Terrorism and The Other Religions

Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions. Murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States.

As for political violence, people of Christian heritage in the twentieth century polished off tens of millions of people in the two world wars and colonial repression. This massive carnage did not occur because European Christians are worse than or different from other human beings, but because they were the first to industrialize war and pursue a national model. Sometimes it is argued that they did not act in the name of religion but of nationalism. But, really, how naive. Religion and nationalism are closely intertwined. The British monarch is the head of the Church of England, and that still meant something in the first half of the twentieth century, at least. The Swedish church is a national church. Spain? Was it really unconnected to Catholicism? Did the Church and Francisco Franco’s feelings toward it play no role in the Civil War? And what’s sauce for the goose: much Muslim violence is driven by forms of modern nationalism, too.

I don’t figure that Muslims killed more than a 2 million people or so in political violence in the entire twentieth century, and that mainly in the Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 and the Soviet and post-Soviet wars in Afghanistan, for which Europeans bear some blame.

Compare that to the Christian European tally of, oh, lets say 100 million (16 million in WW I, 60 million in WW II– though some of those were attributable to Buddhists in Asia– and millions more in colonial wars.)

Belgium– yes, the Belgium of strawberry beer and quaint Gravensteen castle– conquered the Congo and is estimated to have killed off half of its inhabitants over time, some 8 million people at least.

Or, between 1916-1930 Tsarist Russian and then Soviet forces — facing the revolt of Central Asians trying to throw off Christian (and then Marxist), European rule — Russian forces killed an estimated 1.5 million people. Two boys brought up in or born in one of those territories (Kyrgyzstan) just killed 4 people and wounded others critically. That is horrible, but no one, whether in Russia or in Europe or in North America has the slightest idea that Central Asians were mass-murdered during WW I and before and after, and looted of much of their wealth. Russia when it brutally conquered and ruled the Caucasus and Central Asia was an Eastern Orthodox, Christian empire (and seems to be reemerging as one!).

Then, between half a million and a million Algerians died in that country’s war of independence from France, 1954-1962, at a time when the population was only 11 million!

I could go on and on. Everywhere you dig in European colonialism in Afro-Asia, there are bodies. Lots of bodies.

Now that I think of it, maybe 100 million people killed by people of European Christian heritage in the twentieth century is an underestimate.

As for religious terrorism, that too is universal. Admittedly, some groups deploy terrorism as a tactic more at some times than others. Zionists in British Mandate Palestine were active terrorists in the 1940s, from a British point of view, and in the period 1965-1980, the FBI considered the Jewish Defense League among the most active US terrorist groups. (Members at one point plotted to assassinate Rep. Dareell Issa (R-CA) because of his Lebanese heritage.) Now that Jewish nationalsts are largely getting their way, terrorism has declined among them. But it would likely reemerge if they stopped getting their way. In fact, one of the arguments Israeli politicians give for allowing Israeli squatters to keep the Palestinian land in the West Bank that they have usurped is that attempting to move them back out would produce violence. I.e., the settlers not only actually terrorize the Palestinians, but they form a terrorism threat for Israel proper (as the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin discovered).

Even more recently, it is difficult for me to see much of a difference between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Baruch Goldstein, perpetrator of the Hebron massacre.

Or there was the cold-blooded bombing of the Ajmer shrine in India by Bhavesh Patel and a gang of Hindu nationalists. Chillingly, they were disturbed when a second bomb they had set did not go off, so that they did not wreak as much havoc as they would have liked. Ajmer is an ecumenical Sufi shrine also visited by Hindus, and these bigots wanted to stop such open-minded sharing of spiritual spaces because they hate Muslims.

Buddhists have committed a lot of terrorism and other violence as well. Many in the Zen orders in Japan supported militarism in the first half of the twentieth century, for which their leaders later apologized. And, you had Inoue Shiro’s assassination campaign in 1930s Japan. Nowadays militant Buddhist monks in Burma/ Myanmar are urging on an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya.

As for Christianity, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda initiated hostilitiesthat displaced two million people. Although it is an African cult, it is Christian in origin and the result of Western Christian missionaries preaching in Africa. If Saudi Wahhabi preachers can be in part blamed for the Taliban, why do Christian missionaries skate when we consider the blowback from their pupils?

Despite the very large number of European Muslims, in 2007-2009 less than 1 percent of terrorist acts in that continent were committed by people from that community.

