How many dead Jews does it take, Congressman?
It's no secret
LaHood complains that Israel attached the "whole country" of Lebanon simply because two Israeli soldiers got themselves kidnapped. Forget the fact that the reason the attacks are happening in Lebanon because that nation is the one harboring Hezbollah. Had the government of LaHood's beloved ancestral home dealt with Hezbollah itself, they wouldn't be in the position that are in now. It's no doubt true that for all the outrage LaHood has against Israel, there are Christians, Jews and moderate Arabs who desperately want to see Israel drive Hezbollah out of their nation. Doing NOTHING won't accomplish that.
LaHood's position might make sense were this happening in a vacuum. But tiny little Israel is under constant attack from terrorist organizations that expose a virulent form an anti-Semitism that might even make Hitler blush. It's also a fact that Hezbollah -- the thugs responsible for starting this most recent armed confrontation -- are funded and supported by Syria and Iran, two nations whose governments are as committed to destroying Israel as Nazi Germany was to killing every Jew they could.
Perhaps one day Congressman LaHood can tell us exactly how many Jews have to be lying on the ground dead at the end of one day before Israel to has the right to defend its borders. I'm going to assume it's somewhere between two and 6 million.
Crossposted to Peoria Pundit.
34 comments:
It's really an Israeli-Persian war instead of another Arab-Isreaeli war and Iran will fight it to the last Arab.
Something LaHood should keep in mind.
LaHood is a Lebanese Catholic. Think about it.
Your assessment is completely wrong, you simply want an issue to go off about. Nothing in that article says that LaHood wants to support terrorists, that's anti-Semetic on your part.
Since Peoria has a large Lebanese community, he's probably concerned for the families of his constituents. Lebanon is 40% Christian, why do they have to suffer? The majority of Christian groups in Lebanon have been strong supporters of Israel. That said, don't you think it's wrong for Israel to hit Christian areas of Beirut?
BTW, it's tough to call people of Arab descent anti-Semetic, as they are Semetic themselves.
Bill Barr is routinely one of the most uninformed posters, by the way I am pro-Israel,
anon,
I like to think I'm pro-Democracy for Arab, Jew, Persian, and Kurd alike...
...Israel originally funded Hamas as a counter balance to the Christian/Communist PLO, (check the link to funding in Wikipedia) and as the link to my post shows Iran and Israel remained allies against Arabs right through the 1980s even after the rise of the Mullahs.
It was Nixon style real politics and you can read Schransky for criticism of it as practiced by Israel. The same kind of thing Carter/Brezinzki started with the likes of Bin Laden in Afganistan.
So all of it's come back to roost and the only option is the kind of Democratic Revolution Bush is proposing.
And the answer is not to be pro Arab or Pro Israel or Pro Kurd or Pro Persian, but simply be pro Democracy as the best although not easy answer.
Do you make this stuff up as you go along? Do you know how ignorant you sound? You obviously have no idea as to what you're talking about.
Hamas is funded by Iran, not Israel. Both countries start with the letter I, but they are quite different, I assure you. Plus, don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia, anyone can edit it.
Check it out for yourself.
google around.... back in the 70s a lot of people, including Israel and it's Mossad, so Islam as a counter weight to communism. Israel was playing power politics, as was the United States under Carter when we decided we would fund Islamists in Afganistan to fight the Russians.
Then we ended up the Oslo accords when ended up with a Peace Plan where the West funded Arfat...
...we created a big mess.
from Al Jeezera on Hamas. Middle East is a weird place. Nothing is quite what it seems other than it's tough and you need to be tough to live there.
Hamas was funded directly and indirectly during the 1970s and 1980s by various states including Saudi Arabia. The political/charitable arm of Hamas was officially registered and recognized within Israel at this time: indeed Israel supported and encouraged Hamas' early growth in an effort to undermine the secular Fatah movement. Hamas abstained from politics throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, concentrating on social issues such as exposing corruption, administration of waqf (trusts) and organizing community projects. Towards the mid-80s, however, the movement was taken over by an armed faction led by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Israel funded factions then. So did the US. Today we have to create Democracies instead.
I was an auditor by the way with Defense Dept's IG in the early 80s working Foreign Military Sales programs.... The Army bought just about every mule in Tenn then to ship to Afganistan for the Islamic fighters.
So when you read about the Tenn Mule museum being a terrorist target today, it seems silly, but some Taliban thinks its a key US interest.
Just some quick thoughts about how convulted things are over there.
Ray Hannia wrote on the Mossad and Hamas connections too.
I don't make this stuff up...
...at the time, I thought it made sense as it wasn't very secret.
Calling those who oppose Israel anti-semitic is as dumb as calling people who oppose Iran's regime anti-Muslim. Very few of those who oppose Israel are anti-semitic. The reason they employ anti-semitic imagery is because of the coincidence that a Jewish state was put in the area they consider to be Palestine. If an African-American homeland was put there, they'd employ images of monkeys and watermelon. It shows that they believe in a Palestinian state and that they are willing to sink to the lowest common denominator to inslut their enemy, but it does not show that they are anti-semitic. Calling them anti-semitic makes you look like a conspiracy theorist and husts your cause.
It hurts your cause to call the opponents of Israel anti-semites as much as it does for someone who supports deporting illegal immigrants to say that Mexicans commit a lot of crimes and smell bad.
So please, if you like Israel, like I do, don't call her enemies anti-semites.
Also, the best thing Israel could do is to totally pull out of all the West Bank and East Jerusalem and let them together with Gaza become a sovreign independent Palestinian state. When Palestine exists, 90% of Israel's enemies will stop the hatred. While there will still be extremists, they will no longer have the support of a population tired of fighting. Free trade and investment with all Muslim countries by the US would also help by giving Muslim countries more prosperity, which will lead to democracy.
Friend,
Israel pulled out of Gaza. They pulled out of South Lebanon. Look where it got them.
I don't think it makes sense for them to go back, but what does make sense is to deal with Hezbollah once and for all.
Abbas called for a referendum on recognizing Israel and negotiating a two state solution. Hamas and Hezbollah couldn't deal with the contiunation of peace along a two state solution and so instead we have the forays to kidnap IDF troops and this is where were at...
...now it all depends on the IDF's ability to target and wipeout Hezbollah's military capabilities...
...keeping in mind Syria lacks much of a conventional force any more and depends on BioChem, and that I suspect much of Saddam's BioChem capability made it into the Bekaa.
It's a tought time to be an Israeli.
I also agree that Democracy is the only way for the Arab world to go forward (which is why I opposed the invasion of Iraq, as a coup to put in a US-friendly dictator with whom we could have free trade which would bring a middle class and eventually an organic democratic revolution that the US could have supported from the air as a Secretary of State with a brain would have known other than the current nincompoop we have), which is why Israel's current actions are eminently stupid. They are destabilizing and embarrassing the one stable and diverse real democracy in the Arab world by their actions. Lebanon could have been a model and an inspiration for Iraq. However, Israel's actions might totally screw over this experiment.
Hopefully, the resilience of the Lebanese people that brought the Cedar Revolution can help their democracy survive. Some bombs on direct Hezbollah targets and a prisoner exchange would have been rational Israeli policy, along with development and military aid for the Lebanese central government so that it can have the power to rein in Hezbollah.
If Israel couldn't defeat Hezbollah when they directly occupied Southern Lebanon, why do they think they can do it with missiles?
Bill,
Pulling out of Gaza is a half-measure that gets you nothing. The Palestinians still don't have the dignity of an independent state. When that happens, things will be better. Until then, they'll still see support for Hamas.
It's sort of like deregulation and its role in the California energy crisis of a few years ago in a way. The problem was that they did a half-way deregulation, that is dergulating the wholesale market for electricity but not the retail market. That led to blackouts. Oftentimes, half-measures are much worse than doing nothing at all.
I meant Secretary of Defense, not State. Condi is very professional. Rumsfeld is an idiot who knows nothing about waging a war and whose incompetence led to the insurgency taking hold. There didn't have to be an insurgency in Iraq. However, Rumsfeld let it happen by sending in less than half the troops necessary to stop looting and lawlessness and secure the peace.
Letting the insurgency occur gives Democracy a very bad name in the Middle East and has turned more people aginst democracy and freedom than the sight of Iraqis voting has turned in favor of it.
Hamas was funded and supported by Israel, certainly not exclusively.
Mossad wanted Hamas to offset and counterbalance the more secular, urban, communist influenced, Christian influenced PLO.
The PLO had communist/Christian George Habasch, Edward Said agnostic/Christian culturally/francophile/US academic Palestian, Hanna Ashrawi Eastern Orthodox Christian, Catholic archbishops in the inner circle, etc. Saids theory and prediction that the rise of Zionism would cause an increase in Islamic fundamentalism has been true.
The Israeli government has had a policy of divide and conquer with Christians and Muslims (Palestinians) and to decrease the role of Arab/Palestinian Christians in Israel so there would be no international lobby.
The problem is that the lack of Christians and the decrease in secular influence has created a young, fundamentalist Muslim, nihilistic population with no influences of Christianity, actual Christians, or secular, former soviet, or even ideological influences. Yassir Arafat was not a fundamentalist and his last and youngest wife was a Christian and a francophile. The Francophile (french speaking and influenced) Chrisitan Arab that is pro-Western and secular is an anachronism, and while that Arab may have been anti-Zionist, the new Arab is deadly for the Israeli state and the rest of the world. The situation has gotten worse and certainly different because of the policies of Israel (not solely)
I used to like Rumsfield but he is arrogant, incompetent, has hurt the military and this situation.
ISRAEL CREATED HAMAS
Hamas is considered one of Israel's greatest threats, but the Islamic terrorist organization found its beginnings in the misguided Israeli effort to encourage the rise of a religious alternative that would undermine the popularity of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasir Arafat.
The strategy resulted in the birth of Hamas which rose from these Islamic roots. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was a member of the government when the policy was developed in the late 1970s.
Although Sharon and his Likud (formerly Herut Party) government colleagues could not anticipate that the Islamic leaders they backed would eventually evolve into Hamas and suicde bombings, the two have benefited from each other's extremism over the years.
The Likud strategy to promote an Islamic alternative evolved in response to Arafat's transformation from a revolutionary leader to the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people. Arafat was anointed as the only person who could negotiate for the return of the Occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Arab East Jerusalem at the Rabat Arab Summit in October 1974.
In addition to hoping to turn the Palestinian masses away from Arafat and the PLO, the Likud leadership believed they could achieve a workable alliance with Islamic, anti-Arafat forces that would also extend Israel's control over the occupied territories. At the time, the Islamicization of the Palestinian leadership was still very much in its infancy.
But the Islamic Palestinian leaders viewed the relationship with Israel differently. They were eager to accept Israel's financial backing and an easing on their activities, but only because they feared that Arafat would sign away Palestinian land captured by Israel in 1948.
If Arafat's weakness was the lack of a long term vision and an inability to resist short term achievements, his Islamic foes always believed that the struggle to liberate Palestine was a long term, slow process.
Violence was always a part of that picture. The Palestinian Islamic groups turned to violence during the first Intifadah in 1987. The Intifadah (1987- 1993) literally began as an uncontrolled, unplanned explosion of Palestinian frustrations and it gave the Islamicists their first opportunity to attract popular support.
Although Arafat remained the most popular Palestinian leader, he was still in Tunisia when the first Intifadah exploded in 1987. As Palestinians fought back against Israel's occupation, Sheik Yassin decided it was time to launch an armed wing, Hamas, to seek to lead that armed struggle against Israel's military.
Eventually, though, Hamas evolved into a much more extremists movement, not only targeting Israeli military. Hamas initially turned to the more extreme form of violence, suicide bombings, as a means of retribution for egregious Israeli attacks against Palestinians.
The first Hamas suicide bombing occurred in April 1994 in response to the massacre of 29 Muslims months earlier who were praying at the Hebron Mosque. The number of Hamas suicide bombings only steadily increased since, bringing the Middle East today to its worst crisis in decades.
Later, in the second Intifadah, suicide bombings became the weapon of choice as more and more Palestinians turned away from Arafat's secular solution through compromise with Israel and toward faith-based religious fanaticism.
The failure of the peace process to achieve a workable compromise, the new Intifada or "Palestinian rebellion," the increased terrorism and suicide bombings, and changes in how the world views political violence and terrorism since Sept. 11th have all given Likud and the Sharon government a new mandate.
Angered by the suicide bombings, the Israeli public has given Sharon wide latitude to forcefully respond to Hamas violence and the intifada. He has eagerly pursued this mandate as a front to achieve his real political agenda to undermine Arafat and to prevent Israel from accepting a peace accord that results in the establishment of an independent Palestinian State.
