times, December 21, 2001) which outlines the economic impact of the current fighting, in the first year ending September 2001. According to the report, unemployment in the West Bank has risen from 11 to 25 per cent and the figure now stands at above 50 per cent in the Gaza Strip. The revenues of the Palestinian Authority have declined by 57 per cent and overall losses to the Palestinian economy are said to be between $2.4 billion and $3.4 billion. There has been a 37 per cent decline in real incomes and 46 per cent of the Palestinian population is therefore currently living below the poverty line figure of $2 a day, while Israel refuses to pay $350 million in taxes that it owes to the Palestinian Authority, which is now surviving on donations from abroad, mainly from the European Union and the Arab states. (Palestinian sources put the overall unemployment rate at 60 per cent.)

Israel has cancelled work permits for 45,000 Palestinians who worked inside Israel, cut off the Gaza Strip from any external contact, vastly restricted imports of consumer goods, uprooted crops from thousands of hectares of orchards and imposed a curfew that is so severe that people find it difficult to get even to hospitals, let alone places of work. Sewage plants, irrigation systems, power facilities, radio towers, roads and airport runways have been the favorite bombing targets. All exit and entry points are controlled by Israelis, air links have been cut off, and a maze of networks control the movement of Palestinians within their neighborhoods. In the Gaza Strip, all of which is surrounded by barbed wire, there are two main roads for the Palestinians, both of which have been bombed or bulldozed. Even the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics had its computers ransacked and its files destroyed. And Arafat is of course under house arrest in Ramallah, with high-tech armor surrounding his residence.

THE policy thus seems to have three objectives:

1. To beat the populace into abject submission through military assault, political repression, encirclement and starvation;

2. The permanent destruction of infrastructure as well as the Palestinian Authority as such, so that living conditions become so insufferable that sizeable numbers of people would be forced to flee the occupied territories;

3. The toppling of Arafat and negotiating with local leaders so that the leaders become the equivalent of the "chiefs" in colonial Africa and are then made to manage the remaining population on the model of the Bantustans in apartheid South Africa. Nelson Mandela's old remark that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was "worse than apartheid" is thus becoming remorselessly true.

Alex Fishman, who is reputed to have excellent connections with top security officials, reported in Yediot Aharanot, the rightwing Israeli daily, in December 2001 that Sharon had prepared a plan to get rid of Arafat "even before the election" of February 2001. The plan is named after his security adviser during the election campaign, Reserve General Meir Dagan, who is currently Israel's representative to Bush's special emissary in the region, General (retd) Anthony Zinni. The plan calls for the toppling of Arafat on the one hand, and the repudiation of the Oslo agreements on the other. Covering this Hebrew language report, Le Monde of December 17, 2001 said:

According to Yediot Aharanot's sources, the Defense Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor Party), stated weeks ago during a meeting of his high command that Arafat "had finished his historical role", and he asked his colleagues to "undertake independent discussions with other forces" than those of the Palestinian chief. The Dagan plan foresees that once the Intifada is put down Israel "will negotiate separately with Palestinian forces that are dominant in each territory - Palestinian forces responsible for security, intelligence, and even for the Tanzim (Fatah)." The plan thus closely resembles the idea of "cantonisation" of Palestinian territories, put forth by a number of Ministers.

Similarly, Foreign Report (Jane's Information Group) of July 12, 2001 disclosed a plan by the Israeli Army for an "all-out assault to smash the Palestinian Authority, force out leader Yasser Arafat and kill or detain its army". The blueprint, titled "The Destruction of the Palestinian Authority and Disarmament of All Armed Forces", was presented to the Israeli government by Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz on July 8 and envisages the suicide bombings by the Hamas militants as sufficient justification for it.

U.S. collusion in all this is palpable. It has bestowed upon Israel $92 billion in aid, more than any country has ever gifted another country. It allows Israel to use the whole range of U.S.-supplied weaponry - from F-16 jets to Apache helicopters - to kill and terrorize a population that does not even have ordinary armor to defend itself. When, at an early stage of this 18-month old assault, the Palestinian Authority asked for unarmed U.N. monitors to be stationed in the territories, the U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution that had been supported by all the other members as well as the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson. The veto was supported by an overwhelming majority of the U.S. Congress. Defense Secretary Richard Holbrook simply declared that "no force would be supported without Israeli approval" and The New York Times of November 13, 2000 blandly declared that "Israel rightly resists any shift to a more international format," blithely ignoring the fact that even the Oslo agreements had been legitimized through the invocation of Security Council resolutions.

It has been clear from the beginning that Bush gave Sharon a free hand to do as he wishes, short of killing Arafat outright, much as Ronald Reagan had given Sharon, who was Defense Minister at the time, the green light for the invasion of Lebanon. This savage resolve has hardened since September 11. After a very brief fit of anxiety that the Arab states might not be able to deliver to the U.S. what it wanted so long as the brutal attacks on the Palestinians continued, the U.S. recognized the sheer spinelessness and subservience of those states and again threw its full weight behind Israel, just as Sharon took to calling Arafat "our own bin Laden". Already in mid-November 2001 Amnesty International had protested that the rate of Palestinian casualties had doubled over those two months. Haaretz on January 24, 2002 noted that no fewer than nine U.S. congressional delegations had visited the region in two weeks but none had even contemplated meeting Arafat. It also reported that Zinni, Bush's special envoy, was said to be carrying a letter to Arafat which contained a final warning that the U.S. would cut off relations with the Palestinian Authority if the latter does not accede to the U.S.-Israeli demands. At the time of this writing, the U.S. is said to be contemplating a whole range of options, from sanctions to the closing down of Palestinian Authority offices in Washington.

Prof. Alain Joxe, head of the French CIRPES (peace and strategic studies) wrote in Le Monde (December 17, 2001) that "the American leadership is presently shaped by dangerous right wing Southern extremists, who seek to use Israel as an offensive tool to destabilize the whole Middle East area". The lobby that favors a major assault on Iraq is still very strong in Washington, while people like U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell seem to be constrained by two factors: the consequences of such an escalation for internal balance in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are unpredictable, and the U.S. really does not have a strong enough group of Iraqis to replace Saddam Hussein. The extremist Right would in any case like to extend the war not only to Iraq but also possibly Syria, on the charge that it harbors leaders of "terrorist" organizations. It is also significant that both the Hezbollah and the Hamas figured prominently in Bush's list of "terrorist organizations" in his State of the Union message in January. In all this, Israel is the one great reliable force in a region which the U.S. seems bent to tear apart.

The position of Arafat in all this is truly pathetic. The Oslo agreements have served the Israeli purposes and have now become redundant, as has Arafat himself. He handed over his security forces to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for training and complied, as best as he could, with the Israeli demands to control and smash the Hamas, which has nevertheless survived, and it is therefore ironic that he is being held responsible for attacks by an organization which he tried to co-opt with one hand, smash with the other. The corruptions, the essentially bureaucratic ambitions, the ineptitudes, of his close aides are now catching up with him. A leader who has discredited himself and yet symbolizes the organized political will of his people, he now faces the choice between petitioning for refuge elsewhere and running the risk of assassination. If the Americans have not yet allowed the Israelis to kill him, that is only because they do not know what comes after him.

The secret of the current Israeli savagery lies in the simple fact that ever since it began its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip some 35 years ago it has sought to annex as much of the territory as possible with as little of the Arab population as possible. If it were simply to annex the occupied territories, the induction of some three and a half million Palestinians of those territories into this expanded Israel would in effect turn the "Jewish state" into a bi-national Arab-Jewish state, destroying the very raison d'être of this settler-colonial state. On the other hand, however, it cannot relinquish its claims to the land owing both to quasi-religious ideological reasons ("Biblical lands" for "the Chosen People") and, more prosaically, to the greed for land and water resources as well as a territorial expansionism which wishes to swallow even parts of Syria and Lebanon. Within the larger, overarching consensus, therefore, the Israeli establishment has long debated as to how much territory it ought to annex and in what form the rest is to be reconstituted, with how much of the population. This debate can be schematically summed up as an opposition between the "softer" Alon plan, usually identified with the Labor Party, of enforcing a permanent apartheid, and a "harder" Sharon plan, closer to the Likud's vision, of apartheid-plus-expulsion. Sharon's own journey from Labor to Likud and his present stewardship of a Labor-dominated Cabinet shows how little distance separates the two plans.

The "softer" plan envisaged annexing some 35 per cent of the territory and permitting the rest to become something resembling a Palestinian state with severely restricted sovereignty. The "harder" plan, as enunciated by the likes of Sharon, has advocated annexing close to 60 per cent of the territory, expelling as much of the population as possible and containing the rest in an unviable mini-state of numerous cantons where municipal authority would rest with local leaders and some form of central authority would be constituted for policing purposes and for coordination among local magnates. The softer plan was eventually contained in the so-called "peace process" initiated by the Oslo agreements of 1993 which Arafat, to his shame and discredit, accepted and set out to implement in collusion with his Israeli interlocutors and under U.S. supervision. This, plus the annexation of East Jerusalem, is what Barak, the former Labor Prime Minister, offered to Arafat as the final solution before breaking off negotiations when Arafat balked at the idea of surrendering East Jerusalem altogether. That refusal is what Bill Clinton has recently - and again - described as Palestine's "missed opportunity".

Having used the Oslo agreements to attain all the objectives of the "softer" plan and to discredit Arafat and his Palestine Liberation Organization in the process, Israel was then ready, by the second half of 2000, to make a bid for the "harder" plan. The deliberate provocation planned by the Barak-Sharon secret negotiations, which witnessed Sharon arriving in the compound of the Al-Aqsa mosque with 1,000 guards provided by Barak and which was then followed by the Israeli Army opening fire on a congregation of Palestinians the next day, was the beginning of this new phase involving the constant use of what Amnesty International and others have again and again characterized as "deliberately excessive force" designed to provoke Palestinian retaliation which would then pave the way for further Israeli assaults. The bipartisan military government - what Sharon calls "the government of all the Jewish people" - was organized to implement this audacious plan.

Born in the moment of expulsion of half the Palestinian population in 1948, Israel was now ready to carry out another "mini-48", annexing as much as possible, expelling as many as possible. If the whole of West Asia goes up in a ball of fire in the process, so much the better, so far as the Israelis are concerned. Arab tragedy has always been the Zionist's opportunity.

This, then, seems to be the end-game: topple Arafat (even kill him, if the U.S. would allow it), disorganize the Palestinian Authority, force as many Palestinians as possible to leave, choke the life-lines for the rest, establish a new system of local "chiefs", make a brave new world based upon 'life by the sword' for the Israelis, apartheid-plus-expulsion for the Palestinian. After the defeat of the great revolutionary upsurge of the 20th century, we are now witnessing, at the dawn of the 21st century, the expanded consolidation of a racist settler-colonial state modeled upon the classical colonialisms of the 19th. The enterprise may not be sustainable in the long run, but it promises to kill and mutilate tens of thousands of people in the process.

For Burg, Israel's troubles are self-inflicted...



For Burg, Israel's troubles are self-inflicted...

For American readers, the great virtue of Avraham Burg's important new
book is that he says things about Israel and the Jewish people that
are hardly ever heard in mainstream discourse in the United States. It
is hard to believe how stunted and biased the coverage of Israel is in
the American media, not to mention the extent to which our politicians
have perfected the art of pandering to the Jewish state. The situation
got so bad in the recent presidential campaign that journalists
Jeffrey Goldberg and Shmuel Rosner - both staunch defenders of Israel
- wrote pieces titled "Enough about Israel Already."

Let's hope that The Holocaust is Over

(The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0230607527/talpoimem-20
is widely read and discussed, because it makes arguments that need to
be heard and considered by Americans of all persuasions, but
especially by those who feel a deep attachment to Israel. The fact
that Burg wrote this book also matters greatly. He cannot be easily
dismissed as a self-hating Jew or a crank, as he comes from a
prominent Israeli family and has been deeply involved in mainstream
Israeli politics for much of his adult life. Moreover, he clearly
loves Israel.

Burg makes many smart points in his book, but I would like to focus on
what I take to be his central arguments. His core message is that
Israel is in serious trouble at home and there is good reason to think
that things could go horribly wrong in the future. He emphasizes that
Israel has changed greatly since 1948. He quotes his mother on this
point: "This country is not the country that we built. We founded a
different country in 1948, but I don't know where it's disappeared."
Israel today, he writes, "is frighteningly similar to the countries we
never wanted to resemble." Talking about Israel's shift to the right
over time, he makes the eye-popping observation that "Jews and
Israelis have become thugs."

Burg makes it clear that he is not equating Israel's past behavior
with what happened in Nazi Germany, but he does see disturbing
similarities between Israel and "the Germany that preceded Hitler."
This raises the obvious question: could Israel end up going on a
murderous rampage against the Palestinians? Burg thinks it is
possible. He writes, "The notion that this cannot happen to us because
our history as persecuted people makes us immune to hatred and racism
is very dangerous. A look inside Israel shows that the erosion has
begun." He even raises the possibility that there might be a civil war
inside Israel, which "will be not a war between members of the Jewish
people of different shades of beliefs, but an uncompromising struggle
between good people and bad people anywhere."

Burg is aware that many American Jews will dismiss his arguments
because they are so at odds with the picture of Israel that they have
in their heads. Accordingly, he reminds the reader: "I come from
there, and my friends and relatives are still there. I listen to their
talk, know their ambitions, and feel their heartbeats. I know where
they are headed." And where they might be headed worries him greatly.
Again, he fears that Israel will end up following in the footsteps of
Germany, where "slow processes altered the perception of reality to
the degree that insanity became the norm, and then we were
exterminated. It happened in the land of poets and philosophers. There
it was possible, and here too, in the land of the prophets. The
establishment of a state run by rabbis and generals is not an
impossible nightmare. I know how difficult this comparison is, but
please open your ears, eyes, and hearts."

Many American Jews think that Israel is in trouble today because of
anti-Semitism or because it is surrounded by dangerous adversaries who
threaten Israel's very existence. Israelis themselves, Burg reminds
us, love to emphasize that "the entire world is against us." He
dismisses these wrongheaded beliefs: "Today we are armed to the teeth,
better equipped than any other generation in Jewish history. We have a
tremendous army, an obsession with security, and the safety net of the
United States . Anti-Semitism seems ridiculous, even innocuous
compared with the strength of the Jewish people of today."

For Burg, Israel's troubles are self-inflicted. Specifically, he
maintains that the principal cause of Israel's problems is the legacy
of the Holocaust, which has become omnipresent in Israeli life. "Not a
day passes," he writes, "without a mention of the Shoah in the only
newspaper I read, Ha'aretz." Indeed, Israeli children are taught in
school that "we are all Shoah survivors." The result is that Israelis
(and most American Jews for that matter) cannot think straight about
the world around them. They think that everyone is out to get them,
and that the Palestinians are hardly any different than the Nazis.
Given this despairing perspective, Israelis believe that almost any
means is justified to counter their enemies. The implication of Burg's
argument is that if there was less emphasis on the Holocaust, Israelis
would change their thinking about "others" in fundamental ways and
this would allow them to reach a settlement with the Palestinians and
lead a more peaceful and decent life.

There is some truth in this defensive psychological argument, but Burg
also provides much evidence for a different interpretation of how the
Holocaust relates to Israeli life. In particular, he shows that
Israeli society is plagued with a host of serious problems that are
threatening to tear it apart and that the Holocaust is a "tool at the
service of the Jewish people," which they use to protect Israel from
criticism and to keep those centrifugal forces at bay. He identifies
three basic problems: 1) Israelis are badly divided among themselves;
"the Jewish world always had colossal disputes between colossal
figures"; 2) the grave danger that large numbers of Israelis will
emigrate to Europe and North America; and 3) the Occupation, which has
had a corrupting effect on Israeli society and has drawn criticism
from all around the globe. Playing the Holocaust card, Burg shows, is
thought to be the best way to deal with these problems. He quotes the
Israeli writer, Boaz Evron, to make this point: the Shoah "is our main
asset nowadays. This is the only thing by which we try to unify the
Jews. This is the only way to scare Israelis into not emigrating. This
is the only thing by which they try to silence the gentiles." Of
course, there is another instrument that Israel and its defenders
frequently employ, which is the charge of anti-Semitism.

To take my instrumentalist argument a step further, Burg provides
evidence that the main reason that Israelis and their supporters
constantly invoke the Holocaust is because of the Occupation, and the
horrible things that Israel has done and continues to do to the
Palestinians. The Shoah is the weapon that Israelis and their
supporters in the Diaspora use to fend off criticism and to allow
Israel to continue committing crimes against the Palestinians. Burg
writes: "All is compared to the Shoah, dwarfed by the Shoah, and
therefore all is allowed - be it fences, sieges, crowns, curfews, food
and water deprivation, or unexplained killings. All is permitted
because we have been through the Shoah and you will not tell us how to
behave."

The best evidence that Israel's obsession with the Holocaust is linked
with the Occupation is found in Burg's discussion of the evolution of
Israeli thinking about the Holocaust itself. He shows clearly that
Israeli thinking about the Shoah has varied considerably over time.
The leaders of the Yishuv "did very little in response to the
annihilation of Europe's Jews" when it was happening. "They did not
want to waste emotional resources that could otherwise be channeled
into building the Jewish state." Moreover, Israelis did not focus much
attention on the Holocaust in the first decade or so after 1948 and
they showed surprisingly little sympathy for the survivors who came to
Israel after the war. But all that changed in the 1960s, starting with
the Eichmann trial, but picking up a head of steam after Israel
conquered the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 and began the Occupation. "To
understand the wrong turn we took," he writes, "we need to go back to
the 1960s, the Eichmann trial, the Six-Day War, and all that lies in
between." He goes even further and notes that the 1990s - and remember
that the First Intifada broke out in December 1987 - was the "decade
of transition from the mythology of the early state to the obsessive
journeys to the scene of the crime." The pattern seems clear: the
Holocaust has been the main weapon that Israelis (and their supporter
abroad) have employed to provide cover for the horrors Israel has
inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

All of this is to say that the best way to rescue Israel from its
plight is not simply to get beyond the Holocaust, but to end the
Occupation. Then, the need to talk incessantly about the Holocaust
will be greatly reduced and Israel will be a much healthier and secure
country. Sadly, there is no end in sight to the Occupation, and thus
we are likely to hear more, not less, about the Holocaust in years
ahead....
"The UN General Assembly, [***] Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."-

UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION NUMBER 3379
REVOKED UNDER ZIONIST PRESSURE BY RESOLUTION NUMBER 4686
http://www.jewishracism.com/quotes.htm


Friday, 9/12/2008

QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The way I see it, the fact of the Jews' racial peculiarity will necessarily
influence their social relations with non-Jews. The conclusions which-in my
opinion-the Jews should draw is to become more aware of their peculiarity in
their social way of life and to recognize their own cultural contributions.
First of all, they would have to show a certain noble reservedness and not
be so eager to mix socially-of which others want little or nothing. On the
other hand, anti-Semitism in Germany also has consequences that, from a
Jewish point of view, should be welcomed. I believe German Jewry owes its
continued existence to anti-Semitism."-Albert Einstein, A. Engel translator,
"How I became a Zionist", The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 7,
Document 57, Princeton University Press, (2002), pp. 234-235, at 235.
"Anti-Semitism will be a psychological phenomenon as long as Jews come in
contact with non-Jews-what harm can there be in that? Perhaps it is due to
anti-Semitism that we survive as a race: at least that is what I
believe."-Albert Einstein, English translation by A. Engel, The Collected
Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 7, Document 37, Princeton University
Press, (2002), p. 159.

