It’s been almost two weeks since I wrote to National Public Radio’s senior Washington editor, Ron Elving, and to the network’s ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, to ask why Elving used an Israeli formulation – "disputed" area – to characterize East Jerusalem, instead of calling it "occupied," the term used by the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and virtually every other international body. So far, neither has replied.
While I wait, I’ve spent some time looking a little more deeply into NPR’s coverage of East Jerusalem since Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 new housing units there put the area in the spotlight. The network posts transcripts of all its stories, interviews, and talk shows on the Middle East (and nowadays most other stories, too) on its website, and it has a pretty good search engine, so it wasn’t hard to review all 22 broadcasts that have discussed East Jerusalem since the controversy exploded. (NPR doesn’t transcribe its hourly headlines, so they’re not included. Neither are the Associated Press reports and Foreign Policy articles it posts on its website but doesn’t read over the air.)
Here’s some of what I found anyone depending on NPR for information about the issue would have gathered about East Jerusalem:
1. It’s part of Israel’s capital. Regular listeners have heard Jerusalem described that way in at least eight stories. In five of those cases the city was called Israel’s "undivided capital;" once the phrase was "unified capital." When NPR’s reporters say it (as opposed to when they’re quoting Netanyahu or Michael Oren, for example), they scrupulously precede these phrases with something like "the Israelis have proclaimed" or "Israel considers" the whole city their capital. But since NPR reporters hardly ever even hint that anyone except the Palestinians disputes this claim, these are essentially throw-away words. (The closest they come to questioning the Israel position is the statement, which I found in two stories, that "The international community believes that the final status of the city should only be determined through negotiations.")
2. Israel has a deep historical claim to all of Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s assertion in his AIPAC speech that "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago" was quoted in three separate stories. Twice listeners have been told that Israelis consider the city – implicitly the whole thing – just as much theirs as Tel Aviv. On "Talk of the Nation" they heard an Israeli analyst explain that no government would agree to a construction freeze because Jerusalem is "the heart and soul of the Jewish people." Weekend news analyst James Fallows informed listeners that the Israeli public considers the government’s East Jerusalem policy "necessary for their survival."
3. Ramat Shlomo, the East Jerusalem settlement where the government plans to add the 1,600 new units, is an idyllic "neighborhood" (a word NPR reporters have used at least eight times in this context) or "community" on a hilltop. It’s "tranquil" or even "very tranquil," full of pious Jews who "focus on their religious studies and pay little attention to the outside world." Their only problem is that they have large families and therefore "housing needs;" this "housing crunch" explains the government’s decision to build the 1,600 units.
4. As for the Palestinians, including the roughly 250,000 who live in East Jerusalem, they are presented to NPR listeners not as people whose roots in Jerusalem go back millennia – who, legally, own East Jerusalem – but as people who, for some unexplained reason, lay claim to what Israel has: they "want" East Jerusalem, they "claim" it, they "hope" it will be part of their "future state," they "aspire" to make it their capital. In the meantime, unlike the "unfazed" Jewish residents of Ramat Shlomo, they can barely contain their emotions: they are "angry," "frustrated," "incensed." Some of them even think Israel wants to push them out of the city, but the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem is promptly called upon to dismiss this charge, and he’s given the last word.
Now, some things NPR listeners have not been told about Jerusalem since the controversy flared :
1. Except Israel, no government in the world, even the U.S., recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Not a single country, even the U.S., has an embassy there. Under the U.N.’s 1947 partition plan, it was not to be part of Israel at all, but a separate entity – a "corpus separatum" – under U.N. administration.
2. In legal terms, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory by the United States government, the United Nations, the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice, including even the American judge who was the one holdout when the ICJ in 2004 ruled the separation Wall in East Jerusalem and the West Bank illegal. (In fairness, weekend host Guy Raz noted in passing on March 13 that East Jerusalem is "an area Israel has occupied since 1967," and in one report Garcia-Navarro said that Ramat Shlomo is "on land captured by Israel during the 1967 war.")
3. Under international law (specifically, the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention) occupying powers are clearly prohibited from transferring their civilians into such territories.
4. The "international community" has repeatedly and forcefully rejected Israel’s claim to East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of Israel’s seizure of the area as well (as the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights) during the 1967 war, the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S., adopted several resolutions reaffirming that "acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible" In 1971 Security Council Resolution 298, adopted with U.S. support, declared that "al1 legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the: City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid and cannot change that status.".In 1980, when Israel adopted the "Jerusalem Law," through which it attempted to formalize its annexation of East Jerusalem and surrounding areas and to declare the city its ""eternal and indivisible" capital, Security Council Resolution 478 said the law’s adoption constituted "a violation of international law" and "a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East," declared it "null and void," and asserted that it "must be rescinded forthwith." (This resolution was adopted by a vote of 14-0; the U.S. abstained but declined to use its veto power.)
5. In recent days U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has on at least two occasions declared publicly that East Jerusalem, like the West Bank, is occupied territory and that Israel’s settlement expansion plans are "unacceptable." "Let us be clear," he said on March 20. "All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped." NPR has completely ignored Ban’s statements on these issues.
6. The 1,600 Jewish housing units planned for Ramat Shlomo are only a small part of Israel’s plans to "Judaize" East Jerusalem. Ha’aretz and other reputable sources reported on March 11 that some 50,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem are in various stages of the Israeli planning and permitting process. Coming on the heels of the Biden visit and the flap about the 1,600 units, this report got wide circulation around the world. NPR hasn’t mentioned it.
7. Much of the Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem is organized and financed by ultra-right-wing Zionist organizations such as Elad and Ateret Cohanim, which openly proclaim their intention to evict Jerusalem’s Palestinians. These groups are funded largely by tax-deductible donations from American Jews, most notably Miami doctor and bingo billionaire Irving Moskowitz. Yet NPR has never once – not just this month, but never, as far back as its archives go – mentioned Irving Moskowitz or Ateret Cohanim; Elad was mentioned only once, last September, as the funder of archaeological digs in the Silwan section of East Jerusalem – which host Robert Siegel referred to only as "the City of David," the patently ideological name the Zionists recently bestowed upon the area.
Likewise, NPR has never reported on the recent expulsions of Palestinian families from homes built for them in the 1950s by the U.N. in the Sheikh Jarrah section of East Jerusalem – nor on the growing non-violent movement that’s brought thousands of Palestinians and Israelis together to protest these evictions.
8. Even as it repeats Netanyahu’s assertion that "the Jewish people" were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, NPR has not raised any question or qualification about this claim. If ancient history is to be considered grounds for sovereignty, there are several issues that deserve attention: Many mainstream archaeologists doubt that there was such a thing as a Jewish people or even a Jewish religion 3,000 years. Whoever may have been building there 3,000 years ago, today’s Palestinians have a considerably stronger claim to be their descendants than Ashkenazi Jews like Netanyahu. As Juan Cole has recently pointed out, Jews have ruled Jerusalem for only a few brief moments in its history; Muslims have ruled the city and done most of the building there over the last 1,500 years.
9. If the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are angry and frustrated, one reason is because Israel treats them like second- or third-class citizens – except that they’re not even citizens. They can’t vote in national elections, and they’re not entitled to Israeli passports. They’re prohibited from engaging in political activity, and Israel has repeatedly barred celebrations of their national culture. Thousands of them have had their Jerusalem residency rights revoked for such "offenses" as spending too much time outside the city. If a Jerusalem Palestinian marries someone from elsewhere in the occupied territories – even from, say, Bethlehem or Ramallah, which are just a few miles away – they’re not permitted to live together, either in Jerusalem or in the territories.
Meanwhile, social and economic conditions in East Jerusalem are miserable and rapidly deteriorating, in part because the giant separation wall Israel has built within and around East Jerusalem cuts the area off from the rest of the Palestinian population and economy. 68.4 percent of the population of East Jerusalem live below the poverty line, yet only 22 percent receive any government social services. While the Palestinians make up 32 percent of Jerusalem’s total population, and the municipality collects around 30 percent of its tax revenue from them, less than ten percent of the municipal budget is spent on services for them. The municipality spends four times as much per pupil on primary schools in West Jerusalem as in East Jerusalem, which suffers from a drastic shortage of classrooms. Entire Palestinian neighborhoods are not connected to a sewage system and do not have paved roads or sidewalks. Almost 90 percent of the city’s sewage pipes, roads, and sidewalks are found in the western part of the city. West Jerusalem has 1,000 public parks, East Jerusalem has 45. West Jerusalem has 34 swimming pools, East Jerusalem has three. West Jerusalem has 26 libraries, East Jerusalem has two. West Jerusalem has 531 sports facilities, East Jerusalem has 33. And so on.