Terrorism is a tactic of extremists within each religion, and within secular religions of Marxism or nationalism. No religion, including Islam, preaches indiscriminate violence against innocents.

It takes a peculiar sort of blindness to see Christians of European heritage as “nice” and Muslims and inherently violent, given the twentieth century death toll I mentioned above. Human beings are human beings and the species is too young and too interconnected to have differentiated much from group to group. People resort to violence out of ambition or grievance, and the more powerful they are, the more violence they seem to commit. The good news is that the number of wars is declining over time, and World War II, the biggest charnel house in history, hasn’t been repeated.

By Juan Cole

Muslims Who Sacrificed Themselves To Save WWII Jews

Noor Inayat Khan was recruited by Churchill’s elite Special Operations Executive (SOE) to work in Paris as a wireless operator. Her clandestine efforts supported the French Underground as England prepared for the D-Day invasions. Among SOE agents, the wireless operator had the most dangerous job of all, because the occupation authorities were skilled at tracking their signals. The average survival time for a Resistance telegrapher in Paris was about six weeks.

Khan’s service continued from June 1943 until her capture and arrest by the Gestapo in October. Her amazing life and eventual murder in Germany’s Dachau prison camp in September 1944 are the focus of a PBS film I co-produced that is airing this week. In researching her story, I came across quite a number of other Muslims who bravely served the Allied cause — and sometimes made the ultimate sacrifice. History is rich with examples of their daring heroism and split-second decisions that helped defeat the Nazis.

Behic Erkin, the Turkish ambassador in Paris, provided citizenship papers and passports to thousands of Jews (many with only distant claims to Turkish connections) and arranged their evacuation by rail across Europe. One fateful day, Necdet Kent, the Turkish consul-general in Marseille, stymied the shipment of 80 Turkish Jews to Germany by forcing his way onto a train bearing them to their likely death and arranging for their return, unharmed, to France.

Abdol-Hossein Sardari used his position at the Iranian consulate in Paris to help thousands of Jews evade Nazi capture. Later dubbed the Iranian Schindler, he convinced the occupying Germans that Iranians were Aryans and that the Jews of Iran had been Iranian since the days of Cyrus the Great — and, therefore, should not be persecuted. Then he issued hundreds of Iranian passports to non-Iranian Jews and saved their lives.

Ahmed Somia, the Tunisian co-director of the French Muslim Hospital outside Paris, organized weapon caches, facilitated Resistance radio transmissions, treated wounded Resistance fighters, and helped save many downed U.S. and British pilots by hiding them in fake T.B. wards where Gestapo and French gendarmes feared to go.

Khan was posthumously decorated with the highest British and French civilian and military honors, but so were other Muslims, including standout heroes among the 2.5 million British Indian troops fighting Axis forces around the globe. In this largest volunteer army in recorded history, Muslims (roughly one-third of the force) played prominent roles. 

In a letter to President Roosevelt during the war, Churchill pointed out that Muslim soldiers were providing “the main army elements on which we [the British] must rely for the immediate fighting.” 

In 1944-45, the French Army of Africa, joined to de Gaulle’s Free French Forces, was expanded to 260,000 men, of whom 50 percent were North African, the great majority being Muslim, while another substantial group were Senegalese Muslim riflemen. These forces invaded Italy and helped liberate southern France.

 Eastern Europe offered more examples: 

In the Balkans, for instance, only 200 Jews lived in Albania before WWII. Yet by war’s end, almost 2,000 Jews lived in the country, because so many had fled Greece, Austria and other locations in Europe to take shelter there among the predominantly Muslim population, which hid and protected them.

As Cole wrote elsewhere, commemorating the 70th anniversary of D-Day: 

“While a few Muslims did support the Axis, out of resentment of Western colonialism and hopes that the rise of an alternative power center would aid their quest for independence, they were tiny in their numbers compared to the Muslims who not just supported the Allies… but actively fought on their behalf.”

By Michael Wolfe

Arab Rescue Efforts During The Holocaust

Si Ali Sakkat

During his career Si Ali Sakkat held positions of a government minister and mayor of Tunis. By 1940 Si Ali Sakkat was enjoying retirement on his farm at the base of Jebel Zaghouan. There was a forced labor camp for the Jews not far away from Sakkat's farm. Jews from the camp were put to work repairing an airfield, which was regularly bombed by Allies. Arabs saw how Germans who ran the camp beat Jews on a regular basis. One night, during an especially heavy battle, sixty Jewish laborers were able to escape. The first structure they encountered was the wall of Sakkat's farm. They knocked on the gate, and were allowed shelter and food. They were also allowed to stay until the liberation of Tunisia by Allied forces.