Ironically, this is Sharon's second try to destroy Arafat. He led the Israeli army assault on the PLO in Lebanon and Beirut in 1982, but that ended in embarrassment for Israel when the army unilaterally retreated. Sharon left with his reputation tarnished, blamed for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.
As the peace process collapsed and as Hamas terrorism increased, Sharon's agenda found new life. In September 2000 Sharon went to the Haram al-Ash Sharif (Temple Mount). Although events had been set in motion by the collapse of peace, Sharon;s visit and his declaration that Jerusalem will forever be the capitol of Israel sealed the fate of the unavoidable violence that consumes Palestinians and Israelis today.
Likud and Islamicists make strange bedfellows
In 1977, newly elected prime minister and Likud (Herut) founder Menachem Begin decided drastic steps were needed to block Arafat's return.
A year later, seeking to undermine Arafat's popularity in the Occupied Territories, Begin's government approved an application from a 42-year old quadriplegic religious leader in the Gaza Strip, Sheik Ahmad Yassin, to license his humanitarian organization, the Islamic Association. Later, with the explosion of the first Intifada, the Islamic Association launched a military arm called Hamas.
Begin's successor was Yitzhak Shamir. Both Begin and Shamir were leaders of the first terrorist organizations that operated in Palestine in the 1940s.
Under Begin and later Shamir, Israel created, funded and controlled the "Village Leagues," a system of local councils managed by Palestinians who were hand-picked by Israel to run local city and village administrations.
The plan was devised by Sharon, who was Israel's Defense Minister. Sharon appointed Menahem Milson, a professor of Arabic literature and former Hebrew University Dean, as its first Civil Administration leader in November 1981. Less than one year later, the two broke over Sharon's role in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres and Milson resigned.
Over the objections of many Palestinian Islamic leaders including the Commissioner of the Muslim Waqf in the Gaza Strip, Rafat Abu Shaban, Israel registered the newly formed "Islamic Association" which Yassin founded.
Yassin was willing to cooperate with the Likud government because he, too, shared the goal of undermining Arafat's secular influence over the Palestinians. More importantly, and in line with Likud policies, he sought to block the creation of a Palestinian State based on land-for-peace.
Israel's Likud government permitted Yassin to launch a newspaper and to set up charitable fundraising organizations. With funding Yassin raised and with Israeli funds directed through the Village Leagues, the Islamic Association built new mosques, new schools, hospitals and medical clinics. The group established social service and humanitarian agencies and even job creation venues. Despite its later turn to armed struggle and suicide bombings, Hamas meticulously directed nearly 95 percent of the funds it raised to these worthy humanitarian projects.
Yassin's followers won significant influence over the Village Leagues system, another Israeli supported scheme intended to undermine the PLO's influence and strengthen the hand of "local leaders" that Likud believed could be co-opted politically.
Yassin was not initially involved with violence. Most of the violence was directed either by Arafat's Al-Fatah organization, based in Lebanon, or by the other PLO umbrella partners like the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Inside the occupied territories, another Islamic group called Islamic Jihad was struggling to gain support among Palestinians living under occupation.
The "Islamic Association," was a shadow organization and prodigy of the more radical Moslem Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Bana. The group created a Palestinian branch in the 1930s but waged a mainly rhetorical battle against oppression in the Arab World.
Initially, the Moslem Brotherhood and Sheik Yassin's Islamic Association were not supportive of armed struggle against Israel. Yassin adopted the Moslem Brotherhoods approach toward a slow Islamicization of the region.
In 1984, Shamir was forced into a coalition government with Labor Party's Shimon Peres. Under a shared-leadership agreement, Peres held the office for two years until 1986 before returning it to Shamir. During those two years, the Likud party leaders saw firsthand the seriousness of behind-the-scenes negotiations between Labor Party leaders and Arafat, who was exiled in Tunisia.
Yassin and the Islamic Association benefited from a system of Israeli controlled "Village Leagues," sometimes called Village Councils. The Village Leagues where largely funded by Israel. But the Islamic Association was allowed to raise tens of millions more each year from supportive Arab regimes angry with Arafat. The creation of the Village Leagues was Israel's first effort to encourage an alternative to the PLO.
Sheik Yassin used the money to operate a network of schools, medical clinics, social service agencies, religious institutions and provide direct services to the poverty stricken Palestinian population.
Israel saw benefits in the leagues which became a breeding ground for Palestinian collaborators who were blackmailed or bribed into reporting on the activities of other Palestinians. Many of them held positions of leadership in the Village Leagues and were friendly to Israel.
The Israeli military gave the League members protection and widespread powers. As many as 200 of the league members were given weapons training by Israel. Israel's Shin Bet recruited paid informers from this network and Israeli sources estimated the number of informants were in the thousands.
Israel Military Government employed as many as 19,000 Palestinians, with 11,000 of them working as teachers, clerks and administrators.
Always the survivor, Arafat and the PLO agreed in 1988 to accept the "two state" solution based on "land for peace" negotiations. While Likud responded by trying to sell "autonomy" to the Islamicist movement, the response of the Islamic Association was unexpected. Reacting angrily to Arafat's decision to recognize Israel, and seeking to play to Palestinian emotions during the Intifadah, the new organization, Hamas, openly embraced armed struggle against Israel.
Arafat's first act was to impose controls on Hamas, while Israel moved to more aggressive policies expelling, jailing and even assassinating Hamas leaders.
As secret talks with Labor Party leaders advanced, Arafat ordered his loyalists to force Village League members to resign in 1988 sparking violence between Hamas and Arafat's Al-Fatah supporters. The gap between Hamas and Al-Fatah widened when Al-Fatah commemorated the 20th anniversary of the March 21, 1968 battle of Karameh.
Karameh was a village in Jordan at the border with the West Bank that consisted mainly of Palestinian refugees. There, Arafat and his Al-Fatah faction set up headquarters and directed their armed struggle against Israel.
Israeli troops invaded Karameh but confronted fierce resistance from the Arafat-led guerrilla defenders. It was particularly important because of the humiliation Arabs shared for the defeat to Israel in June 1967. The battle successes added to Arafat's growing charisma among Palestinians.
During the commemoration, Palestinian leaders of the Village Leagues began their mass resignations. The Palestinian Mayor of Beitunia, Abdallah Rezaq, was the first to dissolve his municipality's council.
The only thing that stopped Hamas from growing further was the return of the Labor Party to power in 1992 and the return of Yasir Arafat to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Hamas is born
Strengthened by Village League funding and a vast network of charitable institutions that were popular among the Palestinian masses, Yassin authorized the establishment of a military arm of the Islamic Association in 1987 that he called Hamas. It launched its first attacks in January 1998, both against Israeli military targets and even against Arafat's Fataha loyalists in the Gaza Strip.
The acronym Hamas comes from the Arabic name, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya). In English, the word Hamas translates into "zeal." It is appropriate to Yassin's goals. The Moslem Brotherhood and its sister organizations pursued a policy of gradual Islamicization of the Arab World and Palestine. It was a policy that Hamas rejected as being too slow.
There is a real irony in the transformation of Yassin's organization from a benevolent religious foundation to a guerrilla movement. Begin and his successor, Yitzhak Shamir, had both headed the first two terrorist organizations to operate in Palestine during the 1940s. Shamir had led the Stern Gang while Begin led the larger Irgun Zvi Leuhmi. The two groups worked in tandem and were responsible for introduction of terrorist techniques into Palestine including car bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings of military vehicles and the lynching of British soldiers in the olive groves outside of Jerusalem. They were responsible for the near destruction of the car-bombed King David Hotel and for the massacre of civilians at the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem.
Begin and Shamir understood exactly what they had created. Knesset Member Avraham Poraz (Shinui) was among a litany of Israeli leaders who blamed Likud for Hamas. "The Likud has got Hamas on its hands because it refused to talk to the PLO," he said.
Hamas quickly found itself in competition with another religious group banned by Israel, Islamic Jihad. Both sought to disrupt the occupation and seize Palestinian leadership from Arafat.
Islamic Jihad distributed a leaflet claiming responsibility for the killing of restaurateur, Ya'acov Shalom, in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem neighborhood on May 20, and a fatal bomb attack in the Mahane Yehuda market the week before. It also labeled Jordan's King Hussein, a Hamas backer at the time, as a "butcher." That was an apparent reference to the King's suppression of unrest in Palestinian refugee camps following another attack at Rishon Lezion, an Israeli settlement outside of Tel Aviv.
But the real rivalry for Hamas was with Arafat's Fatah loyalist.
During the first Intifadah, Hamas enforced business closures and boycotts as a means of protesting Israeli policies and as a way to control the Palestinian population. Hamas constantly challenged PLO political positions and thwarted PLO efforts to direct the Intifadah from abroad.
For example, in January 1990, Arafat deputy Abu Iyad publicly complained that Soviet Jewish immigration to Israel was undermining the peace process because new immigrants went directly to settlements, and settlements were created to accommodate this immigration. In response, Hamas issued an order closing all businesses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to protest Soviet Jewish immigration, not simply to join in the protest but to also steal the thunder from the distant PLO leaders.
Shamir was surprised by the Islamic violence. He quickly ordered the arrest of Hamas political leader Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi and then a full scale crackdown on Hamas and the arrest of Sheikh Yassin. But it was too late. Hamas was now permanently entrenched among a hard core and growing cadre of Palestinian religious zealots.
By February 1990, Israeli officials estimated that Hamas enjoyed solid backing during the Intifadah from 30 percent of the residents of the Gaza Strip where it was based. This increased popularity only hastened Arafat's decision to accept a compromise with Israel in the hopes of returning and taking charge and prompted Shamir's Labor Party successors to accept an Arafat deal.
Under Labor Party pressure and a "shared government" arrangement with Likud, Israel agreed to participate in peace talks with the Palestinians and Jordanians in Cairo. Still, Shamir tried to reduce the role of the PLO by insisting on vetoing the appointment of the Faisal al-Husseini, an Arafat confidant and the PLO's Jerusalem representative, to lead the the Palestinian delegation.
Arafat immediately tried to control Hamas, partly to demonstrate his authority and partly to show his Labor Party partners that he could deliver. But initial offers of compromise and alliance from PLO officials were consistently rejected and Hamas remained dedicated to its hardline, Islamicist ideology which rejected any form of compromise with Israel.
The more the Labor-Arafat peace process advanced, the more Hamas turned to violence. When Husseini and other PLO officials denounced the murder of Jewish tourists in Egypt in February 1990, Hamas countered by sending vehicles with loudspeakers through the streets of major Palestinian cities praising the attacks and denouncing the PLO for its criticism. They argued against peace with Israel and more violence.
The Likud desire to undermine Arafat remained strong even after Hamas had been declared a "terrorist organization" and the Labor peace initiative with Arafat was at its height. In the months after the White House peace signing, some leaders of the Israel's security forces pursued contacts with Hamas leaders who were in Israeli jails in the hopes of getting them to embrace peace at the expense of Arafat's leadership. The Israelis wanted to use Hamas as a means of pressuring Arafat into making more concessions.
It didn't work.
Hamas and Likud benefit from violence
There is a natural affinity that exists in a limited way between the policies and goals of Hamas and the political objectives of the Likud Bloc that has brought them together.
Every time Israeli and Palestinian negotiators appeared ready to take a major step toward achieving peace, an act of Hamas terrorism has scuttled the peace process and has pushed the two sides apart.
The startling ease with which terrorism has undermined peace is a testament to the fragility of the peace process and the political weakness of both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. Two specific acts of Likud-inspired violence derailed the momentum of the peace process, too.
Terrorism has been the primary common denominator that exists in the up and down relationship between the leadership of Israel's Likud and the Palestinian Hamas movement. It's not that they are working together, but that their goals are the same.
Acts of terrorism can be directly associated with changes in the political leadership of Israel -- influencing the defeat of Labor Party government and the rise of the Likud.
In the last quarter century, Likud Party candidates have served as Israel's prime ministers for 17 years, more than double the eight years served by Labor Party candidates.
Since 1977, four Likud candidates have served five times as prime minister, while three Labor candidates served four times. (Likud's Menachem Begin, 77-83; Likud's Yitzhak Shamir, 83-84; Labor's Shimon Peres, 84-86; Likud's Shamir, 86-92; Labor's Yitzhak Rabin, 92-95; Labor's Peres, 95-96; Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, 96-99; Labor's Ehud Barak, 99-01; Likud's Ariel Sharon, 01-present.)
Efforts to achieve peace between Arafat and Labor were marred by the violence on both sides with Hamas attacking Israeli targets and Likud loyalists and members of the pro-Likud settler movement attacking Palestinians.