As for housing, NPR somehow hasn’t noticed that the Palestinians too have large families and suffer from a "housing crunch" far more drastic than that afflicting Ramat Shlomo. While the government works overtime to develop plans for additional Jewish settlement construction in East Jerusalem, it’s all but impossible for Palestinians to get construction permits, and if they build anyway, they’re at constant risk of having their homes demolished. (All Things Considered did run a reasonably good report by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro last November about "allegations" by East Jerusalem Palestinians that Israel is "intensifying a campaign to evict them from their homes.")
10. NPR found time this month for a long story about an Israeli tariff that’s threatening the business of an Illinois company that exports carp for gefilte fish, but the last time the network’s listeners heard that Israel receives $3 billion a year in U.S. aid was when Stephen Walt mentioned it in a July 2006 interview. This month, even as debate about U.S. relations with Israel has boiled up, the network’s news shows haven’t bothered to mention U.S. aid at all. (The subject has come up briefly on Talk of the Nation – once mentioned by guest Ted Koppel, once in a quote from Gideon Levy read by host Neal Conan, and once when a caller from California observed that for $10 million a day, "You would think that would buy us a little more influence than it does" – to which Conan responded "Well, part of that is the billion dollars that we promised both to Israel and to Egypt, that’s included in the peace agreement that got those two people to recognize each other, which is a benefit that I think everybody can agree on.")
What a fabulous post. NYT just informed its readers that Netanyahu “stood firm” on settlements. If it were Iran, we’d be told “Defiant Ahmadinejad…”
Ahmed I read your comment while watching the evening news here in Australia.
NYT bias is well known. I’m happy for mainstream media to continue to die a slow death as more and more people come to distrust them.
See how SBS describe Netanyahu:
link to player.sbs.com.au
RE: “NYT just informed its readers that Netanyahu “stood firm” on settlements” – ahmed
ME: Protect Obama from AIPAC on Israeli Settlement Expansion
AIPAC lobbyists are demanding that Congress pressure Obama back down from his opposition to Israeli settlement expansion. Urge your representatives in Congress to support President Obama’s opposition to Israeli settlement expansion.
TO SEND E-MAIL – link to justforeignpolicy.org
‘DISPUTED’ is even more confusing…do not us the word ‘OCCUPIED’ either; it should justly be -’REOCCUPIED’!
Marvellous essay. Looks like a week of work. Thanks so much. Now if we had but an army to pester NPR and all its several programs about these matters. But maybe this will change when and if President Obama plays the next move in his very interesting gambit with AIPAC/Israel/Congress. Perhaps HE will say these things and NPR will find themselves quoting him (and remembering what they said for the next time). Until then, you really can’t blame them too much — they feel they must be “politically correct” and maintain cordial relations with their “contacts” at least until the rules and rulers change.
Henry, great work. I knew there was a reason that I stopped about 10 years back from listening to them. Alexand Cockburn has a great parody of the Mc Neil/Lehrer report that captures the utter vacuousness of the whole network. This is dated, but remains quite funny:
link to counterpunch.org
I’m trying to post a detailed comment, but the system claims it “appears spammy” and won’t let me…
I’ll try it in parts.
Good article. Just two more things that I find are hardly ever mentioned:
1. What Israel today calls “Jerusalem” is an arbitrary creation that has no historical or cultural meaning. After Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 it enlarged the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem way beyond anything that was ever considered to be the city. It annexed an area of the West Bank 12 (twelve!) times larger than what constituted the Jordanian city of Jerusalem up to that point. See map: . The tiny brown area is what those who are religious might argue is holy — the old city. The small area bounded by the brownish line is original east (Jordanian) Jerusalem; the huge area bounded by the red line is Israel’s “east Jerusalem”. This new “Jerusalem” Israel now claims to be holy, indivisible etc. The purpose of enlarging the boundaries of the city this way was quite clearly to provide more area to move Israel’s Jewish population into.
2. Israel claims that it will not accept a return to the pre-67 days when a wall separated the two parts of the city (Jordanian and Israeli). But in fact, that’s the situation that exists on the ground today! Israel’s apartheid wall around Jerusalem passes through built-up areas, sometimes through the middle of streets. Some parts of what Israel considers the city (Palestinian parts, of course), are outside the wall, even! For example, see and . It makes as much sense to call what’s on one side of the wall a “neighborhood” of Jerusalem as it does to use that term for what’s on the other side. Obviously, Israel has no problem with a wall passing through the city. So we might as well move the wall back to the Green Line.
For more detailed map see . You can clearly see how the wall does not even follow the Israeli municipal boundaries of the city.
The links didn’t come through. It turns out these links are what the system considers “spammy”.
If you want the pictures and maps, let me know: arens@isi.edu
Two things:
A) Yeah, if a post contains more than a couple links, it gets held up. It might still get posted a bit later, though. If you have a lot of pertinent information, you may want to forward it the site authors directly (I think there are links for that under “About”) and they might consider making a post specifically for it. It depends upon the relevancy and presentation of the info but they’ve done it in the past, so it might be worth a try.
B) Posting your own email address on a blog is pretty risky. :) Just there’s a chance you’ll get hate mail out of it. The vast majority of the audience on this blog are sensible and civil, but there is a very nasty, spiteful contingent that haunts this blog that might give you grief. You may want to be more careful about putting your address out there — especially your college / university address.
I get so much hate mail already, I won’t notice the difference :-).
Pictures:
Wall running through city
link to stopthewall.org
link to stopthewall.org
And check the whole site.
I’ve got to agree with Chaos on the riskiness of posting your email address, although I suspect that yarens is already well acquainted with hatemail. He’s a very brave soul. We’ve met before in person, I believe, several years ago. Phil posts pieces from others and I think that a posting from yarens would be a wonderful addition to this site.
yarens,
First off, welcome.
Second, I’ve found that there seems to be a limit of two links per comment before you get blocked out as “too spammy”. If you can split up your comments or links so that there are only one or two links per comment you can get your links through the spam filter.
I’d love to see you post those pictures and maps here.
And here are the maps:
Map of east Jerusalem
link to en.wikipedia.org
Detailed map of the city
link to ir-amim.org.il
Again, check that second site for lots of additional information.
Thanks, and please consider Chaos’ suggestion that you contact Phil about adding a posting of your own here.
Do I understand: the Municipal Boundary (the one which much of the apartheid wall follows, btw), is that the border between the “International Area (of Jerusalem)” and the West Bank? Or is this UN-drawn border a differrent one?
The UN drawn one is entirely different. It included Bethlehem, by the way.
See map: link to mideastweb.org
Another good map. It also shows the original, tighter cityborder you mentioned above. And clearly the better names are: “UN Corpus Separatum in Jerusalem – 1947″ and “Divided Jerusalem – 1949 to 1967″.
Here’s a good blog, NPR Team Check’s less ambitious, but accurate nonetheless, take on this: link to nprcheck2.blogspot.com
I’m going to post this entry on their blog. Thanks to all of you for shining a light on the garbage NPR coverage of Israel, this time centering on the settlements.
Thanks to Linda J we have a path to a marvellous list of documents, including UNSC resolutiuons such as the following (1980 !!!!) (and read the last line, brave but to be swallowed up, not followed up):
The treatment of the situation with Iran on NPR has been a complete and utter joke as well. What’s amusing, of course, listeners calling in and proving to be even more well informed then the moderators — much to the irritation, one supposes, of the agenda-touting spin doctors that are supposed to pass as informed guests on NPR. History’s going to recall that NPR was in the same boat as the NYT and Fox News in laying the paving stones right to the edge of the cliff we’re driving off of.
NPR is a loop recording of the Israeli talking points fed to everyone in the MSM. Really it is quite extensive material that they receive, and at times they are wined and dined to make sure the message sets in strongly. Anyone who gets out of line is dismissed.
Henry Norr: I hope you peel this off on paper and send it to NPR. Snail maily.
Great work.
Send it to their ombudsman.
Thanks, MRW (and to others here for your responses). In fact, I sent the piece yesterday to NPR’s ombudsman, Lisa Shepard, and to a guy named Loren Jenkins, who is, I’m told, the editor in charge of Middle East coverage. I sent it by e-mail rather than paper. Do you have some reason to think paper would be more effective?