Khaled Abdul-Wahab

Main article: Khaled Abdul-Wahab

Abdul-Wahab was a son of a well-known Tunisian historian. He was 32 years old when the Germans occupied Tunisia. He was an interlocutor between the Nazis and the population of the coastal town of Mahdia. When he overheard German officers planning to rape a local Jewish woman, Odette Boukhris, he hid the woman and her family, along with about two dozen more Jewish families, at his farm outside of town. The families stayed there for four months, until the occupation ended. Abdul-Wahab is sometimes called the Arab Oskar Schindler. In 2009 two trees were dedicated to honor his bravery. One tree was planted in Adas Israel Garden of the Righteous in Washington, D.C., the other was planted in the Garden of the Righteous Worldwide. His daughter Faiza attended the ceremony in Milan.

Shaykh Taieb el-Okbi

Taieb el-Okbi was a member of Algerian Islah (Reform) Party, and a friend of the prominent Algerian reformist Abdelhamid Ben Badis, who was tolerant to different religions and cultures. Ben Badis founded and directed the Algerian League of Muslims and Jews. He died before Vichy forces occupied Algeria, but Taieb el-Okbi took his place. Taieb el-Okbi discovered that the leaders of the pro-fascist group the Légion Français des Combattants were planning a Jewish pogrom. He did everything he could to prevent it and ordered Muslims not to attack Jews. His actions were compared to French archbishops Jules-Géraud Saliège and Pierre-Marie Gerlier, both of whom saved some Jews in France.

Muslim Rescue Efforts In Europe

Refik Veseli

Most of the 2,000 Jews of Albania were sheltered by the mostly Muslim population. Refik Veseli, a 17 year old Muslim boy, took in the family of Mosa and Gabriela Mandil, including their five year old son Gavra and his sister Irena, then refugees from Belgrade but originally from Novi Sad, for whom he had been working as an apprentice in their Tirana photographic shop. When the Germans took over from the Italians, he took them, and another Jewish family by night on long journey to his family village at Kruja, where they were protected by his parents for the war's duration, some 9 months later, even against Enver Hoxha's partisans. His example inspired his whole village to risk their lives in order to protect Jews. On receiving Gavra Mandil's request for them to be recognized as righteous, the authorities of Yad Vashem inscribed both Refka and Drita Veseli in 1988 among the Righteous. The story became better know after Albania's surviving Jewish community was allowed to perform aliyah in the 1990s, and many survivors told how their Albanian hosts vied for the privilege of offering sanctuary, on the grounds that it was an Islamic ethical obligation. Since that date, a further 50 Albanians have been registered among the ranks of the Righteous.

Source: Wikipedia

“Les Hommes Libres” (“Free Men”)

An unlikely savior of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France: the rector of a Paris mosque.

Muslims, it seems, rescued Jews from the Nazis.

“Les Hommes Libres” (“Free Men”) is a tale of courage not found in French textbooks. 

According to the story, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, provided refuge and certificates of Muslim identity to a small number of Jews to allow them to evade arrest and deportation.

In the early 1940s France was home to a large population of North Africans, including thousands of Sephardic Jews. The Jews spoke Arabic and shared many of the same traditions and everyday habits as the Arabs. Neither Muslims nor Jews ate pork. Both Muslim and Jewish men were circumcised. Muslim and Jewish names were often similar.

The most graphic account was given by Albert Assouline, a North African Jew who escaped from a German prison camp. He claimed that: 

more than 1,700 resistance fighters — including Jews but also a lesser number of Muslims and Christians — found refuge in the mosque’s underground caverns, and that the rector provided many Jews with certificates of Muslim identity.

In his 2006 book, “Among the Righteous,” Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, uncovered stories of Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and included a chapter on the Grand Mosque. 

Dalil Boubakeur, the current rector, confirmed to him that: 

some Jews — up to 100 perhaps — were given Muslim identity papers by the mosque, without specifying a number. Mr. Boubakeur said individual Muslims brought Jews they knew to the mosque for help.

Mr. Boubakeur showed Mr. Satloff a copy of a typewritten 1940 Foreign Ministry document from the French Archives. It stated that:

the occupation authorities suspected mosque personnel of delivering false Muslim identity papers to Jews. “The imam was summoned, in a threatening manner, to put an end to all such practices,” the document said.