One of those likud-inspired settler fanatics was Dr. Baruch Goldstein. In February 1994, Goldstein strolled through Israeli security with an automatic weapon and opened fire on Muslims praying at the Heborn Mosque. He killed 29 Muslims. Goldstein took a page out of the Likud ideology and hoped the massacre would derail the peace process with Arafat.
The Goldstein attack so outraged Hamas leaders that they retaliated in April 1994 with a Hamas bomber who drove an explosive laden car into a civilian bus in the Israeli city of Afula. Eight people died and 50 were wounded.
Likud-inspired violence was not reserved for Palestinian targets. Less than a year later, an Israeli fanatic inspired by Likud rhetoric assassinated Rabin. Rabin's widow, Leah Rabin, directly placed the blame for her husband's assassination on the Likud party and its anti-peace rhetoric. Leah Rabin declared that the assassin was incited to violence by the vicious language of Likud's silver-tongued leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rabin's murder undermined the Labor Party's future and sabotaged the Israeli-Palestinian peace process pushing all sides back to violence.
In otherwords, violence did for the Likud what violence had achieved for Hamas in terms of stopping the peace process.
Politically, Hamas and Israel's Likud Bloc share several common goals, each for different reasons. They both oppose the Land-for-Peace formula and object to the creation of an independent Palestinian State. Hamas seeks to establish an Islamic State in Palestine while the Likud seeks the formal expansion of Israel into the occupied West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. Likud seeks to annex the territories providing the Palestinians with administrative autonomy but not independence or sovereignty.
In contrast, the PLO and the Labor Party also share several goals and oppose the policies of Likud and Hamas. Both accepted in formal written agreements in September 1993 at the White House a peace accord that recognized Israel's right to exist and the Palestinian right to statehood.
While Likud and Labor battle over ideology and politics, Hamas differs with the PLO on issues of religion and it rejects compromise.
Hamas views the PLO as an important organization but much like a "wayward brother." It's stated goal is the creation of an Islamic State in Palestine, one that subjugates not only Jews but Christians and other religions, too. The PLO has recognized Israel and, like the Labor Party, has accepted the Land-for-Peace principle.
While Hamas views all Israeli politics as identical, its violence twice helped elect Likud candidates to the office of Prime Minister.
It is this politics of opposition that drives Likud and Hamas to share similar goals.
Arab regimes flipflop on Hamas
As peace moved forward, the Arab World also shifted from supporting the Islamic militant movement to opposing it.
The Muslim Brotherhood and later Hamas enjoyed the backing, for example, of King Hussein of Jordan and several other Arab government leaders not just during its rise, but even years later.
In Jan. 1991, the new Jordanian Government included members of the Moslem Brotherhood, insuring that Jordanian funds would continue to Hamas.
In a show of how important King Hussein viewed the religious organization, King Hussein pressured Israel to release Yassin from his Israeli prison in 1997. It was a price demanded by the monarch for his freeing of Israeli Mossad agents who were arrested after bungling the attempted assassination of a Hamas leader in Jordan.
After his release, Yassin devoted his energies to repairing damage to Hamas' educational and charitable institutions inflicted during Israel's sweeping 1996 crackdown. Hamas' military wing directed attacks from its safe haven in Amman, Jordan.
Like many Arab leaders who viewed Arafat as a threat, King Hussein was willing to live with Hamas militancy as a counter-balance to Arafat. Jordan viewed Hamas as a natural rival to Arafat's leadership. Despite his public rhetoric, the Jordanian Monarch could never forgive Arafat for his efforts to destabilize his government. Half of Jordan's population consisted of Palestinians, most of them refugees from the 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.
As Hamas stepped up attacks against Israel and was denounced by Israelis as a terrorist organization, Hamas enjoyed growing support among the Arab regimes. Ironically, it was easier to show lipservice to Hamas than to lead their own wars against Israel.
Arafat's misunderstood support of Iraq during the Gulf War did much to strengthen Arab support of Hamas. Hamas received more financial support from Kuwait after Hamas leaders publicly denounced Saddam Hussein and likened the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Other Arab Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia continued to channel funds to both the PLO and Hamas, but favored Hamas' religious militancy and its Islamic charitable foundations and social service agencies.
Arafat was publicly humiliated by Kuwait at the 1990 "Baghdad summit" when he demanded to know why Kuwait had paid less than one-eighth of the money it had promised the Palestinians. The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jabber al-Ahmed al-Sabah responded by producing data that showed in fact Kuwait had continued to support the Palestinian cause, but through Hamas instead of through the PLO.
As the Arab government's slowly supported the Arafat-Rabin peace accords, support for Hamas began to wane. Hamas turned elsewhere, to Iran's Islamic government. In August 1999, Jordan closed the group's political bureau, arrested its leaders and prohibited Hamas from operating out of Jordan.
As the peace process progressed, Hamas influence continued to fall. Hamas struggled to sustain its network of charitable and social agency service agencies in the West Bank (notably Tulkarm) and also in Gaza where they had more support. Hamas shifted most of its military and political leadership from Amman, Jordan to a more sympathetic Damascus, Syria.
Still, the network that Shamir and the Likud helped create for Hamas preserved its funding resources. Even after breaking with Jordan and other Arab countries, sources estimated the Hamas budget at between $40-70 million a year.
The peace process teeters on the brink of Hamas attacks
In early April 1990, Palestine National Council Chairman Sheikh Abdel Hamid a-Sayeh invited Hamas to join a committee preparing the next Palestine National Council meeting. (The PNC was the umbrella group that included representatives of most Palestinian organizations and mainly the PLO.) Hamas circulated a memorandum in the territories on April 6, 1990 setting for the conditions the PLO would have to meet: Hamas would only join the Palestine National Council if the PLO withdrew its "acceptance of partition," rejects territorial concessions, and refuses to recognize Israel. The statement also demanded that Hamas be given up to 50 percent of the PNC seats, and a modification of the Palestinian National Covenant "in accordance with the faith of the Moslem Palestinian people and its glorious heritage."
Even President Clinton recognized the ability of Hamas to disrupt the peace process. On January 24, 1995, Clinton signed an Executive Order prohibiting transactions with Hamas due to their potential for disrupting the Middle East peace process. This included all of Hamas' subgroups including the Izzedin Al-Qassem Brigades. Even with the change in attitudes of the Arab governments, pressure from the Clinton Administration and a reversal in Israel's policies toward Yassin, the road to undermining Hamas' extensive funding network was difficult.
Eventually, Hamas was forced to consider, at least briefly, a possible compromise with Arafat in order to survive. By 1998, Yassin publicly broke from the Hamas Charter and participated at a meeting of the PNC. His presence prevented the PNA from declaring Palestinian statehood, but it brought a harsh rebuke from the Hamas leadership outside of the territories. Hamas political head Khaled Meshal and treasurer Musa Abu Marzook, both in Jordan, and Hamas' Damascus representative Imad Alami all urged Yassin to resign.
As peace falters Hamas influence rises
Support for Hamas declines as the peace process moves ahead and increases as the peace process falters. Prior to the peace process, support among the Palestinians for Hamas was estimated by the Israelis at 20-40 percent in the West Bank and 60-80 percent in the Gaza Strip. This fell to 15-25 percent during the peace process.
And undermining the peace process has always been the real target of Hamas and has played into the political ambitions of the Likud. Continued Hamas suicide bombings and violence has played a significant role in undermining and bringing the peace process to a grinding halt, and set the stage for Sharon's election over Labor Party leader Ehud Barak in 2001.
As the peace accords lumbered ahead, Hamas stepped up its terrorist suicide attacks. About a dozen suicide bombings were attempted in the months after the PLO-Israel accord was signed at the White House in September, 1993.
Initially, the peace process persisted in the face of these heinous terrorist attacks. But it couldn't stand the pressure of the gut-wrenching images of suicide bomb attacks. In February and March 1996, Hamas launched a series of suicide bombings in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of alleged Hamas bomb-maker Yahya Aiyash the month prior. These attacks contributed mightily to bringing down the Peres government and helped return the Likud back to power electing the more hardline but silver-tongued young Turk, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The wave of deadly Hamas bombings took 60 Israeli lives in eight days, prompting Arafat to clamp down on Hamas even more - some 1,000 Palestinians were arrested and Arafat's Palestinian National Authority government, established under Labor, even ousted Hamas from some of its mosques. The suicide attacks continued through 1997 giving Netanyahu public support to halt the peace process and reverse agreements made by the murdered Rabin.
Netanyahu ignored Arafat's efforts to crackdown on Hamas and the peace process came to a grinding halt.
Similarly, Hamas suicide bombings during the Barak administration coupled with the failure to reach a peace accord on President Clinton's timetable, and Sharon's provocative incursion to the "Temple Mount" on September 28th, 2000 provoked the second Intifadah.
Although the Israelis insist that second Intifadah was responsible for a wave of Israeli killings, during the first week of the conflict, 50 Palestinians had been killed and five Israelis had died. Among the dead were nine Palestinian protesters whose deaths sparked the Intifadah's start. The Israeli response was repressive and heightened Palestinian response. And, when two Israeli reservists (suspected of being undercover government assassins) were captured and murdered viciously in Ramallah on October 12th, 2000, the slide to total Palestinian-Israeli conflict was already set in stone.
Barak declared his decision to resign to give himself a 60-day window before elections to controlt he conflict and authorized secret meetings at Taba where Palestinian and Israeli negotiators desperately tried to reach an accord.
But, it was too late, Sharon had achieved his objectives. Sharon did not need a major Hamas suicide bombing to win his election against Barak. The Sharon inspired Intifadah and the violence it caused on both sides swung Israeli voters to the hard right, giving him a landslide victory against Barak on Feb. 7, 2001.
Clearly recognizing that their violent strategy was bringing down the Arafat government, halting the peace process and playing into the emotions of the Palestinians, Hamas launched another wave of suicide bombings in the week after Sharon's election. Sharon used these attacks as the pretext to launch a massive invasion of PNA controlled areas of the West Bank and decimating Arafat's government infrastructure.
Hamas terrorism played into the rage and the frustrations of the Palestinian people, who helplessly watched as the promise of peace evaporated before their eyes. They had never tasted its fruits but only heard its empty promises. The were a people on the edge and easy victims for Sharon's political manipulations.
The conflict continues its escalation. The number of Palestinian and Israeli dead continues to climb. The terrorist attacks on September 11th by madman Osama Bin Laden in the name of Islam only served to further build a barrier that prevents reasonable people to achieve a peace.
And, once again, the real benefactor of the violence and conflict is Israel's right wing Likud Bloc and its new leader, Ariel Sharon, the man that his fanatic supporters affectionately call "Bulldozer."
The ANTI ARAFAT and ANTI PLO POLICIES created both HAMAS and the HAMAS election Victory.
Israel created this MONSTER and now it is coming back to haunt them. READ MORE:
February 7, 2006
Israel Created the Conditions for Hamas's Success
Why Hamas Won
By NEVE GORDON
Although it is still unclear what the future holds for Israelis and Palestinians, a few things can be said about the processes that enabled Hamas to win a landslide victory in the January 25 democratic elections and how the organizationís triumph will likely affect the local political arena.
Founded in Gaza at the beginning of the first Intifada (December 1987) by Sheik Ahmad Yassin, Hamas is a direct extension of the Muslim Brotherhood. Although in the media Hamas tends to be identified with its military arm, Izzeddin al-Qassam, which is well known for its suicide attacks against Israeli targets, the organizationís popularity in the Occupied Territories actually stems from its being seen as the voice of Palestinian dignity and the symbol of the defense of Palestinian rights at a time of unprecedented hardship, humiliation, and despair.
People who voted for Hamas emphasize not only the heroic acts of its combatants, but also its reputation for clean conduct, modesty, and honesty, which have been pointedly contrasted with the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. Many of its followers do not subscribe to religious fundamentalism, but rather support the organization due to its pragmatic approach characterized by support for the short-term objective of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, while still maintaining the long-term goal of establishing an Islamic state that would replace Israel and offer a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.
Most importantly, perhaps, Hamas acquired much of its political credit from its charity and social service networks. It built kindergartens and schools (that offer free meals for children), education centers for women, and youth and sports clubs. Its medical clinics provide subsidized treatment to the sick and the organization extends financial and technical assistance to those whose homes had been demolished as well as to refugees living in sub-standard conditions.
In other words, Hamas was elected not only because it is considered an alternative to the corrupt Palestinian Authority, but also because Israel created the conditions that made it an indispensable social movement.