Interestingly, but probably coincidentally, in their hourly headlines this morning they had a report from Cairo by Peter Kenyon, in which I _believe_ he said that the international community has never recognized Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem! I was just waking up, so I’m not entirely certain I heard him correctly. I went to npr.org to listen again, but Kenyon’s segment was not included in the online version of the hourly headlines. It’s not inconceivable that some Zionist higher-up pulled it between the time I heard it on the radio and when I got to the website, but more likely it just got replaced with some newer item – they update the headlines frequently. They don’t post transcripts of their headlines, so I can’t check.
Did anyone else hear Kenyon’s report?
Peter Kenyon, an NPR reporter currently in Cairo, was kind enough to confirm what I thought I heard him say in their headlines this morning. Here’s what he said:
ISRAEL ANNEXED EAST JERUSALEM IN 1980, HAVING TAKEN CONTROL OF THE ENTIRE CITY IN THE 1967 WAR. THAT ANNEXATION HAS NEVER BEEN RECOGNIZED BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY, INCLUDING ISRAEL’S STAUNCHEST ALLY THE UNITED STATES.
It shouldn’t be a big deal that someone mentions this indisputable historical fact on air, but considering the general climate on NPR and the MSM in general, it’s quite remarkable. Three cheers for Peter Kenyon!
Henry, thanks for all this research, but at the beginning you refer to “an Israeli formulation — “disputed” area — to characterize East Jerusalem, instead of calling it “occupied,” the term used by the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and virtually every other international body.”
I refer you to Tony Blair, who is currently the official envoy of the Middle East Quartet, representing the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia. In his prepared speech at the AIPAC conference this week, he said that “settlement expansion continues in disputed territory.” He never referred to occupied territory. Watch his speech here, or read the transcript here.
Tony Blair’s words were not the Quartets words. In his very first line he disconnects his job from the Quartet’s aim. He spoke first person only. He even refers to West Bank area as “disputed”, not occupied: the Israeli formulation. Allthough he did use the word: ” [After the withdrawal from the Gaza strip] [t]he occupation deepened”. Tony Blair is not an international body. He’s more like a tourist, measuring progress by his ease of travel. He doesn’t need international law for that.
The Quartet’s own words, four days older, are on Tony Blair’s site too: The Quartet believes these negotiations should lead to a settlement, [...] that ends the occupation which began in 1967. And: … peace on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 … (UNSC 242 – that’s occupation).
eGuard writes:
“Tony Blair’s words were not the Quartets words. In his very first line he disconnects his job from the Quartet’s aim. He spoke first person only.”
Yes, in his speech he was speaking first-person only, and he does not say that he is speaking on behalf of the Quartet, but here is his first line (the only time he mentions the Quartet and his job):
“My job is to try to get agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, for the Quartet which tries to get agreement between the US, the UN, the EU and Russia.”
Does that line disconnect him from the Quartet and its aim? I don’t think so. More like the opposite.
eGuard continues:
“He even refers to West Bank area as “disputed”, not occupied: the Israeli formulation.”
Yes, that is my point. If we’re going to attack NPR for using the Israeli formulation, then we should attack Blair for doing the same thing, and we should attack him even more because it’s his job to represent the Quartet, and he should not be going off message like this in a public forum. This was a prepared speech, and Blair’s word choice was deliberate.
I reacted to your main point, which was that an international body (the Quartet) that used “disputed” instead of “occupied”. That would contradict Henry’s statement. I quoted that the Quartet itself does use the word “occupation”, no Israelism there (Henry’s claim stands). It was Tony Blair himself who went personal, not doing his job while wearing the Representative-hat, talking “disputed”.
Other things I wrote were confusing my own point, at least (e.g. the disconnection was elsewhere: in his I-not-Quartet point-of-view).
And I fully agree with you that we should confront Blair with his lousiness, lack of backbone, accepting prizes from Israel, and giving diplomacy a worse name than Shimon Peres does – no small feat. Hell, he doesn’t even work for his boss.
Henry Norr – thanks for a great article.
Dare I use the words “forensic scholarship”?
I was years into adulthood before I had any sensible understanding of the I/P conflict. Without hesitation I’ll say the major factor in that was the whitewashed/dishonest media coverage of events. Taking the media to task and insisting they report in a non-partisan way, with reference to UN and ICJ opinion, is I think an essential component of any campaign to build awareness about the true nature of the Palestinian struggle.
Earlier this morning I watched on CSPAN a foreign policy panel discussing preventive
and preemptive war and, Why does the world hate the US? Two panel members doing most of the speaking were Bill Clinton’s Rubin and a blonde women high up in our former regime from 2004-2009, if memory serves. There was no Q & A; the audience was old, and entirely passive and silent. Rubin babbled on about how the US has always had a preventive war policy practice–he did not give any examples from US history. The picture painted was that the Arab states really want Israel to take out Iran as a threat to the region, and the US does too but has to be careful to set up
going through diplomacy and sanctions first. The end game was characterized as either an Iranian agreement to be fully monitored and transparent so that if it ever tries to divert nuclear material to making a bomb, the US could attack Iran as a standard part of US preventive war policy, or if Iran refused total transparency at all times, the US would attack Iran as part of its historical preventive war policy.
The balance of the picture painted by the panel was that the world really doesn’t hate the US, but admires it. Not one word was mentioned about the Palestinians, nor about the I-P conflict. How can such an experienced panel discuss US foreign policy in the Middle East for a full hour without once mentioning the I-P conflict, the 42 year
occupation?
How can such an experienced panel discuss US foreign policy in the Middle East for a full hour without once mentioning the I-P conflict, the 42 year
occupation?
If you examine the pro-Israel bias demonstrated by the American media, it becomes clear that the instrument of deception is primarily one of omission of facts. So the media curries favour of Israel not by explicitly supporting its actions, but by failing to report on its activities which stand as inherently violent and negative projections of the state. To go along with this charade, it is necessary to eliminate the Palestinian narrative altogether, the most vocal challenger of the Israeli image promoted in the West. The advantage of this method of propaganda is that the biased news source can be, at worst, accused of incompetence. Thus the offending channel of news calls into question its quality of journalism, not the political loyalty of its reporters.
Yes, Henry, great work!
I agree with Sumud. Awareness is essential.
Finkelstein on Israeli propaganda (as related by ‘the Angry Arab’)
“Norman Finkelstein sent me this (I cite with his permission): “I was rereading the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center’s 350-page response to Goldstone: Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip: The main findings of the Goldstone Report versus the factual findings. It is such an embarrassment that you almost — I said almost — begin to feel sorry for the authors. Because you have read the Goldstone report I thought you would particularly appreciate this. You will recall the harrowing passages in the Goldstone report of Palestinians forced to kneel blindfolded and handcuffed in sandpits surrounding Israeli tanks that are firing away or moving back and forth. So, listen to what this Israeli report conjures up: “Hamas operatives would position innocent civilians near IDF tanks to prevent IDF soldiers from shooting at them” (p. 196). You get it: a “Hamas operative” drags a Palestinian civilian in front of an Israeli tank and then says: “You stand right here to make sure the Israeli tank squad doesn’t fire at us.” (No doubt the tank squad obliged and stood idly by.)”
Link to the comment above:
link to angryarab.net
The US media is the board of directors of the Israel Lobby. NPR has been a board member for ages. NPR’s obligation, like all, other board members, is to send out a clear message. What “news” is broadcast is to support the message. What does not support the message will not be broadcast. If this sounds like the NY Times, the Washington Post, CBS, CNN, etc., it is because they all are carrying out their obligation as members of the board of directors of the Israel Lobby.
“As for the Palestinians, including the roughly 250,000 who live in East Jerusalem, they are presented to NPR listeners not as people whose roots in Jerusalem go back millennia – who, legally, own East Jerusalem”
When was East Jerusalem part of a Palestinian State? Was it captured from the Palestinians in 1967?
You mean when was it part of the terrorist state of Israel? you are not just so fucking ignorant, read some history.
Good answer. Just what I expected from an idiot. There has never been a Palestinian State. Jerusalem has never been part of a “Palestinian” state. It’s all just Palaprop. That is history.