Mr. Satloff said in a telephone interview: “One has to separate the myth from the fact. The number of Jews protected by the mosque was probably in the dozens, not the hundreds. But it is a story that carries a powerful political message and deserves to be told.”

A 1991 television documentary “Une Résistance Oubliée: La Mosquée de Paris” (“A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris”) by Derri Berkani , and a children’s book “The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust,” published in 2007, also explore the events.

Source: The New York Times

Albanian Muslims Rescued Jewish Lives From Nazis

In 1934, American Ambassador to Albania Herman Bernstein proclaimed, “There is no trace of any discrimination against Jews in Albania, because Albania happens to be one of the rare lands in Europe today where religious prejudice and hate do not exist, even though Albanians are divided into three faiths.” Indeed, as Jews across Europe were being massacred en masse as part of the Nazi final solution, one country in Europe didn’t have a negative Jewish growth rate and that country, Albania, had a Muslim majority.

Prior to WWII, only 200 Jews lived in Albania, yet by the end of the war, about 2,000 Jews lived within the country because so many Jews fled Greece, Austria, and other locations in Europe to take shelter there. Other Jews, such as Albert Einstein, used Albania in order to pass on to other countries. Immigration officials in Albania permitted Jews to enter even if they didn’t have the proper paperwork and when the Nazis took over, the local inhabitants protected the Jews who lived within their country, providing them with paperwork stating that the Jews were Albanian Muslims. As a result, the Jews who fled to Albania were spared the horrors that the rest of the Jews of Europe endured.

Indeed, the Albanian Muslims have an honor code known as besa, meaning to keep the promise, which mandates hospitality and protection of guests as if they are members of ones own family. Because of this Albanian honor code, many of the Albanians who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust often don’t feel that what they did was particularly extraordinary, for they assert that any one in their culture would do the same. Yet, the reality is that other peoples in Europe did not live by the besa code, thus preventing what happened in Albania from happening elsewhere. The Albanian Muslims truly live by the Quranic principle, which is also cited in the Talmud, “If one saved a life, it would be as if he saved all humanity.”

Yet, Albanian Muslims living within Albania were not the only Albanians to help save Jewish lives. Dervis and Servet Korkut, who were Albanian Muslims that hid the Sarajevo Hagaddah from the Nazis, also saved the life of Mira Papos. When Mira’s parents were murdered by the Nazis, Mira escaped to the forests and joined the partisans. After the partisans suffered some horrendous defeats, they ordered Mira and the other young children to return to Sarajevo, which Mira viewed to be a death sentence. However, she also understood that remaining in the forests without assistance would also lead to death.

So, when she returned to Sarajevo, she met someone who worked with her father and begged him for help. He brought her to Dervis Korkut, who immediately took her into his home. Even though Nazis lived nearby, no one suspected them because they dressed Mira in traditional Muslim clothes, gave her a Muslim name, and told people that she was hired to take care of their baby. She was instructed not to speak to people outside the family, so she wouldn’t be detected as non-Albanian. Thanks to them, she survived the war. The Korkut family lived by the besa code and thus took it upon themselves to save Mira, in addition to one of the oldest Hagaddah prayer books in Europe. This demonstrates the marvelous ethics demonstrated by the Albanian people.

To watch a documentary on Albanians saving Jews during the Holocaust, see below!

Source: United With Israel

The "Righteous Muslim" Exhibition

The Righteous Muslim Exhibition, launched at the Board of Deputies of British Jews in Bloomsbury, will feature photographs of 70 Muslims who hid Jews from the Nazis, alongside their stories and detailing their acts of heroism.

These 70 Muslims were recently added to Yad Vashem's list of "righteous among the nations" detailing those who risked their lives to protect Jews.

Among those listed in the Righteous Among the Nations are Muslims from Albania, Bosnia and Turkey.

Source: The Jerusalem Post

Marlon Brando Speaks Truth On The Treatment of American Indians

Legendary Marlon Brando was interviewed on The Dick Cavett Show 6/12/1973 after he refused to accept the Oscar at 45th Academy Awards, 1973 to protest the treatment of American Indians.

Three months after not accepting the best actor award at the Academy Awards, Marlon Brando appeared on The Dick Cavett Show with members of the Pauite, Cheyenne and Lummi tribes. Brando had refused his Oscar for The Godfather in protest of Hollywood’s depiction of Native Americans on film.