Allow me to explain. According to the United Nations, the poverty rate, defined as those living off less than $2.20 a day, climbed to 64 percent in the Occupied Territories in 2005. Even this figure, however, is inaccurate considering that half of the 64 percent, or some 1.2 million Palestinians, live not on $2.20 a day but on $1.60 or less. Impoverishment of this proportion has produced new populations that need assistance just to sustain life, or as one member of an Islamic charity stated, the past few years ìhave engendered new types of need, which has increased the number of eligible beneficiaries and diversified the social groups requiring such assistance.î These new groups currently include landowners, shopkeepers, and those whose homes have been demolished by Israeli bulldozers; in other words, they are not just the traditional poor.
As Israel destroyed the infrastructure of existence in the territories, it also engendered an institutional vacuum by targeting the Palestinian Authority. Hamas took advantage of these dire developments and used them as an opportunity to promote its own agenda.
The organization adopted a policy of providing assistance on the basis of socio-economic need rather than religious or political criteria, so that families in economic distress did not need to be Hamas members or even practicing Muslims in order to qualify for aid. Rapidly its charitable institutions became the second largest food donor in the occupied Palestinian territories after the United Nations Relief and Work Agency. As the chairman of one Islamic charity pointed out already two years before the elections, ìThe expansion of poverty has vastly increased the pressure upon our organization, because we are receiving many more applications than before.î
In its report on Hamas, the International Crisis Group concludes that while it is impossible to measure the impact of Hamasís charitable work on its popularity, the organizationís positive image is significantly related to the efficiency of its social services, particularly when compared with the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority.
Although this is surely the case, the Crisis Groupís conclusion substitutes the symptoms for the causes. The question is not whether Hamasís social welfare organizations have helped it garner popular support, but rather why Hamasís charity network has been so successful. Indeed, the claim that Hamasís popularity results from its social welfare network conceals the fact that Israel has produced a situation where there is desperate need for charity institutions. Accordingly, Israelís efforts to undermine the Palestinian Authority alongside its success in destroying the infrastructure of existence in the Occupied Territories has not only made Palestinian life miserable, but has empowered its most lethal adversary, the Hamas.
So what lies in store for those of us living in this neck of the world now that Hamas has won the elections?
Hamas is prepared to negotiate a settlement based on the concept of a hudnah (a temporary truce). As Azzam Tamimi, the director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought points out, Hamas as well as the majority of Palestinians consider Israel as having been built on land stolen from the Palestinian people. ìThe creation of the state was a solution to a European problem and the Palestinians are under no obligation to be the scapegoats for Europe's failure to recognize the Jews as human beings entitled to inalienable rights. Hamas, like all Palestinians, refuses to be made to pay for the criminals who perpetrated the Holocaust. However, Israel is a reality and that is why Hamas is willing to deal with that reality in a manner that is compatible with its principles.î
These principles are important. Hamasís victory appears to introduce a new dimension into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If the conflict first emerged as a national clash between two peoples fighting over one piece of land, as the years passed a Jewish messianic ideology which believes in the redemption of the biblical land of Israel gained ground. Thus, the Zionist camp brought a fundamentalist element to the national-territorial quarrel, inscribing a strong theological strain into the nationalist fervor.
Hamasís triumph can be seen as the introduction of the religious dimension into the Palestinian side, thus strengthening the fundamentalist characters of the conflict. In many respects, the national clash over territory is being transformed into a religious battle between Jews and Muslims. If Hamasís pragmatic strain does not prevail over its religious drive, then we are heading towards very bloody times simply because reaching some kind of political solution between the two parties will be much more difficult.
The introduction of a fundamentalist worldview will no doubt affect Palestinian society as well. Already number two on Hamasís list, Muhammad Abu Tir suggested that the Palestinian school system will be changed; girls and boys will no longer study together and a more Islamic curriculum will be introduced. Abu Tir added that the first act of the newly-elected Palestinian Legislative Council will be to introduce sharia (Muslim law) as the source for legislation. Statements like these do not bode well for the future.
How, one might ask, should the international community respond to Hamasís victory?
Israelís acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked foreign leaders to boycott the new Palestinian Authority if it does not comply with three conditions: 1) the disarmament of Izzeddin al-Qassam and other paramilitary groups; 2) the annulling of Hamasís charter which calls for the destruction of Israel; and 3) and the acceptance of the agreements and obligations that the Palestinian Authority took upon itself when the Fatah party was in control.
While Olmertís first two conditions could easily be part of future negotiations rather than a condition for negotiations, his third demand puts Israel in a thorny spot. After all, Israel, not the Palestinians, has been using the separation barrier in the past three years to execute a unilateral plan which contravenes all previous agreements. Thus, according to Olmertís logic, the international community would need to boycott Israel in order to remain consistent.
Although the Quartet -- the US, UN, European Union, and Russia -- decided against immediately adopting Olmertís demands, it did warn that if Hamas refuses to abandon violence, recognize Israel and embrace the diplomatic ìroad mapî to peace it would cut off foreign aid.
This threat needs to be taken seriously, since the data suggests that if world leaders decide to cut off economic aid to the Occupied Territories, humankind will witness a social catastrophe. As mentioned, today 64 percent of the population lives under the international poverty line of $2.20 a day, while the World Bank reports that acute malnutrition affects 9 percent of Palestinian children. Taking into account that financial aid amounts to almost one third of the per capita gross national income in the West Bank and Gaza, a decision to cut it off would be tantamount to an experiment in famine.
Does Olmert really want the population living under Israelís occupation to starve? Is the international community willing to take on such a responsibility?
Questions like these lead directly to the most crucial point, one that has been frequently elided by the recent discussion concerning Hamasís successful ascent to power. Despite the threatening character of Hamasís victory, Israel continues to be the stronger side in this conflict -- it is the occupier and oppressor and not the victim. Israel is unwilling to withdraw to the 1967 borders or offer a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, as required by United Nations resolutions 194, 242 and 381. And, finally, Israel is the one that has been implementing unilateral moves that are in direct violation of the road map and any other solution based on dialogue and mutual understanding.
Hamas, as Azzam Tamimi suggests, underscores Israelís breach of the UN resolutions and is willing to embark on a peace process based on the fact that Israel give up its sole ownership over victimhood and recognize that the Palestinians are the victims and have been victims since the state of Israel was established. All of which raises serious questions regarding who, at this point in time, is undermining the possibility of reaching peace in the Middle East.
Neve Gordon teaches human rights at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and is the editor of
"The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler and behave worse than Genghis Khan," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday. He was quoted by the Iranian News Agency.
Which ist it bucko? The Holocaust never happened or Israel is doing Big Al The Paper Hanger one better?
The Islamists were pro-Nazi back in the Day and they stiil got their chops.
I hope the Israelis celebrate the Sabbath in Damascus this week.
Hey Hickey, the IRA were pro-Nazi,
so was Fr. Coughlin
so was Joe "the bootlegger" Kennedy
lots of Irish from Ireland and Irish Americans were pro-Nazi
the IRA has also been training in Lybia and has ties to international Islamic terrorism
so what do you think about dem apples
The IRA was NOT pro-Nazi.
The IRA was anti-British. There is a difference.
Moreover, although I am not big on comparing groups to Nazis, if you look at the actions of the British from at least 1800 to 1920, the actions are not all that different. It was one of the only countries anywhere that saw population fall, in large part because the Brits refused to allow the Irish to consume their own crops.
Fact of the day: The potato famine would not necessarily have caused mass starvation, but for the fact that the Brits would not allow the Irish to eat other crops not impacted by the blight. Grain was for export only, and not for the bread of the Irish.
I'Tink you need read more: Tim Pat Coogan's IRA is a fairly simple start.
Chuck Lindburgh dabbled with der Fuerher as well I 'tink, but dats jus me.
Dere was IRA mugs in da Republican Innernashional Brigade dat fought the Krauts and EYEtalians in Spain aroun''37 - my cousin Con Enright now 92 was a da mugs en got excamewnicated too, en he IRA, see?
But you proved your point - now put a hat on it.
The answer is 428.
428 dead Jews is how many it will take.
for what ever its worth...
...Hezbollah killed 250 some Marines in Lebanon a few decades ago.
Amercians who went to protect refugees in camps.
We need a Maronite/Falangist come back.
Where is Gemayel?
Hickey, how could any good Irish Catholic go and fight for the secularist masonic anti-clerical forces in Spain against a good Catholic like Franco? Do you know how many Churches were destroyed and priests and nuns who were killed? Tragic.
The need for the IRA and their tactics are becoming a thing of historical past
Annoymous, you are one far . . er smart feller.
Does Hickeys 92 year old uncle take communion? or did he say it was his cousin? Was the excommunication lifted?
I never heard of hard core Catholics fighting on the Republic side, Fulton Sheen and Pat Buchanan (both good Irish Catholics although Sheen more for the faith)
Nulla Salus Sancta Ecclesium
With all due respect to Bill Barr who otherwise has some interesting things to say, the issue of SINGLE PARENT FAMILY(IES) IS IS IS an ISSUE and not just values rhetoric. Remember the 1960 Sen Monihyan prediction/white paper about 25% African American illegitimacy/single motherhood and 6% white. Well it is over 50% and in some areas 75% plus for African Americans and now 25% for whites. That is the single best indicator of dysfunctional behavior and a strong indicator of poverty (as are race, educational background, wealth of parents, and geography) That does not mean that there are not good single moms or that many great children come out of difficult backgrounds but it does mean that statistically this is a serious serious issue. It is a policy issue because it has real consequences. Conservatives are right to an extent in diagnosing the problem even if they do not have the best solution.
2. Tom Roeser is not a racist. He may be a cumudgreon. He may not be PC. He did a lot of minorities in the Federal Government and at Quaker Oats. He says things that many people used to say publicly but now are afraid to say because of the PC and race police, some shouldn’t be said, but it doesn’t cause a very good nor honest dialogue or debate.
3. Pat Hickey is right. Obama was not well liked by other Black/African American elected officials. Monique Davis and Mary Flowers were good to him. Sen. Donne Trotter (also light skinned and straightens his hair) had many racial slurs that would of been condemned if used by any white politicians. Even Sen Ricky Hendon who supported him for US Senate would make fun of him, his diction, his body movements. Cong Jackson said before Obama ran for US Senate that he was not Black enough and to explain the African daddy and White mommy grew up in Hawaii would not fly in Chicago. Jackson and Meeks bothed jumped on the Obama for Senate bandwagon early and it gave him cover in the African American community. Obama did not have any like nor respect among his peers–they viewed him as an outsider, too white, and not one of them. They literally made fun of him using terms tht might get my post deleted.
4. Pat Hickey probably has more experience and did more for the African American community in Chicago than Obama did. Obama NEVER grew up with his “Black side”. He did not “grow up black”. Obama always went to elite private schools including a Muslim one in Indonesia (one of his step dads was Muslim). Obama did not go to Chicago Public Schools–he didn’t even go to the underfunded struggling Catholic schools like Hickeys Leo. Obama has no roots in chicago nor in the African American community. He worked for the con artist pro Daley UNO of alderman Danny Solis and was a prof at the U of C (in Hyde Park). He grew up “white”. He grew up Hawaii and internationally. Obama does not know the Chicago nor African American experience first hand–that does not mean that he cannot be a good legislator but the real binding ties are not there. Obama is a good guy–I know him a little personally, and has some great qualities BUT he is a media creation–there is not a lot of substance nor accomplishment there, not YET at anyrate. Thank you Hickey for helping out good schools helping out African Americans.
5. Tom Roeser asking the questions he is asking is not racist nor wrong. Obama certainly gives credit to his mother and he goes visits his white family in Hawaii but to not recognize that Obama is going out of his way, and not in a normal way to be more Black, and possibly for political reasons is not something racist nor illogical. I do not believe that Obama needs to step, play basketball or listen to Snoop Doggy Dogg let alone some 102.7 dusties or even Gospel BUT Obama has NO “Black experience” beyond his skin color, and his political activities.
6. Most African American children living in Public Housing or being forced out of Public Housing with a BLACK single mother and NOT going to Harvard or living in Hawaii or Indonesia do NOT identify with Obama. Private schools. International Travel. Being around white people.
Harvard. Being a media darling that cannot be criticized. The African American children can adore him and admire him but they really cannot identify with him.
7. Alan Keyes did make an interesting historical note, one that people like Toni Morrison and Alex Haley think is important (I voted for Obama and not Keyes) that Obama is NOT a descendant of slaves. His father was not impovershed from Africa but actually educated, had opportunity, and was going to Harvard, he just decided for whatever reason to leave his son. Obama was not the first nor will he be the last person without a father in his life. The DJ on 102.7 calls them “Sperm donors” (African American DJ on an African American oriented radio station HIGHLY critical of deadbeat dads)
His dad abandoning him is not extraordinary.