Fortunately, Israel won’t go the way of France with it’s no go zones. link to i.ville.gouv.fr
oh yeah because Russians and American Zionists Jews were all over Jerusalem when it was captured by Israel huh? Julian why not reading some real history instead of your hasbara scum?
Fortunately, Israel won’t go the way of France with it’s no go zones.
First of all you are trying to tell me that all the french regions are no go zones? Do you really think that France is closed with walls as it is the case in Israel? How dare you compare France with Apartheid Israel?
Actually, Julian, I’ve never seen a claim that there was a Palestinian State including Jerusalem, so you have disproved nothing. Recent history, however, is not in doubt. The West Bank, including East J, was recognized as part of Jordan after the 1949 Armistice. It was captured from Jordan by Israel in 1967. In 1988, Jordan relinquished its claim to the area, but only in favor of the PLO as representative of the Palestinians. In other words, Jordan said whatever rights we have, we confer on the Palestinians. So what is your point, Julian? That Israel somehow has a viable claim? As usual, you regurgitate talking points without analyzing them or subjecting them to the slightest critical analysis.
David Samel- I think there were only two countries who recognized the West Bank as part of Jordan- Britain and Pakistan. The armistice did not infer recognition, only an armistice.
Really? The Partition plan was to give 55% to Israel and 45% to Palestine. After the armistice, the 45 was divided, with half in Israel’s control, and the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt. The world has always recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the new borders (78%) which is deemed the Green Line. Are you suggesting that Israel’s possession of those areas it conquered in the 1947-49 war (the extra 23%) was more legal or universally recognized than Jordan’s possession of the WB and Egypt’s possession of Gaza? In other words, if you’re going to question Jordan’s control of the WB until 1967, and its rights to that land after 1967, aren’t you also calling into question all the territory Israel acquired in the 1940′s in addition to what was included in the partition plan? Do you really want to challenge Israel’s sovereignty over a large chunk of territory that it held before the 1967 war?
The recognition of Israel by the United Nations in 1949 I assume included Israel’s borders at that time. Certainly the 1967 resolution 242 accepted Israel’s borders before the conflict. As far as Jordan’s rule over the West Bank this is the quote from wikipedia and you will need more than mere logic to deny historic facts:
From 1948 until 1967, the area was under Jordanian rule, and Jordan did not officially relinquish its claim to the area until 1988. Jordan’s claim was never formally recognized by the international community, with the exception of the United Kingdom.[3
Sounds like you’ve only backed up what David Samel has said, WJ. And at any rate, Israel has never accepted its own internationally recognized borders. Never.
It appears many people have forgotten that Jerusalem itself was not to be part of either state according to the 1947 partition resolution. It was to remain an internationalized corpus separatum. Its occupation and division between Jordan and Israel in 1948 was recognized by nobody.
To this day the US does not officially recognize even west Jerusalem as part of Israel, although things got a little murky after the mid-90s with passage of the advisory “Jerusalem Embassy Act”.
If you were born in Jerusalem and are an American citizen, your US passport will simply list your birthplace as “Jerusalem”, with no country. At least that’s the way it used to be until about 20 years ago when the US State Department caved in to many requests by Israeli dual citizens and agreed to identify their birthplace as “Jerusalem, Israel” if they so requested.
what does that even mean? Israel has never accepted its own borders? Do they think they don’t exist?
you back on the meth?
yonira, back again with more displays of ignorance
Israel has never declared its borders, ever, since this would place a limit on its land-grabbing.
Yonira, you do not accept the borders and limits of Jewish law and custom, you just pick and choose which little bit you think might profit you, and the rest, which might impede your sex life, you just ignore.
How the hell can we build a new Zion with guys like you that can’t see past their own dick?
I mean, c’mon, how can we depend on you to fight for Israel’s existence, when you won’t even fight for her honor (which is more than she ever did!
If you are typical of the human material which makes up Zionism, and you are, Zionism is bound to fail, big time. We are just trying to save your sorry asses from yourselves.
“There has never been a Palestinian State.”
It’s a moot point. Sovereignty rests with people whether or not they have a western style or even functioning government.
Why do you think the UN forced elections in post-invasion Iraq? Because even after the collapse/disassembly/destruction of Saddam Hussein’s government that the sovereignty of the Iraqi people had not and could not be extinguished.
So, Julian, how do you feel about the expulsion of millions of ethnic Germans from
former lands occcupied by Germany under the Hitler regime?
Ernest Mandel wrote about one of the ugly things that resulted from Hitler’s defeat was the expulsion of Germans from countries the Nazis had occupied. He was not discussing German occupiers but Germans who had lived in those countries for as long as 7 centuries.
There were vast numbers of people added to the refugees of post war Europe.
People sometimes cite the ethnic cleansings during and after WWII as some sort of justification for ignoring the Nakba. The reasoning seems to be that
A) This injustice was never rectified, so why can’t the Palestinians get over it?
or worse–
B) The German civilians all deserved it and so do the Palestinians.
Argument B is usually not stated in quite those terms, but I think it lies underneath a lot of what people say and think on this subject. Many people do believe in collective punishment , just so long as it doesn’t touch them or anyone they like.
Exellent point, Donald. I would only add that Argument B was used by my personal favorite Hasbarist, Prof Dershowitz, who explicitly blames the Holocaust on … the Palestinians! He lists the crimes of the Mufti (which were real enough, though Dersh grossly exaggerates them), pronounces collective guilt on all the Palestinians, and concludes that their fate was not as bad as what happened to the Sudeten Germans. link to huffingtonpost.com In his film version of The Case for Israel, he gets none other than Michael Oren to spout the same nonsense. Oren adds that the UN debate on Palestine leading to the Partition Resolution took into account this (mis)conduct.
According to Wikipedia, there were four principle motivations for the expulsion of the Germans from prior occupied lands, including those
who have lived there for centuries:
1.) A desire to create ethnically homogeneous nation-states.
2.) View of a German minority as potentially troublesome fifth column in Soviet occupied Europe.
3.) To punish the Germans who some argued were collectively guilty of German war crimes. (There’s no doubt that the expulsion/transfer of millions of German extraction, during which up to 3 million died, was a collective punishment, as has been the reparations paid to Israel by each generation of Germans since the end of WW2.
4.) Stalin saw the expulsions as a means of creating useful antagonism between the Soviet satellite states and their neighbours.
Citizen how do you feel about the expulsion of close to a million Jews from Arab countries, losing their land and their property?
I will answer you, Julian, as soon as you answer my earlier question to you.
Julian’s a coward, both intellectually and morally. Good luck getting an answer from him, Citizen.
C’mon Julian, everyone knows this was a Zionist conspiracy to make them leave.
Racists of a feather, flock together.
And, while I’m asking, yonira, what’s your explanation of the Lavon affair?
Personally I don’t feel about it at all. Perhaps if you’d assess the situation (and the I/P conflict in general) with reason and intellect instead of feeling you might not hold so many unreasonable positions.
I don’t doubt there were cases of expulsion, and that should be addressed legally, but not as part of the resolution of the I/P conflict. It looks more like the majority of jews who left arab lands in the 15 or so years after 1948 did so to make aliyah, and not because they were forced out.
link to en.wikipedia.org
FTA:
Iraqi-born Ran Cohen, a former member of the Knesset, said: “I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee”.
Yemeni-born Yisrael Yeshayahu, former Knesset speaker, Labor Party, stated: “We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations”.And Iraqi-born Shlomo Hillel, also a former speaker of the Knesset, Labor Party, claimed: “I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists.”
Citizen how do you feel about the expulsion of close to a million Jews from Arab countries, losing their land and their property?
Julian
————————————
Julian+ Yonira
Learn your classics!
Israeli historian Yehouda Shenhav: “Any analogy between Palestinian refugees and Jewish immigrants from Arab lands is folly in historical and political terms”
“Hitching a ride on the magic carpet
By Yehouda Shenhav-Haaretz
“An intensive campaign to secure official political and legal recognition of Jews from Arab lands as refugees has been going on for the past three years. This campaign has tried to create an analogy between Palestinian refugees and Mizrahi Jews, whose origins are in Middle Eastern countries – depicting both groups as victims of the 1948 War of Independence. The campaign’s proponents hope their efforts will prevent conferral of what is called a “right of return” on Palestinians, and reduce the size of the compensation Israel is liable to be asked to pay in exchange for Palestinian property appropriated by the state guardian of “lost” assets.
The idea of drawing this analogy constitutes a mistaken reading of history, imprudent politics, and moral injustice.