At the 1973 Academy Awards ceremony, Brando refused to accept the Oscar for his performance in The Godfather. Sacheen Littlefeather represented him at the ceremony. She appeared in full Apache attire and stated that owing to the "poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry", Brando would not accept the award.

At this time, the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee occurred, causing rising tensions between the government and Native American activists. The event grabbed the attention of the US and the world media. This was considered a major event and victory for the movement by its supporters and participants.

Brando is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century. He has earned great respect among critics and theater experts for his memorable performances and charismatic screen presence.

Video and summary via White Wolf Pack.

On Course For Holocaust II…..?

This is the most controversial article the gentile me has ever written or is ever likely to write, but I believe that what I am going to say needs to be said and should be widely debated if the rising, global tide of “anti-Israelism” (I prefer the term anti-Zionism) is not to be transformed into anti-Semitism on a scale that could lead, in a foreseeable future, to Holocaust II, my shorthand for another great turning against the Jews.

I am, of course, aware that anti-Semitism is more than prejudice against and loathing even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews. Arabs are Semites, too. So anti-Semitism is prejudice against Arabs as well as Jews. In other words, Islamophobia, a monster on the prowl across America and Europe and licking its lips, is also a manifestation of anti-Semitism. That said my use of the term anti-Semitism in this article relates only to prejudice against and loathing even hatred of Jews just because they are Jews.

A clear, early warning that anti-Israelism could be transformed into anti-Semitism was given by Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former Director of Israeli Military Intelligence, in his book ISRAEL’S FATEFUL HOUR, first published in Hebrew in 1986 and in English two years later.

(He started out as a rabid right-winger and a supporter of Menachem Begin, arguably the most successful terrorist leader of modern times. But he, Harkabi, subsequently broke with Begin and launched a blistering attack on the ideological mindset of the proponents of Greater Israel and the expansionist policies of the Begin and Shamir governments. Instead of the policy of not yielding an inch and waiting for the Palestinians to surrender, he advocated negotiations with the PLO to establish an independent Palestinian state. “Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories with their growing Arab population” is the first sentence on the back cover of his book).

The following is the text of Harkabi’s warning:

Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.

In my opinion the flaw in Harkabi’s argument is that Israel is a Zionist not a Jewish state (how could it be a Jewish state when about a quarter of its citizens are Palestinian Arabs and mainly Muslims?); and that raises the question of how much, actually, Israel is an example of the Jewish character. But that doesn’t detract from his main warning point that Israel’s behaviour could be a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism.

More than a quarter of a century on from Harkabi’s warning, the impression conveyed by mainstream Western media reporting and comment while the IDF was (and still is) delivering death and destruction to the Gaza Strip was not that a transformation of anti-Israelism/anti-Zionism into historical anti-Semitism might be underway, but that the anti-Israel protests and demonstrations across the world, in Europe especially, were manifestations of naked anti-Semitism. In other words, what used to be called the “sleeping giant of anti-Semitism” is awake again.

The most dramatic headline that came to my notice was over an article in The Guardian by Jon Henley on 7 August. It read: Antisemitism on rise across Europe “in worst times since the Nazis”. And underneath that there was a secondary headline, Experts say attacks go beyond Israel-Palestine conflict as hate crimes strike fear into Jewish communities.

One of the “experts” Henley quoted was Dieter Graumann, president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews. He said: “These are the worst times since the Nazi era. On the streets you here things like ‘Jews should be gassed, Jews should be burned’. We haven’t had that in Germany for decades. Anyone saying those slogans isn’t criticising Israeli policies, it’s just pure hatred against Jews; nothing else. And it’s not just a German phenomenon. It’s an outbreak of hatred against Jews so intense that it’s very clear.”

Some demonstrators and protestors were using Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip as a cover for expressing their inherent anti-Semitism, but most were not. Most were criticising and condemning Israel’s actions, not expressing hatred of Jews just because they are Jews.

I agree with Christopher Dickey who made this comment. “Can you criticise Israel’s military actions and a lot of its policies without being anti-Semitic? Yes. Can you do it without having some people accuse you of anti-Semitism? No, you can’t.”

In passing I want to add that in my opinion the global reaction against Israel was driven not only by visual evidence of the death and destruction the IDF delivered to the Gaza Strip but also the absurd statements of justification made by all who speak for Israel right or wrong from Netanyahu down. (“Hamas is engaging in child sacrifice” etcetera, etcetera).