"What would you say, for example, if I did not deny there are good aspects
of anti-Semitism? I say that anti-Semitism will educate the Jews. In fifty
years, if we still have the same social order, it will have brought forth a
fine and presentable generation of Jews, endowed with a delicate, extremely
sensitive feeling for honor and the like."-Theodor Herzl, as quoted by Amos
Elon, Herzl, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, (1975), pp. 114-115.
________________________________________
"[T]here may be some truth in that if the Arabs have some complaints about
my policy towards Israel, they have to realize that the Jews in the U. S.
control the entire information and propaganda machine, the large newspapers,
the motion pictures, radio and television, and the big companies, and there
is a force that we have to take into consideration."-Richard Milhous Nixon,
Thirty-Seventh President of the United States of America, as quoted by
Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in America, Oxford University Press, New
York, (1994), pp. 232-233. Dinnerstein cites: "Clipping of Fikri Abbaza,
interview with Richard Nixon, Al-Mussawar, July 12, 1974, folder 'Jewish
Matters, 1969-1974,' box 5, Leonard Garment mss., LC."
________________________________________
"Yet despite the lack of Jewish worship and observance, and my family's
total assimilation into everything American and secular, we were thoroughly
Jewish. Our perspective was Jewish, as was our very essence. The world was
split into two distinct halves: Jews and gentiles. Jews were always sought
in business or social dealings over gentiles. A common expression used by
Jews to describe a slow, dense person was-and still is-'He's got a goyisher
kop,' which literally means 'He's got a gentile head' but figuratively means
'slow-witted.' First question when I came home and boasted of making a new
friend always was 'Is he Jewish?' 'God forbid!' (my father's expression) if
I should ever go out with a gentile girl, and 'Oy vey!' (which literally
means 'Oh pain!') if I ever got serious with her. All my parents' friends
were Jews. They all shared the same role models: Sandy Koufax, Bernard
Baruch, Bess Meyerson, Sam Levinson, Hank Greenberg, Arthur Goldberg, Golda
Meir, Albert Einstein-these were people to be admired. And that poet with
the beard, Allen Ginsberg, so smart, but the faygeleh (homosexual) business,
such a waste!"-S. G. Bloom, Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland
America, Harcourt, Inc., New York, (2000), pp. 63-64.
________________________________________
"Joseph's appointment in Egypt was good for the Jews. The Jews of Persia
were saved thanks to Esther's influence with the king. When a very powerful
emperor is elected by the majority of the people, we must cooperate with
him[.]"-Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor, as quoted by Amiram Barkat, "Putin ally is
frontrunner to head European Jewish Congress", HAARETZ.com,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873804.html, (21 June 2007).
"The [European Jewish Congress] has a very important role in the struggle
against Iran. We are not Israel's ambassadors, but we can pressure our
governments and explain the danger[.]"-President of the Austrian Jewish
Community Ariel Muzicant, as quoted by Amiram Barkat, "Putin ally is
frontrunner to head European Jewish Congress", HAARETZ.com,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873804.html, (21 June 2007).
________________________________________
"Regarding a timeline ... we decided that the end of 2007 will be the point
of assessing the effectiveness of the sanctions and the amount of influence
they are having on the Iranians. [***] I never said there is no military
option, and the military option is included in all the options that are on
the table, but at this time it's right to use the path of sanctions, and to
intensify them."-Transportation Minister of Israel Shaul Mofaz as quoted by
"News Agencies", "Mofaz: All options, including military one, on the table
regarding Iran", HAARETZ.com,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868786.html, (9 June 2007).
"I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against
the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me, that
would include a strike into, over the border into Iran, where we have good
evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people
coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers. [***] If they don't play by the
rules, we've got to use our force, and to me that would include taking
military action to stop them from doing what they're doing."-United States
Senator Joseph Lieberman, in an interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the
Nation on 10 June 2007, "Lieberman: Bomb Iran If It Doesn't Stop",
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/10/ftn/main2908476.shtml.
________________________________________
"It's been conclusively proven Iran is not going to be talked out of its
nuclear programme. So to stop them from doing it, we have to massively
increase the pressure. If we can't get enough other countries to come along
with us to do that, then we've got to go with regime change by bolstering
opposition groups and the like, because that's the circumstance most likely
for an Iranian government to decide that it's safer not to pursue nuclear
weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is
between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to
look at the use of force. [***] If the choice is them continuing [towards a
nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you're at a Hitler marching into
the Rhineland point. If you don't stop it then, the future is in his hands,
not in your hands, just as the future decisions on their nuclear programme
would be in Iran's hands, not ours."-Former United States Ambassador to the
United Nations John Bolton, as quoted by Toby Harnden, "We must attack Iran
before it gets the bomb ", Telegraph.co.uk,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/16/wbolton16.xml,
(17 May 2007).
________________________________________
"With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we're sending clear messages to
friends and adversaries alike. We'll keep the sea lanes open. [. . .] We'll
stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and
dominating this region[.]"-United States Vice President Dick Cheney, as
quoted by Graham Bowley, "On Carrier in Gulf, Cheney Issues Warning to
Iran", The New York Times www.nytimes.com,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-cheney.html?hp, (11
May 2007); and Tom Raum, "Cheney Warns Iran Sea Lanes Must Be Open", The
Associated Press, www.washingtonpost.com,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/11/AR2007051100572.html,
(11 May 2007).
________________________________________
"The American president will not abandon the military option and I believe
that we do not want him to do so[.]"-United States Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, as quoted by Reuters News Agency, "Bush won't give up
military option on Iran: Rice", www.reuters.com,
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL086231320070508, (8 May 2007).
________________________________________
"Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. We all know that. Iran continues
their efforts to build nuclear weapons. Iran is now exporting lethal IED's
and jihadists and suicide bombers into Iraq killing American soldiers. The
Iranians encouraged Hezbullah to attack Israel from Lebanon recently. Iran
poses one of the greatest threats to the world, to the security of the
world, and in the Middle East. I believe the Iranians have got, we have got
to bring greater pressures, diplomatic, economic, political, join with our
European allies. We still fear greatly the effect of a cut off of oil on,
from, into Europe. We have to work together. If the Russians and the Chinese
are not helpful to us, then we had better figure out a way to put additional
pressures encouraging democracy and freedom within Iraq, which is a very
cultured socie. . . within Iran, which is a very cultured society. At the
end of the day, we cannot allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. [. . .] My
greatest fear is the Iranians acquire a nuclear weapon, and give it to a
terrorist organization, and there is a real threat of them doing that. The
trip wire [for a U. S. strike at Iran] is, that if they acquire these
weapons, and their, our intelligence tells us, that this is a real threat to
the state of Israel, to other states in the region. But I want to emphasize,
Chris, there's lots of additional efforts that can be made and must be made
before we consider that option. There's lots of things we can do. That is
the ultimately final option and I don't think we need to exercise it at this
time."-U. S. Senator and Presidential candidate John McCain, Republican
Presidential Candidate Debates,
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=&p=hotvideo_m_debate_rep&t=c3684&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18296908/&fg=
"If there is a threat to the existence of Israel, which is by the way I
think a potential threat to the existence of the United States, then you
have to come to that, the aid of Israel."-U. S. Congressman and Presidential
candidate Tom Tancredo, Republican Presidential Candidate Debates,
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=&p=hotvideo_m_debate_rep&t=c3684&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18296908/&fg=
"It really depends on what our intelligence says. I mean the reality is the
use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. It would be very
provocative. The only thing worse would be Iran being a nuclear power."-U.
S. Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, Republican Presidential Candidate
Debates,
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=&p=hotvideo_m_debate_rep&t=c3684&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18296908/&fg=
"Right now Iran is moving equipment into Iraq that is being used to kill
Americans. Iran has crossed the line. The United States has absolute license
at this point to take whatever actions are necessary to stop those deadly
instruments from being moved across the line being used in explosives,
roadside bombs inside Iraq. And, lastly, you know we should not get to the
edge of the cliff on this enrichment of uranium and plutonium to be used for
a nuclear weapon in Iran. The United States needs to move very quickly."-U.
S. Congressman and Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, Republican
Presidential Candidate Debates,
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=&p=hotvideo_m_debate_rep&t=c3684&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18296908/&fg=
________________________________________
"If we do have to take offensive military action against Iran, it would be
far better if the rest of the world saw it as a position of last resort, not
first resort, because the effect and consequences will be global."-United
States Senator, and Presidential Candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as
quoted by Hilary Leila Krieger, "Clinton: US might have to confront Iran",
The Jerusalem Post, www.jpost.com,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1177514487245&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(26 April 2007).
________________________________________
"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war
with Iraq, we would not be doing this[.] The leaders of the Jewish community
are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is
going, and I think they should."-Congressman Jim Moran, as quoted by Ted
Barrett, "Lawmaker under fire for saying Jews support Iraq war: Moran
apologizes; White House blasts comments", www.CNN.com,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/moran.jews/, (12 March 2003).
________________________________________
"Another diplomatic source said that the resolution was partly a result of
Israel's activity around the world."-Ronny Sofer, "J'lem sources pleased
with UN resolution increasing", Ynetnews www.ynetnews.com,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3380541,00.html, (24 March 2007).
________________________________________
"'I believe that ultimately the only real prospect of getting Iran to give
up nuclear weapons is to change the regime,' Bolton told reporters after an
off-the-record speech to the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan policy research
organization. How should this be done? 'By the force of the Iranian people
themselves,' Bolton replied. 'But if the alternative is a nuclear Iran, as
unpleasant as the use of military force would be, I think the prospect of a
nuclear Iran is worse.'"-Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer, quoting
former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, "Bolton: Iran Won't Give Up
Nuke Ambition", Associated Press, Guardian Unlimited www.guardian.co.uk,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6496892,00.html, (21 March
2007).
________________________________________
"Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any
ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah's military
capability."-"Bolton admits Lebanon truce block", BBC NEWS,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6479377.stm, (22 March 2007).
________________________________________
"Chirac asked that Israel act to topple the Assad regime, and promised in
return to block any moves against Israel within the United Nations or
European Union."-Ezra HaLevi, "France Urged Israel to Invade Syria During
War", Arutz Sheva www.IsraelNationalNews.com,
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/121878, (19 March 2007).
"I know this will annoy many of your readers. . . But the anger is over the
fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. Instead of Israel
fighting against Hizbullah, many parts of the American administration
believe that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is
Syria and not Hizbullah."-Meyrav Wurmser, as quoted by Yitzhak Benhorin in,
"Neocons: We expected Israel to attack Syria",
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3340750,00.html, (16 December
2006).
________________________________________
"Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had
decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush
to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran. Conservative
Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel
had argued for the change in strategy."- David Espo and Matthew Lee,
Associated Press Writers, "Dems abandon war authority provision", Associated
Press, YAHOO! NEWS http://news.yahoo.com,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070313/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq;_ylt=A0WTcUJqOfZFa8cAkxqs0NUE,
(13 March 2007).
________________________________________
"Israeli Knesset member Effie Eitam has a reputation as a hawk, but on the
question of Iran and its nuclear program, he believes he speaks for the
country's mainstream strategic thinkers. Diplomatic and political manoeuvres
to rein in the Islamic state are feckless and doomed to fail, leaving
Israel, with or without the co-operation of the United States, no
alternative but to use military force to put an end to the nuclear threat,
he says. 'Israel is preparing and will definitely take action,' Eitam
predicted. [***] Eitam told The CJN that Israel may have to act alone
against Iran within 'a window' to two to three years, but he suggested
Israel would move before Bush leaves Office."-Paul Lungen, "Israeli MK
predicts attack on Iran", The Canadian Jewish News www.cjnews.com,
http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=11329, (8 March 2007).
________________________________________
"The Israeli Regime while remaining outside the relevant international
instruments continues quantitative and qualitative development of its
nuclear weapons, without any concern, international pressure or monitoring.
Those who are pushing Security Council to take punitive measures against the
peaceful nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran, continue to hinder
any action by the Security Council against Israeli regime to force it to
abide by the NPT regime. Doing so, they have given wide latitude to this
regime and even encourage it to develop freely the clandestine and
prohibited possession of nuclear weapons. [***] While Iran has been
providing the Agency with access to all its nuclear material and facilities
pursuant to its NPT Safeguards Agreement and the Agency is able to verify
the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran (as reflected in
paragraphs 26-27 of the report), few countries have been making daily threat
of resort to attack Iranian fully safeguarded peaceful nuclear facilities
uttered at their highest levels, in clear violation of Article 2 (4) of the
UN Charter. The Islamic republic of Iran has already documented these
unlawful and dangerous threats by sending official letters to the UN
Secretary General and the Director General of the IAEA. And while
overwhelming majority of the international community has been calling for a
peaceful negotiated solution and Iran has announced its readiness for such a
solution, the United States and Israel which both have a high record of
vertical and horizontal proliferation activities are continuing to make
threats against Iran's full-scope safeguarded facilities."-Ali Asqar
Soltanieh, Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy
Agency Board of Governors from Iran, in an address to the IAEA Board of
Governors on 7 March 2007, "Full Text of Speech Delivered by Iran's Envoy to
IAEA", Fars News Agency www.farsnews.com,
http://www.farsnews.com/English/newstext.php?nn=8512160500, (7 March 2007).
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat
or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence
of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the
United Nations."-Charter of the United Nations, Chapter 1, Article 2,
Paragraph 4.
________________________________________
"I believe that either regime change in Iran or, as a last resort, military
action is the only thing that will stop the Iranians from getting nuclear
weapons[.]"-John Bolton, Former American Envoy to the United Nations, as
quoted by Janine Zacharia and Bill Varner, "Bolton Says U.S. Should Seek
'Regime Change' in Iran", Bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.m.58sr9RqM&refer=home,
(1 March 2007).
________________________________________
"Ahmadinejad is the pusher of all the Muslim world toward fanaticism and
extremism. In his case, he should be made to disappear from the arena. He
has said he wants to become a shahid, a martyr, so I think he should get his
wish and be sent to heaven[.]"-Meir Amit, Former Director of Mossad, as
quoted by Aaron Klein, "Former Mossad chief: Assassinate Ahmadinejad.
Iranian president 'says he wants to die a martyr so he should be sent to
heaven'", WorldNetDaily www.wnd.com,
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54244, (14 February 2007).
"It is time for Israel or the US to bomb Iran now. Not next week, next
month, or next summer, but now. As quickly and as hard and as painfully as
possible. [***] So like it or not, time is of the essence, and there is not
a moment to lose. The US or Israel should bomb Iran now, before it proves
too late."-Michael Freund, "Right on!: Stop the atomic ayatollahs", The
Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359851111&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(13 February 2007).
"'The only chance to convince Iran to dismantle without using brute force is
if you choose a big enough stick and you wave it wildly enough,' Steinitz
told The Jerusalem Post. The Likud MK added that the goal was to 'wave, in
order to not to use it.'
'At this moment, Iran thinks that Israel is weak politically, so it would be
better if the United States were to issue the threats,' said Steinitz.
'There is one leader of the world and it is not miniscule Israel. Iran is a
global threat they are developing a nuclear project to become not just a
regional player but a global Player.'"-Sheera Claire Frenkel quoting Knesset
Member Yuval Steinitz, "Steinitz: US must stop Iran from arming", The
Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359851884&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(14 February 2007).
Did Tzipi Livni, Foreign Affairs Minister and Vice Prime Minister of Israel,
call for the elimination of the nation of Iran?
"The global Holocaust denial led by Iran is a political move meant to
de-legitimize Israel, and it is unacceptable that a country that denies the
Holocaust is accepted by the world as part of the international
community[.]"-Tzipi Livni, Foreign Affairs Minister and Vice Prime Minister
of Israel, as quoted in Lilach Shoval, "Anti-Semitism very much alive, says
Livni", www.ynetnews.com,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3363734,00.html, (11 February
2007).
"ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment
facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility
using low-yield nuclear 'bunker-busters', according to several Israeli
military sources."-Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter, "Revealed: Israel plans
nuclear strike on Iran", The Sunday Times www.timesonline.co.uk, (7 January
2007).
"SPIEGEL: You said recently that Israel might have to stand alone and
therefore must be ready to deal unilaterally with the Iran problem.
Lieberman: That is the worst-case scenario. The differences in opinion
between Russia and Western Europe, between Europe and the U.S., between the
U.S. and the United Nations have destabilized the global political system.
We have to take into account that the international community may not do
anything and that Israel may have to act alone."-"SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH
AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN" conducted by Christian Neef and Christoph Schult, quoting
Avigdor Lieberman, Minister of Strategic Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister
of Israel, Der Spiegel, SPIEGEL ONLINE, www.spiegel.de,
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,465769,00.html, (12
February 2007).
"We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates
in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by
Bush against Iran. We should also approach European countries so that they
support American actions in Iran, so that Bush will not be isolated in the
international arena again. We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia
so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran."-Brigadier General (Res.)
Oded Tira, Former IDF Chief Artillery Officer, "What to do with Iran?",
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3346275,00.html, (30 December
2006).
"'Once you say that Iran is like Nazi Germany and that it is willing to use
its nuclear weapons to destroy Israel regardless of the destruction it would
bring to their own country, you are really arguing that there is no
alternative but for Israel and the United States to attack first,' said M.J.
Rosenberg, director of policy analysis for the Israel Policy Forum."-James
D. Besser, "Leading Hawk Warns Of Hysteria Over Iran: Suggestion that war is
only option misguided, JINSA official says", The Jewish Week
www.thejewishweek.com,
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13644, (9 February
2007).
"We must cry Gevalt before the entire world[. . . .] In 1938, Hitler didn't
say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this
is his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime
against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a
program for genocide."- Likud chair MK Benjamin Netanyahu, Ninth Prime
Minister of Israel, as quoted in Mazal Mualem, "Netanyahu wants Iran
president tried for genocide", www.haaretz.com,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/800838.html, (15 December 2006).
"The Jews of North African origin are strongly attached to Israel, don't
hide their ethnic affiliation and don't fear a charge of 'dual loyalty' to
both France and Israel. The young generation doesn't bow to the old French
Jewish model of being French first and Jewish later, and aren't embarrassed
about showing a 'communitarian' preference for a particular political
candidate."-JTA, "French Jews Favor Conservative", The Jewish Week,
www.thejewishweek.com,
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13926, (20 April
2007).
"Active Canadian Jews, I have observed, live with a completely different
dynamic. They're proud of their Canadian citizenship, but don't have a deep
sense of Canadian national identity. Their national identity is ebulliently
Jewish, belonging to the Jewish nation."-Gary Wexler, "US Jews can learn
from the Canadian community", The Jerusalem Post www.jpost.com,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879238105&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(3 April 2007).
"SUBSIDIZING THE REFUGEE CAMPS
Senator GORE. Mr. Secretary, I realize that we do not have power, as Senator
Symington has punctuated, to give instructions and directions there.
There is one problem, it seems to me, about which we can have a say, and
that is continued subsidization of this refugee camp. I went there ten years
ago and found it an impossible situation in which they have continued all
the while to feed and clothe, support those people, and there are some
200,000 more than when they went into the camp. So surely we can have
something to say about no longer continuing to subsidize this.
Secretary RUSK. Well, that constitutes some pressure on the Arabs. It does
not constitute any pressure on Israel.
Senator GORE. Well, Israel has taken over some of them, in the Gaza Strip
and also in Jordan. They are now claiming sovereignty. So it seems to me it
might be a pressure on both.
Secretary RUSK. Well, I do think that the refugee matter should be raised
and looked at wholly anew in connection with a settlement of this present
situation.
Senator GORE. The point I am trying to make is this is one subject on which
we can have a say, and that is how long we are going to continue to pay a
very heavy cost of these refugees if they are not dispersed into the
countryside.
Secretary RUSK. Well, I do not want to underestimate influence in this
situation, but I just want to point out that it is not necessarily decisive