Bill Clinton launched the campaign in July 2000 in an interview with Israel’s Channel One, in which he disclosed that an agreement to recognize Jews from Arab lands as refugees materialized at the Camp David summit.”
link to haaretz.com
BTW, yonira and Julian,
Yehouda Shenhav is a respected Israeli researcher…
Tough luck!
Henry Norr – Thanks for doing the heavy lifting, and providing this detailed analysis of “liberal” “objective” NPR. I recall (though I have not researched to confirm) that about 20-25 years ago, the lobby subsequently imagined by Walt and Mearsheimer got 49 out of 50 state governors to agree that Jerusalem is the eternal indivisible capital of the Jewish people. The only dissenter was John Sununu of NH, of Arab descent. Congress has also passed a non-binding resolution to the same effect with its usual million-to-three margin.
I shall write to NPR. It will be useless, but I have the time. I will tell them that the truth is supposed to make us free, but that lies and omissions make us slaves. I shall ask them to refrain carefully from inadvertent lies and omissions.
In this regard, I shall ask them NEVER to refer to “OCCUPIED territories” as “ADMINISTERED territories” because the latter phrase is essentially meaningless (where is there a NOT-ADMINISTERED TERRITORY? Other than somewhere in the Gobi Desert or Rub al-Khali?). And because it is a propaganda word used by apologists for Israel to obscure the juridical nature of the occupied territories.
I shall ask them never to refer to the OCCUPIED territories as DISPUTED territories: because, where land has been seized and OCCUPIED in warfare, and there is a disinclination for the occupier to relinquish control (as with Israel in the West Bank and Gaza and Golan) there will always be a dispute about it, so that the term is, again, essentially meaningless. It tells the listener nothing. Whereas the term “OCCUPIED” does tell the listener something — it tells him or her the legal status of the land.
I shall ask them to review the legal consequences of the legal status “OCCUPIED”. And refer them to the 20 or so UN SC resolutions.
I shall admit that Israel has claimed to have “annexed” a huge chunk of the occupied West Bank and redefined the ancient name “Jerusalem” to refer to this huge chunk instead of allowing the ancient and honorable name to consinue to refer to the tiny place which has proudly borne the name “Jerusalem” for thousands of years, but that the UN has stated many times that this “annexation” is without legal consequences, is null and void. If there is a dispute, it is about the legal consequences of Israel’s purported “annexation” of greatly expanded “Jerusalem”, and not a dispute between Israel and the Palestinians about ownership or sovereignty. Indeed, it is agreed by almost all the world, including the Israelis and Palestinians, that the ownership and sovereignty of and over Jerusalem is yet to be determined and will be determined by a peace treaty and in no other way. Thus, there is essentially NO DISPUTE about the nature of its ownership and sovereignty.
And when I have told them all this, I shall feel ever so much better.
Let us know what you get by way of response.
All MSM media in the USA is the same Israel great…the rest of humanity shit…
Like I keep saying UNTIL some event takes place the US congress and media will grovel at the jews foot…
Check C-span they have gone the same way…..
The Power Behind The Scenes
By Bill Guru
3-27-10
The aftermath of the Second World War is just as convincing of the power of Jewry as the aftermath of the First World War. In the aftermath of the first conflict the Jewish delegations at Paris achieved some amazing things. These included the mandate over Palestine, the incorporation of the language of the Balfour Declaration in the text of the mandate, the minorities treaties in Central Europe and the Covenant of the League of Nations. But in the aftermath of World war Two, the Jewish achievement in power politics was even more amazing. First came the great Nuremberg Trial where the German defendants were hung during the Jewish high holidays of October 1946. But even more impressive was the immense army of “carpetbaggers” who followed the American and British armies into Germany. They were joined by a similar army of occupiers from the Soviet east. These occupiers wore British, American and Soviet uniforms but all displayed the same ethnicity. The Hungarian author, Louis Marschalko, describes the process in his extremely rare book, “The World Conquerors”, published in English translation in 1958.
In Chapter Nine, “Revenge Is Ours”, Marschalko writes:
“On May 9th, 1945, the revenge of Jehovah was turned loose over Europe. The planes of the British and American forces were still called ‘liberators’ but Eisenhower announced:
“We are not coming as liberators but as conquerors!’
But were the Americans, in fact, the real victors? In the wake of the advancing American forces a sinister fifth column followed, the members of which in ninety-nine per cent of the cases were not Americans. This revengeful army was made up of emigrants from Eastern European countries, of black market operators from Brooklyn ghettos, of Czech, Polish and Hungarian Jews who took refuge in London and of criminal inmates from the liberated concentration camps. They filled all major and minor posts in the C.I.C., organised according to the Morgenthau Plan, they swarmed in the O.S.S., in the various commissions searching for war criminals, as well as in the American security organizations. They became mayors of German towns and commandants of P.O.W. camps. They administered LaGuardia’s U.N.N.R.A. They occupied key positions in the American forces and thus exercised control over them.
There were only 2,524 German war criminals on the original list of the U.N., but soon the C.I.C. and the American conquerors were conducting a search for one million German ‘war criminals’. At first the Soviets wanted to shoot 50,000 Germans summarily, then they proposed to bring 200,000 ‘war criminals’ to trial at Nuremberg.
Simultaneously, the conquering flood began to move eastwards. A mass of several hundred thousand released from the concentration camps surged toward Poland, Hungary, Roumania and Yugoslavia, to become officers in the Communist police forces and other terror organizations and to assume judicial powers in the people’s tribunals and so be able to pass sentence upon innocent people in an orgy of revenge. They were welcomed with open arms by the Soviet MVD who were in control of the Eastern European countries. The pattern was everywhere the same. In the forefront there was either an American, a Soviet or a French general but in each case a Jewish deputy dogged his heels.
Actually, Europe did not fall under the Russians, British or Americans, but under Jewish occupation. Everything that had rightly or wrongly belonged to Europe for 2000 years now disintegrated. The avengers continued doing (but more cruelly) the very things they had set down as crimes against Hitler. This was no occupation by the forces of American democracy or Bolshevism but by those of a victorious Jewish nationalism glowing with hatred. Ensconced in key positions among the occupying powers, they were able to punish everyone, whether innocent or guilty. In their eyes there was but one crime to have opposed, or to be in a position to oppose, Jewish nationalism
The Western and the Eastern Jew set out hand-in-hand to liquidate the Christian upper classes who had succeeded in escaping from Bolshevism. These were considered unreliable people. Vlassow’s Cossacks, for instance, wanted to fight against Bolshevism. But whoever resists Bolshevism is actually fighting one section of the Jewish world-kingdom. These Cossacks knew very well who were the commissars of the collective farms (kolkhoz) before whom the Russian peasant had to go down on his knees. In 1940 they had seen the “Russian” MVD entering Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and thus knew the Jews almost exclusively organized the deportation of tens of thousands of unfortunate people from these small Baltic states. These people were dangerous because they had witnessed certain things. These witnesses must be slain!
How can one account for the fate of Vlassov’s Cossacks otherwise than by Jewish nationalism operating behind the visible power. How else could such inhumanity be accounted for when British democracy allowed armed military police to deploy against thousands of unarmed Cossacks.”
Louis Marschalko here touches upon one of the great hidden secrets of the Second World War the true identity of the conquerors. The British, Americans and Soviet Russians were merely the front men for the real power. Very little academic research has been done on the facts he recounts. It is one of those subjects that “respectable intellectuals” just do not delve into. Nevertheless, the facts are precisely as Marschalko recounts them. A Jewish terror did descend upon Europe after World War Two. This terror was as omnipresent as it has been little mentioned since. Whether it was Herbert Lehman or Fiorello LaGuardia running the UNNRA or Ana Pauker terrorizing Romania, it was, as Marschalko says, the terror of the Jew. Jews everywhere seized the finest properties in Europe. They lived it up at the expense of the defeated while portraying themselves as the greatest of martyrs.
None of this fits the story in the history books which is why it is deleted. A few individuals, such as British general Sir Frederick Morgan and American general George Patton, tried to blow the whistle on what was going on but were quickly silenced. Morgan spoke of a huge flood of Jews pouring down the Balkans out of the Iron Curtain countries toward Palestine. At first the charge was denied but then admitted. Morgan was quickly removed and replaced for daring to tell the truth. General Patton wrote scathingly on how displaced person, meaning Jews, were living it up as virtual privileged saints in Germany after the war. What happened to Patton, and the reasons for it, is only too well known. Post World War Two Europe was a Jews harvest. “Survivors” proliferated in American and British uniforms; Jewish commissars dominated in Stalinist governments; refugees swarmed to the best hotels and UNRRA supply depots on their way to the Holy Land.