Their statements were in my view an insult to the intelligence of all sane people who could see for themselves what was happening as Israel unleashed its fire power. Avi Shlaim put it this way. “The terms in which Netanyahu and his right-wing colleagues frame the conflict with Hamas is a mixture of half-truths, outright lies, deliberate deception and mind-boggling double-standards.”

The key to understanding is, I submit, in the following paragraph.

Yes, it’s true that the giant of real anti-Semitism has been present throughout history, sometimes sleeping, sometimes awake and on the rampage. But after the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant not only went back to sleep, IT ALMOST CERTAINLY WOULD HAVE DIED IN ITS SLEEP IF THERE HAD BEEN NO ZIONISM.
 

That last statement is, of course, speculation on my part but I believe it is fully supported by the completeness of the assimilation of the Jewish citizens of the Western nations as the second half of the 20th century unfolded. Also to be noted is that in the last decade or so about one million Israeli Jews said goodbye to the Zionist state to start new lives in the Western nations; and in the months before the European protests and demonstrations against Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip, more of those who took their leave of Israel resettled themselves in Germany rather than America.

To the extent that the transformation of anti-Israelism/anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism is underway today, the factor, not “a” factor as in Harkabi’s warning, is Israel’s “misconduct”, which I define criminal behaviour justified by sickening self-righteousness.

According to Harkabi self-righteousness is Israel’s biggest enemy:

There should be discussion of the dangers that religious extremism pose to the state, to the status of the Jewish people in the world and to Judaism. The dangers of Messianism must be presented candidly, with full exposure of the catastrophes produced by false messiahs in the past.

All these lessons can be summed up as the pressing need for self-criticism. Certainly Israel is not guilty of everything that has gone wrong in the occupied lands. But self-criticism is imperative in order to counter balance the tendencies to self-righteousness and self-pity that stem from basic Jewish attitudes, from the historical experience of persecution and from the ethos fostered by Menachem Begin. No factor endangers Israel’s future more than self-righteousness, which blinds us to reality, prevents a complex understanding of the situation and legitimizes extreme behaviour.

If Harkabi was alive today (he died in 1994) I would suggest to him that in 2014 there is no chance of Israel opening itself to self-criticism because the vast majority of its Jews have been brainwashed by Zionist propaganda to the point where they are beyond reason on the matter of justice for the Palestinians.

If the notion that there is a real danger of another great turning against the Jews provoked by Zionism in action was only my gentile view, I probably would not have written this article. But I have a number of very dear Jewish friends who fear that it could happen. One of them is Nazi holocaust survivor Dr. Hajo Meyer, the author of An Ethical Tradition Betrayed: The End of Judaism.

And then there is Tony Learman. I don’t know him but I respect him enormously. (He is a British Jewish writer who specialises in the study of anti-Semitism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, multiculturalism and the place of religion in society. From 2006 to early 2009 he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a think tank on issues affecting Jewish communities in Europe). 

He recently wrote this:

If Israel continues its attitude of defiance of international legal norms and of the wishes of the international community as regards settlements, then this is almost inviting a real resurgence of a form of historical anti-Semitism.

In conversation with Tony I would say something like the following. Israel’s leaders are not “almost inviting” a real resurgence of anti-Semitism. They are actually inviting it. They need it to justify their crimes in general and, in particular, their determination to keep for ever most if not all of the occupied West Bank, even if that requires a final ethnic cleansing of it.

Another British Jewish writer who captured my attention was Blake Ezra. The following was the opening paragraph of an article on his web site which was carried by The Times of Israel. on 9 August.

“Dear world, I’m writing to you from a place of despair and confusion. When I say ‘world’, I don’t simply mean the planet upon which we all live but I address personally whoever is reading this. As a Jewish person, I have a question for you. It’s a genuine question to which I can’t find a suitable answer through my own thoughts… What do you want from us?”

He went on to say that as a Jew he, like many of his co-religionists, didn’t feel safe in his own city (London). And he insisted that “the hatred being indiscriminately hurled in our direction today” was not a response to Israel’s military action.

