Larry Derfner has a great piece in the JPost laying out the hypocrisy of Israel's extolling terrorists while condemning Palestinians when they do the same. It's a wonderful argument, but for me what leaped out was the Bernadotte bit. Consider, that Count Bernadotte, who saved Jews from the Nazis during the war, wanted to internationalize Jerusalem, as Herzl had promised it would be, and get the Palestinian refugees back to their homes, and more equitably divide historical Palestine than the division created by the armistice. Well Bernadotte was killed; and as you can see in this piece, some Israelis love it that he was killed. And of course we are still dealing with the injustice of the resulting arrangement. Derfner:
After the War of Independence, [Menachem] Begin was a terrorist in the eyes of some Israelis, but by now he is a supreme, unchallenged national hero. Remembered as a gentleman, he is the most beloved leader in Israeli history.
We see no reason why he shouldn’t be. But when the Palestinians, beginning with their leaders, eulogize Muhammad Oudeh, who planned the Munich Olympics killings of 11 Israeli athletes, or name a square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, leader of the Coastal Road bus hijacking that killed 37 Israelis, then we are outraged.
“Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah after a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the Coastal Road encourages terror,” said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in March. He called on Palestinian leaders to “stop the incitement.”
But four years ago, when Etzel veterans commemorated the 60th anniversary of the King David bombing, Netanyahu, scion of a proud Revisionist family, was the featured speaker. “It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terrorist action and legitimate military action,” he told the audience.
IN THE hypocrisy that characterizes Israel’s view of Palestinians, this is the height of it: The greatest denouncers of Palestinian violence against Israel also tend to be the greatest defenders of pre-state Zionist violence against Britain.
After electing Begin prime minister, we elected Yitzhak Shamir, who had been one of the leadership trio of Lehi (the Hebrew acronym for “Fighters for the Freedom of Israel”). Lehi went Etzel one better – not only did it kill for Israeli statehood, it killed after statehood, too. On September 17, 1948, Lehi men in Jerusalem shot to death Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN’s envoy to the Middle East (who, as a Swedish diplomat during World War II, had saved many thousands of Jews from the Nazi death camps).
At Lehi’s 70th anniversary celebration in Jerusalem last month, National Union MK Arye Eldad (whose father, Yisrael, had been one of Shamir’s partners in the leadership) said from the podium: “Count Bernadotte wanted to internationalize Jerusalem. In response, Lehi killed him. With his death, the concept of taking Jerusalem away from the Jewish people died with him.”
Hooray. And after Yitzhak Shamir dies, there will be highways, neighborhoods, hospitals and schools named after him, too.
It seems to me that if you are going to condemn the Munich Olympics killings and the Coastal Road Massacre, you also have to condemn the King David Hotel bombing and the Bernadotte assassination.
Derfner also mentions he standard hasbara line about the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 that killed 91 people: the Irgun warned the British ahead of time, by half an hour or so. Apparently one of the women who called the hotel was lately interviewed, and said she blamed the British for not evacuating the hotel. This is absurd. I had a really smart girlfriend once who went to Harvard Law School. Responding to some piece of trickery/declaration I was trying to get over on her once, she said, "You know it doesn't make it any better if you tell someone you're going to run over them with a car, and then you actually run over them with a car." There was a principle of law that embodied this principle, I seem to recall; and it surely applies to putting bombs in someone's basement and then phoning them up.
Yes, the hypocricy is indeed staggering [if not world class], the gall unmitigated, the termerity brazen. It tells us everything we need to know about some Israelis and the nature of the goals they seek and the ideals that they claim to profess.
Yet none [at least in our ekected politico class] dare call this hypocrisy, or the BS that it truly is and always will be.
Extremist Israeli rabbi acused of incitement to kill gentiles who “threaten’ the state of Israel.
Bernadotte fits this bill for sure. The more things change the more they remain the same.
link to uruknet.info
Celebrating terrorism.
link to haaretz.com
It seems to me that if you are going to condemn the Munich Olympics killings and the Coastal Road Massacre, you also have to condemn the King David Hotel bombing and the Bernadotte assassination.
Asking the Zionists to be morally consistent is going to about as productive as asking them to stop ethnically cleansing the Palestinians.
Of all the hypocrisy that taints (or rather defines Zionism), this one is very much widespread.
In an article in the NYT, the Israeli novelist and dove Amos Oz refers to terrorist bombings in Egypt as “certain adventurist Israeli intelligence operations.”
Right, sherbrsi, there’s a difference between universal moral principles and tribal ethics.