What is extraordinary is his white mother protecting him, not abandoning him to government or social service agencies, giving him the best educational opportunities, not raising him in crime infested neighborhoods in Chicago on the West or South Sides, and giving him private education at good schools, marrying rich men, and giving him international travel opportunities. Not many African American Males from the South Side of Chicago (or West Side or suburbs or any side) have white mamas (besides Baby O and Judge Anne Burke), travel internationally, live in Hawaii, never live with Black people, and go to Harvard. Clarence Thomas (I do not agree with him by the way) growing up in the deep south and being trained by Catholic nuns or even Alan Keyes as an Army brat and trained with U of C Allan Bloom is much more impressive and much more “Black”. Obama does not have slave roots which some think makes him able to stand taller remember in the movie with Wesley Snipes as a Heroin dealer when the Nigerians call him “Akkata” (cotton picker)
Should there be affirmative action for non slaves? Is restitution for slavery based on race or historical slaves? Are their historical memories and group consciousness?–if so does Obama have any claim to this one?
I like Obama. I don’t like any politician to be given a free pass and fawned over. I am not considered a conservative, but am sympathetic to some ideas, and don’t believe everyone who is a conservative is a racist. I don’t believe Tom Roeser is a racist. I believe the questions he brings up are valid. I think Obama has been exagerratd.
Hickey could solve the Middle East Conflict.
Hickey is better than Obama.
Hickey is the only Irish Catholic to be against facism, Franco, Nazism, and part of the good wing of the IRA (is that the provo's?)
extra ecclesiam nulla salus
Hickey and all should be aware
Yet the Israelis wonder why the Arab/Moslem world has no love loss for them. Unfortunately, the world has been trained by the Anti-Defamation League to put the whole blame on the Muslim “terrorists,” but Israel has shown over and over again that they are just as terror-minded as their Arab counterparts. As Harry Truman once said:
“The Jews have no sense of proportion, nor do they have any judgment on world affairs. The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons, as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power – physical, financial or political – neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.” (President Harry S. Truman, unpublished diary entry of July 21, 1947, Washington Post, July 11, 2003, cited by Michael A. Hoffman II).
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
Working Paper Number:RWP06-011
Submitted: 03/13/2006
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Abstract
In this paper, John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago's Department of Political Science and Stephen M.Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government contend that the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy is its intimate relationship with Israel. The authors argue that although often justified as reflecting shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, the U.S. commitment to Israel is due primarily to the activities of the “Israel Lobby." This paper goes on to describe the various activities that pro-Israel groups have undertaken in order to shift U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction.
To view responses to this paper from Harvard University faculty members, click here
Ariel Sharon has pulled his Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip. He is to be commended for his decision, especially in the face of objections from hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu. Sharon’s pull out tells us, however, that Israel is finally admitting it should have never confiscated the land originally. It was seized in the “six-day” war in 1967 based on Israel’s claims it was being attacked by the Arabs. In actuality, there was no attack.
Nevertheless, the pull out from Gaza seems out of character for Sharon. In 1971, the 43-year old Sharon, knowing that Gaza was filled with Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, brought in dozens of bulldozers to smash 2,000 houses to the ground, uprooting 16,000 people (London Independent, 1971). Stunned by what it was discovering about Sharon, the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, did an investigation. It reported that beginning in 1953 Sharon was part of Unit 101, a special squad organized to attack Arabs. Ha’aretz writes: “Unit 101's purpose was that of instilling terror by the infliction of discriminate, murderous violence not only on able-bodied fighters but on the young, the old, the helpless.” In August 1953 Sharon attacked the innocent refuge camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza, where 50 refugees were killed, mercilessly. Sharon would trap the people in houses with machine gun fire and then throw incendiary devices through the windows to blow them up. Two months later, Sharon attacked Qibya on the West Bank where 60 Jordanians were slaughtered by the same tactics. Even Moshe Sharett, Israel’s foreign minister, said Sharon’s attacks were a “stain that would stick to us and not be washed away for many years.” Avi Shlaim, Israeli historian, called Sharon’s actions a “war crime.” Finally, the U.S. State Department demanded that those responsible “should be brought to account.” Sharon tried to cover his tracks by claiming that he thought the houses were empty. In 1969 Sharon was reassigned to Israel’s Defense Force where he continued to bring terror on Palestinians.
In 1973, Sharon decided to capture control of the Suez Canal. Upon questioning from the Israeli military tribunal, Sharon was found to have violated strict orders. He was soon dismissed from the military altogether. Sharon then managed to find his way back as an advisor for Yitshak Rabin and later as an agricultural minister under Menachem Begin. Here Sharon used his newly acquired political muscle to establish Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, causing further agitation in the region. In 1982, against U.S. demands, Israel invaded Lebanon and attacked West Beirut. Here Sharon massacred 3000 refugees over 62 hours in the camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Mind you, these were defenseless civilians, as were all refugees. Not only were they killed, but Ha’aretz reported that they were “mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed.” So outrageously demonic were these attacks that a special commission was formed to investigate the incident, headed by Yitzhak Kahan, president of Israel’s Supreme Court. Siding with Sharon, they whitewashed his crime by saying he was only “indirectly” responsible for the massacre because he “hired” the Phalange militia who did the actual killing. The United Nations General Assembly, although very cautious about criticizing Israel, stated that the attacks on Sabra and Shatilla were “acts of genocide.”
Hence, knowing as we do Sharon’s notorious history in dealing with the Gaza Strip, the impetus to pull out had to have come from great pressure put on him by the United States and Britian. The most likely reason is that both countries simply do not want another suicide bomb exploding in a crowded subway, the latest such explosion occurring in London a couple of months ago. Evidence is already pouring in that both the Oklahoma City bombing and the downing of TWA flight 800 were masterminded by former Iraqi soldiers who had already settled in the United States under the aegis of the Clinton administration. McVeigh and Nichols are said to have been commandeered by these middle-eastern agents (Evening Standard, London, 10-21-02). So clear is the evidence that Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch has filed suit in U.S. district court against the Republic of Iraq on behalf of Oklahoma City victims. News of these things is systematically being kept from the American public, probably for fear of admitting to us how deeply entrenched the terrorists are on our soil (See Dr. Dennis Cuddy’s meticulously documented book: Cover-Up: Government Spin or Truth, 2003). In any case, since 1980 it has been evident beyond reasonable doubt that when the U.S. and Israel stop the incursion into Arab territory, the suicide bombings cease. In his article “Dying to Win: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” Robert Pape made a thorough study of the issue (as cited in The American Conservative, 7-18-05). He found that the motivation of the terrorist attacks is not “Islamofacism” (the favorite excuse of the Neo-cons) but…
…to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide terrorist campaign – over 95% of all incidents – has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
Pape then shows the statistics to prove the case. Prior to the Gulf War…
Iraq never had a suicide attack in its history. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly, with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year since the U.S. invasion, suicide terrorism has doubled….Far from making us safer against terrorism, the operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorists and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life….[when we] withdraw from the homeland of the terrorists, they often stop – and stop on a dime.
As Pat Buchanan has noted of Pape’s discovery: “Pape is saying that President Bush has got is backward: The Iraq war is not eliminating terrorism, it is creating terrorists” (“Why Are They Killing Us,” The Wanderer, 7-21-05). In addition to the U.S. invasions, the Oslo Peace accord that Israel signed in 1993 was supposed to have disallowed Israel from establishing any new settlements, but since that time over 250 settlements have been created, many in the Gaza Strip, while at the same time thousands of Palestinian homes have been destroyed in the region. The recipe is simple. The Arabs and the Muslims don’t want our “democracy” our capitalism our imperialism, our western decadence, and they certainly don’t want us to steal their oil or their land. As long as we ignore this recipe, they will fight to the death to stop us. They only way to win is to totally wipe them out, which, unfortunately, is on the minds of some of these war-lord Neo-cons in Washington.
In order to accomplish their imperialistic fantasy, the Neo-cons are desperately trying to get Catholics on their side, since we seem to be their biggest opponent. In the latest issue of New Oxford Review, editor Dale Vree reveals that, when he started his magazine he was…
…contacted by a neo-con foundation – right out of the blue. The foundation wanted to give us money – “free” money. A fellow flew out from the east coast and asked me to meet him for drinks in a San Francisco restaurant – on him. He told me he would fund us regularly – if we would support corporate capitalism and if we would support a militaristic foreign policy.
So there you have it. They are trying to bribe us with their money coffers. Incidentally, Vree also adds that the Catholic magazines Crisis and First Things were also approached by these neo-con capitalists with the same offer. Not surprisingly, Deal Hudson and Fr. Richard Neuhaus, both accepted. The culprits in Neuhaus’ case were Norman Podheretz and his wife Midge Decter, which in exchange for giving him Jewish financial backing, required him to support the Zionist/Neo-con agenda. As we saw in our last article, Neuhaus has gladly capitulated for the last 15 years. The latest issue of First Things has an article with the title: “How to Think about Zionism,” advancing the ludicrous argument that since the ancient Jews didn’t read past the Pentateuch, then as far as today’s Israelis are concerned, the Promised Land was never received from God and thus have the right to possess it now. Incidentally, records show that since 1990, First Things has received a whopping $8,217,500 from these Neo-con foundations.
Back to Ariel Sharon. For all Sharon’s aggressiveness, history shows that he was merely following the legacy of his predecessors. Previously we noted David ben Gurion’s opening speech to the Knesset in 1948 in which, under a thunderous round of applause, he boasted that it was Israel’s intent to acquire, by military force or clandestine operations, the Solomonic borders of the 10th century BC, a vast land grab that extends to the Euphrates river, the Sinai peninsula and about half of Saudi Arabia. But ben Gurion’s sights were set not only on geographical treasures, but also for Israel to be the supreme religious-political beacon of the world. In the January 16, 1962 issue of Look magazine, ben Gurion is quoted:
All continents will become unified in a world alliance, at whose disposal will be an international police force. All armies will be abolished, and there will be no more war. In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a shrine of the prophets to serve the federated union of all continents. This will be the seat of the Supreme Court of mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.
Even Jewish authors recognize the global designs and ruthless tactics of the Israeli government since 1948. In the book The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians by Moshe Lieberman, he recounts some of the secret and not-so-secret Israeli incursions and clandestine activity. Here is a short list of them:
On July 2, 1946, 33-year old Menachem Begin organized the bombing of the King David Hotel in which 91 people died. The purpose of the attack was to convince the British to leave Palestine so that Israel could take over.
On April 9, 1948, Begin, with the Irgun assassination gang, led a massacre of 260 Arab civilians at Deir Yassin.
On Sept 17, 1948, 33 year old Yitzhak Shamir and his Stern gang assassinated Swedish peace mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte.
On October 14, 1953, 25-year old Ariel Sharon ordered an attack on the Palestinian settlement, Qibya, destroying 42 homes and 60 civilians.
On July 14, 1954, the Israeli Army intelligence squad known then by the name of Modin, under Prime Minister Moshe Sharett, firebombed a civilian post office in Egypt.
In 1956, the Israeli army under David Ben-Gurion attacked the settlement Kafr Qasim and committed 47 cold-blooded murders.
In 1966, the same army under prime minister Levi Eshkol attacked the settlement village of Sammu and killed 18 people and wounded 100.
In 1967, just prior to the six-day war, the Israeli air force under Levi Eshkol, made an unprovoked attack against the USS Liberty killing 34 soldiers and wounding 170, destroying the ship’s radio towers and lifeboats in hopes that there would be no survivors.
In 1969, the same army bombed a civilian school building named Bahdr al Baker killing 75 and wounding 100 innocent children.
In March 1970, under Golda Meir, the Israeli army invaded Lebanon killing scores of innocent civilians.
On Sept. 8, 1972, the same army arbitrarily decided to bomb Syrian and Lebanese civilians killing hundreds of innocent people.
In 1974, the same army under Yitzhak Rabin attacked civilian aircraft and desecrated Christian shrines including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and stole the diamond crown of the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
From 1975 to 1980, the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, conducted a bloody campaign of murder against Palestinian scientists, journalists and other important people.
In October 1982, the same Mossad bombed the houses, offices and cars of three legitimately elected mayors of the West Bank cities, Nablus, Ramallah and Al Beireh.
In February 1989 Yitzhak Shamir bombed the Beka Valley killing 15 children and an unspecified number of their parents.
On April 14, 1989, the Israeli police and armed Jewish settlers attacked a disarmed Palestinian village, Nahalin, killing 8 and wounding 50.
Through March 6-16, 2002, the Israeli army slaughtered over 200 Palestinians.
On March 30, 2002, Sharon’s army arbitrarily executed five Palestinian bank guards.