when you are talking with countries about what they consider the life and
death issues for them.
TAX EXEMPTIONS FOR DONATIONS TO ISRAEL
Senator HICKENLOOPER. Do we not give tax forgiveness for moneys contributed
to Israel, which is rather unusual? We could stop that.
Secretary RUSK. I believe contributions to the UJA are tax exempt, yes.
The CHAIRMAN. That is right.
The only country. Do you think you have the votes in the Senate to revoke
that?
Senator CASE. Are you in favor yourself?
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I think we ought to treat all nations alike.
Senator CASE. That is correct. But are you in favor of it?
Senator HICKENLOOPER. As long as we do not give it to other nations, I do
not--
The CHAIRMAN. The trouble is they think they have control of the Senate and
they can do as they please.
Senator SYMINGTON. What was that?
The CHAIRMAN. I said they know they have control of the Senate politically,
and therefore whatever the Secretary tells them, they can laugh at him. They
say, 'Yes, but you don't control the Senate.''
Senator SYMINGTON. They were very anxious to get every Senator they could to
come out and say we ought to act unilaterally, and they got two, three.
The CHAIRMAN. They know when the chips are down you can no more reverse this
tax exemption than you can fly. You could not pass a bill through the
Senate.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I do not think you could.
The CHAIRMAN. Changing that tax exemption contribution to the UJA. I would
bet you ten to one you could not begin to pass a bill You do not believe
they could under any circumstances.
Senator SYMINGTON. A bill to do what?
The CHAIRMAN. To revoke the tax exemption of gifts to the UJA. That is one
of their major sources of income. You yourself have pointed out the money
they paid for the French arms they got from the U.S.
Senator SYMINGTON. Each year the money we give annually for this is less
than 1 percent of the cost of Vietnam.
The CHAIRMAN. I agree with that.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. There you go.
U.S. CONTRIBUTIONS PAY THE ISRAELI ARMS
The CHAIRMAN. But you know very well, you said yourself, that the arms they
buy from France are largely paid for by contributions that come from this
country.
Senator SYMINGTON. Because we would not sell it to them, so instead of
selling them the arms--
Senator GORE. Has the President recommended that this be repealed?
The CHAIRMAN. No, he has not. I do not wish to make the point except the
Secretary is quite correct when he says his leverage on Israel is very
limited because of the political situation.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I am sorry I brought it up.
Secretary RUSK. I did not say it.
The CHAIRMAN. If you did not say it, you do not disagree with it anyway.
Secretary RUSK. I think it should be pointed out though on this tax exempt
matter that there are many other organizations, institutions, that would
fall into the same principle, private foundations in their expenditures
abroad, churches, the voluntary agencies; there are very large sums of money
going to foreign countries that are tax exempt in this country as the
origin.
Senator HICKENLOOPER. I do not think it is analogous.
Senator GORE. It is tax deductible; you said tax exempt.
Secretary RUSK. Except the organizations are exempt. Contributions to them
are tax deductible.
Senator COOPER. I suggest-it is possible after this that Israel may ask that
this be removed as a sign of showing they are not absolutely dependent on
the U.S."-"BRIEFING ON THE MIDDLE EAST SITUATION, Friday, June 9, 1967, U.S.
SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC.", Executive Sessions
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Together with Joint Sessions with
the Senate Armed Services Committee (Historical Series), Volume XIX,
Ninetieth Congress, First Session, U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D. C., (1967/2006), pp. 705-728, at 710-712.
________________________________________
"History has shown that progress is possible only if the United States of
America assumes its historic role as honest broker between Israel and
Palestine[.] We cannot be peacemakers if American government leaders are
seen as knee-jerk supporters of every action or policy of whatever Israeli
government happens to be in power at the time."-Jimmy Carter, Thirty-Ninth
President of the United States of America, as quoted by Paul Kita, "Awards
Ceremony Offers Carter Prize, Platform for His Opinions", info Zine
www.infozine.com,
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/22062/, (6 April
2007).
"The American friends of Israel who demand such subservience are in many
cases sincere and well-intentioned people. I know them. But on this crucial
issue, they are tragically mistaken. Their demands subvert America's ability
to bring to Israel what she most desperately needs and wants -- peace and
security within recognized borders."-Jimmy Carter, Thirty-Ninth President of
the United States of America, as quoted in, "US cannot be Mideast peacemaker
as "knee-jerk" supporter of all Israeli", Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)
www.kuna.net.kw,
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1721738&Language=en,
(4 April 2007).
________________________________________
"It's almost politically suicidal in the United States for a member of the
Congress who wants to seek reelection to take any stand that might be
interpreted as anti-policy of the conservative Israeli government, which is
equated, as I've seen it myself, as anti-Semitism."-Jimmy Carter,
Thirty-Ninth President of the United States of America, in an interview on,
"This week with George Stephanopoulos," ABC, as quoted by Yitzhak Benhorin,
"Balanced stand on ME is political suicide, says Carter", www.ynetnews.com,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3369679,00.html, (26 February
2007).
________________________________________
"The Islamic Republic of Iran seeks good neighborly relations with all the
surrounding states, and it desires establishment of sustainable peace,
friendship and tranquility in the region, particularly in the Persian
Gulf."-Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar,
as quoted in "Iran Seeks Peace, Stability in Persian Gulf", Fars News Agency
www.farsnews.ir, http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8511220267, (11
February 2007).
"That Iran is willing to threaten Israel is wrong[. . . .] We pose no threat
and if we are conducting nuclear research and development we are no threat
to Israel. We have no intention of aggression against any country. [. . .]
Today we announce to you that the political will of Iran is aimed at the
negotiated settlement of the case and we don't want to aggravate the
situation in our region[. . . .] We know that this issue can be settled in a
constructive dialogue and we welcome that."-Ali Larijani, Iranian Secretary
of the Supreme National Security Council and Chief Iranian Nuclear
Negotiator, as quoted in Associated Press, "Iran negotiator: Nuclear program
'no threat to Israel'",
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/11/iran.israel.ap/, (11 February
2007).
"Repeatedly and frankly we have announced that in Iran's national security
doctrine there is no room for atomic and chemical weapons as we consider
them against Islamic laws. Iran's Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Seyyed Ali
Khamenei) in this connection had issued a decree that mass destruction
weapons are prohibited by the Muslim religion. [. . .] Therefore we support
the idea of a Middle East free from weapons of mass destruction[.]"-Ali
Larijani, Iranian Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and
Chief Iranian Nuclear Negotiator, as quoted in "'No room for WMDs in Iran's
national security doctrine,' says Larijani", Islamic Republic News Agency,
http://www2.irna.com/en/news/view/line-203/0702111128162815.htm, (11
February 2007).
"We are committed not to launch aggression on any country and defend
ourselves in the face of any aggression."-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of
Iran, as quoted in "IR calls for promotion of peace", Islamic Republic of
Iran Broadcasting www.iribnews.ir,
http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=231222&n=22, (11 February 2007).
________________________________________
"We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international
relations . . . the United States has overstepped its national borders in
every way[. . . .] The legitimate use of force can only be done by the
United Nations, which cannot be replaced by EU or NATO[. . . .] The
unilateral illegal action has not resolved any problem. [. . .] [N]obody
feels secure anymore[. . . .] We should not corner Iran into a hostile
environment[.]"-Vladimir Putin, Second President of the Russian Federation,
as quoted in Mu Xuequan, Editor, "Russia differences with West obvious at
Munich conference", China View www.chinaview.cn,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/10/content_5724866.htm, (10
February 2007).
________________________________________
"1 Why are the nations in an uproar? And why do the peoples mutter in vain?
2 The kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD, and against His anointed: 3 'Let us break their bands
asunder, and cast away their cords from us.' 4 He that sitteth in heaven
laugheth, the Lord hath them in derision. 5 Then will He speak unto them in
His wrath, and affright them in His sore displeasure: 6 'Truly it is I that
have established My king upon Zion, My holy mountain.' 7 I will tell of the
decree: the LORD said unto me: 'Thou art My son, this day have I begotten
thee. 8 Ask of Me, and I will give the nations for thine inheritance, and
the ends of the earth for thy possession. 9 Thou shalt break them with a rod
of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.' 10 Now
therefore, O ye kings, be wise; be admonished, ye judges of the earth. 11
Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Do homage in
purity, lest He be angry, and ye perish in the way, when suddenly His wrath
is kindled. Happy are all they that take refuge in Him."-The Jewish book of
Psalm 2 [version of the Jewish Publication Society]"
________________________________________
Charter of the United Nations
Chapter 1, Article 1, Paragraphs 1 & 2:
"1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take
effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to
the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches
of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with
the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of
international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the
peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the
principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take
other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;"
Chapter 1, Article 2, Paragraph 4:
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat
or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence
of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the
United Nations."
Chapter 6, Article 33, Paragraphs 1 & 2:
"1. The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to
endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first
of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation,
arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or
arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.
2. The Security Council shall, when it deems necessary, call upon the
parties to settle their dispute by such means."
The North Atlantic Treaty
"The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations,
to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by
peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and
justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations
from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes
of the United Nations."
Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950
"Principle Vl
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under; international
law:
a. Crimes against peace:
i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a
war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
ii.Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of
any of the acts mentioned under (I)."
"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international
crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war
crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole."-Robert H. Jackson at the Nuremberg Tribunal, quoted in Curtis
Doebbler, "A Farce of Law: The Trial of Saddam Hussein", Jurist: Legal News
& Research,
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/04/farce-of-law-trial-of-saddam-hussein.php,
(24 April 2006).
________________________________________
"More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass
destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has
embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush
administration officials said today. [***] Hard-liners are alarmed that
American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq's nuclear
program before Baghdad's defeat in the gulf war. Conscious of this lapse in
the past, they argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found
hard evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign
of a 'smoking gun,' they argue, may be a mushroom Cloud."-Michael R. Gordon
and Judith Miller, "Threats and Responses: The Iraqis; U.S. Says Hussein
Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts", The New York Times, (8 September 2002 /
Late Edition - Final), p. 1.
________________________________________
"It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and
annihilate them. They are evil and damnable[.] [***] The Lord shall return
the Arabs' deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them,
devastate them and vanish them from this world[.]"-Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, as
quoted in BBC News, "Rabbi calls for annihilation of Arabs",
www.news.bbc.co.uk,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1270038.stm, (10 April 2001).
"And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite
them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor
shew mercy unto them:"-The Jewish book of Deuteronomy 7:2.
________________________________________
"'U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we
must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons,' the Democrat told
a crowd of Israel supporters. 'In dealing with this threat ... no option can
be taken off the table.' Clinton spoke at a Manhattan dinner held by the
largest pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S., the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee."-The Associated Press, quoting United States Senator
Hillary Clinton, "Sen. Clinton: We must not permit Iran to acquire nuclear
weapons", www.haaretz.com,http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/821284.html,
(2 February 2007).
________________________________________
"With American-Iranian tensions mounting, Democratic presidential contenders
are facing a daunting political challenge: how to speak out against Tehran's
pursuit of nuclear weapons in a way that appeals to pro-Israel supporters
without alienating the party's overwhelmingly anti-war rank and
file."-Jennifer Siegel, "Crisis Over Iran Poses Political Headaches For
Democratic Presidential Hopefuls", The Jewish Daily Forward,
http://www.forward.com/articles/crisis-over-iran-poses-political-headaches-for-dem/,
(2 February 2007).
"While Jewish communal leaders focus most of their current lobbying efforts
on pressing the United States to take a tough line against Iran and its
nuclear program, some are privately voicing fears that they will be accused
of driving America into a war with the regime in Tehran."-Forward Staff,
"Groups Fear Public Backlash Over Iran", The Jewish Daily Forward,
http://www.forward.com/articles/groups-fear-public-backlash-over-iran/, (2
February 2007).
________________________________________
"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our
troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly. We - it makes
common sense for the commander-in-chief to say to our troops and the Iraqi
people and the Iraqi government that we will help you defend yourself from
people that want to sow discord and harm. And so we will do what it takes to
protect our troops.
One of the things that is very important in discussing Iran is not to mix
issues. Our relationship with Iran is based upon a lot of different issues.
One is what is happening in Iraq. Another is their ambitions to have a
nuclear weapon. And we're dealing with this issue diplomatically, and I
think this can be solved diplomatically. And the message that we are working
to send to the Iranian regime and the Iranian people is that you will become
increasingly isolated if you continue to pursue a nuclear weapon.
The message to the Iranian people is that your government is going to cause
you deprivation. In other words, you've got a chance to really flourish
again as a great tradition. However, if your government continues to insist
upon a nuclear weapon, there will be lost opportunity for the Iranian
people. They won't be able to realize their full potential.
The Iranian people have got to know that this government and the United
States bears no hostility to them. We're just deeply concerned about a
government that is insisting upon having a nuclear weapon, and at the same
time, rewriting history - the history of the past, and regards, for example,
the Holocaust. It troubles a lot of people in this world, and I'll continue
to work with, you know, friends and allies to send a clear message."-George
W. Bush, Forty-Third President of the United State of America, "Full
Transcript: NPR Interview with President Bush", www.npr.org,
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7065633, (29 January
2007).
________________________________________
"Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last
casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to
disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he
systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons, even while inspectors were in his country. Nothing to date
has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons - not economic
sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile
strikes on his military facilities.
Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam
Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for
the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N.
inspectors were sent to conduct - were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt
for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the
inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to
show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out
for the world to see, and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has
happened.
The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological
weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax - enough doses
to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's
given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to
produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin - enough to subject
millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for
that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to
produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such
quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not
accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has
destroyed them.
U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000
munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned
up 16 of them - despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence.
Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these
prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.
From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several
mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare
agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam
Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he
has destroyed them.
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam
Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design
for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching
uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our
intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has
not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.
The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving.
From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi
security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N.
inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors
themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate
witnesses.
Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations.
Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are
supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials
on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has
ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq
will be killed, along with their families.
Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent
enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass
destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use
he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.
With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons,
Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and
create deadly havoc in that region. And this Congress and the America people
must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret
communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam
Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.
Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden
weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.
Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein
could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy
terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with
other weapons and other plans - this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would
take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a
day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our
power to make sure that that day never comes. (Applause.)
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have
terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on
notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly
emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.
Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy,
and it is not an option. (Applause.)
The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has
already used them on whole villages - leaving thousands of his own citizens
dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions
are obtained - by torturing children while their parents are made to watch.
International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the
torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping
acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and
rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. (Applause.)
And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country - your enemy is ruling your
country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power
will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)
The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a
serious and mounting threat to our country, and our friends and our allies.
The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February
the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world.
Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about
Iraqi's legal - Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those
weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.
We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein
does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the
world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. (Applause.)
Tonight I have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace,
members of the American Armed Forces: Many of you are assembling in or near
the Middle East, and some crucial hours may lay ahead. In those hours, the
success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you.
Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in
you. (Applause.)
Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a President can
make. The technologies of war have changed; the risks and suffering of war
have not. For the brave Americans who bear the risk, no victory is free from
sorrow. This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost and we
dread the days of mourning that always come.
We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A
future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all. If war is
forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means - sparing,
in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will
fight with the full force and might of the United States military - and we
will prevail. (Applause.)
And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring
to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies - and freedom.
(Applause.)
Many challenges, abroad and at home, have arrived in a single season. In two
years, America has gone from a sense of invulnerability to an awareness of
peril; from bitter division in small matters to calm unity in great causes.
And we go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to
the right country.
Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time.
Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to
ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our
strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the
liberty of strangers.
Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every
person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's
gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. (Applause.)
We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not
know - we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust
in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and
all of history.
May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of
America. (Applause.)"-George W. Bush, Forty-Third President of the United
State of America, "State of the Union Address", (28 January 2003).
________________________________________
"'The State of Israel will not allow the world to avoid a confrontation with