Other gems from his article included the following:
 

“The Jewish people have never insisted that whichever country they inhabit becomes kosher, Jewish people have never insisted that their fellow non-Jewish citizens keep the laws of the Jewish Sabbath, Jewish people have never insisted that their Synagogues dominate the skyline of towns across the diaspora. We mean no harm, we come in peace, please stop threatening to kill us… Sometimes, world, I wonder if your plan is to make Jewish people feel so uncomfortable in the countries they inhabit that they all move to Israel, all the Jews in one place would certainly make it easier for a fanatical group to wipe us all out in one fell swoop. Are you really working towards this mass International ghettoization?… World, I’m still desperately trying to decipher what we could have done differently, in order to avoid this deep-seated hatred that is seemingly coming to the fore this year… Can we EVER do enough to be accepted by you? World, I ask you in the hope that one day I’ll understand… What do you want from us?”

The answer to that question ought to be obvious to all but those who are suffering from paranoia and can be simply stated.

What the world wants from Israel’s Jews and Jews everywhere is an acknowledgement that a terrible wrong was done to the Palestinians by Zionism in the name of all Jews and that the wrong must be righted.

Without such an acknowledgement I can see no hope for peace based on an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians and security for all and, if Israel remains on its present course, not much hope for preventing the transformation of anti-Israelism/anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism on a scale that could lead, in a foreseeable future, to another great turning against the Jews.

In my analysis the key to preventing Holocaust II at some point in a foreseeable future is in the hands of the Jews of the world themselves, European and American Jews in particular. What I mean is that it’s in their own best interests to distance themselves from the Zionist state in order in order to rob accusations of their complicity in its crimes of any credible substance. In addition to acknowledging the wrong done to the Palestinians and the need for that wrong to be righted, they could say, publicly, that they cannot and will not support an Israel that demonstrates contempt for international law and Jewish moral values.

It is true that a growing but still smallish number of European and American Jews are speaking out, not only in support of some justice for the Palestinians but also to condemn Israel’s policies and actions. Those who speaking out have taken Harkabi’s advice. Here is what he wrote on the need for open and honest debate.

What we need in Israel is not a united front behind a wrong policy, but searching self-criticism and a careful examination of our goals and means, so that we can differentiate between realistic vision and adventurist fantasy.

Jews in the West, particularly in the United States, should participate in this debate. They should not be squeamish and discouraged by the fear that the arguments they air may help their enemies and those of Israel. The choice facing them, as well as Israel, is not between good and bad but between bad and worse. Criticising Israeli policies may be harmfully divisive, but refraining from criticism and allowing Israel to maintain its wrong policy is incomparably worse. If the state of Israel comes to grief (God forbid), it will not be because of a lack of weaponry or money, but because of skewed political thinking and because the Jews who understood the situation did not exert themselves to convince the Israelis to change that thinking.

What is at stake is the survival of Israel and the status of Judaism. Israel will soon face its moment of truth. The crisis that faces the nation will be all-consuming. It will be bitter because many will have to acknowledge that they have lived in a world of fantasy; they will have to shed conceptions and beliefs they have held dear.

One implication of that part of Harkabi’s analysis is that if the Jews of the Western world who understand the situation exerted themselves, they could convince Israelis to change their thinking. In theory that might be so but in reality it can’t happen as things are

for the simple reason that the majority of the Jews of the Western world do not understand the situation; and that in turn is because they have been conditioned to believe a version of history, Zionism’s version, which is simply not true.

The majority don’t know, for example, that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab force. And they don’t know, another example, that it’s not Israel that has lacked a Palestinian partner for peace but the Palestinians who for the past 34 years have lacked an Israeli partner. (As I have previously written, there’s a case for saying they might have had one in Prime Minister Rabin, but he was assassinated by a Zionist fanatic who knew exactly what he was doing – killing the peace process Arafat made possible, in 1979, by persuading the highest decision making bodies on the Palestinian side that they had to be ready for unthinkable compromise and peace with an Israel confined to its borders as they were on 4 June 1967).

And there’s an awesome complicating factor. It’s not only that most Jews of the Western world don’t know the truth of history as it relates to the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel, MANY DON’T WANT TO KNOW IT. In my book, Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews I illustrate this point by telling of a conversation I had with a Jewish gentleman who after my dear wife is my second best friend in the world and has been for more than 40 years.

Shortly before the publication of the first volume of the UK edition of my book way back in 2005 I said the following to him. “Like many if not most Jews you believe that when Israel went to war in 1967 it was either because the Arabs attacked or were about to attack. If I can prove to you, using only Israeli sources, that what you believe is Zionist propaganda nonsense and that the Arabs had no intention of striking first, and that it was actually a war of Israeli aggression, what…?”

My friend was silent for about a minute. Then, in a voice not much above a whisper, he said, “If what I believe about that war is not true, everything crumbles.”