To investigate any of this in detail is to raise immediate questions about the Jewish extermination story. Thus, the rich and fallow territory of the Jewish conquest of post-World War Two Europe lies largely unexplored. In all probability that shall continue. The subject is loaded with historical dynamite.
The article of the “Catholic Gazette” read as follows:
“THE JEWISH PERIL AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH”
That there had been and still is a Jewish problem no one can deny. Since the rejection of Israel, 1,900 years ago, the Jews have scattered in every direction, and in spite of the difficulties and even persecution, they have established themselves as a power in nearly every nation of Europe.
In view of this Jewish problem, which affects the Catholic Church in a special way, we publish the following amazing extracts from a number of speeches recently made under the auspices of a Jewish society in Paris. The name of our informant must remain concealed. He is presently known to us, but by reason of his peculiar relations with the Jews at the present time, we have agreed not to disclose his identity nor to give away any further details of the Paris meeting beyond the following extracts which, though sometimes freely translated, nevertheless substantially convey the meaning of the original statements.–Editorial Note glories in the fact that without detriment to their own racial unity and international character, the Jews have been able to spread their doctrines and increase their political, social and economic influence among the nations..
——–
“As long as there remains among the Gentiles any moral conception of the social order, and until all faith, patriotism and dignity are uprooted, our reign over the world shall not come.
“We have already fulfilled part of our work, but we cannot yet claim that the whole of our work is done. We have still a long way to go before we can overthrow our main opponent: the Catholic Church…
“We must always bear in mind that the Catholic Church is the only institution which has stood, and which will, as long as it remains in existence, stand in our way. The Catholic Church, with her methodical work and her edifying and moral teachings, will always keep her children in such a state of mind, as to make them too self-respecting to yield to our domination, and to bow before our future King of Israel…
“That is why we have been striving to discover the best way of shaking the Catholic Church to her very foundations. We have spread the spirit of revolt and false liberalism among the nations of the Gentiles so as to persuade them away from their faith and even to make them ashamed of professing the precepts of their Religion and obeying the Commandments of their Church. We have brought many of them to boast of being atheists, and more than that, to glory in being descendants of the ape! We have given them new theories, impossible of realization, such as Communism, Anarchism, and Socialism, which are now serving our purpose…The stupid Gentiles have accepted them with the greatest enthusiasm, without realizing that those theories are ours, and that they constitute our most powerful instrument against themselves…
GENTILES BUILDING THEIR OWN JAILS
“We have blackened the Catholic Church with the most ignominious calumnies, we have stained her history and disgraced even her noblest activities. We have imputed to her the wrongs of her enemies, and thus brought these latter to stand more closely by our side… So much so, that we are now witnessing to our greatest satisfaction, rebellions against the Church in several countries… We have turned her clergy into objects of hatred and ridicule, we have subjected them to the contempt of the crowd… We have caused the practice of the Catholic religion to be considered out of date and a mere waste of time..
.
“And the Gentiles, in their stupidity, have proved easier dupes than we expected them to be. One would expect more intelligence and more practical common sense, but they are no better than a herd of sheep. Let them graze in our fields till they become fat enough to be worthy of being immolated to our future King of the World…
“We have founded many secret associations, which all work for our purpose, under our orders and our direction. We have made it an honour, a great honour, for the Gentiles to join us in our organizations, which are, thanks to our gold, flourishing now more than ever. Yet it remains our secret that those Gentiles who betray their own and most precious interests, by joining us in our plot should never know that these associations are of our creation and that they serve our purpose…
“One of the many triumphs of our Freemasonry is that those Gentiles who become members of our Lodges, should never suspect that we are using them to build their own jails, upon whose terraces we shall erect the throne of our Universal King of Israel; and should never know that we are commanding them to forge the chains of their own servility to our future King of the world.
INFILTRATION
“So far, we have considered our strategy in our attacks upon the Catholic Church from the outside. But this is not all. Let us now explain how we have gone further in our work, to hasten the ruin of the Catholic Church, and how we have penetrated into her most intimate circles, and brought even some of her Clergy to become pioneers of our cause.
“Apart altogether from the influence of our philosophy, we have taken other steps to secure a breach in the Catholic Church. Let me explain how this has been done.
“We have induced some of our children to join the Catholic body, with the explicit intimation that they should work in a still more efficient way for the disintegration of the Catholic Church, by creating scandals within her. We have thus followed the advice of our Prince of the Jews, who so wisely said: ‘Let some of your children become canons, so that they may destroy the Church’. Unfortunately, not all among the ‘convert’ Jews have proved faithful to their mission. Many of them have even betrayed us! But, on the other hand, others have kept their promise and honored their word. Thus the counsel of our Elders has proved successful.
REVOLUTION
“We are the Fathers of all Revolutions – even of those which sometimes happen to turn against us. We are the supreme Masters of Peace and War. We can boast of being the Creators of the REFORMATION! Calvin was one of our Children; he was of Jewish descent, and was entrusted by Jewish authority and encouraged with Jewish finance to draft his scheme in the Reformation.
“Martin Luther yielded to the influence of his Jewish friends, and again, by Jewish authority and with Jewish finance, his plot against the Catholic Church met with success…
“Thanks to our propaganda, to our theories of Liberalism and to our misrepresentations of Freedom, the minds of many among the Gentiles were ready to welcome the Reformation. They separated from the Church to fall into our snare. And thus the Catholic Church has been very sensibly weakened, and her authority over the Kings of the Gentiles has been reduced almost to naught..
.
“We are grateful to Protestants for their loyalty to our wishes – although most of them are, in the sincerity of their faith, unaware of their loyalty to us. We are grateful to them for the wonderful help they are giving us in our fight against the stronghold of Christian Civilization, and in our preparations for the advent of our supremacy over the whole world and over the Kingdoms of the Gentiles.
“So far we have succeeded in overthrowing most of the Thrones of Europe. The rest will follow in the near future. Russia has already worshiped our rule, France, with her Masonic Government, is under our thumb. England, in her dependence upon our finance is under our heel; and in her Protestantism is our hope for the destruction of the Catholic Church. Spain and Mexico are but toys in our hands. And many other countries, including the U.S.A., have already fallen before our scheming.
CHURCH WAS LAST BASTION
“But the Catholic Church is still alive..
.
“We must destroy her without the least delay and without the slightest mercy. Most of the Press in the world is under our Control; let us therefore encourage in a still more violent way the hatred of the world against the Catholic Church. Let us intensify our activities in poisoning the morality of the Gentiles. Let us spread the spirit of revolution in the minds of the people. They must be made to despise Patriotism and the love of their family, to consider their faith as a humbug, their obedience to their Church as a degrading servility, so that they may become deaf to the appeal of the Church and blind to her warnings against us. Let us, above all, make it impossible for Christians outside the Catholic Church to be reunited with that Church, or for non-Christians to join that Church; otherwise the greatest obstruction to our domination will be strengthened and all our work undone. Our plot will be unveiled, the Gentiles will turn against us, in the spirit of revenge, and our domination over them will never be realized.
“Let us remember that as long as there still remain active enemies of the Catholic Church, we may hope to become Masters of the World… And let us remember always that the future Jewish King will never reign in the world before the Pope in Rome is dethroned, as well as all the other reigning monarchs of the Gentiles upon earth.”
—–
Related, the book “The Plot Against the Church” by Maurice Pinay online
Roaml, have you met America Fust-Cless, who sometimes comments here? You should! You two are a match made in heaven, or maybe someplace else.
At any rate, I thank you for your testimony to Jewish racial purity, on behalf on the Zionists, for whom you help to establish the most blatant canards.
And I completely agree, a secure and powerful Israel is the only garauntee against a Jewish takeover of Europe.
I don’t think the Catholic Church needed or needs any Jew to slander it; the pedophiles in the celibate priesthood did more than anyone ever in history to undermine the Catholic Church. Ironically, if memory serves, celibacy was instituted
in the Middle Ages as a way of eliminating conflicts between the Church reps and the nobility–over medieval land ownership and control.