a country calling for the destruction of Israel,' Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
said Sunday during the weekly cabinet meeting. [***] 'Anti-Semintism is the
gentiles' problem, not the Jews', it is the gentiles' disease, not ours. As
long as there is anti-Semitism in the world, the world will be sick,' Vice
Premier Shimon Peres said."-Ynetnews, www.ynetnews.com, "World can't avoid
confrontation with Iran, PM says",
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/10486.htm, (28 January 2007).
________________________________________
"More important still, during all that period and to the present time, it
was not possible freely to report or discuss a third vital matter: Zionist
Nationalism. In this case the freedom of the press has become a fallacy
during the past two decades. Newspaper-writers have become less and less
free to express any criticism, or report any fact unfavourable to this new
ambition of the Twentieth Century. When I eventually went to America I found
that this ban, for such it is in practice, prevailed even more rigidly there
than in my own country.
Today an awakening is supposed to have occurred in the matter of Communism.
During the most fateful and decisive years of the Second War, when the
things were being done which obviously set the stage for a third one, it was
in fact almost impossible for any independent writer to publish any
reasonable criticism, supported by no matter what evidence, about Soviet
Communism and its intentions. Now, when the damage is done, Communism is
much attacked, but even so the mass of Communist writers who were planted in
the American and British press during those years has by no means been
displaced; and the attentive newspaper-reader in either country may see for
himself how the most specious Communist sophistries are daily injected into
the editorial arguments and the news-columns of newspapers professing the
most respectable principles.
In the matter of Zionist Nationalism, which I hold to be allied in its roots
to Soviet Communism, the ban is much more severe. In my own adult lifetime
as a journalist, now covering thirty years, I have seen this secret ban grow
from nothing into something approaching a law of lese majeste at some
absolute court of the dark past. In daily usage, no American or British
newspaper, apparently, now dares to print a line of news or comment
unfavourable to the Zionist ambition; and under this thrall matters are
reported favourably or non-committally, if they are reported at all, which
if they occurred elsewhere would be denounced with the most piteous cries of
outraged morality. The inference to me is plain: the Zionist Nationalists
are powerful enough to govern governments in the great countries of the
remaining West!
I believe Zionist Nationalism to be a political movement organized in all
countries, which aims to bring all Jews under its thrall just as Communism
enslaved the Russians and National Socialism the Germans. I hold it to be as
dangerous as both of those, and when I recall the results that came of the
subtle suppression of information in the cases of Stalinism and Hitlerism, I
judge that the consequences of this even more rigorous suppression will not
be less grave.
I think it a cardinal error to identify 'Jews' with Zionist Nationalism,
'Russians' with Communism, or 'Germans' with National Socialism. I saw the
enslavement of Germans and Russians and know different. I believe that the
astonishingly powerful attempt to prevent any discussion of Zionist
Nationalism by dismissing it as the expression of an aversion to Jews, as
Jews, is merely meant to stop any public discussion of its objects, which
seem to me to be as dangerous to Jew as to Gentile. Of the three groups
which have appeared, like stormy petrels, to presage the tempests of our
century, the Zionist Nationalists appear to me the most powerful. National
Socialism, I think, was but a stooge or stalking horse for the pursuit of
Communist aims. Communism is genuinely tigerish, and was strong enough to
infest governments everywhere and distort the policies which were pursued
behind the screen of military operations; but, if forced into a corner by
the rising unease of their peoples, Western politicians are prepared in the
last resort to turn against it.
But Zionist Nationalism! . . . That is a different matter. Today American
Presidents and British Prime Ministers, and all their colleagues, watch it
as anxiously as Muslim priests watch for the crescent moon on the eve of
Ramadan, and bow to it as the faithful prostrating themselves in the mosque
at Mecca. The thing was but a word unknown to the masses forty years ago;
today Western politicians hardly dare take the seals of office without
first, or immediately afterwards, making public obeisance towards this
strange new ambition."-Douglas Reed, Somewhere South of Suez, Devin-Adir, U.
S. A., (1951), pp. 8-10.
________________________________________
"'Death to Arabs' was just one of the hateful messages left by Jewish
settlers on Muslim graves after a destructive rampage on a cemetery and
village near Nablus Tuesday."-Ronny Shaked, "Settlers defile Palestinian
graves under IDF watch: Jewish settlers desecrate graves, wreak havoc in
Palestinian village", www.ynetnews.com,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3356741,00.html, (25 January
2007).
________________________________________
VIDEO: Now Playing: Gov. Romney Concludes Remarks on Iran Threat
"Israeli billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban is at the top of the list of
donors to political campaigns in the US."-Itamar Eichner, "Israeli
billionaire Saban biggest donor to US politicians", www.ynetnews.com,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3355786,00.html, (23 January
2007).
"Republican US presidential aspirant Mitt Romney summed up the sentiment of
four US presidential hopefuls who addressed the Seventh Annual Herzliya
Conference over the last two days by saying, 'Iran must be stopped, Iran can
be stopped, and Iran will be Stopped.' [***] Another Republican hopeful,
Sen. John McCain, said the US should 'intensify' its military support for
Israel to ensure that the country maintained it strategic edge over those
who were bent on destroying it, such as Iran. [***] Democratic presidential
hopeful Sen. John Edwards, meanwhile, said by video conference that stopping
Iran from developing nuclear weapons 'is the greatest challenge of our
generation.'"-Herb Keinon and Tovah Lazaroff, "US politicians rip Iran in
Herzliya", The Jerusalem Post,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1167467797900&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(23 January 2007).
"New York's junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is expected to snare the
lion's share of the Jewish community's substantial political donations in
the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination."-E. J. Kessler,
"Hillary the Favorite in Race for Jewish Donations", The Jewish Daily
Forward,
http://www.forward.com/articles/hillary-the-favorite-in-race-for-jewish-donations/,
(23 January 2007).
"The Israeli people are facing the threat of a nuclear Holocaust, former US
Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned the Herzliya
Conference held by the Institute for Policy and Strategy at IDC Herzliya on
Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, he said, the United States could lose a few
million people or a number of cities to a terrorist attack with weapons of
mass destruction."-Yaakov Lappin, "Israel faces nuclear Holocaust warns
Gingrich", www.ynetnews.com,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3356103,00.html, (23 January
2007).
"Former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney
laid out a five-point plan for preventing Iran from going nuclear at the
Herzliya Conference in Israel today."-Campaign Confidential, "Iran Hawk:
Mitt Romney", The Jewish Daily Forward,
http://www.forward.com/blogs/campaign-confidential/iran-hawk-mitt-romney/,
(23 January 2007).
________________________________________
"John Edwards[. . .] sounded Joe Lieberman-like on Iran[. . . .]"-Jennifer
Siegel, "Iran Hawk: John Edwards", The Jewish Daily Forward,
http://www.forward.com/blogs/campaign-confidential/iran-hawk-john-edwards/,
(23 January 2007).
________________________________________
"Extolling the ideals of socialist thinker Karl Marx, Chavez defended his
government's effort to establish a socialist model and rejected US concerns
over a measure to grant him broad lawmaking powers, saying: 'Go to hell,
gringos! Go home!' [***] The National Assembly, controlled by the
president's political allies, is expected to give final approval this week
to what it calls the 'enabling law,' which would grant Chavez authority to
pass a series of laws by decree during an 18-month period."-Associated
Press, "Chavez tells US to 'go to hell' in talk-show", The Jerusalem Post,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467784737&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(22 January 2007). See also: "Enabling Act" or Ermaechtigungsgesetz for a
comparison to Adolf Hitler.
________________________________________
"[. . .]First of all, I would have no peace treaty with Syria. That's number
one. If Syria really wants peace, if they want peace, see number one, they
have to give up land. They have to give up everything up to Damascus. I
don't want this Damascus, it's a smelly, stinky place. That I don't need.
It's one big toilet. But up to Damascus, I'll take. And Syria has to behave
itself, and has to kill out all the terrorists and Hezbullah. It's never
gonna happen, but in order for anyone to have peace with Israel they have to
give up land. And if Syria will kill terrorists, and give up land, so then
we'll promise peace with Syria, and we won't smash their heads in. How does
that sound? We won't smash the heads of the diaper heads, we won't smash the
pamper heads, we won't smash the huggies heads. That's what I say. . .
That's my peace. [. . .]"- Tovia Singer on Israel National Radio,
http://www.israelnationalradio.com/Asx/tovias-tu-2.asx,
http://www.israelnationalradio.com/#tovia, (16 January 2007 / Hour 2).
________________________________________
"The main umbrella group of American Jewish organizations is set to visit
Dubai and Abu Dhabi next month in a sign of the growing concern among Sunni
regimes over Iran's nuclear and regional ambitions. The trip, by a
delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations to the main power centers of the United Arab Emirates, is
notable because the Sunni-majority UAE does not have formal diplomatic ties
with Israel."-Marc Perelman, "Groups Head to Emirates, as Worries Grow Over
Iran", The Jewish Daily Forward,
http://www.forward.com/articles/groups-head-to-emirates-as-worries-grow-over-iran/,
(19 January 2007).
________________________________________
"A group of rabbis have issued a halachic opinion implying that OC Central
Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh deserves to be killed. The rabbis, all
connected with a movement to resurrect the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish
governing body, said in their halachic ruling this week that Naveh was
guilty of being a moser, a Hebrew word that can be roughly translated as an
informant or traitor."-Matthew Wagner, "Rabbis: Naveh deserves to be
killed", The Jerusalem Post,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1167467765105&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(18 January 2007).
"Two additional halachic laws are of special importance both generally and
specifically when related to the Rabin assassination. These two laws,
employed since talmudic times to kill Jews, were invoked by the assassin,
Yigal Amir, as his justification for killing Prime Minister Rabin and are
still emphasized by Jews who approved or have barely condemned that
assassination. These are the 'law of the pursuer' (din rodef) and the 'law
of the informer' (din moser).[Notation: 'Moser,' the Hebrew word for
informer, is a terrible insult for Jews, similar to the word 'collaborator'
for Palestinians.] The first law commands every Jew to kill or to wound
severely any Jew who is perceived as intending to kill another Jew.
According to halachic commentaries, it is not necessary to see such a person
pursuing a Jewish victim. It is enough if rabbinic authorities, or even
competent scholars, announce that the law of the pursuer applies to such a
person. The second law commands every Jew to kill or wound severely any Jew
who, without a decision of a competent rabbinical authority, has informed
non-Jews, especially non-Jewish authorities, about Jewish affairs or who has
given them information about Jewish property or who has delivered Jewish
persons or property to their rule or authority. Competent religious
authorities are empowered to do, and at times have done, those things
forbidden to other Jews in the second law. During the long period of
incitement preceding the Rabin assassination, many Haredi and messianic
writers applied these laws to Rabin and other Israeli leaders. The religious
insiders based themselves on later developments in Halacha that came to
include other categories of Jews who were defined as 'those to whom the law
of the pursuer' applied. Every Jew had a religious duty to kill those Jews
who were so included. Historically, Jews in the diaspora followed this law
whenever possible, until at least the advent of the modern state. In the
Tsarist Empire Jews followed this law until well into the nineteenth
century."-I. Shahak and N. Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Pluto
Press, London, (1999), pp. 137-138.
________________________________________
"Over the last couple of weeks, I have talked with people familiar with the
meetings four U.S. senators recently had in the Middle East. One of them
asked me a question: Can you guess which two meetings were the most similar?
I tried and failed, so he gave me the answer: 'The meeting with [King]
Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia] was the Bedouin version of the meeting with
[Israeli opposition leader] Benjamin Netanyahu.' Netanyahu is the most vocal
alarmist on Iran, and in the meetings he has with U.S. visitors, he tends to
repeat the analogy he uses in public. It's not about Vietnam, and it's not
about Cambodia. 'This is 1938,' he says. 'Iran is Germany, and it is about
to arm itself with nuclear weapons.' The Saudi monarch, I wrote in Ha'aretz,
'for whom the Nazi analogy is not his natural domain, expressed exactly the
same fear, but in somewhat different words.'"-Shmuel Rosner, "Did We Just
Declare War on Iran?", www.slate.com, http://www.slate.com/id/2157489/, (12
January 2007).
"We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates
in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by
Bush against Iran. We should also approach European countries so that they
support American actions in Iran, so that Bush will not be isolated in the
international arena again. We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia
so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran."-Brigadier General (Res.)
Oded Tira, Former IDF Chief Artillery Officer, "What to do with Iran?", (30
December 2006), http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3346275,00.html
________________________________________
"The many controversial issues concerning Palestine and the path to peace
for Israel are intensely debated among Israelis and throughout other
nations - but not in the United States. For the last 30 years, I have
witnessed and experienced the severe restraints on any free and balanced
discussion of the facts. This reluctance to criticize any policies of the
Israeli government is because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the
American-Israel Political Action Committee and the absence of any
significant contrary voices. It would be almost politically suicidal for
members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and
Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak
in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians."-Jimmy Carter,
Thirty-Ninth President of the United States of America, "Speaking frankly
about Israel and Palestine", www.latimes.com,
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-carter8dec08,0,1544474.story?coll=la-news-a_section,
(8 December 2006).
________________________________________
"Israel Beiteinu is a racist party which is a danger to the state of Israel,
Defense Minister Amir Peretz said during the Labor faction meeting on
Monday. 'The decision to appoint Ghaleb Majadle as minister is causing
people to say things that are way out of proportion,' Peretz said. 'If there
is a danger to the state of Israel, it is the danger [presented by] a racist
party like Israel Beiteinu.'"-Gil Hoffman and JPOST Staff, "Amir Peretz
calls Israel Beiteinu a 'racist party'", The Jerusalem Post ,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467737898&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull,
(15 January 2007).
"A few hours after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to Israel
on another diplomatic mission, she hastened to meet with Strategic Threats
Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Rice met Lieberman two days after the chairwoman
of his Yisrael Beiteinu faction, MK Esterina Tartman, made crudely racist
statements against the appointment (which has meanwhile been postponed) of
MK Raleb Majadele as the first Arab minister in the country's history. [***]
Rice's meeting with Lieberman was like giving a stamp of approval to the
racist positions he and his party have adopted. It is not clear why the
secretary of state saw a need to hold this meeting, which is not part of the
standard protocol for her visits to Israel. Her meeting with Lieberman thus
constituted a kind of American recognition of his status and his
stances."-Haaretz Editorial, "Down with racism", www.haaretz.com,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/813380.html, (15 January 2007?).
"Israeli media reported that hardline deputy prime minister, Avigdor
Lieberman, told Rice that the Israeli Army will have to re-enter the Gaza
Strip at some point, and that 30,000 U.N. troops are needed to secure the
chaotic Palestinian territory on Israel's southern flank. Lieberman has in
the past said Israel should assassinate Hamas' leadership, ignore the
moderate Palestinian president and walk away from international peace
efforts. His ideas do not necessarily carry weight, but Rice defended the
decision to meet with him."-Anne Gearan, "Rice Says She Registers Mideast
Demands", The Associated Press/WashingtonPost.com,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/14/AR2007011400287.html,
(14 January 2007).
________________________________________
"The most important thing, and especially if you're a Gentile listening to
my voice, if you're not Jewish, the most important thing for the nations to
do is to bless Israel. The most important thing is to bless Israel. That's
all a Gentile should be thinking about from the morning till night is, 'How
do I bless Israel? How do I stand by Zion?' It's the most important thing.
And the most dangerous, the worst thing in the world, is to curse Israel-the
worst thing. Every Gentile has to think every second of, 'What can I do to
strengthen Zion? What can I do to pray for Jerusalem? What can I do to stand
by the nation of Israel?'"- Tovia Singer, "Can you Hear the Footsteps of the
Messiah?", Israel National Radio,
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=119335, (10 January 2007).
"I'm at the point of saying that Bush is going to do everything he can,
essentially, to taunt Ahmadinejad into attacking us."-Dr. Jerome Corsi,
author of Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American
Politicians, in an interview with Tovia Singer on Israel National Radio,
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=119335, (10 January 2007).
________________________________________
"Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of
Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us
come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will
meet regularly with me and my administration; it will help strengthen our
relationship with Congress. We can begin by working together to increase the
size of the active Army and Marine Corps, so that America has the Armed
Forces we need for the 21st century."- George W. Bush, Forty-Third President
of the United States of America, "Text of President Bush's address on
Wednesday, as prepared by the White House",
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_4987452, (10 January 2007).
________________________________________
"No one denies that the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, in
power from 1995 until 2006, was overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But with
Democratic wins in both houses, the 110th Congress removes from power
several maverick Republicans who wanted the United States to be more
critical of Israel, and boosts to leadership lawmakers who are not just
Israel-friendly but intimately acquainted with the U.S. Jewish
community."-Ron Kampeas, "Division of congressional posts seems to favor
Jewish issues",
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=17466&intcategoryid=3,
(10 January 2007).
________________________________________
"The thing that makes us strong and secure. is that we here in Israel are
only the spearhead of a great people spread all over the world, and one day
they will come home where they really belong, to the State of Israel[.]
[***] Birthright, if you want, is what Israel is all about. Israel is a
Jewish state[.] [***] [Jews] have a birthright to come and live here. [***]
[T]here is only one place in the world which is ours. [***] [W]e are one
people, belong to each other, and that we love each other. [***] When it
does happen, and you feel you are ready, we are waiting for you. And when
you decide to come here, we will hug you, kiss you. we want nothing more
than to have you, the future of the Jewish people, to come here, where they
belong[.]"-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as quoted by Yaakov
Lappin,"Olmert: Israel spearhead for all Jews",
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3349787,00.html, (8 January 2007).
________________________________________
"Most Americans would reject outright any effort by one of our allies to
limit fair debate, discussion, and dialogue here in the United States about
the nature of American relations with any given state. And yet America as a
whole remains mute to the interference by the Israeli Lobby into any
meaningful discussion of American-Israeli relations. The end result is that
Israel and the Israeli Lobby are herding America down the path toward war
with Iran, and most Americans remain ignorant and/or indifferent to this
fact. The proof is in the pudding; even as the world debates and discusses
the June 2006 incentives package offered to Iran, Israel has already
proclaimed its opposition to any such negotiated settlement, and AIPAC has
initiated a full-fledged lobbying campaign targeted at the U.S. Congress to
keep America on track toward conflict with Iran. No one in the world wants
such a confrontation, only Israel. Let there be no doubt: if there is an
American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere
else."-Scott Ritter, Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans
for Regime Change, Nation Books, New York, (2006), p. 211.
________________________________________
"It has been taught: R. Jose12 said: Three commandments were given to Israel
when they entered the land; [i] to appoint a king; [ii] to cut off the seed
of Amalek; [iii] and to build themselves the chosen house [i.e. the Temple]
and I do not know which of them has priority. But, when it is said: The hand
upon the throne of the Lord, the Lord will have war with Amalek from
generation to generation,13 we must infer that they had first to set up a
king, for 'throne' implies a king, as it is written, Then Solomon sat on the
throne of the Lord as king.14 Yet I still do not know which [of the other
two] comes first, the building of the chosen Temple or the cutting off of
the seed of Amalek. Hence, when it is written, And when He giveth you rest
from all your enemies round about etc., and then [Scripture proceeds], Then
it shall come to pass that the place which the Lord your God shall choose,15
it is to be inferred that the extermination of Amalek is first. And so it is
written of David, And it came to pass when the king dwelt in his house, and
the Lord had given him rest from his enemies round about, and the passage
continues; that the king said unto Nathan the Prophet: See now, I dwell in a
house of cedars etc."-I. Epstein, Editor, "Sanhedrin 20b", The Babylonian
Talmud, Volume 27, The Soncino Press, London, (1935), pp. 107-111, at 109.
________________________________________
"So they went nearer and they heard him saying: 'Crown, crown, two sons are
kept outside, and there will be no peace or rest until the bird is thrown
down in Caesarea.' R. Jose wept and said: 'Verily the Galuth is drawn out,
and therefore the birds of heaven will not depart until the dominion of the
idolatrous nations is removed from the earth, which will not be till the day
when God will bring the world to judgement.'"-H. Sperling and M. Simon,
Editors, The Zohar, Volume 2, The Soncino Press, New York, (1933), p. 311.
________________________________________
"We must turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates
in the Democratic Party so that they publicly support immediate action by
Bush against Iran. We should also approach European countries so that they
support American actions in Iran, so that Bush will not be isolated in the
international arena again. We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia
so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran."-Brigadier General (Res.)
Oded Tira, Former IDF Chief Artillery Officer, "What to do with Iran?", (30
December 2006), http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3346275,00.html
"* First, Israel should appoint a roving ambassador tasked with
responsibility for maintaining relations with Christians in America. This
should not be just an honorary title, nor should it go to one of the usual
organizational fund-raisers or foreign service hacks. Instead, the