Since then we have remained best friends but we do not ever discuss Israel.

I thought long and hard about the meaning of “everything crumbles” and I came to the conclusion, endorsed in private by other Jewish friends, that what it means can be summarised as follows. Many and perhaps even most Jews need to believe they always were, are and always will be VICTIMS.

And that, I believe, assists real and true understanding of why most Jews of the world are silent on the matter of Israel’s crimes. Deep down, if only in their sub-consciousness, they fear that Holocaust II is probably inevitable at some point in the future and that they will need Israel as their refuge of last resort. So, they tell themselves, say nothing and do nothing that could assist Israel’s enemies. (It’s also the case that criticism of Israel can and does tear Jewish families apart).

What I believe to be the most tragic irony in all of human history to date is that most Jews of the world can’t see that if the rising, global tide of anti-Israelism/anti-Zionism is transformed into anti-Semitism on a scale that could lead to Holocaust II, it will be because of Zionism in action.

In that light my gentile appeal to the Jews of the world, American and European Jews in particular, is this. The key to preventing Holocaust II is in your hands. Use it to unlock your minds that have been closed by Zionist propaganda. (I mean its lies and deceptions).

Because I have faith in the potential goodness of human nature, a potential that has to be liberated by the truth of history, I want to end this article by pointing to an alternative scenario to the one indicated by my headline.

As I wrote in my book and say on public platforms, I truly believe that, generally speaking, the Jews are the intellectual elite of the Western world and the Palestinians are by far the intellectual elite of the Arab world. Together in peace and partnership in One State for all (yes, that does mean the end of Zionism), they could change the region for the better and by doing so give new hope and inspiration to the whole world.

To put it another way, in peace and a partnership of equals, the Jews minus Zionism could become, with the Palestinians, a light unto nations. Surely that’s a better option than allowing Zionism to put the light out?

R.I.P. DEAR HAJO

I sent a draft of this article to Hajo Meyer for his comments and suggestions. His wife Chris called me to say that a week after celebrating his 90th birthday, Hajo had passed away peacefully. He will rest in peace because he was at peace with himself in his life. I know that because of his answer to a question I asked him over a meal in London some years ago.

I said: “You’re well into your eighties and despite the fact that you lived through the hell of Auschwitz, you are vilified by supporters of Israel right or wrong for your anti-Zionist stance and campaigning. You don’t need this hassle in what remains of your life. Why do you carry on campaigning?”

He replied, “The first person I see when I wake up in the morning is me.”

He meant that he needed above all to be able to live with himself. (As I write I find myself wondering how many of our so-called leaders, President Obama in particular, can do that).

In one of our last conversations Hajo said that he no longer had any hesitation about describing Israel’s leaders as “the new Nazis.”

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years

The Terror Rests On The Shoulders Of The Invader

If you were invaded...what would you do?

Ban Ki-Moon Worked With Israel To Undermine UN Report

The General Secretary of United Nations (UN) Ban Ki-Moon collaborated in secret with Israel and the United States to weaken the effects of a Board of Inquiry's report accusing Israel of human rights violations in Gaza in Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009.

Wikileaks released documents on Friday that revealed that Ban wrote a letter to the UN Security Council asking its members not to take recommendations by the UN Board of Inquiry about Israeli bombings in Gaza into account.

The report demonstrated that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had a direct role in seven of the nine attacks against buildings of the UN in Gaza strip, and accused Israel of having breached the inviolability and immunity of UN premises.

According to Wikileaks, Susan Rice, White House National Security Advisor, spoke at least four times with Ban Ki Moon “to discuss concerns over the Board of Inquiry's report on incidents at UN sites in December 2008 and January 2009".

The report's recommendations included the need for a deeper and impartial investigation into the recent “incidents”, and into the bombings of UN facilities.

According to Wikileaks, Rice first asked Ban not to include the recommendations in the final report's summary, supposed to be transmitted to the UN Security Council on May 5.

Ban responded that “he was constrained in what he could do since the Board of Inquiry is independent; it was their report and recommendations and he could not alter them”.

In the second conversation, “Rice urged the Secretary-General to make clear in his cover letter when he transmits the summary to the Security Council that those recommendations exceeded the scope of the terms of reference and no further action is needed."

Ban then replied that "his staff was working with an Israeli delegation on the text of the cover letter”.

He confirmed in the last phone call that “a satisfactory cover letter” had been completed. In the letter,