On April 8, 2002, Sharon’s army bombed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
The next day, April 9, the same army massacred Palestinian civilians living in Jenin, which, incidentally, is the date of the Israeli holiday, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Yet the Israelis wonder why the Arab/Moslem world has no love loss for them. Unfortunately, the world has been trained by the Anti-Defamation League to put the whole blame on the Muslim “terrorists,” but Israel has shown over and over again that they are just as terror-minded as their Arab counterparts. As Harry Truman once said:
“The Jews have no sense of proportion, nor do they have any judgment on world affairs. The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as Displaced Persons, as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power – physical, financial or political – neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.” (President Harry S. Truman, unpublished diary entry of July 21, 1947, Washington Post, July 11, 2003, cited by Michael A. Hoffman II).
H. G. Wells once remarked: “There is room for some very serious research into the question why anti-Semitism emerges in every country the Jews reside in” (The Controversy of Zion, G. Wheatcroft, 1996, p. 340). Benjamin Ginsberg, Jewish author of The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State, asks the same question: “Why is it that during so many different times and in so many different places, Jews have achieved enormous status, wealth and power only to be cast down, driven out – or worse?” (1993, p. ix). His answer is:
Jews frequently sought the protection of the state. For their own purposes, rulers often were happy to accommodate the Jews in exchange for the services that the latter could provide…As a result of this relationship…Jews sometimes achieved great power. Their relationship with the state, however, also exposed Jews to new hatred and antagonisms. For the Jews, under some circumstances, the embrace of the state proved to be fatal. These considerations…are also central to understanding the past – and potential future – of Jews in America.
To make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors…Indeed, Jews are extremely successful outsiders who sometimes have the temerity to rub it in (The Fatal Embrace, p. ix, as cited in Piper’s The New Jerusalem).
In light of Ginsberg’s statement, we find that the history of the Jewish people is one continuing saga of reinvention and revolution. After their first decimation in 70 AD under the hands of the Roman Titus, the remaining Jews continued to harbor thoughts of Messianism, which led to further revolts against the Romans. About 60 years later, Simon bar Kokhba, who had amassed an army of 400,000 Jewish troops and was deemed as Israel’s prophesied “messiah,” became quite a success when he defeated many of the Roman legions assigned to the area. These soldiers, who had bitten off one of their fingers to show their allegiance to Bar Kokhba, were also known to eat the flesh of their defeated foes. But finally the Roman general Hadrian was simply too much for the Jews. After cutting off their food supply by way of the sea, he eventually razed Jerusalem to the ground in 135 AD. Having been ousted for the final time from Jerusalem, many of the remaining Jews migrated to Babylon under the leadership of the Pharisees and remained there for the next 1000 years. There the Pharisees created the Babylonian Talmud, which introduced new laws and customs for the Jews. A semitic proverb was soon coined: ‘what the Torah forbids, the Talmud permits.’ Needless to say, the Talmud was thoroughly anti-Christian, both theologically and morally. The original versions (e.g., the Soncino edition) state that Christ is in hell being punished in boiling excrement (Gitten 56a-57a); that he was “Balaam” and a “false prophet,” that Mary “played the harlot with carpenters” (Gitten 51a; Sanhedrin 106b); and that Jesus was a bastard born of from adultery (Kallah 51a). Gentiles were considered “non-human” and “animals” (Sanhedrin 74b, Yebamoth 98a), and “the best of them should be killed” (Abhodah Zarah 26b). (See Michael A. Hoffman II’s Judaism’s Strange Gods).
After fomenting revolution in Babylon, the Jews were forced to leave. Some of them migrated to Khazaria in southern Russia and converted the king to Judaism. But the Monguls eventually drove the Jews out of Khazaria and so they began to settle in eastern Europe, mainly Poland, and came to be known as Ashkenazi Jews. The Sephardic Jews, which make up the other 20% of Jewry, settled in western Europe. These bloodlines still exist today. For example, Yitshak Shamir and Menachem Begin are Ashkanazi; while Shimon Peres is Sephardic.
While in Europe the Jews became more prominent in society, especially in banking and other financial matters. At this time the religious Jews created the Kabbalah and the Zohar. Full of mysticism and the occult, they were the Jewish version of the Gnostic heresy of the first centuries AD. The Kabbalah taught that God is an unconscious being and unknowable by the world, but that he communicates with the Jews through levels of “sepharim.” It teaches that the Jews would one day rule the world, while the Zohar teaches that non-Jews do not have souls and therefore are not human; and that “redemption will not be complete until Amalek will be exterminated” (Bereshith 47a; 25b, Encyclopedia Judaica, Keter Publishing, 1971). (NB: “Amalekites” is the term modern day Israelis often give to their Arab neighbors). The Jewish philosopher, Moses Mimonides, attempted to curb such anti-social behavior by mixing Greek philosophy and Jewish tradition, but he was later excommunicated by his own people. Eventually, these new politico-religious twists in Jewish thinking forced popes Boniface VIII and Eugene IV to clamp down hard, declaring in infallible decrees that only through the Catholic Church could one receive salvation, and that “Jews and heretics” were destined for eternal damnation unless they remained in the bosom of the Church.
By the 1700’s the Jews were well entrenched in Europe and began to see themselves as the movers and shakers of world politics, finance and religion. Moses Mendelssohn’s (d. 1786) writings understand the Jews as the “God-given reformers of society.” The attempt to dominate society was demonstrated no better than when the Jews, under influence of such figures as Moses Hess and Karl Marx (famous for the Communist Manifesto which promotes Hegel’s “master-slave” philosophy), joined the Bolsheviks in Russia in order to topple the Christian Czar, a murder plotted by Jewish lieutenants Jacob Sverdlov and Jacob Yurovsky. On October 1, 1929, Jewish World magazine admitted the influx: “…there is much in the fact of Bolshevism itself, in the fact that so many Jews are Bolshevists, in the fact that the ideals of Bolshevism at many points are consonant with the finest teachings of Judaism…” Rabbi J. L. Magnes stated: “Revolutionaries, Socialists, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks… whatever name one assigns to them, all are Jews, and one finds them as the chiefs or the workers in all revolutionary parties” (“Lenin’s Willing Executioners,” Culture Wars, 9-02, p. 32). According to a U.S. State Dept. report published in 1931, Jewish bankers in the United States, England and Germany (e.g., the Rothschilds, Max Warburg, Jacob Schiff, Kuhn-Loeb, et al) financed the Bolshevik revolution since they knew that most of the Bolsheviks were Jewish.
Vladimir Lenin, part Jewish from his mother’s side, chose officers that were predominately Jewish. His Jewish lieutenants included Leon Trotsky (originally Lev Davidovich Bronstein) and Lazar Kagonovich, both of whom were responsible for the unmitigated slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Christians in Russia, which they called “insects.” The Black Marias would come in the night and take families out of their homes to board cattle cars headed for the Gulag. They raped the woman and girls and sodomized the men and boys while other children were sacrificed – all perhaps part of a Kabbalistic/Illuminati ritual for world dominance. The international RNS wire service reported that thousands of clergy were tortured and crucified during the 60 years of communist rule. Tens of thousands of churches were destroyed in the same period. In fact, the concentration camps and genocide instigated by the Jewish communists in Russia against Christians and other groups dwarf those against the Jews in Nazi Germany. Hitler was merely modeling what was already practiced in Russia, a fact ignored by such Jewish authors as Daniel Goldhagen. Contrasted to the dozens of concentration camps in Hilter’s regime, the Russian Jews had thousands of such camps (T. Marrs, “Concentration Camps in America,” 2002), but evidence of these camps have been systematically destroyed and their existence denied by the Jewish controlled media in Russia and the United States (See M. Specter, “Cold Reminder,” N. Y. Times, Dec 3, 1994; and prize-winning Jewish reporter, rabbi Jonathan Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge against Germans in 1945, March 1995). In fact, Sir Eyre Crowe stated: “What may appear to be outrages against the Jews, may be – in the eyes of the Russians – retaliation against the horrors committed by the Bolsheviks who were organized and directed by the Jews” (“Lenin’s Willing Executioners: Jews and Bolshevism,” Culture Wars, 9-02, p. 20).
The list goes on and on. Even the Encyclopedia Judaica says under the category “Communism”: “The Communist movement and ideology played an important part in Jewish life, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s, and during and after World War II.” As early as 1918 the western powers had come to realize that Communism was run almost entirely by atheistic Jews. 75% of all Russian commissars were Jewish. This is precisely why Pope Pius XII later stated that the Soviet Republic was run by Russian Jews (letter to Cardinal Gasparri), which, not coincidentally, earned him the label “anti-Semite” from John Cornwall in Hitler’s Pope, but which was later discovered to be the result of Cornwall’s twisted translation of Pius XII’s Italian language (“Lenin’s Willing Executioners,” Culture Wars, 9-02, pp. 22-27).
Astute Catholics who know their history can connect the dots rather easily. It was precisely at this time that Our Lady appeared to Sr. Lucia (1917, 1929, 1946) and spoke of the evils of Russia that would spread to the world unless the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was performed. Now we know why. The leadership in Russia was comprised mainly of atheistic, anti-Christian, communist Jews who had a lot of money and power behind them. The Jews had already dethroned the Christian Czar who had ruled in the Romanov dynasty for nearly five centuries, and more ominous threats were on the horizon, indeed, the rest of the world was in their crosshairs. Curiously, Our Lady never mentioned a word about Germany.
Few of these events passed by those who were informed, however. Winston Churchill stated in a speech in 1920:
“There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism…by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews. It is certainly a very great one…It may well be that this same astounding race may at the present time be in the actual process of producing another system of morals and philosophy as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which if not arrested, would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity had rendered possible. It would almost seem as if the gospel of Christ and the gospel of the Antichrist were destined to originate among the same people” (Illustrated Sunday Herald, London, Feb. 18, 1920, cited in “The Other Israel” by T. Pike).
As we have documented earlier, our Catholic saints and doctors have said the same thing. The 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia predicts that the anti-Christ will come from Jewry. The 1936 Catholic Encyclopedia followed this by predicting that a Temple would be built for him in Jerusalem:
“Many of the Fathers believe that Antichrist will be of Jewish extraction, of the tribe of Dan, will be circumcised, will rebuild Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple, in which he will set himself up as God. Likewise, he is to begin his work of seduction among the Jews who will accept him as the Messiah. Thus St. Irenaeus (Adversus Haereses, v. 30, PG VII, 1206) says of Antichrist: ‘Jeremias does not merely point out his sudden coming, but he even indicates the tribe from which he shall come, where he says: We shall hear the voice of his swift horses from Dan; he shall come and devour the earth’ [Jr 8:16].
Not only do the Fathers have much to say on these eventualities, the medievals were just as informed. St. Anselm, in his Details Concerning the Antichrist, will suffice for an example:
“Towards the end of the world Antichrist will draw the hearts of the Jews to him by his great generosity and sympathetic attitude so much so that they will praise him as a demi-god;”....“For, the Temple which Solomon built having been destroyed, in its place he [Antichrist] shall restore it, he shall circumcise himself, and he shall give forth the lie that he is the son of the omnipotent God.”
Even after Joseph Stalin’s purges, Jews remained in Russia in large numbers. Jonathan Brent’s book Stalin’s Last Crime documents that, as Stalin began to move against the Zionists in Russia, he was eventually murdered, Kaganovich’s followers being the prime suspects. Nikita Kruschev complained in 1956 that upwards of 50% of his government officials and staff were Jewish, and obviously communists. Around this time also, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also had a Jewish ancestry from both his mother and father (which was made public by the Daily Citizen of Tuscon of Feb 29, 1934; the Detroit Jewish Chronicle in 1935; the New York Times of March 14, 1935; The Revelator of Wichita of Oct. 18, 1936), brought in a large number of Jewish socialists into his administration. The Encyclopedia Judaica states that FDR’s liberal-socialist policies “endeared him to the Jewish community which shared with him an overriding commitment to the welfare state.” In 1949, of the 11 members of the Communist politburo who were convicted of espionage, 8 were Jews. In 1951, of 21 arrested for communism, 14 were Jewish. The influx of Jewish communists and socialists into American government eventually fomented the McCarthy era, but little success was made in rooting them out. Richard Nixon once said in 1971: “The only two non-Jews in the communist conspiracy were Chambers and Hiss…Every other one was a Jew and it raised hell with us” (White House tape released by the National Archives in 1999; cited in N.Y. Times, Oct 7, 1999, and Newsweek, Oct 18, 1999, p. 30, cited by Michael A. Hoffman II). Vladimir Putin is now dealing with the remaining Zionists in Russia, which comprises a group of Jewish billionaires known as “the Oligarchs” who are trying to maintain their control over the Russian economy and press.