government should appoint a person of faith, one who can communicate with
evangelicals in terms they both understand and appreciate.
* Second, Israel should reach out to Christian leaders and their
communities, and initiate the establishment of 'prayer battalions' in
churches across the United States. Like rapid-deployment forces used by the
military, these battalions could be mobilized at a moment's notice to pray
for specific issues, such as the return of Israel's missing soldiers or the
threat posed by Iran's nuclear ambitions."-Michael Freund, Served as Deputy
Director of Communications in Israel's Prime Minister's Office under former
premier Binyamin Netanyahu, "Right On!: In praise of Christian Zionists",
(21 December 2006),
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1164881944891&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
________________________________________
"The conclusions from Dayan's words are clear: This State has no
international obligations, no economic problems, the question of peace is
nonexistent. . . . It must calculate its steps narrow-mindedly and live on
its sword. It must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument
with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward
this end it may, no-it must-invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the
method of provocation-and-revenge. . . . And above all-let us hope for a new
war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles
and acquire our space. (Such a slip of the tongue: Ben Gurion himself said
that it would be worth while to pay an Arab a million pounds to start a
war.) (26 May 1955, 1021)"-Excerpt from a 26 May 1955 entry in Moshe
Sheratt's personal diary as quoted in L. Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism,
Third Edition, AAUG Press, Belmont Massachusetts, p. 41.
________________________________________
"In 1937, 5.7 percent of the Party were Jews yet they formed a majority in
the government. Lenin himself (who was partly Jewish by ancestry) said that
if the Commissar was Jewish, the deputy should be Russian: Stalin followed
this rule. [***] Many Jewish Bolsheviks used Russian pseudonyms. As early as
1936, Stalin ordered Mekhlis at Pravda to use these pseudonyms: 'No need to
excite Hitler!'"- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Star,
Vintage Books, New York, (2003), pp. 305-306.
________________________________________
"In the Great Jalkut Rubeni, in the Parasha Bereshith, [Footnote: Fol. 10.
Col. 1.] we have the following Passage, 'The Skin and the Flesh is the Coat
of a Man. The Spirit within is the Man. But the Idolaters (meaning all the
Nations but the Jewish) are not call'd Men, because their Souls have their
Origin from the Unclean Spirit. But the Souls of the Israelites are derived
from the Holy Spirit.' And a little farther on in the same Treatise, it is
said, [Footnote: Fol. 10. Col. 2.] 'An Israelite is called a Man, because
his Soul cometh from the Supreme Man. But an Idolater, whose Soul cometh
from the Unclean Spirit, is call'd a Swine. If so, then is an Idolater the
Body and Soul of a Swine.' In another Part of the said Treatise, entitled
Shaar olam hattobu [Footnote: Fol. 23. Col. 4.], there is a Passage running
thus: 'The Wicked are stiled the Dead in their Life-Time, because they have
not a Holy Soul from the Foundation, which is called Him that liveth for
ever. But they have the Soul from Kelifa (i. e. the Shell) by which is meant
the Devil) who is call'd Death, and the Shadow of Death: And through the
Sparklings of the same they live.'"-Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, The
Traditions of the Jews, Contained in the Talmud and other Mystical Writings,
Volume 1, J. Robinson, London, (1748), pp. 254-255.
________________________________________
"We Zionists wish to urge self-help on the people; thereby no exaggerated
and unsound hopes will be awakened. On this ground, also, publicity in
dealing with this point is of the highest value. [***] The confidence of the
State, which is necessary for a settlement of large masses of Jews, can only
be gained by publicity and by loyal action."-Theodor Herzl, "The Zionist
Congress: Full Report of the Proceedings", The Jewish Chronicle, (3
September 1897), pp. 10-15, at 11.
"I hear, for ex., that your accomplishments are being used to make
propaganda, with the 'Jewish Newton, who is simultaneously an ardent
Zionist' (I personally haven't read this yet, but only heard it mentioned).
[***] But I cannot go along with the propagandistic fuss with its inevitable
untruths, precisely because Judaism is at stake and because I feel myself so
thoroughly a Jew."-Letter from Paul Ehrenfest to Albert Einstein of 9
December 1919, English translation by A. Hentschel, The Collected Papers of
Albert Einstein, Volume 9, Document 203, Princeton University Press, (2004),
pp. 173-175, at 174.
________________________________________
"In 1983 AIPAC distributed to students and faculty around the country a
ten-page questionnaire on political activism on their campuses. Its
instructions include: 'Please name any individual faculty who assist
anti-Israel groups. How is this assistance offered? What are the propaganda
themes . . . ?' The survey results form the body of the AIPAC College Guide:
Exposing the Anti-Israel Campaign on Campus, published in April 1984.
While AIPAC claims to respect the right of all to free speech, number eight
on its list of 10 suggested 'modes of response' to pro-Palestinian events or
speakers on campus reads: 'Attempt to prevent.'"-Paul Findley, They Dare to
Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, Lawrence Hill &
Company, Westport, Connecticut, (1985), p. 181.
________________________________________
"I don't understand your optimism,' Ben Gurion declared. 'Why should the
Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with
Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it
to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come
from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to
them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was
that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen
their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one
or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So it's
simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole
policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out.'"-David Ben-Gurion,
as quoted in: N. Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, Grosset & Dunlap, New York,
(1978), p. 99.
________________________________________
"I know this will annoy many of your readers. . . But the anger is over the
fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians. Instead of Israel
fighting against Hizbullah, many parts of the American administration
believe that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is
Syria and not Hizbullah."Meyrav Wurmser, as quoted by Yitzhak Benhorin in,
"Neocons: We expected Israel to attack Syria",
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3340750,00.html, (16 December
2006).
________________________________________
"21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and
the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. 22 And the
children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I
thus? And she went to inquire of the LORD. 23 And the LORD said unto her,
Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated
from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people;
and the elder shall serve the younger. 24 And when her days to be delivered
were fulfilled, behold, there were twins in her womb. 25 And the first came
out red, all over like an hairy garment; and they called his name Esau. 26
And after that came his brother out, and his hand took hold on Esau's heel;
and his name was called Jacob: and Isaac was threescore years old when she
bare them. 27 And the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the
field; and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents. 28 And Isaac loved
Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 And
Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: 30 And
Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I
am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. 31 And Jacob said, Sell me
this day thy birthright. 32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die:
and what profit shall this birthright do to me? 33 And Jacob said, Swear to
me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and
drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his
birthright."-The Jewish book of Genesis 25:21-34.
________________________________________
"You and I both know the powerful influence of AIPAC, which is not designed
to promote peace. I'm not criticizing them, they have a perfect right to
lobby, but their purpose in life is to protect and defend the policies of
the Israeli government and to make sure those policies are approved in the
United States and in our Congress-and they're very effective at it. I have
known a large number of Jewish organizations in this country [that] have
expressed their approval for the book and are trying to promote peace. But
their voices are divided and they're relatively reluctant to speak out
publicly. And any member of Congress who's looking to be re-elected couldn't
possibly say that they would take a balanced position between Israel and the
Palestinians, or that they would insist on Israel withdrawing to
international borders, or that they would dedicate themselves to protect
human rights of Palestinians-it's very likely that they would not be
re-elected."-Jimmy Carter, Thirty Ninth President of the United States of
America, as quoted by Eleanor Clift, "Last Word: Jimmy Carter Revisiting
'Apartheid'", Newsweek International, (25 December 2006 - 1 January 2007).
________________________________________
"Thus what was on offer was no more and no less than the establishment of a
fascist Jewish state in Palestine as an ally of German fascism!"-Klaus
Polkehn, "The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941", Journal
of Palestine Studies, Volume 5, Number 3/4, (Spring-Summer, 1976), pp.
54-82, at 79.
________________________________________
"The United States has made a massive commitment to the future of Iraq in
both blood and treasure. As of December 2006, nearly 2,900 Americans have
lost their lives serving in Iraq. Another 21,000 Americans have been
wounded, many severely.
To date, the United States has spent roughly $400 billion on the Iraq War,
and costs are running about $8 billion per month. In addition, the United
States must expect significant "tail costs" to come. Caring for veterans and
replacing lost equipment will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Estimates run as high as $2 trillion for the final cost of the U.S.
involvement in Iraq."-James A. Baker, et al.,The Iraq Study Group Report,
Vintage Books, New York, (2006), p. 32.
________________________________________
"The conflict includes not only the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza
Strip, but Israeli Arabs also[.] [***] The linkage between the Palestinian
Authority and the Israeli Arab population - it will destroy us, it is
impossible. What is the logic of creating one and a half country for one
people and a half country for the Jewish people? [***] It's not racism [***]
The test is loyalty, not their religion."-Avigdor Lieberman as quoted by Ira
Stoll in "Israel's Lieberman Calls for Tougher Stance on Israeli Arabs", The
New York Sun, (13 December 2006).
________________________________________
"Revolting as it is, it would be an interesting study in psychology to
analyze the motives, other than fear and cowardice, that have prompted
Jewish bankers to lend money to Germany as they are now doing. It is in part
their money that is being used by the Hitler regime in its reckless, wicked
campaign of propaganda to make the world anti-Semitic; with that money they
have invaded Great Britain, the United States and other countries where they
have established newspapers, subsidized agents and otherwise are spending
untold millions in spreading their infamous creed. The suggestion that they
use that money toward paying the honest debts they have repudiated is
answered only by contemptuous sneers and silence. Meantime the infamous
campaign goes on unabated with ever increasing intensity to the everlasting
disgrace of the Jewish bankers who are helping to finance it and of the
weaklings who are doing nothing effective to check it."-Samuel Untermeyer,
as quoted in: "Text of Untermyer's Address", The New York Times, (7 August
1933), p. 4.
________________________________________
"'Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful
monument in Palestine. You know', and here the biographer-historian seemed
to assume the role of a patriarchal Jew-'the coming of the Nazis was rather
a welcome thing. So many of our German Jews were hovering between two
coasts; so many of them were riding the treacherous current between the
Scylla of assimilation and the Charybdis of a nodding acquaintance with
Jewish things. Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were
brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very
grateful to him.'"-Meyer Steinglass quoting Emil Ludwig, "Emil Ludwig before
the Judge", American Jewish Times, (April, 1936), p. 35; as quoted in: L.
Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago,
(1983), p. 59.
________________________________________
"19:5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant,
then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the
earth is mine: 19:6 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an
holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of
Israel."-The Jewish book of Exodus 19:5-6.
"32:1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the
mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto
him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the
man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become
of him. 32:2 And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which
are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and
bring them unto me. 32:3 And all the people brake off the golden earrings
which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. 32:4 And he received
them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made
it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought
thee up out of the land of Egypt. 32:5 And when Aaron saw it, he built an
altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast
to the LORD. 32:6 And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt
offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and
to drink, and rose up to play. 32:7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get
thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt,
have corrupted themselves: 32:8 They have turned aside quickly out of the
way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have
worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O
Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 32:9 And the
LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a
stiffnecked people: 32:10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax
hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a
great nation. 32:11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why
doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out
of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand? 32:12
Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring
them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face
of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against
thy people. 32:13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom
thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your
seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I
give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. 32:14 And the LORD
repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people. 32:15 And Moses
turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the Testimony
were in his hand: the tables were written on both their sides; on the one
side and on the other were they written. 32:16 And the tables were the work
of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.
32:17 And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said
unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp. 32:18 And he said, It is
not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of
them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.
32:19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he
saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the
tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. 32:20 And he took
the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to
powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink
of it. 32:21 And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that
thou hast brought so great a sin upon them? 32:22 And Aaron said, Let not
the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on
mischief. 32:23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before
us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of
Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 32:24 And I said unto them,
Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I
cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf. 32:25 And when Moses
saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their
shame among their enemies:) 32:26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp,
and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons
of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. 32:27 And he said unto them,
Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and
go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his
brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. 32:28 And
the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of
the people that day about three thousand men. 32:29 For Moses had said,
Consecrate yourselves to day to the LORD, even every man upon his son, and
upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day. 32:30 And
it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses said unto the people, Ye have
sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto the LORD; peradventure I shall
make an atonement for your sin. 32:31 And Moses returned unto the LORD, and
said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of
gold. 32:32 Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin; and if not, blot me, I
pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. 32:33 And the LORD said
unto Moses, Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my
book. 32:34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have
spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in
the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them. 32:35 And the LORD
plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made."-The
Jewish book of Exodus 32.
________________________________________
"I see the entire leadership of Hamas and Jihad walking around freely, and
it's continuing to incite[. . . .] They ... have to disappear, to go to
paradise, all of them, and there can't be any compromise."-Avigdor Lieberman
as quoted by KARIN LAUB Associated Press Writer, "Take Back Gaza, Israeli
Official Says", (18 November 2006),
http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=105&sid=979447
________________________________________
"The massacre of Armenian and Assyrian Christians in the Turkish Empire is a
crime which in scale and horror has probably no parallel in the history of
the world, and the sufferings baffle description which are now being endured
by the rapidly dwindling number of hunted and persecuted
survivors."-Archbishop of Canterbury quoted in: "Armenians and Serbians",
The London Times, (15 December 1915), p. 7.
________________________________________
"8 Shall I not in that day, saith the LORD, even destroy the wise men out of
Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau? 9 And thy mighty men, O
Teman, shall be dismayed, to the end that every one of the mount of Esau may
be cut off by slaughter. 10 For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame
shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever."-The Jewish book of
Obadiah.
"11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out
before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the
Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. 12 Take heed to thyself, lest
thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest,
lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: 13 But ye shall destroy their
altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: 14 For thou shalt
worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a
whoring after their gods , and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call
thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; 16 And thou take of their daughters
unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make
thy sons go a whoring after their gods. 17 Thou shalt make thee no molten
gods."-The Jewish book of Exodus 34:11-17.
________________________________________
"Two other interrelated factors have contributed to the perpetuation of
violence and regional upheaval: the condoning of illegal Israeli actions
from a submissive White House and U.S. Congress during recent years, and the
deference with which other international leaders permit this unofficial U.S.
policy in the Middle East to prevail. There are constant and vehement
political and media debates in Israel concerning its policies in the West
Bank, but because of powerful political, economic, and religious forces in
the United States, Israeli government decisions are rarely questioned or
condemned, voices from Jerusalem dominate in our media, and most American
citizens are unaware of circumstances in the occupied territories. At the
same time, political leaders and news media in Europe are highly critical of
Israeli policies, affecting public attitudes. Americans were surprised and
angered by an opinion poll, published by the International Herald Tribune in
October 2003, of 7,500 citizens in fifteen European nations, indicating that
Israel was considered to be the top threat to world peace, ahead of North
Korea, Iran, or Afghanistan."-Jimmy Carter, Thirty-Ninth President of the
United States of America, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, Simon & Schuster,
New York, (2006), p. 209.
________________________________________
"Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg had offered biblical justification for the view that
the spilling of non-Jewish blood was a lesser offense than the spilling of
Jewish blood. 'Any trial based on the assumption that Jews and goyim are
equal is a total travesty of justice,' he said."-"An Israeli Mayor Is Under
Scrutiny", The New York Times, (6 June 1989), p. 5.
________________________________________
"For Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples; and Judah hath
multiplied fenced cities: but I will send a fire upon his cities, and it
shall devour the palaces thereof."-The Jewish book of Hosea 8:14.
________________________________________
"We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the
Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life
more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine. In
broad day-light, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they
are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing
machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their
families to endless grief."-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic
Republic of Iran, "Open Letter to the American People", (29 November 2006)
"Instead, the governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert have built the
fence and wall entirely within Palestinian territory, intruding deeply into
the West Bank to encompass Israeli settlement blocs and large areas of other
Palestinian land. It is projected to be at least three and a half times as
long as Israel's internationally recognized border and already cuts directly
through Palestinian villages, divides families from their gardens and
farmland, and includes 375,000 Palestinians on the 'Israeli' side of the
wall, 175,000 of whom are outside Jerusalem. One example is that the
wandering wall almost completely surrounds the Palestinian city of Qalqiliya
with its 45,000 inhabitants, with most of the citizens' land and about
one-third of their water supply confiscated by the Israelis. Almost the same
encirclement has occurred around 170,000 citizens of Bethlehem, the
birthplace of Jesus."-Jimmy Carter, Thirty-Ninth President of the United
States of America, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, Simon & Schuster, New
York, (2006), pp. 190, 192.
________________________________________
"XXVIII. The next thing is that charge about the Jewish gold. And this,
forsooth, is the reason why this cause is pleaded near the steps of
Aurelius. It is on account of this charge, O Laelius, that this place and
that mob has been selected by you. You know how numerous that crowd is, how
great is its unanimity, and of what weight it is in the popular assemblies.
I will speak in a low voice, just so as to let the judges hear me. For men
are not wanting who would be glad to excite that people against me and
against every eminent man; and I will not assist them and enable them to do
so more easily. As gold, under pretence of being given to the Jews, was
accustomed every year to be exported out of Italy and all the provinces to
Jerusalem, Flaccus issued an edict establishing a law that it should not be
lawful for gold to be exported out of Asia. And who is there, O judges, who
cannot honestly praise this measure? The senate had often decided, and when
I was consul it came to a most solemn resolution that gold ought not to be
exported. But to resist this barbarous superstition were an act of dignity,
to despise the multitude of Jews, which at times was most unruly in the
assemblies in defence of the interests of the republic, was an act of the
greatest wisdom. 'But Cnaeus Pompeius, after he had taken Jerusalem, though
he was a conqueror, touched nothing which was in that temple.' In the first
place, he acted wisely, as he did in many other instances, in leaving no
room for his detractors to say anything against him, in a city so prone to
suspicion and to evil speaking. For I do not suppose that the religion of