Problem lies in this kind of information in not reaching US citizenry. On every occasion Palestininan terrorism will be cited and also the “gory celebration of terrorism” will be cited in the OpEd columns,Primne Time TV news-discussion and also be used by policy makers like Dennis Ross/Indyk along with claims like Iran has refused the overtures from Bush and Obama despite the obvious opposite This creation of news will then lead to subliminal readiness in public’s mind to accecpt aggression against Arabs/Iranain and lead to “private decision” making process as was being referred to by Indyk on Haaretz
I have this argument that in Israel, they have more journalistic independence than they have in US. The truth is this in Israel public will not be swayed to accecpt a legitimate Palestinian state .Neither the public can force the military-political revolvong door to change the situation for Plaestine. So the media openenss does not matter.
In US ,those are blocked out/minimized or flatly suppressed completely.When the news come out, it is interpreted as old news or outright antisemitism. Israel can afford openess in israel but not in US for a reason.it is existential.
Israel can afford openess in israel but not in US for a reason.it is existential.
Because the Zionist power base is America, not Israel. It is the Congress, not the Knesset, that determines key Israeli policies and advancement of interests (see the Iran sanctions, impending Iran strike, the defense budget of Israel as funded by the US, the allocation of aid and weaponry and rubber-stamping of Israeli expansionism and destruction). It is the US media, transmitted the world over, that is being used to broadcast Hasbara internationally, making Israel’s Foreign Ministry seem downright redundant in comparison. And then of course we have American presidents and politicians being Zionist and bought by Israel Firsters, being propped up to protect Israel from any sort of accountability, be it international condemnation or UN resolutions.
That Israel has more room in discussing the conflict is more a reflection of how tightly the discourse on the conflict is monitored and censured in America rather than being a showcase of Israeli democracy or freedom.
And Americans need to ask themselves, why in a state where nothing is sacrosanct and free from criticism, the subject of Israel and American subservience to Israel still the greatest taboo, and the topic which when inquired about manages to stumble even a great orator such as Obama, making him at a loss of words.
I think Stone may have a clue.
Very well put, sherbrsi. And yes, Stone knows.
As Phil says, Bernadotte saved thousands of Jewish (and even more thousands of non-Jewish) prisoners, about 20-30,000 total, mostly women from the Ravensbrouck concentration camp in the waning days of the European War in April 1945. He escorted them to safety in Sweden and looked after them until they were able to “return” to wherever they called home. He did this at great personal risk nad was nearly killed. It is interesting to compare his historical obscurity with his countryman Wallenberg’s fame. Wallenberg surely is the most celebrated gentile in Holocaust lore. The address of the US Holocaust Museum in D.C. is 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place. Yet it is exceedingly difficult to find any trace of Bernadotte in Holocaust museums or websites or historical books by such mainstream authors as Martin Gilbert. The reason is obvious. Bernadotte had the bad taste to be assassinated by Israeli goons, one of whom later became Prime Minister, and remembering his WWII heroism has become quite problematical, because it will necessary remind people of this embarrassing chapter of Israeli history.
One lesson to be drawn is that a big part of the agenda of the Holocaust remembrance movement is to justify Israel as a Jewish State. If the Holocaust were remembered solely for its own sake, as a warning of what humankind is capable of, to condemn the villains and celebrate the courageous, Bernadotte would join Wallenberg at the head of the heroes section. Instead, this great figure has been relegated almost to oblivion. Look up the front page of the NY Times of the day after the assassination and see how prominent the coverage was, how universal was the condemnation for this atrocity, and you will wonder how it became so easy to obscure this great man’s role in history.
It’s interesting that Eldad now feels it appropriate to invoke Bernadotte’s ghost. On the one hand, I think, to paraphrase Casablanca’s Rick, “I wouldn’t bring up Bernadotte now. It’s poor salesmanship.” On the other hand, the Israeli right has become so brazen that it fears little from shining the spotlight on this affair. What was swept under the rug before is now glorified as a milestone in the Zionist enterprise.
Wow, I didn’t know this about Bernadotte or if I did I’d forgotten. And it is shocking–even after thinking I knew the worst about hypocrisy in this conflict, something new will pop up that will show I’m not quite cynical enough.
“What was swept under the rug before is now glorified as a milestone in the Zionist enterprise.” This is the hist
ory of Zionism of last 130 yeras .
Folke Bernadotte was the grandson of King Oscar II, who was very popular, and is widely regarded in Sweden and Norway as a Good Thing.
Oscar was instrumental in easing the independence of Norway (he was King of Norway at the time) and his intelligence and fair-mindedness were highly respected. He was invited to arbitrate in a number of international disputes.
His grandson seems to have inherited those traits.
Way to win over Sweden, Zionists!
NEWS FLASH
US Investigators discover that telephone calls were made to the Pentagon and the World Trade Center warning of impending attacks on these buildings, half an hour before hijacked planes flew into these builings on September 11, 2001.
The US Government announced that in light of these new findings the war on terror has been cancelled, and the heroes of September 11 will be honored accordingly.