After World War II, many Jews migrated to America, making Jewry in the United States twice that of Europe. Today, of 14.4 million Jews worldwide, 40% live in the United States, while another 40% live in Israel. As some have discovered, America has become the “New Jerusalem” for the Jews (M. Piper, The New Jerusalem, 2004). In the period of 1950-1980, before the Reagan era, most liberal and communist Jews were found on the left side of the political spectrum. Up until the 1980s, 50% of the Democratic funding came from Jewish gifts; and the Jews had a lot of money to give. Although the Jews comprise less than 3% of the U.S. population, they possess over 50% of its billionaires (B. Ginsburg, The Fatal Embrace, p. 1).
Having virtual control of the U.S. media, the Jews spread their philosophy far and wide. The three major television networks, which started to promote anti-Christian morality beginning around the late 1960s, were begun by Jews (NBC: David Sarnoff; ABC: Leonard Goldenson; CBS: William Paley). Jews own the four largest Hollywood film studios. The Encyclopedia Judaica, under “Motion Pictures,” says that, with the exception of United Artists, “all the large Hollywood companies were founded and controlled by Jews.” The largest of these is MCA, known in the industry as “The Octopus,” which is run by Lou Wasserman, long recognized as the “king of Hollywood.” According to author Neal Gabler, “the Jews invented Hollywood” in order to promote their culture and their dominance over society (An Empire of Their Own, 1988).
The decadent moral philosophy of these Hollywood moguls has been apparent for quite some time. The1983 Lichter-Rothman poll found that of all media executives, 97% were for abortion; 80% said homosexuality was not immoral and 86% favored homosexual teachers; and 57% said adultery was not immoral. A whopping 60% of these executives were “raised in the Jewish religion,” out of an American Jewish population of less than 3%. If you’ve ever wondered why our televisions and movie houses are just bursting with sexual immorality and violence, this is it. Many of these shows now openly promote the homosexual lifestyle, as well as give us a steady diet of soft and not-so-soft pornography. In fact, pornography has become the favored social debilitator. There are few quicker way to bring a society down from the inside. Once obsessed with pornography, the addict has little time for anything else. The Israeli army is noted for dumping reams of pornographic material into Palestinian settlements, which, of course, only proves to the Muslims that Israel has imbibed western decadence.
A telltale sign in the movie industry of the shift in mores was demonstrated no better than in the Walt Disney corporation. Founder Walter Disney was well-known in the 50s and 60s for wholesome family entertainment. Interestingly enough, Walt had a policy of not hiring Jewish people. Once Walt died, things began to change. Eventually, Jewish entrepreneur Michael Eisner got control of the Disney enterprise and Harvey Weinstein grabbed its subsidiary, Miramax. Soon, Disney studios were turning out sex and violence like all the other studios. The Jewish senior editor of The New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook, finally wrote to Eisner warning him that, “Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can’t possibly miss the message – now Disney’s message – that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself” (“Skin and Discourse,” Culture Wars, 12-03, p. 9). Fortunately, the Disney board eventually forced Eisner out, but not before Easterbrook retracted his criticism of Eisner so that he could pounce on the “violence” depicted in The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson.
Not coincidentally, much of the new frontier in Hollywood’s sexual freedom was begun in the late 1960s by Jewish writer Philip Roth. His book Portnoy’s Complaint (Random House, 1969), which is a 270-page monologue of the main character on a psychiatrist’s couch, was given a glowing Life magazine review, which stated: “…in this 5729th year since the creation of the world, they will hail the birth of a new American hero, Alexander Portnoy…an American masterwork in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn” (2-7-69). In the catharsis promoted by his Freudian-like shrink, Portnoy eventually divests himself of all the moral restraints to which his traditional Jewish religion had bound him, especially those regarding sex, while at the same time Portnoy took his belligerent pot shots at Christianity. He tells his shrink that the “dumb goyim really believe that Christ rose from the dead,” and that a relationship with Gentile women was like “having your Goy and Eating One Too.” As E. Michael Jones reads it:
“Portnoy ushered in the Golden Age of Jewish humor and cultural subversion. The age began in 1965 when the Jews wrested cultural control of the movies from the Catholics by releasing The Pawnbroker (a movie not coincidentally about a Holocaust survivor). Portnoy’s Complaint followed four years later. Four years after that…Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, the female version of Portnoy, and four years after that, in 1977, Woody Allen did Annie Hall, the real film version of Roth’s book. Woody Allen [formerly Allan Konigsberg], more than anyone else, symbolizes the Jewish ‘reshaping’ of American culture. Shortly after the release of Annie Hall, Time magazine [Jewish owned] eulogized Allen as an American Genius (“Mock Messiah: Jewish Humor and Cultural Subversion,” Culture Wars, 1-04, p. 33).
Often the Zionist agenda of Hollywood’s elite subtly but effectively misdirects the public. Stephen Speilberg is one such example. While inoculating movie-goers with fantasy films such as Jurassic Park, E. T., Jaws and War of the Worlds, at the same time Spielberg promotes his own political sympathies, such as the four-hour long Shindler’s List, which, among other things, depicts scenes of Jewish people jammed in cattle cars. Spielberg would never consider making a film of his ancestors from Russia packing millions of Christians and Muslims in the same cattle cars which were sent by Jewish communists to the Gulag, where most were raped, tortured and killed. The “Holocaust” is all we are allowed to see by the Jewish-controlled media. It is drummed into our heads year after year. As E. Michael Jones has noted:
The Holocaust, now the paradigm of Jewish suffering, has long ceased to be a piece of history, and is now treated by religious and secular Jews alike, as a piece of theology – a sacred text almost – and therefore beyond scrutiny….one may question the Armenian genocide; one may freely discuss the Slave Trade, one can say that…the moon is but a piece of green cheese floating in space, but one may not question the Jewish holocaust. Why? Because, like the rest of the Jewish history of suffering, the Holocaust underpins the narrative of Jewish innocence which is used to bewilder and befuddle any attempt to see and to comprehend Jewish power and responsibility in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere in the world (“Fear of the Jews,” Paul Eisen, Culture Wars, 1-05, pp. 12, 17).
Of course, anyone who tries to point out these and many other problematic issues stemming from the Jewish stranglehold over television and movies will be confronted with the Jewish stranglehold over America’s newspapers that will brand the accuser with the stigma of being “anti-Semitic.” The two most influential newspapers in the world, the New York Times and Washington Post, which are owned by Jews (the Sulzberger family and the Meyer-Graham family), make a practice of enforcing the threat. One exception to the rule is columnist Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. He is unabashedly critical of Ariel Sharon and Zionism, but he says, “If I weren’t a Jew, I might be called an anti-Semite.” According to Cohen, there is a difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, the former of which is “hating Jews on account of supposedly inherent characteristics” (Culture Wars, 9-02, p. 20). Paul Eisen illustrates the difference:
This is the problem with Zionism. It expresses Jewish identity but also empowers it. It tells Jews (and many others too) that Jews can do what Jews have always dreamed of doing. It takes the perfectly acceptable religious feelings of Jews, or if you prefer, the perfectly harmless delusions of Jews, and tries to turn them into a terrible reality. Jewish notions of specialness, choseness and even supremacism, are fine for a small wandering people, but, when they are empowered with a state, and army, and F-16s they become a concern for us all. Zionism, as Jewish empowerment in statehood, changes everything…It is a state that both believes, and uses as justification for its own aggression, the notion that its very survival is always at stake, so anything is justified to ensure that survival. Israel is a state that manifestly believes that the rules of both law and humanity, applicable to all other states, do not apply to it (“Fear of the Jews,” ibid., 1-05, p.12).
Jewish critics such as the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen are far outnumbered, however. The number of pro-Israel/pro-Zionist media outlets in America is staggering. The Sulzbergers also own the NY Times News Service, which provides already-written columns to 650 newspaper and magazine customers across the nation, in addition to owning the Boston Globe, the Santa Barbara News-Press and a half-dozen other newspapers, as well as eight radio stations nationwide. In addition to the Washington Post, Meyer-Graham owns Newsweek, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles/Washington Post News Service, three other newspapers and six radio stations across the U.S. The $7 billion Jewish dynasty of Edgar Bronfman, whose father Sam made his millions in liquor-smuggling during Prohibition, owns AOL-Time Warner, which includes America On-Line, Time magazine, Warner Brothers, HBO, CNN and Paramount Pictures. Jewish executive Jeff Bezos runs AOL, while the Jewish group of Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Andreas Bechtolsheim own the Internet phenomenon, Google. Bronfman’s Seagrams company in Canada (alcohol manufacturers) owns Universal Studios. Incidentally, Edgar Bronfman is also the head of the World Jewish Congress, one of the most powerful Zionist groups in the world.
We also know through the exhaustive effort of Michael Collins Piper’s new 738-page book, Final Judgment, how Bronfman is implicated in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The story begins when Kennedy refused to capitulate to Israel’s demand for nuclear weapons, and you can probably guess the rest of the story. Now, of course, everything is different. Sean McDade of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assigned to the infamous PROMIS case, concluded that: “The Israelis may now possess all the nuclear secrets of the United States.” George Tenet, director of the CIA, adds: “Pollard stole every worthwhile intelligence secret we had. The American public just doesn’t know the full extent of what he did.” As of this day, Israel is the only country “allowed” to have nuclear weapons, and they possess four nuclear facilities and over 200 nuclear warheads, thanks to the BBC’s detailed investigation.
Other high-profile newspapers also have Jewish owners bent on pro-Israel politics. US News and World Report and The New York Daily News are owned by Mortimer Zuckerman. Commentary is owned by the American Jewish Committee, with editor Norman Podheretz who, as we noted earlier, also financed Fr. Richard Neuhouse’s First Things so that it would print pro-Zionist articles. The New Republic is owned by Martin Peretz, et al. The New York Post and the Weekly Standard are owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is part Jewish. Jewish neo-con, Bill Kristol, is the editor of the Weekly Standard. Some are not owned by Jews but are edited by them. The Wall Street Journal is edited by Peter Kann. Even William F. Buckley, editor of National Review, is part Jewish, according to Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune (Piper, The New Jerusalem, pp. 121-122; NB: The Chicago Tribune has been accused of “anti-Semitism” since it has been critical of Israel). Perhaps we now know another reason why William Buckley fired Joe Sobran in 1993 after twenty years of service. Sobran wrote one article criticizing Israel as an “albatross for the U.S.,” and was immediately accused of “anti-Semitism” by Buckley’s friend, Norman Podheretz. That was enough for Buckley, but not before he added insult to injury. Sobran writes:
When he fired me, Bill…ascribed it to ‘an incapacitation moral and perhaps medical.’ That was the typical Buckley touch…to insinuate that they have become a little, you know, unbalanced. He himself, of course, represents the golden mean….Bill is always on stage: always acting, posing, making empty gestures. He isn’t concerned about their truth or coherence. That’s why he can talk facilely about prayer while he’s writing for Playboy and Penthouse (How I Was Fired by Bill Buckley, 2004, p. 7).
There are many others. The Newhouse family, which has assets of $7 billion and is known as the “second wealthiest Jewish American family” (S. Birmingham, The Rest of Us, 1984), has a stranglehold on 26 newspapers in 22 cities over 9 states. (Sam Newhouse is also implicated in covering up the truth about Kennedy’s assassination). Newhouse also owns such prestigious magazines as Parade, Allure, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Mademoiselle and 7 others. Sumner Redstone (formerly “Rothstein”) owns Viacom, a huge global media arm controlling Paramount Studios, Blockbuster Video, Simon and Schuster, Nickelodean and MTV. Prior to this Redstone owned Columbia Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox. Last but not least is Walter Annenberg who owns TV Guide. Needless to say, these media outlets are constantly promoting homosexuality, abortion, pornography, violence and many other forms of anti-social behavior, including political opinions that are slanted against Christianity. Even the pro-Israel and liberal-minded Catholic, Eugene Fisher, who is the director of Catholic-Jewish relations at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated: “The Jewish community is a very literate community, and it has a lot to say. And if you can shape opinion, you can shape events” (J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment, 1996, p. 280). As Piper notes in regard to television news broadcasts: “The greatest concentration of Jews, however, is at the producer level – and it is the producers who decide which stories will go on the air, and how long, and in what order they will run” (The New Jerusalem, p. 119). This is true not only for NBC, ABC and CBS but also for “60 Minutes” and “20/20.”