“By the twelfth century, as we have illustrated, Rome had consolidated an enormous amount of power in itself. For the most part, however, it was “paper power,” the power flowing from signed concordats, papal pronouncements, decrees of its marriage tribunal, and so forth. To make that power more “real” Rome needed real estate. Many bishops were living like feudal lords, owning large tracts of land, and the priesthood was frequently passed on from father to son as an inheritance. Part of that inheritance was land, often given as “a benefice” to the local bishop or priest by a rich patron. Rome saw a possible bonanza here, if it could find a way to get its hands on all that real estate. Celibacy was the key. The inheritance lines had to be cut. That would bring all benefices under the control of the Church’s bureaucracy and the appropriated lands could be leased out to fatten the papal coffers. Celibacy made Rome an important power broker in the real estate business.”
link to ejhs.org
Celibacy 101
This is pretty lame.
“We have brought many of them to boast of being atheists, and more than that, to glory in being descendants of the ape!”
Romal
——————–
Is this supposed to be a summary of the “Theory” of Evolution?
and hmm..Darwin wasn’t Jewish, Romal ..Neither was Wallace..
You had lost me early on but you most definitely lost me here..
Thanks for enlightening us, romal. Many of us were unaware that the Jews engineered the myth of the Holocaust to victimize Germans and seize the spoils of conquest. In fact, a lot of people are still ignorant of the fact that in the Oklahoma City bombing, the three-year-olds in the daycare center actually were suicide bombers who cleverly framed McVeigh and Nichols. Maybe you could expose this under-reported history next.
A shame really–there were terrible atrocities committed against German civilians at the end of WWII, but one reason the issue is commonly dismissed is because it gets used, predictably enough, by crazed anti-semites.
Well, to be fair, Donald, the atrocities against the Germans as a people after WW2 is not mentioned in any US school textbook. You won’t learn of it there.
I suppose one can only pity the likes of romal and one must in a sense pity people who are in the grip of extreme Zionist fantasies comparable to these ultramontane/ medievalist/Action Francaise bits of nonsense.
So long as our media spews out distorted nonsense called “news” that anyone with half a brain knows has nothing to do with reality, victims like Romal will seek out a substitute reality, no less absurd but deeply deeply pathetic.
Check out the Times latest hasbara editorial: link to nytimes.com
Huh? For the NYT, this is pretty strong and positive stuff
Sorry, got my quoted material reversed. Hope you can understand my point anyway.
I found it an odd selection to point out as “hasbara” when the NYT has produced so much worse.
I agree with your point. It is, as potsherd says, “strong stuff” for the NYT, but that’s precisely the problem. The Overton Window is so far over in the pro-Israel direction that any criticism of Israel comes across as a shocking novelty and people are far too willing to express praise for statements when we should be pointing out where they are good and where they fall short. Also, notice how they express the hope that Obama will be just as hard on the Arab side. They also say this–
“The disputes with Israel have made Mr. Obama look weak and have given Palestinians and Arab leaders an excuse to walk away from the proximity talks (in which Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, would shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah) that Washington nurtured.”
Yes, those dastardly Arab and Palestinian leaders were just looking for an excuse to walk away from the proximity talks that Washington nurtured. For the NYT, what Washington nurtures is for the Arabs and Palestinians to gratefully accept–if they walk away it’s because they were “looking for an excuse” to do so.
The NYT is well to the left of, say, the average Democratic congressperson, but that’s not saying much.
Agree with potsherd. Unusually strong words from NYTs. J Street all the way. So, who let the dogs out? is the gate open just a crack? or, do the good owners, editors and dons at the jewish seats of power decide that it’s time for regime change in Israel?
I can imagine the frantic calls to Livni – do something, Tzipi! can’t you just deal with the clown for just half a year? a year at the most? after that Iran will be a gonner and all will be well…..
Quality of comments here, excepting poor “romal” of course, gets better and better.
I don’t suppose we will be seeing much more of “romal”.
And we seem to have lost “Yonira”, too. And just when he was striking his great blow for anti-Zionism and the dissolution of the Jewish people.
There is no possible way for Israel to exist if every Jew decides for his or herself just what it means to them, and which of its laws they will obey. How would that work in the IDF? “Sarge, I’m sorry, but your orders to shoot un-armed demonstraters does not comport with my interpretation of Judaism!” And while he’s arguing with his SUPERIOR OFFICER (which is just like arguing with God, in a religious state) we’re all being driven into the sea by those Palestinian kids and un-armed protestors! DISCIPLINE, and all pulling together, and most of all, unquestioning obedience, is the only way Zionism and Israel will be sucessful, and ultimately prevail! And if Jews like Yonira find that hard to stomach, they should keep in mind the great Zionist proverb: “You can’t break eggs without making an omelette, swell, if you are a Zionist, anyway!”
yonira is a he? Damn, I …
Oh who cares anyway?
thankgodimatheist, don’t feel bad, everybody is bowled over by yonira’s feminine charm.
But yonira tells us, in a comment just a few days ago, that he is going to (as the chabader’s call it) “roll his own”. That is, he is going to convert his girlfriend to Judaism, and then marry her and produce (and this is ver-fucking-batim, my friend) “his Jewish children”.
Which is really mystifying, because I thought Judaism frowned on lesbianism.
I find yonira very encouraging. If there is one thing Zionism will never survive, it’s every Jew interpreting the Jewish law for himself: “Okay, men of the IDF, over the top and charge those Palestinians!” Yonira: “But Captain Macher, it’s Saturday! I can’t fight on Shabbos!”
Anyway, such Naches I get from Yonira, but he won’t tell us the ETA of the conversion, nor the wedding date. Nor will he assure us he is not engaging in pre-marital intercourse or even co-habitation. That’s how a good Jewish mensch acts? It’s not what they told me in Hebrew School, and we were Reform!
that he is going to (as the chabader’s call it) “roll his own”. That is, he is going to convert his girlfriend to Judaism, and then marry her and produce (and this is ver-fucking-batim, my friend) “his Jewish children”.
Mooser
—————————
ouff!
Did the idea of asking her what SHE thinks cross his mind? What if she’s not keen on being kosher, would he still marry the poor thing?
Pingback: Where East Jerusalem Doesn’t Matter « بنسبة لنا
Interesting. I had quite the experience calling into NPR’s Talk of the Nation when they did a show a week ago about Netanyahu’s announcement. I was on the phone with a screener (she claimed to be the producer) . I have gotten through on this program hundreds of times during the last 10 years. Literally. If you give them what they want they let you through and then you can ask what you please.
I had not called in close to a year. My question was about Netanyah’s statement “Jerusalem is not a settlement it is our capitol” When I referred to East Jerusalem as internationally recognized as Palestinian territory. She wanted me to say “disputed” territory. Her response was we need FACTS. I laughed and let her know that she needed to do some homework to find out what the facts are. That the International Court of Justice the highest Judical body in the world had made that determination in 2004 along with the UN security council years ago.
She would not allow me on and I refused to change my language to exactly the way she wanted me to. I asked her “why not just ask the question yourself” since you are filtering and manipulating questions coming in. She was not happy with that.
NPR has never done any in depth coverage of the Goldstone Report. Talk of the Nation, The Diane Rehm show . NPR will not touch the Goldstone Report.
Do you know this FAIR report on NPR
link to fair.org
NPR misleads and misinforms on far more that “east Jerusalem”
Can you imagine what the coverage would have been if 4 Israeli teens were gunned down by Hamas or other Palestinians. Our MSM has barely whispered about these killings last week
When was East Jerusalem part of a Palestinian State? Was it captured from the Palestinians in 1967?
Julian
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Julian
The concept of “state” is rather a modern one.. Syria became a state in 1943. All countries in the region, except Palestine of course, gained their independence and became states in the 40s.
But let’s assume just for the sake of argument that Palestine, not being a state, has no claims to Jerusalem/Palestine. They’re “invaders”, “occupiers”, “aliens” who “came from foreign lands (Arabia)..”
When did that “invasion” took place?
The Arabs/Muslim conquest of Jerusalem took place in 630 AD. That was 1400 years ago. If 1400 years of UNINTERRUPTED presence on a certain piece of land are still not enough to make them locals, people of the land, to give them legitimacy for statehood, what will?
Uninterrupted Atheist, did you forget about a little thing called WWI and the end of the Caliphate? I’d call that a pretty big interruption.
Yonira, we can’t claim we deserve a land of our own if we don’t keep our blood pure, or “neat and tidy”.