the Jews, our enemies, was any obstacle to that most illustrious general,
but that he was hindered by his own modesty. Where then is the guilt? Since
you nowhere impute any theft to us, since you approve of the edict, and
confess that it was passed in due form, and do not deny that the gold was
openly sought for and produced, the facts of the case themselves show that
the business was executed by the instrumentality of men of the highest
character. There was a hundredweight of gold, more or less, openly seized at
Apamea, and weighed out in the forum at the feet of the praetor, by Sextus
Caesius, a Roman knight, a most excellent and upright man; twenty pounds
weight or a little more were seized at Laodicea, by Lucius Peducaeus, who is
here in court, one of our judges; some was seized also at Adramyttium, by
Cnaeus Domitius, the lieutenant, and a small quantity at Pergamus. The
amount of the gold is known; the gold is in the treasury; no theft is
imputed to him; but it is attempted to render him unpopular. The speaker
turns away from the judges, and addresses himself to the surrounding
multitude. Each city, O Laelius, has its own peculiar religion; we have
ours. While Jerusalem was flourishing, and while the Jews were in a peaceful
state, still the religious ceremonies and observances of that people were
very much at variance with the splendour of this empire, and the dignity of
our name, and the institutions of our ancestors. And they are the more
odious to us now, because that nation has shown by arms what were its
feelings towards our supremacy. How dear it was to the immortal gods is
proved by its having been defeated, by its revenues having been farmed out
to our contractors, by its being reduced to a state of subjection."-M. T.
Cicero, Pro Flaccus, Chapter 28; translated by C. D. Yonge, The Orations of
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 2, George Bell & Sons, London, (1880), pp.
454-455.
________________________________________
"R. Joseph further had in mind to say, in regard to what has been taught
that in the case of idolaters and shepherds of small cattle one is not
obliged to bring them up [from a pit] though one must not cast them in it2 -
that for payment one is obliged to bring them up on account of ill feeling.
Abaye, however, said to him: He could offer such excuses as, 'I have to run
to my boy who is standing on the roof', or, 'I have to keep an appointment
at the court.'
R. Abbahu recited to R. Johanan: 'Idolaters and [Jewish] shepherds of small
cattle need not be brought up though they must not be cast in, but minim,3
informers, and apostates may be cast in, and need not be brought up.'
Whereupon R. Johanan remarked: I have been learning that the words, And so
shalt thou do with every lost thing of thy brother's [thou mayest not hide
thyself],4 are also applicable to an apostate, and you say he may be thrown
down; leave out apostates! Could he not have answered that the one might
apply to the kind of apostate who eats carrion meat to satisfy his
appetite,5 and the other to an apostate who eats carrion meat to provoke? -
In his opinion, an apostate eating carrion meat to provoke is the same as a
min.6
It has been stated: [In regard to the term] apostate there is a divergence
of opinion between R. Aha and Rabina; one says that [he who eats forbidden
food] to satisfy his appetite, is an apostate, but [he who does it] to
provoke is a 'min'; while the other says that even [one who does it] to
provoke is merely an apostate. - And who is a 'min'? - One who actually
worships idols.1
An objection was raised: If one eats a flea or a gnat he is an apostate. Now
such a thing could only be done to provoke, and yet we are taught that he is
merely an apostate! - Even in that case he may just be trying to see what a
forbidden thing tastes like.
The Master said: 'They may be cast in and need not be brought up' - if they
may be cast in need it be said that they need not be brought up? - Said R.
Joseph b. Hama in the name of R. Shesheth: What is meant to convey is that
if there was a step in the pit-wall, one may scrape it away, giving as a
reason for doing so, the prevention of cattle being lured by the step to get
unto the pit. Raba and R. Joseph both of them said: It means to convey that
if there is a stone lying by the pit opening, one may cover the pit with it,
saying that he does it for [the safety] of passing animals. Rabina said: It
is meant to convey that if there is a ladder there, he may remove it,
saying, I want it for getting my son down from a roof."-I. Epstein, Editor,
"Abodah Zarah 26a-26b", The Babylonian Talmud, Volume 29, The Soncino Press,
London, (1935), pp. 131-132.
________________________________________
"Let it, however, be kept in mind, that the restoration will be at first
limited and partial; the government which they may form will be transitory
and contingent; the great war prophesied in Ezekiel against Gog, prince of
Rush, Meshech, and Tubal, the power which now controls Archenaz, Refath, and
Togarmah of the Scriptures, that is to say, the Germans, Sclavonians,
Sarmatians, and Turks of our day, is RUSSIA; the descendants of the joint
colony of Meshech and Tubal, and the little horn of Daniel. Russia, in its
attempt to wrest India from England and Turkey from the Ottomites, will make
the Holy Land the theatre of a terrible conflict. TARSHISH, 'with the young
lions thereof'-evidently Great Britain, with her allies-will come to the
rescue. Then will ensue the battle so sublimely described by the prophet:
the fire and hailstones; the purification and victory; the advent of the
Messiah, and the thousand years of happiness and peace which are to
ensue."-Mordecai Manuel Noah, Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews:
Delivered at the Tabernacle, Oct. 28 and Dec. 2, 1844, Harper & Brothers,
New-York, (1845), pp. 52-53.
________________________________________
"It was I. M. Wise, typically, who broke the silence of the established Jews
as they saw what was happening to the good name of their faith. From the
fresh air of Cincinnati, Wise observed the noisy, smelly scenes in the
eastern seaports and was revolted. 'It is next to an impossibility to
associate or identify ourselves with that half-civilized orthodoxy which
constitutes the bulk of the [Jewish] population in those cities,' he
stormed. 'We are Americans and they are not. We are Israelites of the
nineteenth century and a free country, and they gnaw the dead bones of past
centuries.' Wise was never a man to mince words. 'The good reputation of
Judaism must naturally suffer materially, which must without fail lower our
social status.' The prosperous 'Uptown' Jew of New York found identification
with the unsavory 'Downtown' Jew dangerous in the extreme. It was in the
Uptown salons of the German-Jewish aristocracy that the word 'kike' first
appeared, to deride the uncultured and unclean immigrants. Yet the emotional
dilemma was acute, for the Uptown Jew was not without a sense of obligation
and guilt."-Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America, Alfred A. Knopf, New
York, (1983), pp. 31-32.
________________________________________
"The American Jewish community was divided into a three-stage action team.
First were the individual sayanim (if the situation had been reversed and
the United States had convinced Americans working in Israel to work secretly
on behalf of the United States, they would be treated as spies by the
Israeli government). Then there was the large pro-Israeli lobby. It would
mobilize the Jewish community in a forceful effort in whatever direction the
Mossad pointed them. And last was B'nai Brith. Members of that organization
could be relied on to make friends among non-Jews and tarnish as
anti-Semitic whomever they couldn't sway to the Israeli cause. With that
sort of one-two-three tactic, there was no way we could strike out."- Victor
Ostrovsky, The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's
Secret Agenda, Harper Collins, New York, (1994), p. 32.
________________________________________
"Journalist Harold R. Piety observes that 'the ugly cry of anti-Semitism is
the bludgeon used by the Zionists to bully non-Jews into accepting the
Zionist view of world events, or to keep silent.' In late 1978 Piety,
withholding his identity in order not to irritate his employer, wrote an
article on 'Zionism and the American Press' for Middle East International in
which he decried 'the inaccuracies, distortions and- perhaps
worst-inexcusable omission of significant news and background material by
the American media in its treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict.'
Piety traces the deficiency of U.S. media in reporting on the Middle East to
largely successful efforts by the pro-Israel lobby to 'overwhelm the
American media with a highly professional public relations campaign, to
intimidate the media through various means and, finally, to impose
censorship when the media are compliant and craven.' He lists threats to
editors and advertising departments, orchestrated boycotts, slanders,
campaigns of character assassination, and personal vendettas among the
weapons employed against balanced journalism."-Congressman Paul Findley,
They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby,
Lawrence Hill & Company, Westport, Connecticut, (1985), p. 296.
________________________________________
"7 Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and
unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the
vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites,
and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates. 8 Behold, I
have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD
sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to
their seed after them."-The Jewish book of Deuteronomy 1:7-8.
________________________________________
"42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul
delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to
the Gentiles. [***] 60:11 Therefore thy gates shall be open continually;
they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the
forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. 60:12 For the
nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations
shall be utterly wasted. [***] 60:16 Thou shalt also suck the milk of the
Gentiles, and shalt suck the breast of kings: and thou shalt know that I the
LORD am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob. 60:17 For
brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood
brass, and for stones iron: I will also make thy officers peace, and thine
exactors righteousness. [***] 61:5 And strangers shall stand and feed your
flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your plowmen and your
vinedressers. 6 But ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD: men shall
call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles,
and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves."-The Jewish book of Isaiah
42:1; 60:11-12, 16-17; 61:5-6.
________________________________________
"Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional
historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been
pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an
American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase,
aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. 'That's why our recognition of
Israel was rushed through so fast.' As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite
(unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny
story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics."-Gore
Vidal in his Forward to Israel Shahak's book Jewish History, Jewish
Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Pluto Press, London, (2002),
pp. vi-vii, at vi.
________________________________________
"THE LATEST PRODUCTION of Israel's apologists is the 'new anti-Semitism.'
[***] The main purpose behind these periodic, meticulously orchestrated
media extravaganzas is not to fight anti-Semitism but rather to exploit the
historical suffering of Jews in order to immunize Israel against criticism.
[***] Finally, whereas in the original New Anti-Semitism marginal left-wing
organizations like the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party were
cast as the heart of the anti-Semitic darkness, in the current revival
Israel's apologists, having lurched to the right end of the political
spectrum, cast mainstream organizations like Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch in this role. [***] WHAT'S CURRENTLY CALLED the new
anti-Semitism actually incorporates three main components: (1) exaggeration
and fabrication, (2) mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy, and
(3) the unjustified yet predictable spillover from criticism of Israel to
Jews generally. EXAGGERATION AND FABRICATION The evidence of a new
anti-Semitism comes mostly from organizations directly or indirectly linked
to Israel or having a material stake in inflating the findings of
anti-Semitism."-Norman G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of
Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, University of California Press,
Berkeley, (2005), pp. 21-22, 32, and 66. See also: N. G. Finkelstein, The
Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering,
Second Edition, Verso, London, New York, (2003).
________________________________________
"The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign
policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six
Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its
relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for
Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has
inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security.
This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the
United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance
the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the
two countries is based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral
imperatives. As we show below, however, neither of those explanations can
account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the
United States provides to Israel.
Instead, the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost
entirely to U.S. domestic politics, and especially to the activities of the
'Israel Lobby.' Other special interest groups have managed to skew U.S.
foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to
divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest
would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S.
and Israeli interests are essentially identical.1"-J. J. Mearsheimer and S.
M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy, Faculty Research Working
Papers Series, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government,
(March, 2006), p. 1.
________________________________________
"The Jewish Lobby, Not Big Oil
Contrary to the view of most American progressives that oil, and
specifically the interests of Big Oil, is the primary mover, there is no
evidence that the major US oil corporations pressured Congress or promoted
the war in Iraq or the current confrontation with Iran. To the contrary:
there is plenty of evidence that they are very uneasy about the losses that
may result from an Israeli attack on Iran. Furthermore, it seems reasonable
to suppose that Big Oil is far from happy about taking the rap for all that
is happening in the Middle East, particularly when it combines with public
anger at high gas prices, and leads to Senate inquiries.
There is an abundance of evidence for the past 15 years that:
1. The oil companies did not promote a war policy.
2. The wars have prejudiced their interests, operations and agreements with
prominent Arab and Islamic regimes in the region.
3. The interests of the oil companies have been sacrificed to the state
interests of Israel.
4. The power of the pro-Israel lobbies exceeds that of the oil companies in
shaping US Middle East policy."-James Petras, The Power of Israel in the
United States, Clarity Press Inc., Atlanta, (2006), pp. 21-22.
________________________________________
"24 Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours:
from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even
unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be. 25 There shall no man be able to
stand before you: for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of you and the
dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath said
unto you. 26 Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; 27 A
blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command
you this day: 28 And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the
LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day,
to go after other gods, which ye have not known."-The Jewish book of
Deuteronomy 11:24-28.
________________________________________
"15:18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy
seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river,
the river Euphrates: [***] 17:8 And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed
after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan,
for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."-The Jewish book of
Genesis 15:18; 17:8.
________________________________________
"A number of discrepant versions of Biblical borders of the Land of Israel,
which rabbinical authorities interpret as ideally belonging to the Jewish
state, are in circulation. The most far-reaching among them include the
following areas within these borders: in the south, all of Sinai and a part
of northern Egypt up to the environs of Cairo; in the east, all of Jordan
and a large chunk of Saudi Arabia, all of Kuwait and a part of Iraq south of
the Euphrates; in the north, all of Lebanon and all of Syria together with a
huge part of Turkey (up to lake Van); and in the west, Cyprus."-Israel
Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years,
Pluto Press, London, (2002), p. 9.
________________________________________
"Much is heard of the [Balfour] Declaration as an instrument conferring upon
the Jewish race unwarrantable privileges in a land from which that race had
been effectively dispersed. There has been remarkably little said as to the
reasons of high policy which impelled the Allies to adopt the purpose of the
Declaration as one of their war aims.
To some extent altruistic motives influenced certain Gentile protagonists of
the Zionism expressed in the Declaration. At a time when justice for
oppressed races and small peoples had become an Allied slogan it was at
least consistent to include the Jews among those whose wrongs might be
righted as an outcome of the War. But we well may doubt how far such
considerations, standing alone, would have carried the Allied Governments
towards accepting the restoration of the Jewish people to Palestine as a war
aim. The truth is, of course, that for Great Britain and her Allies the
policy indicated in the Declaration was most definitely a war measure, well
calculated to yield results of immense importance to the Allied cause. And,
further, that for Great Britain special reasons existed why she should adopt
and support the policy of the Declaration.
These may be found in the obvious advantages of covering the Suez Canal by
an outpost territory, in which important elements of the population would
not only be bound to her by every interest, but would command the support of
world Jewry. That was the long view of British Imperial interests, taken in
1916 and 1917; it counted for much then, but for even more after the war.
But apart from exclusive British interests, the Declaration may be described
as essentially a war measure adopted by the Powers of the Entente in the
furtherance of their own vital interests. Defined in greater detail, it was
a bold, imaginative, and statesmanlike effort to prevent the incalculable
and universal influence of Jewry being exerted on the side of the Central
Powers-as, indeed, it was, to a serious extent, then being exerted-and to
transfer this highly important influence to the cause of the Entente. Nor
was it a project of sudden origin, or hastily embraced. The advantages to be
gained if the policy of the Declaration were adopted had long been urged;
opposition to that policy had long been active. Before the British
Government gave the Declaration to the world it had been closely examined in
all its bearings and implications, weighed word by word, and subjected to
repeated change and amendment. Unless full weight be given to these
antecedent facts, no correct judgment upon the Declaration and its policy in
operation can be formed.
2. The Zionists and the Declaration. Zionism had been a living and ambitious
force in the Jewish world long before 1914. While awaiting its real
opportunity it had, in 1905, rejected the tempting offer of territory for
the creation of a Zionist State in Uganda, under the British flag. It had
steadily looked to Palestine as the one land which could provide the
historical connexion essential to Zionist aims. The entry of Turkey into the
war brought the hitherto impracticable dreams of Zionism within the bounds
of possible attainment. If the goodwill of the Allies, particularly of Great
Britain, could be secured, and provided that ultimate success should attend
the Allied arms, much might be done to realize the dearest ambitions of
Zionism. It lay with Zionist leaders to bring their ideal before the British
Government as a scheme likely to be of advantage to the Entente.
Suffice to say that at this crisis of its fortunes Zionism was fortunate,
that in Dr. C. Weizmann and Mr. N. Sokolov it found two leaders equal to the
great occasion, that British Statesmen, including Mr. (now Lord) Balfour,
Lord Milner, Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Robert Cecil, immediately recognized the
political importance and value of the Zionist suggestions, and that in the
subsequent long negotiations and discussions by which the aims of Zionism
were harmonized with the political realities of the situation, the British
negotiators were Mr. Balfour and the late Sir Mark Sykes, both of them
convinced and ardent supporters of Zionist aspirations. These British
representatives and the Zionist leaders just named must be credited with the
chief part in framing the policy of the Declaration.
Support of Zionist ambitions, indeed, promised much for the cause of the
Entente. Quite naturally Jewish sympathies were to a great extent
anti-Russian, and therefore in favour of the Central Powers. No ally of
Russia, in fact, could escape sharing that immediate and inevitable penalty
for long and savage Russian persecution of the Jewish race. But the German
General Staff desired to attach Jewish support yet more closely to the
German side. With their wide outlook on possibilities they seem to have
urged, early in 1916, the advantages of promising Jewish restoration to
Palestine under an arrangement to be made between Zionists and Turkey,
backed by a German guarantee. The practical difficulties were considerable;
the subject perhaps dangerous to German relations with Turkey; and the
German Government acted cautiously. But the scheme was by no means rejected
or even shelved, and at any moment the Allies might have been forestalled in
offering this supreme bid. In fact in September 1917 the German Government
were making the most serious efforts to capture the Zionist movement.
Another most cogent reason why the policy of the Declaration should be
adopted by the Allies lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had
been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they
had become the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda; by 1917 they had
done much in preparation for that general disintegration of Russian national
life, later recognized as the revolution. It was believed that if Great
Britain declared for the fulfilment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine
under her own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the
cause of the Entente.
It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence
upon world Jewry in the same way, and secure for the Entente the aid of
Jewish financial interests. It was believed, further, that it would greatly
influence American opinion in favour of the Allies. Such were the chief
considerations which, during the later part of 1916 and the next ten months
of 1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with
Jewry.
But when the matter came before the Cabinet for decision delays occurred.
Amongst influential English Jews Zionism had few supporters, at all events
for a Zion in Palestine. It had still fewer in France. Jewish influence both
within and without the Cabinet is understood to have exerted itself
strenuously and pertinaciously against the policy of the proposed
Declaration.
Under the pressure of Allied needs the objections of the anti-Zionists were
either over-ruled or the causes of objection removed, and the Balfour
Declaration, as we have seen, was published to the world on 2nd November
1917. That it is in purpose a definite contract with Jewry is beyond
question. Subsequently the Declaration was accepted and endorsed by the
Governments of France, Italy, and Japan.
That it is in purpose a definite contract between the British Government and
Jewry represented by the Zionists is beyond question. In spirit it is a
pledge that in return for services to be rendered by Jewry the British
Government would 'use their best endeavours' to secure the execution of a
certain definite policy in Palestine. No time limit is set for performance;
completion alone appears to have been intended as the conclusion of the
contract. It would thus seem to be an agreement incapable of being greatly
varied except by consent.
How far the implied services of Jewry have been or may yet be rendered
cannot be estimated, and must always remain a matter of opinion. The
Declaration certainly rallied world Jewry, as a whole, to the side of the
Entente. The war was won by the Entente; and to the Declaration as a measure
to that end may be attributed a share in achieving the great result. And it
is possible to understand from many sources that directly, and indirectly,
the services expected of Jewry were not expected in vain, and were, from the
point of view of British interests alone, well worth the price which had to
be paid. Nor is it to be supposed that the services already rendered are the
last-it well may be that in time to come Jewish support will much exceed in