The leading feminists of the women’s liberation movement who made their impact in print and visual media (an influence that has made almost a total wreck of the American family in addition to promoting abortion on demand), was led by Jewish females (e.g., Gloria Steinhem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Erica Jong). Today we get deviant sexual advice from such Jewish matrons as Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and questionable behavioral advice from Dr. Laura Schlesinger, Ann Landers (formerly Esther Friedman Lederer) and her sister Abigail van Buren (Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips). Helping the feminists were such television producers as Norman Lear, whose presentation of “Archie Bunker” portrayed white males as bigoted, arrogant know-it-alls who enslaved their wives.
Then there are organizations such as the ACLU which, says Jewish author Benjamin Ginsburg, is “an organization whose leadership and membership are predominately Jewish.” As we all know, it was the ACLU that recently obtained a federal court order banning prayer in the schools and nativity scenes in parks and public buildings, among a myriad of other anti-Christian enactments in its long notorious history. Alongside the ACLU are the Jewish political action committees, whose main purpose is to promote the election of pro-Jewish/pro-Zionist candidates. There are over 90 of these Jewish political groups sprawled out over the United States, and many are hid under innocuous names such as “San Franciscans for Good Government” or “Religion and Tolerance Committee.” The Jewish AIPAC lobby is probably the strongest in America.
In regards to the Jewish agenda, there is no more powerful organization than the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) of B’nai B’rith. Although many people think of the latter as a philanthropic organization, in reality the ADL is one of the most ruthless and invasive organizations in existence. Their sole purpose is to create laws to force the public to accept the Zionist cause and the state of Israel without allowing so much as a word of criticism. As the ADL itself has stated: “Anti-Jewish statements are clear evidence of anti-Semitism.” To enforce its program of censorship, the ADL has 50 offices across the United States that report to the main office in New York where the decision is made to take action. Unbeknownst to most, the ADL keeps dossiers on countless American citizens whom it regards as potential threats to the welfare of Jews and Israel, which is against U.S. law. So vast and meticulous is its operation throughout the world that decades ago senator Jack Tenney opined that “the CIA and FBI are like tinkertoys compared to the ADL.”
B’ne B’rith originated in 1842, ostensibly for Jewish humanitarian reasons. In 1913, the spelling changed to B’nai B’rith and it became an organization whose main purpose was to thwart anti-Semitism. By the mid-twentieth century, the ADL arm of B’nai B’rith had grown so large that Congressman John Rarick was compelled to give critical testimony before Congress on Dec 6, 1971. Here are his sobering words:
The world’s largest spy network, the ADL…is either too powerful to be curbed or too well embedded to be mentioned or to come under public scrutiny. What is the ADL? It is a private investigative organization engaged in spying and preparing secret dossiers and reports which it uses to suppress free speech and discussion and to influence public thought and sentiment on an unsuspecting citizenry.
Rarick further comments that the ADL is a “monstrous Gestapo of the establishment,” whose purpose is the “use of its intelligence network as a private super-pressure [organization],” and that it engages in “coerced cooperation of newspapers and other media of communication…” Quoting the words of senator Jack Tenney of California, Rarick continued:
“The ADL has become the world’s most powerful Gestapo; the brain center of a vast spy network and the intelligence unit of a myriad of Jewish organizations. Their secret agents spy on American citizens. Extensive files and dossiers are complied on those whom they dislike…Throughout their multitudinous controls of the media of communication, they are capable of destroying reputations and silencing all rebuttal.”
“We are beginning to appreciate its vast spy network sprawling across the nation and throughout the world. Our imagination is staggered by its apparent control of the avenues of communication.”
In effect, the ADL is the intelligence arm of the Israeli Mossad. And because the ADL is an unregistered foreign organization spying on American citizens and creating files on them (something even the FBI cannot do to American citizens), it is in violation of the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s “Foreign Registration Act of 1938,” in that it is an illegal agent of the state of Israel. Of course, the Mossad has been spying on American citizens for quite some time. Just one example will suffice. As of this date,
Amdocs Limited, and Israel-based, government-subsidized telecommunications company which contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America…is in the unique position of having legal real-time access to nearly every telephone in the country. ‘It is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it’ [quoting Carl Cameron, Fox News correspondent]. The system also has the potential to generate personal information from every household and customer with a phone – in short, virtually every person in the country…Sources told Fox that in 1999, the NSA issued a ‘Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information report’ warning that Israel was acquiring the call records (“Little Brother is Watching,” Culture Wars, Marlene Maloney, 2-04, p. 30).
Not only has the ADL toppled a huge number of politicians running for office who have been on its hit list, its main goal is to enact “hate crimes laws” that not only prosecute criminal activity motivated by prejudice, but to prosecute what it calls “hate speech,” that is, anything said that is critical of identifiable groups based on race, sexual orientation, etc. This has already been enacted in Canada, and the B’nai B’rith in Canada has a 25-year legal paper trail beginning in 1971 showing itself to be the premier lobbyist for the law’s passage in the Canadian Parliament. The ADL is now working feverishly for an identical law to pass in the United States. They almost succeeded in 2000 when the “Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act,” which would have made it a federal crime to make critical remarks of various identifiable groups, was narrowly defeated in Congress. The forerunner of the Enhancement Act was the “Hate Crimes Statistics Act,” which passed Congress in 1990, and which allowed the federal government to keep information in data banks of those who commit crimes with “hate” as a motivation; followed by the “Hate Crimes Act, S.622,” passed in 1999, which made it a felony to commit a crime motivated by “hate.” Amazingly enough, this is the same kind of legal paper trail that began in Canada and which ended up curbing all speech against identifiable groups. Such a law in the United States would make it illegal, for example, to denounce the homosexuality promoted by Dignity USA; or to denounce the abortion agenda promoted by Planned Parenthood, or the pornography of Hugh Hefner and Larry Flint. In essence, if such “hate speech” laws are enacted the Christian Gospel will be technically illegal to preach, for it holds an uncompromised stand against all of the above immoral behavior.
As the ADL would have it, writing or speaking against the Jewish religion or Israel’s politics will be considered “anti-Semitic,” and thus motivated by “hatred” of Jews. A good example of the ADL’s intent is evident in the vociferous reaction Abe Foxman, its president, registered against Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. If Foxman has his way, Christianity will not be allowed to preach “Christ crucified,” since that, in his mind, would tend to single out the Jews as a notorious race. Already there are prominent Jewish leaders, such as Micha Brumlik speaking at the Evangelical Academy in Germany, who have declared that the Gospel of St. John is an “embassy of hate” (German: “eine Botschaft des Hasses”). He concludes: “…the message that is supposed to lead the people by way of faith and the Son to the Father, is in reality a message of marginalization, fear, anxiety and hate” (March 1989, cited in “Is St. John an Anti-Semite?” Culture Wars, 6-04, p. 21).
As of this day, the ADL is already brainwashing politicians and police departments with its “education” on how to identify hate crimes, which is based, of course, on the ADL’s definition of a “hate crime.” As a reward for their cooperation, the ADL sponsors all-expense paid trips to Israel.
Suffice it to say, Jewish power in America is greater than at any time in its history. Norman Cantor in The Sacred Chain, states: “Jews in the four decades after 1940 came home in American society…to penetration of academia…to politics and government and controlling levels of media…Nothing in Jewish history equaled this degree of Jewish accession to power, wealth and prominence….The Morgans, the Rockefellers, the Harrimans, the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the titans of bygone eras, they have been superseded by the Jew…” (pp. 406, 407, 418, as cited in Piper’s The New Jerusalem).
As we can see, in contrast to the pullout from Gaza, we are faced with a Zionist machine that knows no bounds. With all of the above evidence about the Zionist force in America, Sharon was certainly correct in boasting to his Tel Aviv cabinet meeting on Oct 3, 2001: “I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about America. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it” (as reported by Israel Radio (Kol Yisrael)). Even Israeli citizens, like Elias Davidson, know the score:
As a Jew myself (but opposed to Zionism) I need no encouragement…to observe what should be obvious to the blatant eye: namely that Jews effectively rule US foreign policy and thus determine to a great extent the conduct of most countries…So it is with the proposition that Jews control the world. Surely they do not control every single action; surely it does not mean that every Jew participates in the ‘control.’ But for all practical purposes the proposition holds (“Skin and Discourse,” Culture Wars, 12-03, p. 10).
What is done is done. We now have to make the best of what we have. Let’s all hope and pray that the heightened conflict engendered by Jewish power does not someday result in an all-out nuclear free-for-all. Let’s hope by the grace of God that the winner-take-all philosophy now present in the Neo-con, Evangelical and Zionist agenda does not end up producing the worst carnage the world has ever known. In the meantime, my fellow Catholics, prepare yourselves and your children for a rough ride until the Daystar rises again.
Robert A. Sungenis, M.A., Ph.D. (cd)
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Where are the Christians?
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Posted: July 18, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.
When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert unleashed his navy and air force on Lebanon, accusing that tiny nation of an "act of war," the last pillar of Bush's Middle East policy collapsed.
First came capitulation on the Bush Doctrine, as Pyongyang and Tehran defied Bush's dictum: The world's worst regimes will not be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons. Then came suspension of the democracy crusade as Islamic militants exploited free elections to advance to power and office in Egypt, Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq and Iran.
Now, Israel's rampage against a defenseless Lebanon – smashing airport runways, fuel tanks, power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads and the occasional refugee convoy – has exposed Bush's folly in subcontracting U.S. policy out to Tel Aviv, thus making Israel the custodian of our reputation and interests in the Middle East.
The Lebanon that Israel, with Bush's blessing, is smashing up has a pro-American government, heretofore considered a shining example of his democracy crusade. Yet, asked in St. Petersburg if he would urge Israel to use restraint in its airstrikes, Bush sounded less like the leader of the Free World than some bellicose city councilman from Brooklyn Heights.
What Israel is up to was described by its army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, when he threatened to "turn back the clock in Lebanon 20 years."
Olmert seized upon Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers to unleash the IDF in a pre-planned attack to make the Lebanese people suffer until the Lebanese government disarms Hezbollah, a task the Israeli army could not accomplish in 18 years of occupation.
Israel is doing the same to the Palestinians. To punish these people for the crime of electing Hamas, Olmert imposed an economic blockade of Gaza and the West Bank and withheld the $50 million in monthly tax and customs receipts due the Palestinians.
Then, Israel instructed the United States to terminate all aid to the Palestinian Authority, though Bush himself had called for the elections and for the participation of Hamas. Our Crawford cowboy meekly complied.
The predictable result: Fatah and Hamas fell to fratricidal fighting, and Hamas militants began launching Qassam rockets over the fence from Gaza into Israel. Hamas then tunneled into Israel, killed two soldiers, captured one, took him back into Gaza and demanded a prisoner exchange.
Israel's response was to abduct half of the Palestinian cabinet and parliament and blow up a $50 million U.S.-insured power plant. That cut off electricity for half a million Palestinians. Their food spoiled, their water could not be purified, and their families sweltered in the summer heat of the Gaza desert. One family of seven was wiped out on a beach by what the IDF assures us was an errant artillery shell.
Let it be said: Israel has a right to defend herself, a right to counter-attack against Hezbollah and Hamas, a right to clean out bases from which Katyusha or Qassam rockets are being fired and a right to occupy land from which attacks are mounted on her people.
But what Israel is doing is imposing deliberate suffering on civilians, collective punishment on innocent people, to force them to do something they are powerless to do: disarm the gunmen among them. Such a policy violates international law and comports neither with our values nor our interests. It is un-American and un-Christian.
But where are the Christians? Why is Pope Benedict virtually alone among Christian leaders to have spoken out against what is being done to Lebanese Christians and Muslims?
When al-Qaida captured two U.S. soldiers and barbarically butchered them, the U.S. Army did not smash power plants across the Sunni Triangle. Why then is Bush not only silent but openly supportive when Israelis do this?
Democrats attack Bush for crimes of which he is not guilty, including Haditha and Abu Ghraib. Why are they, too, silent when Israel pursues a conscious policy of collective punishment of innocent peoples?
Britain's diplomatic goal in two world wars was to bring the naive cousins in, to "pull their chestnuts out of the fire." Israel and her paid and pro-bono agents here appear determined to expand the Iraq war into Syria and Iran, and have America fight and finish all of Israel's enemies.
That Tel Aviv is maneuvering us to fight its wars is understandable. That Americans are ignorant of, or complicit in this, is deplorable.
Already, Bush is ranting about Syria being behind the Hezbollah capture of the Israeli soldiers. But where is the proof?
Who is whispering in his ear? The same people who told him Iraq was maybe months away from an atom bomb, that an invasion would be a "cakewalk," that he would be Churchill, that U.S. troops would be greeted with candy and flowers, that democracy would break out across the region, that Palestinians and Israelis would then sit down and make peace?
How much must America pay for the education of this man?
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