Statues will shortly be erected in New York City and Washington D.C. of both Osama Bin Laden and Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the men who instigated these attacks (out of anger at unlimited US support for Israel).
upside, your sarcasm is on the money. The notion that warning of an atrocity makes it OK to perpetrate it is ridiculous, even if there were warnings issued to the hotel, which I doubt.
But you do not have to dream up hypothetical examples. I recall that during the 1006 Lebanon War, Nasrallah and Hezbollah were constantly making public statements about how their rockets could reach further and further into Israeli territory, even hitting Haifa. Did anyone, much less Hezbollah itself, make the bizarre claim that they properly warned the Israeli public, yet the Israeli authorities made no attempt to evacuate those areas, and thus were guilty of intentionally sacrificing their own citizens for PR purposes? Yet that is the type of nonsense that passed muster when made by Israel.
Israel is a cowardly terrorist country that relies upon terrorism in its relations with other countries. It’s no surprise their past “heroic figures” are also cowardly terrorists.
The article mentions shamir, but conveniently forgets to mention shamir’s connections to the nazis. Since Bernadotte had rescued victims of the Holocaust, perhaps that also is why the nazi, shamir, was involved in his assassination.
It boggles the mind how Jews could worship these nazi freaks, but then, that’s israel and zionism.
Philip, David, how many times will you fall into the same trap?
Never, never!, accept discussing the King David alone. Zionist terrorists carried out many atrocious massacres without any warning, like the Haifa market massacre of 25 July 1938, which killed 40 innocent Arabs and wounded 60 more. At the risk of overquoting me, allow me to direct you to a post I wrote on the subject, which gives examples of Jewish terror attacks, complete with newspaper clippings from the time, as well as to its sequel, which directly tackles the “warnings were given” claim.
Ibrahim, you make an excellent point about the extent of Jewish terrorism in pre-State and infant Israel, and of course, the deliberate targeting of civilians has been a consistent strategy ever since. Your blog’s reference to contemporaneous articles is fascinating. But I must plead not guilty to your accusation. I did not remotely imply that terrorism was restricted to the KD Hotel, or to Irgun and Lehi. I took the opportunity to discuss Bernadotte, and then expressed appreciation of upside’s parody of the warning excuse. Previously, I have noted Benny Morris’s admission, despite his abhorrent politics, that there were at least 24 massacres of civilians by armed Jewish militia during the 1947-48. I’m certainly not above being corrected, but my omissions were not deserving of such scolding simply because I did not make the very valid points that you make. It would be as if I said “Ibrahim, never accept discussing pre-state terror alone. Israel has continued to commit terrorist actions throughout its history. You’re giving people the impression that once the state was created, Israel stopped targeting civilians.” I think such criticism would be unfair, because you weren’t addressing more recent decades.
Other than that, I hope all is well with you, and you have recovered from Germany’s demolition of Argentina, a very messi affair. I was rooting for your team, but amazingly, it did not help.
It took me some time to recover from the footballistic genocide Germany inflicted on us (just 65 years after the Holocaust, the insensitive bastards!), Dave, but I’m back on my feet.
Yes, you did tackle Bernadotte’s murder, but that can be dismissed as political assassination rather than a mass killing of civilians. What I meant is that the King David warnings claim shouldn’t even be discussed because even if they had taken place (to which there’s no direct evidence) they would have been an exception to the Zionists’ routine procedure of bombing places without prior notice. Agreeing even to discuss whether giving a warning clears terrorists from their responsibility is playing into the Zionists’ hands.
Whenever someone comes up with “But the British were warned,” we should quickly reply with a list of examples of “unwarned” attacks.
As for honoring one’s own terrorists, I have a piece on that, too. Basically, David Raziel, a bomber of marketplaces, is celebrated with streets named after him in all major Israeli cities. We should all have that example ready as a response to the claim that Arabs celebrate terrorists.
UNO Scumno, or how the Israelis learned ASAP to ignore world opinion the way they had learned to ignore the UN:
link to wrmea.com
I don’t know how to use Google, so I must ask, by whom was he killed, Phil?
He was killed by a LEHI team, which is why Israel went after that group:
link to palestinefacts.org
“Yehoshua Zettler, who died on May 20 aged 91, was the former commander in Jerusalem of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, or Lehi (known to the British as the Stern Gang); it was he who planned and supervised the assassination of the United Nations mediator Count Folke Bernadotte on September 17, 1948. Bernadotte, a member of the Swedish royal family, was sent to the Middle East by the UN to mediate between Israelis and Arabs over the future of Palestine.” link to tlaxcala.es
Zettler also took part in the Deir Yassein (sic?) massacre with relish.
That’s May 20th, 2009. Zettler, an Israeli Jew, conceived, planned, and supervised the murder of Bernadotte:
link to telegraph.co.uk