importance any thought possible in the past. That, however, is a possibility
for Palestine of the future to demonstrate."-W. J. M. Childs, in H. W. V.
Temperley, Editor, A History of the Peace Conference of Paris, Volume 6,
Published under the auspices of the British Institute of International
Affairs, Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, London, (1924), pp. 171-174.
________________________________________
"'Mr. Malcolm, President of the Armenian National Committee in London,
advised Sir Mark Sykes to influence Wilson through Brandeis, and to
guarantee Palestine forthwith to the Jews, in order to gain their support.
After discussion with Lord Milner, Sykes begged Mr. Malcolm to put him into
touch with the Zionist leaders, because Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Balfour were
convinced of the justice of the Zionist demand for Palestine. Through
Greenburg, Malcolm made contact with Weizmann.' [***] [T]he Foreign Office
had sent word to Brandeis and through him had worked on Wilson, in
Washington."-Malcolm Thomson's English translation of Adolf Boehm, Die
Zionistische Bewegung, Volume 1, Juedischer Verlag, Berlin, Hozaah Ivrith
Co., Ltd., Tel Aviv, (1935), p. 656; and part of Thomson's commentary in:
"Origin of the Balfour Declaration", The [London] Times Literary Supplement,
(22 July 1949), p. 473.
"Mr. Malcolm, Praesident des Armenischen National-Komitees in London, riet
Sir Mark Sykes, Wilson durch Brandeis zu beeinflussen und den Juden, um sie
guenstig zu stimmen, gleichzeitig Palaestina zu sichern. Nach Ruecksprache
mit Lord Milner bat Sykes Mr. Malcolm, ihn mit den zionistischen Fuehrern in
Verbindung zu setzen, da Sir Edward Grey und Mr. Balfourvon der
Gerechtigkeit der zionistischen Forderung auf Palaestina ueberzeugt seien.
Durch Greenberg trat Malcolm auch mit Weizmann in Verbindung. [Footnote:
Ueber die hier dargestellten Vorgaenge siehe den Bericht ueber die
,,Balfour-Declaration'' von S. Landmann, der von 1917-1922 Sekretaer der
zionistischen Exekutive war, in ,,World Jewry'', London, 1935, Nr. 42 und
43.]"- Adolf Boehm, Die Zionistische Bewegung, Volume 1, Juedischer Verlag,
Berlin, Hozaah Ivrith Co., Ltd., Tel Aviv, (1935), p. 656.
________________________________________
"During the critical days of 1916 and of the impending defection of Russia,
Jewry, as a whole, was against the Czarist regime and had hopes that
Germany, if victorious, would in certain circumstances give them Palestine.
Several attempts to bring America into the War on the side of the Allies by
influencing influential Jewish opinion were made and had failed. Mr. James
A. Malcolm, who was already aware of German pre-war efforts to secure a
foothold in Palestine through the Zionist Jews and of the abortive
Anglo-French demarches at Washington and New York; and knew that Mr. Woodrow
Wilson, for good and sufficient reasons, always attached the greatest
possible importance to the advice of a very prominent Zionist (Mr. Justice
Brandeis, of the US Supreme Court); and was in close touch with Mr.
Greenberg, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle (London); and knew that several
important Zionist Jewish leaders had already gravitated to London from the
Continent on the qui vive awaiting events; and appreciated and realised the
depth and strength of Jewish national aspirations; spontaneously took the
initiative, to convince first of all Sir Mark Sykes, Under-Secretary to the
War Cabinet, and afterwards Monsieur Georges Picot, of the French Embassy in
London, and Monsieur Gout of the Quai d'Orsay (Eastern Section), that the
best and perhaps the only way (which proved so to be) to induce the American
President to come into the War was to secure the co-operation of Zionist
Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilise the hitherto
unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in
favour of the Allies on a quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be
seen, the Zionists, having carried out their part, and greatly helped to
bring America in, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was but the public
confirmation of the necessarily secret 'gentleman's' agreement of 1916 made
with the previous knowledge, acquiescence and/or approval of the Arabs and
of the British, American, French and other Allied Governments, and not
merely a voluntary altruistic and romantic gesture on the part of Great
Britain as certain people either through pardonable ignorance assume or
unpardonable ill-will would represent or misrepresent.
Sir Mark Sykes was Under-Secretary to the War Cabinet specially concerned
with Near Eastern affairs, and, although at the time scarcely acquainted
with the Zionist movement, and unaware of the existence of its leaders, he
had the flair to respond to the arguments advanced by Mr. Malcolm as to the
strength and importance of this movement in Jewry, in spite of the fact that
many wealthy and prominent international or semi-assimilated Jews in Europe
and America were openly or tacitly opposed to it (Zionist movement), or
timidly indifferent. MM. Picot and Gout were likewise receptive.
An interesting account of the negotiations carried on in London and Paris,
and subsequent developments, has already appeared in the Jewish press and
need not be repeated here in detail, except to recall that immediately after
the 'gentleman's' agreement between Sir Mark Sykes, authorized by the War
Cabinet, and the Zionist leaders, cable facilities through the War Office,
the Foreign Office and British Embassies, Legations, etc., were given to the
latter to communicate the glad tidings to their friends and organizations in
America and elsewhere, and the change in official and public opinion as
reflected in the American press in favour of joining the Allies in the War,
was as gratifying as it was surprisingly rapid. [***] In Germany, the value
of the bargain to the Allies, apparently, was duly and carefully noted. In
his 'Through Thirty Years' Mr. Wickham Steed, in a chapter appreciative of
the value of Zionist support in America and elsewhere to the Allied cause,
says General Ludendorff is alleged to have said after the War, that: 'The
Balfour Declaration was the cleverest thing done by the Allies in the way of
propaganda, and that he wished Germany had thought of it first.' [Footnote:
Volume 2, page 392.] As a matter of fact, this was said by Ludendorff to Sir
Alfred Mond (afterwards Lord Melchett), soon after the War. The fact that it
was Jewish help that brought U.S.A. into the War on the side of the Allies
has rankled ever since in German-especially Nazi-minds, and has contributed
in no small measure to the prominence which anti-Semitism occupies in the
Nazi programme."-Samuel Landman, Great Britain, the Jews and Palestine, New
Zionist Press (New Zionist Publication Number 1), London, (1936), pp. 4-6.
________________________________________
"The obligations of the Mandate are specific and definite. They are to
encourage the establishment of a national home for the Jews without
detriment to any of the rights of the Arab population. I agree that it is a
dual undertaking, and we must see that both parts of the Mandate are
thoroughly enforced. But look at the conditions under which we entered into
it. It was one of the darkest periods of the War when Mr. Balfour prepared
his Declaration. Let me recall the circumstances to the House. At the time
the French army had mutinied, the Italian army was on the eve of collapse
and America had hardly started preparing in earnest. There was nothing left
but Britain confronting the most powerful military combination the world has
ever seen. It was important for us to seek every legitimate help we could
get. We came to the conclusion, from information we received from every part
of the world, that it was vital we should have the sympathies of the Jewish
community. I can assure the Committee that we did not come to that
conclusion from any predilections or prejudices, certainly we had no
prejudices against the Arabs, because at that moment we had hundreds and
thousands of troops fighting for Arab emancipation from the Turk.
In these circumstances and on the advice which we received we decided that
it was desirable to secure the sympathy and co-operation of that most
remarkable community, the Jews throughout the world. They were helpful in
America and in Russia, which at that moment was just walking out and leaving
us alone. In these conditions we proposed this to our Allies. France
accepted it, Italy accepted it, and the United States accepted it, all the
other Allies accepted it, and all the nations which constitute the League of
Nations accepted it. And the Jews-I am here to bear testimony to the
fact-with all the influence they possess responded nobly to the appeal which
was made. I do not know whether the House realises how much we owe to Dr.
Weizmann with his marvellous scientific brain. He absolutely saved the
British army at a critical moment when a particular ingredient which was
essential we should have for our great guns was completely exhausted. His
great chemical genius enabled us to solve that problem. But he is only one
out of many who rendered great services to the Allies. It is an obligation
of honour which we undertook, to which the Jews responded. We cannot get out
of it without dishonour."-D. Lloyd George, The Parliamentary Debates.
Official Report. House of Commons, Series 5, Volume 313, (19 June 1936),
cols. 1339-1345, at 1341-1342.
________________________________________
"5 And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien
shall be your plowmen and your vinedressers. 6 But ye shall be named the
Priests of the LORD: men shall call you the Ministers of our God: ye shall
eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast
yourselves."-The Jewish book of Isaiah 61:5-6.
________________________________________
"All the treasures and natural resources of the world will eventually come
in possession of the righteous. This would be in keeping with the prophecy
of Isaiah: 'And her gain and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord; it
shall not be treasured nor laid up; for her gain shall be for them that
dwell before the Lord, to eat their fill and for stately clothing.[Isaiah
23:18]'20 Similarly, the treasures of gold, silver, precious stones, pearls,
and valuable vessels that have been lost in the seas and oceans in the
course of centuries will be raised up and turned over to the righteous.21
Joseph hid three treasuries in Egypt: One was discovered by Korah, one by
Antoninus, and one is reserved for the righteous in the ideal world.22 [***]
Gold will be of secondary importance in the new social and economic order.
Eventually, all the friction, jealousy, quarrels, and misunderstandings that
exist under the present system, will not be known in the ideal Messianic
era.319 The city of Jerusalem will possess most of the gold and precious
stones of the world. That ideal city will be practically full of those
metals and stones, so that the people of the world will realize the vanity
and absurdity of wasting their lives in accumulating those imaginary
valuables.320"-Michael Higger, The Jewish Utopia, Lord Baltimore Press,
Baltimore, (1932), pp. 12-13, 57.
________________________________________
"10 And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the
land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to
give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, 11 And houses
full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which
thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when
thou shalt have eaten and be full; 12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD,
which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of
bondage. 13 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear
by his name. 14 Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people
which are round about you; 15 (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among
you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy
thee from off the face of the earth."-The Jewish book of Deuteronomy
6:10-15.
________________________________________
"7 And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come:
and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. 8 The silver
is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts."-The Jewish book of
Haggai 2:7-8.
________________________________________
"TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir.-Your correspondent 'Judaeus' would seem to belong to the class of Jew
satirized very recently by a Jewish writer as always anxious to cast
overboard any fellow-Jews who are pointed to as inconvenient Jonahs. To-day
he is bent upon dissociating himself as an English Jew from his Russian
brethren because the latter are involved in Bolshevism. Yesterday he was
anxious to dissociate himself from his German brethren because they were
involved in Prussian militarism. He is desirous of disclaiming a Trotsky as
a fellow-Jew, while doubtless willing to bask in the reflected glory of an
Einstein.
But I am more concerned with his curious excursus into the ethnology of the
Jew. He would have us believe that the Jew is contradistinguished from his
fellow-beings only by religion, and that for the rest he is Russian in
Russia, a German in Germany, and an Englishman in England-that race has no
bearing upon the Jew as a product, and that we are wholly the result of the
environment in which we may happen to be placed. It would be interesting,
indeed, if 'Judaeus' would tell us how soon he thinks a Skye terrier
domiciled in England would become a bulldog, or how long it would take for a
race of bulldogs bred in the Celestial Empire to produce Pekinese pups.
Obediently yours,
AN ENGLISH-BORN JEW."-"An English-Born Jew", The London Times, (1 December
1919), p. 10.
________________________________________
"[. . .]The anti-Semitic press sneered disdainfully at 'Sarah the Jewess,'
the Slavophiles made her name the pretext for fresh controversy with the
Zapadniki-the 'Occidentals'-as are termed those who are modest enough to
admit that Russia has still a good deal to learn in the matter of
civilization from Western Europe.
This polemic was at its height when she arrived at St. Petersburg; she was
tired with her journey, out of spirits, suffering from a bad cold, and the
reception at the depot was not calculated to bring up her morale, all of
which suited the plans of her enemies, who prophesied a stupendous failure
and an assault on the box-office by the public to get its money back before
the end of the first act. The aristocracy took no part in this discussion,
as the aristocracy affects supreme contempt for everything relating to the
question of Jews versus Gentiles, simply ignoring the chosen people
altogether, except when it wants its paper discounted. But, though caring
naught for the stranger's religious creed, it was, all the same, not
benevolently inclined to her. These and all the other details indeed I got
from another private letter written by one of the Bernhardt troupe, where
all is not peace and good-will, although Marie Colombier is not of it. Sarah
is accused of being too fond of M. Angelo, of snubbing certain great
personages on account of that good-looking actor, and such derogations are
not readily pardoned in Muscovy, as Mme. Patti learned to her cost. And so
the fatidical moment came; the house was literally crammed; nowhere was even
standing room obtainable; the fronts of every box resembled a horticultural
exhibition; but the silence was glacial. The curtain rose, not a Russian
hand was clapped in welcome, the Nationals in the pit smiled with
ill-concealed satisfaction, not venturing on a hiss, but sternly shutting up
the few French spectators who might have been disposed to manifest
favorably. The first act passed, so did the second, and always with the same
hostile reserve; Sarah was seriously disheartened; she said nothing and kept
the door of her dressing-room closed and locked during the entr'actes, but
rumor affirms that the grinding of teeth inside was distinctly audible from
without, and that Mr. Jarrett grew pale as he thought of the scene which
would follow that performance, and of the other scene which he might expect
when summoned by the Director of Police to explain why there was no second
performance, as the showman felt quite sure that she who had left the
Francais because her interpretation of the 'Aventuriere' was pronounced to
be defective would never risk a second affront from a Russian audience.
However, Sarah is a brave woman; whatever she thought she kept severely to
herself; never did she play better, and at last, suddenly, in the third act,
in the pathetic scene between Marguerite and Armand Duval's father, the ice
melted as by enchantment; the artist had won her cause, and the whole
audience broke into an enthusiastic tempest of applause, which was all the
more passionate that it had been so long contained. No such triumph of
talent over stupid prejudice is on record in the city of Peter; the stage
became literally a parterre of flowers; even the Nationals cheered, and,
forgetting their hatred of her origin, joined with the 'Occidentals' in
sincere admiration of this 'queen of dramatic art.' Since then all has gone
well with Mlle. Bernhardt, but it was so nearly not going well that she
wants to come home, and, as I have already hinted as a strong probability,
will not insist on M. Perrin's making amende honorable in his shirt with a
lighted taper in his hand and barefooted, which were, says Mrs. Grundy, the
original conditions demanded by her as the sine qua non of her return, the
derelict manager and the socictarians on the other hand, and as a quid pro
quo for this gracious condescension, agreeing not to talk any more about
those 100,000f. damages awarded by the court for breach of contract.
From a French actress on the Russian stage to a Russian play on the French
stage, the transition is easy and natural, but before saying anything about
'Serge Panine,' I will just mention a few words concerning that tremendous
anti-Semitic feeling which, first showing itself in semi-barbarous Southern
Muscovy, has gradually spread westward, until not only Germany, but even
skeptical, atheistical France begins to exhibit symptoms of the agitation.
Far be it from me to justify or even palliate the atrocious acts of violence
perpetrated at Odessa, at Kiev, at Elizabethgrad, and at a hundred other
points upon the Israelites. Persecution is never justifiable, but truth and
justice compel me to say that the Israelites have brought it upon themselves
by over-zeal in acting up to the one command of the lawgiver which none of
them have ever transgressed; they were bidden to spoil the Egyptians, and
they have done so, confounding all who are not of their own communion in the
same category as the original subjects of King Pharaoh, until the Gentiles
have arisen in their wrath and smitten their oppressors. All through the
East of Europe, except in Turkey, where, thanks to the superior cleverness
of the Armenians, the Jews starve, these Pariahs prove that Shylock was not
the mere creation of a poet's fancy. A vast deal of maudlin sympathy was
expressed about their sufferings in Roumania by their coreligionists in
England, whose lying publications were circulated on all sides and awakened
even an echo in America. I wish some of their sympathizers would go to
Roumania, to Galicia, to Bessarabia, and judge from what they see how those
Provinces have flourished since they were overrun by this scum of mankind,
more destructive than the locusts and the grasshoppers of Egypt; the
travelers might be sincere Philo-Semites when they started on their journey,
but not one on his return, if he spoke the truth, would profess other than
sentiments of ultra-anti-Semitism. The hatred of Poles for Russians is
proverbial, and yet the late riots at Warsaw have proved that this animosity
is about to be forgotten in their still stronger detestation of the Jews,
whom the population accuses of its ruin by their shameless speculations on
corn and breadstuffs, and their disgraceful manoeuvres on the Stock
Exchanges of Frankfort, Berlin, and Vienna. I believe, and I think have
already so stated, that Sarah Bernhardt is not a child of Israel, although
she certainly is of that type, but the mere suspicion of her connection with
'the foul accursed race who crucified our Lord'-I quote literally from a
Russian author-is quite enough to create hosts of enemies; if she had tried
it on about Easter, or rather about the time of the Passover, when the Slav
peasant is convinced that the Jews steal and murder Christian babes 'in
their unholy rites,' Sarah would have been pelted with something even more
disagreeable than cucumbers, and about one-half of the nation would have
thought, if it did not say so in so many words: 'Served her right!' [. .
.]"-"Bernhardt in Russia", The New York Times, (24 January 1882), p. 6. A
Letter to the Editor by "Truth" in response to the above article appeared
under the heading "Jews in Russia and the East" in The New York Times, (28
January 1882), p. 2.
________________________________________
"When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate
officers of the revolutionary party; when we rise, there rises also our
terrible power of the purse. [***] Again, people will say that I am
furnishing the Anti-Semites with weapons. Why so? Because I admit the truth?
Because I do not maintain that there are none but excellent men amongst us?
Again, people will say that I am showing our enemies the way to injure us.
This I absolutely dispute. My proposal could only be carried out with the
free consent of a majority of Jews. Individuals or even powerful bodies of
Jews might be attacked, but Governments will take no action against the
collective nation. The equal rights of Jews before the law cannot be
withdrawn where they have once been conceded; for the first attempt at
withdrawal would immediately drive all Jews rich and poor alike, into the
ranks of the revolutionary party. The first official violation of Jewish
liberties invariably brings about economic crisis. Therefore no weapons can
be effectually used against us, because these cut the hands that wield
them."-Theodor Herzl, A Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the
Jewish Question, The Maccabaean Publishing Co., New York, (1904), pp. 23,
99.
________________________________________
"Resh Lakish said: He who is observant of fringes will be privileged to be
served by two thousand eight hundred slaves, for it is said, Thus saith the
Lord of hosts: In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take
hold, out of all the languages of the nations, shall even take hold of the
skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, etc."- I. Epstein,
Editor, Shabbath 32b, The Babylonian Talmud, Volume 7, The Soncino Press,
London, (1938), p. 149.
________________________________________
"Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the
midst of thee. 2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle;
and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished;
and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the
people shall not be cut off from the city. 3 Then shall the LORD go forth,
and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. 4
And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is
before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the
midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very
great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and
half of it toward the south. 5 And ye shall flee to the valley of the
mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye
shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah
king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.
6 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear,
nor dark: 7 But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not
day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be
light. 8 And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from
Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the
hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. 9 And the LORD shall be
king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name
one. 10 All the land shall be turned as a plain from Geba to Rimmon south of
Jerusalem: and it shall be lifted up, and inhabited in her place, from
Benjamin's gate unto the place of the first gate, unto the corner gate, and
from the tower of Hananeel unto the king's winepresses. 11 And men shall
dwell in it, and there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem
shall be safely inhabited. 12 ¶And this shall be the plague wherewith the
LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their
flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes
shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in
their mouth. 13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult
from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the
hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his
neighbour. 14 And Judah also shall fight at Jerusalem; and the wealth of all
the heathen round about shall be gathered together, gold, and silver, and
apparel, in great abundance. 15 And so shall be the plague of the horse, of
the mule, of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the beasts that shall be
in these tents, as this plague. 16 And it shall come to pass, that every one
that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall even go
up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the
feast of tabernacles. 17 And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of all
the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of
hosts, even upon them shall be no rain. 18 And if the family of Egypt go not
up, and come not, that have no rain; there shall be the plague, wherewith
the LORD will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of
tabernacles. 19 This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of
all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. 20 In that
day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; and
the pots in the LORD's house shall be like the bowl's before the altar. 21
Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the LORD of
hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe
therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house
of the LORD of hosts."-The Jewish book of Zechariah Chapter 14