Zionism wasn’t built by men who worshipped their own dicks, and not the Jewish State.
yonira: “a little thing called WWI and the end of the Caliphate? I’d call that a pretty big interruption. ” — you mean the Palestinians left Palestine for these years? Quel diaspora.
Uninterrupted Atheist, did you forget about a little thing called WWI and the end of the Caliphate? I’d call that a pretty big interruption.
yonira
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??!!
How their presence on the land was interrupted, yonira? Do you think the farmers, peasants and common Palestinian folks in towns and cities just left to somewhere else? If yes, Where? Where did they go?
Yonira
Not being very familiar with you general input, I had a scanning look and realised that more often than not you’re just content to mock around and answer in quips and snide remarks. Fair enough but I no longer expect a serious answer to my question above. Let’s forget about then. Ok?
*big smile*
Smart man, you are. You’ll fit in just fine here. :)
Thanks Chaos..Very kind of you. I know I’m going to love it here. Broad and in depth knowledge across the board in the comments section..I’m impressed.
Hey, Mr. Atheist, just to show that you are one of the elect, I’ll have Yonira send you an invitation to the wedding. We’ll dance on the tables, drink gallons of Yonira’s booze, and toast intermarriage all night!
Sounds good Mooser but I never attended a Jewish wedding before..Anything special I should be made aware off?. Should I convert first?
The Palestinians have a lot more than 1400 years of residency in Palestine, they are descended from the Canaanites and Judeans, not Arabs. Even though others have ruled over the land, they have always been present.
Exactly potsherd. Also in addition, an Arab means a person who speaks Arabic so there is an Arabic race. Arabs are semi thats the so called “ethnicity”.
Potsherd, of course they do!! I’m familiar with both thesis, Shlomo Sand’s and Israel Finklestein’s “The Bible Unearthed” thesis, making the argument that today’s Palestinians are the descendants of those groups you mentioned. The reason why I referred to the Muslim conquest of Palestine in 630 AD was only to take on board the thesis, often evoqued in Zionist circles, that Arabs are “invaders” who ” came from Arabia”..So my thinking was, ok, for the sake of the argument, let’s accept that… Wouldn’t 1400 years be enough to make them locals? How long would be enough?
evoqued
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Evoked..(Sorry for the francism..my main language by the way)..
wondering jew March 27, 2010 at 1:22 pm Msg 44
“The recognition of Israel by the United Nations in 1949 I assume included Israel’s borders at that time. Certainly the 1967 resolution 242 accepted Israel’s borders before the conflict.”
Israel’s ‘borders’ in 1949 were the same in 1967. There were no recognised borders; only a truce line, known as the Green Line. Resolution 242 requested Israel’s: “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”, which included, of course, East Jerusalem, and all other territories beyond the Green Line, occupied in 1967. It in no way recognised Israel’s borders, or its claims to any of the territories it occupied over and beyond the UN Partition lines of 1947.
That is why no state has yet opened an embassy in any part of Jerusalem.
That the pre-1967 occupation in 1947-8 of extra territories (including West Jerusalem) by Israel extending up to the Green Line seem to have been accepted generally, without a legal basis, is due solely to inertia. It is very much part of Israel’s policy of ‘facts on the ground’ which it is so arrogantly confident will carry it through its policies of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
Sorry about the emphasis throughout; minor omission of a symbol.
The question of when was there a Palestinian state might be answered by this thought.
The Palestine Mandate created a sovereignty in regard to the territory in question. The purpose was to provide supervision (by GB) until the local people (Palestinians, Jews and Arabs etc., etc., who then lived there) being considered nearly ready for self-government, and GB was merely a TRUSTEE, not the “absolute owner”. Perhaps GB was the “sovereign”, perhaps the League of Nations and, later, the UN, was the “sovereign”. They, after all, had the ARMY, a normal incident of sovereignty. But the “nearly ready for self-government” strongly suggests that the “people” were the “sovereign,” and GB merely supplied the governance.
NB: In Anglo-American law, a “trust” is a special type of ownership in which one person, a “trustee” is the “legal owner” of the “trust property”, but “holds it in trust” for the benefit of the beneficiary (“beneficial owner”). The trustee is subject to enforcement (by courts) of the “deed of trust” which sets the rules for how the trust property is to be administered and/or distributed. The “trustee” does not at all have a “free hand” and is very far from being the absolute owner in the way that a person may be owner of property NOT held “in trust.”
In the case of the Mandate, if GB was the “legal owner”, surely the “people” were the “beneficial owners” of the property (the land of I/P). Even if there were no doctrine of a right of self-determination of peoples (but, of course, there is) creating a “sovereignty” over I/P for the Palestinian people (subject to whatever countervailing sovereignty the Israeli people or state might have), the Mandate suggests that in 1919 there was at the very least a “beneficial ownership” and thereby quasi-Sovereignty for the people (then overwhelmingly non-Jewish).
The peace treaty much talked about (and much avoided) has, therefore, a dual purpose. It will end the war of 1967, but it will also (as between Israel and Palestine) end the war of 1948, a civil war (with intervenors on both sides) among the citizens of Mandatory Palestine, the illegal Jewish immigrants being intervenors for the Jews and the Arab armies being intervenors (much later) for the non-Jews. That civil war ended in a truce without final boundaries established by treaty. Israel now has treaties as to its boundaries with Egypt and Jordan, but lacks treaties with Lebanon, Syria, and (residual) Palestine.
If Phil, Henry Norr, and others could supply a list of EMAILs for NPR, NYT, and others to whom comments w.r.t. this issue might usefully be sent, it would aid us all.
Isn’t it (as Rodgers and Hart so astutely observed) romantic? I just figured it out! Yonira meant his comment about converting his girlfiend, marrying her and then producing “my Jewish children” as a surprise proposal for the lucky lady!
Awwww!
Thanks Henry for this excellent expose on NPR’s pro-Israel bias. I think part of the reason for that bias is that NPR has become a commercial radio network masquerading as public radio.
Over the past few years, my local NPR station has gone from being a source of in-depth news and analysis to being a source of light news, info-tainment, traffic, weather, and sports – and commercials, lots of commercials.
It seems to me that serious coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began to disappear around the same year that the number of commercials increased dramatically. I think there is a connection. If the NPR network and its local radio stations are now dependent on commercial sponsors for income, it makes sense for them to shy away from controversial reporting that might offend sponsors or make them uneasy. It’s safer to appear conventional and middle-of-the-road.
The decline in serious news content is most noticeable in the two flagship programs: “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” In-depth investigative reporting often has been replaced with superficial reporting and feel-good feature stories.
Example: I don’t recall ever hearing an NPR story on the magnitude of the suffering being inflicted on the civilians of Gaza by Israel’s blockade. I have heard BBC radio cover this seversl times.
(Exceptions: I still hear in-depth analysis on the “Fresh Air” and Diane Rehm” programs.)
For your next investigative piece, I would love to see you “follow the money” at NPR and find out how much in donations and commercial sponsorships it gets from pro-Israel sources. One way or another, I am convinced that commercialism has ruined what was once a fine public radio network.
That is my sense of New York city’s WNYC. And the fund-raising sounds as if small donors give 1/3 or so of the total money (tho I’ve never looked closely). The “matching funds” to encourage small donors all come from big-money people or foundations. Lots of corporations and businesses support the station. There are lots of mini-ads. And there is the board of directors who are inevitably wealthy and who also inevitably do (or might) exercise a power of censorship (as all donors, even small ones) may do. But my sense is that the weight of donations lies with the big donors. I always suppose that they are profoundly pro-Israel. Nothing broadcast suggests otherwise.
And I lived in Boston when Vanessa Redgrave had her contract cancelled by the Boston Symphony because of the BSO’s knowledge or mere suspicion that they’d lose contributors if they let her — a PLO supporter — perform as her contract provided. If it can happen in Boston, it can happen in NYC.
Continuing. WNYC’s financial statement for PE June 30, 2009, shows:
$11.7 M Membership
$ 8.9 M Underwriting
$ 1.0M Underwriting trade
$ 5.4M Campaign for New York Public Radio
$ 2.1M Major donors
$ 0.7M Bequests
$3.5M Foundations and not-for-profit organizations
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$33.4M total (of which is $11.7M is “memberships” and $15.5M is major or other, excluding bequests). So membership is 11.7/(11.7+15.5)=43% and not 33% as I’d supposed.
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