________________________________________
"Then shall Armillus with his whole army die, and the Atheistical Edomites
(the Christians they mean) who laid waste the house of our God, and led us
captive into a strange land, shall miserably perish; then shall the Jews be
revenged upon them, as it is written, [Margin Note: Obad. 18] The house of
Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of
Esau (that is, we Christians, as the Jews interpret, whom they Christen
Edomites) shall be for stubble. This stubble the Jews shall set in fire,
that nothing be left to us Edomites which shall not be burnt and turned into
ashes."-Johannes Buxtorf, quoting from Machir of Toledo's Avkat Rokhel,
Constantinople/Istanbul, (1516); Synagoga Judaica: Das ist Jueden Schul ;
Darinnen der gantz Juedische Glaub und Glaubensubung. . . grundlich
erklaeret, Basel, (1603); as translated in the 1657 English edition, The
Jewish Synagogue: Or An Historical Narration of the State of the Jewes, At
this Day Dispersed over the Face of the Whole Earth, Printed by T. Roycroft
for H. R. and Thomas Young at the Three Pidgeons in Pauls Church-Yard,
London, (1657), p. 323.
________________________________________
"It is a well-known fact that the Salonika Committee was formed under
Masonic auspices with the help of the Jews and Donmehs, or crypto-Jews of
Turkey, whose headquarters are at Salonika, and whose organization took,
even under Abdul Hamid, a Masonic form. Jews like Emmanuel Carasso, Salem,
Sassun, Fardji, Meslah, and Donmehs or crypto-Jews, like Djavid Bey and the
Baldji family, took an influential part both in the organization of the
Committee and in the deliberations of its central body at Salonika. These
facts, which are known to every Government in Europe, are also known
throughout Turkey and the Balkans, where an increasing tendency is
noticeable to saddle the Jews and Donmehs with responsibility for the
sanguinary blunders which the Committee has made."-Vienna Correspondent for
The Times of London, "Jews and the Situation in Albania", The London Times,
(11 July 1911), p. 5.
________________________________________
"And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of
the LORD; and they shall be afraid of thee."-Deuteronomy 28:10
________________________________________
"And that all the seed of his sons should be Gentiles; but from the sons of
Isaac one should become a holy seed and should not be reckoned among the
Gentiles. For he should become the portion of the Most High, and all his
seed had fallen into possession of God, that it should be unto the Lord a
people for His possession above all nations and that it should become a
kingdom and priests and a holy nation."-Book of Jubilees 16:38, as quoted in
M. Higger, The Jewish Utopia, Lord Baltimore Press, Baltimore, (1932), p.
31. See also: Book of Jubilees 32:17-20.
________________________________________
"Yet the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, notwithstanding their degradation,
exhibit a certain intellectual tendency. They live in an ideal world,
frivolous and superstitious though it be. The Jew who fills the lowest
offices, who deals out raki all day long to drunken Greeks, who trades in
old nails, and to whose sordid soul the very piastres he bandies have
imparted their copper haze, finds his chief delight in mental pursuits.
Seated by a taper in his dingy cabin, he spends the long hours of the night
in poring over the Zohar, the Chaldaic book of the magic Cabala, or, with
enthusiastic delight, plunges into the mystical commentaries on the Talmud,
seeking to unravel their quaint traditions and sophistries, and attempting,
like the astrologers and alchymists, to divine the secrets and command the
powers of Nature. 'The humble dealer, who hawks some article of clothing or
some old piece of furniture about the streets; the obsequious mass of
animated filth and rags which approaches to obtrude offers of service on the
passing traveller, is perhaps deeply versed in Talmudic lore, or aspiring,
in nightly vigils, to read into futurity, to command the elements, and
acquire invisibility.' Thus wisdom is preferred to wealth, and a Rothschild
would reject a family alliance with a Christian prince to form one with the
humblest of his tribe who is learned in Hebrew lore.
The Jew of the old world, has his revenge:
'The pound of flesh which I demand of him
Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it.'
Furnishing the hated Gentiles with the means of waging exterminating wars,
he beholds, exultingly, in the fields of slaughtered victims a bloody
satisfaction of his 'lodged hate' and 'certain loathing,' more gratifying
even than the golden Four-per-cents on his princely loans. Of like
significance is the fact that in many parts of the world the despised Jews
claim as their own the possessions of the Gentiles, among whom they dwell.
Thus the squalid Yeslir, living in the Jews' quarter of Balata or Haskeni,
and even more despised than the unbelieving dogs of Christians, traffics
secretly in the estates, the palaces and the villages of the great Beys and
Pachas, who would regard his touch as pollution. What, apparently, can be
more absurd? Yet these assumed possessions, far more valuable, in fact, than
the best 'estates in Spain,' are bought and sold for money, and inherited
from generation to generation."-"The Jews", The Knickerbocker; or New York
Monthly Magazine, Volume 53, Number 1, (January, 1859), pp. 41-51, at 44-45.
________________________________________
"You have doubtless heard that the Great Einstein is coming to America soon
with Dr. Weizmann, our Zionist Chief. Palestine may need something more now
than a new conception of the Universe or of several additional dimensions;
but it is well to remind the Gentile world, when the wave of anti-Semitism
is rising, that in the world of thought the conspicuous contributions are
being made by Jews."-United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz
Brandeis quoted in M. I. Urofsky and D. W. Levy, Editors, Letters of Louis
D. Brandeis, Volume 4, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York,
(1975), pp. 536-537.
________________________________________
"I don't think that I approach cases in a particular way because I am Jewish
any more than I do because I'm a woman. I have certain sensitivities for
both. You know the old expression, 'Is it good for the Jews?' For example, a
lot of people want to have crosses in front of their town hail or whatever.
They say, 'It doesn't hurt anybody.' We had one case where I was in
dissent-it was about a cross in front of the Statehouse in Ohio. And to me,
the photograph of that statehouse told the whole story of the case: Here is
the Capitol in Columbus, and here is this giant cross. And what is the
perception of a Jewish child who is passing by the Capitol? It's certainly
that this is a Christian country. A person's reaction could be: 'There's
something wrong with me.' It's not a symbol that includes you."-United
States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as quoted in: A. Pogrebin,
Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish, Broadway Books, New
York, (2005), p. 24.
________________________________________
"'You never observe a great intellectual movement in Europe in which the
Jews do not greatly participate. The first Jesuits were Jews; that
mysterious Russian Diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organized and
principally carried on by Jews; that mighty revolution which is at this
moment preparing in Germany, and which will be, in fact, a second and
greater Reformation, and of which so little is as yet known in England, is
entirely developing under the auspices of Jews, who almost monopolize the
professorial chairs of Germany. Neander the founder of Spiritual
Christianity, and who is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of
Berlin, is a Jew. Benary, equally famous, and in the same University, is a
Jew. Wehl, the Arabic Professor of Heidelberg, is a Jew. Years ago, when I
was in Palestine, I met a German student who was accumulating materials for
the History of Christianity, and studying the genius of the place; a modest
and learned man. It was Wehl; then unknown, since become the first Arabic
scholar of the day, and the author of the life of Mahomet. But for the
German professors of this race, their name is Legion. I think there are more
than ten at Berlin alone.[']"-Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby; or, The New
Generation, H. Colburn, London, (1844), here quoted from The Century Co.
edition of 1904, New York, pp. 231-232.
________________________________________
"Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou
shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that
thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess
it."-Deuteronomy 23:20
________________________________________
"Mussolini demanded of Greece fifty million lire as compensation for a few
murdered Italians. If we had the power to impose blood-money for our
murdered, the financing of Palestine would become child's play."-Israel
Zangwill, "Is Political Zionism Dead? Yes", The Nation, Volume 118, Number
3062, (12 March 1924), pp. 276-278, at 276.
________________________________________
"While he lived in Germany, however, Einstein seems to have accepted the
then-prevalent racist mode of thought, often invoking such concepts as
'race' and 'instinct,' and the idea that the Jews form a race."-John
Stachel, "Einstein's Jewish Identity", Einstein from 'B' to 'Z',
Birkhaeuser, Boston, Basel, Berlin, (2002), pp. 57-83, at 68.
________________________________________
"TROTZKY LEADS
RADICAL CREW
TO WORLD RULE
________________________________________
Bolshevism Only a
Tool for His Scheme
BY JOHN CLAYTON.
(Chicago Tribune Foreign News Service.)
(By Special Cable.)
(Copyright: 1920: By the Tribune Company.)
PARIS, June 18.-For the last two years army intelligence officers, members
of the various secret service organizations of the entente, have been
bringing in reports of a world revolutionary movement other than Bolshevism.
At first these reports confused the two, but latterly the lines they have
taken have begun to be more and more clear.
Bolshevism aims for the overthrow of existing society and the establishment
of an international brotherhood of men who work with their hands as rulers
of the world. The second movement aims for the establishment of a new racial
domination of the world. So far as the British, French and our own
department's inquiry have been able to trace, the moving spirits in the
second scheme are Jewish radicals.
Use Local Hatreds.
Within the ranks of communism is a group of this party, but it does not stop
there. To its leaders, communism is only an incident. They are ready to use
the Islamic revolt, hatred by the central empires for England, Japan's
designs on India, and commercial rivalry between America and Japan.
As any movement of world revolution must be, this is primarily
anti-Anglo-Saxon. It sees its greatest task in the destruction of the
British empire and the growing commercial power of America. The brains of
this organization are in Berlin.
Trotzky at Head.
The directing spirit which issues the orders to all minor chiefs and finds
money for the work of preparing the revolt is in the German capital. Its
executive head is none other than Trotzky, for it is on the far frontiers of
India, Afghanistan, and Persia that the first test of strength will come.
The organization expert of the present Russian state is recognized, even
among the members of his own political party, as a man of boundless
ambition, and his dream of an empire of the east is like that of Napoleon.
The organization of the world Jewish-radical movement has been perfected in
almost every land. In the states of England, France, Germany, Poland,
Russia, and the east it has its groups. It is behind the Islamic revolt with
all the propaganda skill and financial aid at its command because it hopes
to control the shaping of the new eastern empire to its own ends. Sympathy
with the eastern nationals probably is one of the chief causes for the
victory of the pro-nationals in the bolshevik party, which threw communism
solidly behind the nationalist aspirations of England's colonies.
Out to Grab Trade Routes.
The aims of the Jewish-radical party have nothing of altruism behind them
beyond liberation of their own race. Except for this their aims are purely
commercial. They want actual control of the rich trade routes and production
centers of the east, those foundations of the British empire which always
have been the cornerstone of its national supremacy.
They are striking for the same ends as Germany when she entered the war of
1914 to establish Mittel Europa and so give the Germans control of the
Bagdad railway. They believe Europe is tired of conflict and that England is
too weak to put down a concerted rebellion in part of her eastern
possessions. Therein lies the hope of success. They are staking brains and
money against an empire.
'Westward the course of empire makes its way,' but even it swings backward
to the old battleground where for countless ages peoples have fought.
Nations have risen and crumbled around control of eastern commerce."-John
Clayton, "Trotzky Leads Radical Crew to World Rule", The Chicago Daily
Tribune, (19 June 1920), p. 1.
________________________________________
"In European capitals there are Hebrew bankers who dictate certain
international relations because they hold the purse-strings of governments;
and every European country owes much to the men of great genius that the
race has contributed to the arts and to statecraft."-"The Jews in the United
States", The World's Work, Volume 11, Number 3, (January, 1906), pp.
7030-7031.
________________________________________
"The way I see it, the fact of the Jews' racial peculiarity will necessarily
influence their social relations with non-Jews. The conclusions which-in my
opinion-the Jews should draw is to become more aware of their peculiarity in
their social way of life and to recognize their own cultural contributions.
First of all, they would have to show a certain noble reservedness and not
be so eager to mix socially-of which others want little or nothing. On the
other hand, anti-Semitism in Germany also has consequences that, from a
Jewish point of view, should be welcomed. I believe German Jewry owes its
continued existence to anti-Semitism."-Albert Einstein, "Wie ich Zionist
wurde", Juedische Rundshau, Volume 26, Number 49, (21 June 1921), pp.
351-352, at 351; English translation by A. Engel, "How I became a Zionist",
The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 7, Document 57, Princeton
University Press, (2002), pp. 234-235, at 235.
________________________________________
"We will also act to end the relationships between Arab men and Jewish women
that is now growing and that so desecrates the Name of G-d."-Rabbi Meir
Kahane, On Jews and Judaism: Selected Articles 1961-1990, Volume 1,
Institute for the Publication of the Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
Jerusalem, (1993), p. 81.
________________________________________
"Anti-Semitism will be a psychological phenomenon as long as Jews come in
contact with non-Jews-what harm can there be in that? Perhaps it is due to
anti-Semitism that we survive as a race: at least that is what I
believe."-Albert Einstein, "Ein Bekenntnisbrief Einsteins", Israelitisches
Wochenblatt fuer die Schweiz, (24 September 1920), p. 10; English
translation by A. Engel, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Volume 7,
Document 37, Princeton University Press, (2002), p. 159.
________________________________________
"Jewish Messianism is in its origins and by its nature-this cannot be
sufficiently emphasized-a theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the
revolutionary, cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical
present to the Messianic future."-Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in
Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality, Schoken Books, New York,
(1971), p. 7.
________________________________________
"[Polish Jews] always resented-as they do to-day-the idea that they were
Poles or a part of the Polish State; they insisted on being Jews and nothing
else. Nor does it seem to be the case that the Jews in Poland were compelled
to lead a distinct existence by the Government as a part of an anti-Jewish
policy; the Ghetto was their own creation and their own choice; the fact
that they were able to enjoy this privilege and many others, was what made
their sojourn in Poland so agreeable and so free from the persecutions to
which they were subject in other countries."-Burton J. Hendrick, "Radicalism
among the Polish Jews", The World's Work, Volume 44, Number 6, (April,
1923), pp. 591-601, at 593.
________________________________________
"[H]ad I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not
imagine being anything else. In fact, I would have been the most ardent
Zionist imaginable."-Adolf Eichmann, "Eichmann Tells His Own Damning Story",
Life Magazine, Volume 49, Number 22, (28 November 1960), pp. 19-25, 101-112;
at 22.
________________________________________
"Never before had I been in such perfect tune with Nordau. [***] This has
nothing to do with religion. He even said that there was no such thing as a
Jewish dogma. But we are of one race. [***] 'The Jews,' he says, 'will be
compelled by anti-Semitism to destroy among all peoples the idea of a
fatherland.' Or, I secretly thought to myself, to create a fatherland of
their own."-Theodor Herzl, English translation by H. Zohn, R. Patai, Editor,
The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Volume 1, Herzl Press, New York,
(1960), p. 196.
________________________________________
"In 1861 Salomon de Rothschild visited the Confederate States and wrote to
his family, associated with the prominent Rothschild banking house in Paris:
'What is astonishing here, or rather, what is not astonishing, is the high
position occupied by our coreligionists, or rather by those who were born
into the faith and who, having married Christian women, and without
converting, have forgotten the practices of their fathers. Judah P.
Benjamin, the Attorney General of the Confederate States, is perhaps the
greatest mind on this continent. H. M. Hyams, the lieutenant governor of
Louisiana, Moyse, the Secretary of the Interior, etc. And, what is odd, all
these men have a Jewish heart and take an interest in me, because I
represent the greatest Jewish house in the world.'"-Salomon de Rothschild,
as quoted in R. A. Rosenberg, Everything You Need to Know About American
Jews and Their History, Plume, New York, (1997), p. 53.
________________________________________
"Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has
survived such struggles and sufferings as we have gone through. Jew-baiting
has merely stripped off our weaklings; the strong among us were invariably
true to their race when persecution broke out against them. This attitude
was most clearly apparent in the period immediately following the
emancipation of the Jews. Later on, those who rose to a higher degree of
intelligence and to a better worldly position lost their communal feeling to
a very great extent. Wherever our political well-being has lasted for any
length of time, we have assimilated with our surroundings. I think this is
not discreditable. Hence, the statesman who would wish to see a Jewish
strain in his nation would have to provide for the duration of our political
well-being; and even Bismarck could not do that. [***] The Governments of
all countries scourged by Anti-Semitism will serve their own interests in
assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want. [***] Great exertions will
not be necessary to spur on the movement. Anti-Semites provide the requisite
impetus. They need only do what they did before, and then they will create a
love of emigration where it did not previously exist, and strengthen it
where it existed before. [***] I imagine that Governments will, either
voluntarily or under pressure from the Anti-Semites, pay certain attention
to this scheme; and they may perhaps actually receive it here and there with
a sympathy which they will also show to the Society of Jews."-Theodor Herzl,
A Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question, The
Maccabaean Publishing Co., New York, (1904), pp. 5-6, 25, 68, 93.
________________________________________
"The most touching point about these Hebrew prayers is, that they are really
an expression of the collective Jewish spirit; they do not plead for the
individual, but for the entire Jewish race. The pious Jew is above all a
Jewish patriot. The 'new' Jew, who denies the existence of the Jewish
nationality, is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a
traitor to his people, his race and even to his family. If it were true that
Jewish emancipation in exile is incompatible with Jewish nationality, then
it were the duty of the Jews to sacrifice the former for the sake of the
latter. This point, however, may need a more elaborate explanation, but that
the Jew must be above all a Jewish patriot, needs no proof to those who have
received a Jewish education. Jewish patriotism is not a cloudy Germanic
abstraction, which dissolves itself in discussions about being and
appearance, realism and idealism, but a true, natural feeling, the
tangibility and simplicity of which require no demonstration, nor can it be
disposed of by a demonstration to the contrary."-Moses Hess, Rom und
Jerusalem: die letzte Nationalitaetsfrage, Eduard Wengler, Leipzig, (1862);
English translation, Rome and Jerusalem: A Study in Jewish Nationalism,
Bloch, New York, (1918/1943), pp. 62-63.
________________________________________
"A final solution: Let Germany be policed forever by an international armed
force? Even if such a huge undertaking were feasible life itself would not
have it so. As war begets war, suppression begets rebellion. Undreamed
horrors would unfold. Thus we find that there is no middle course; no act of
mediation, no compromise to be compounded, no political or economic sharing
to be considered. There is, in fine, no other solution except one: That
Germany must perish forever from this earth!"-Theodor Newman Kaufman,
Germany Must Perish!, Argyle Press, Newark, New Jersey, (1941), p. 88.
________________________________________
"[I applaud] the contribution of our enemies in the continuance of Jewry in
eastern Europe. [***] We ought to be thankful to our oppressors that they
closed the gates of assimilation to us and took care that our people were
concentrated and not dispersed, segregatedly united and not diffusedly mixed
[***] One ought to investigate in the West and note the great share which
antisemitism had in the continuance of Jewry and in all the emotions and
movements of our national rebirth . [***] Truly our enemies have done much
for the strengthening of Judaism in the diaspora. [***] Experience teaches
that the liberals have understood better than the antisemites how to destroy
us as a nation. [***] We are, in a word, naturally foreigners; we are an
alien nation in your midst and we want to remain one."- Jakob Klatzkin,
Krisis und Entscheidung im Judentum; der Probleme des modernen Judentums,
Second Enlarged Edition, Juedischer Verlag, Berlin, (1921), pp. 61-63, 118;
English translation by K. J. Herrmann, "Historical Perspectives on Political
Zionism and Antisemitism", Zionism & Racism: Proceedings of an International
Symposium, International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of
Racial Discrimination, Tripoli, (1977), pp. 197-210, at 204-205. A lengthy
quotation from Klatzkin, in English translation, appears in: M. Menuhin, The
Decadence of Judaism in Our Time, Exposition Press, New York, (1965), pp.
482-483.
"Man vergegenwaertige sich, wie gross der Anteil unserer Feinde am
Fortbestand des Judentums im Osten ist. [. . .] Wir muessten beinahe unseren
Bedraengern dankbar sein, wenn sie die Tore der Assimilation vor uns
schlossen und dafuer Sorge trugen, dass unsere Volksmassen konzentriert und
nicht zerstreut, abgesondert geeint und nicht zerklueftet vermischt werden[.
. . .] Man untersuche es im Westen, welchen hohen Anteil der Antisemitismus
am Fortbestand des Judentums und an all den Regungen und Bewegungen unserer
nationalen Wiedergeburt hat. [. . .] Wahrlich, unsere Feinde haben viel zur
Staerkung des Judentums in der Diaspora beigetragen. [. . .] Und die
Erfahrung lehrt, dass die Liberalen es besser als die Antisemiten verstanden
haben, uns als Volk zu vernichten. [. . .] Wir sind schlechthin
Wesensfremde, sind - wir muessen es immer wiederholen - ein Fremdvolk in
eurer Mitte und wollen es auch bleiben."
________________________________________
"We continue to see anti-Semitism even where it has ceased to exist, or we
exaggerate it where it continues to exist in marginalized form. Indeed, some
Jewish newspapers refuse to print, and some Jewish organizations refuse to
acknowledge, the good news, lest they risk alienating their readerships or
losing their membership. For example, in November of 1996 I saw a
fundraising letter from a Jewish organization which claimed that
'anti-Semitism . . . appears to be growing more robust, more strident, more
vicious - and more 'respectable.'' Well-intentioned as this organization is,
it seeks support by exaggerating the threats we currently face and by
comparing them to those we faced during the Holocaust." - Alan M.
Dershowitz, The Vanishing American Jew, Little, Brown and Company, Boston,
(1997), pp. 12-13.
________________________________________

"We came across a horsehide-covered trunk which looked promising. Opening
it, we found Father's Confederate uniform. Digging deeper into the trunk, we
pulled out a white hood and long robe with a crimson cross on its breast-
the regalia of a Knight of the Ku Klux Klan. [...] To my brother and me the
thought that Father was a member of that band exalted him in our youthful
eyes."- Bernard M. Baruch, Baruch: My Own Story, Henry Holt and Company, New
York, (1957), p. 32.
________________________________________
"They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as
the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the
least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the
human race."- Voltaire as quoted in A.Gould, What Did They Think of The
Jews?, Jason Aronson Inc., New Jersey, (1991), p. 90. Gould cites:
"Voltaire, Lettres de Memmius a Ciceron, 1771, in The French Enlightenment,
p.300"