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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
"Possibly the most fantastic event in the relations of the Jewish state with a Christian church is the controversy surrounding the appointment of the Greek Orthodox patriarch. "
Yossi lightly skated over how Palestinian secular and religious leaders have directly or indirectly contributed in helping Israel with its dirty tricks; in this instance, it involves the 2 Greek-born present and past Greek Orthodox Patriarchs of Jerusalem.
The former one, Ireneos, was deposed in 2005 by the current one, Theophilus III that as of last year, it's said that he has held him captive under lock and key at the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Food and water are sent up to Ireneos by rope and his only communication with the outside world is via his cell phone that he's allowed to keep. This would make a good movie. It's said that he is being held captive because he refuses to to relinquish his claim to the Patriarchate but there could be more behind this story. Greek Orthodox Patriarchs have to be approved by Palestine, Jordan and Israel and it's the Israeli approval of Theophilus III that was withheld for some blackmailing purpose or other that Gurvitz politely called "recognition". I'm guessing keeping Ireneos locked up along with other arm-twisting tactics may have had something to do with Israel having approved Theophilus III after 3 years. What had Ireneos and Theophilus III done to be equally despised by Palestinians?
The Greek Orthodox Church is the biggest private land owner in Jerusalem and is the owner of the West Bank land on which most Christian churches of all denominations are built. This ownership dates back to the late 1800s. Over the last few decades, the Greek Orthodox Church under the watch of Ireneos had increased sales of land to the Israeli government or had leased lands to it for 999 years and it's on these sold or leased lands that Israel has built its large East Jerusalem settlements that effectively cut off the city from the WB. When Athens sent in Theophilus to replace Ireneos after his deals with Israel were exposed, Israel held up the approval until ( as Haarerz wrote) he gave Israel the first right of refusal on all church-owned land up for sale and agreed to maintain the church's Jaffa Gate tenants Jewish. Greek Orthodox lands are prone to shady deals because they are controlled locally by Palestine and Jordan whereas lands owned by the Catholic Church or the Russian Church are controlled by the Vatican and Russian governments. This points to how the church leaders may have helped with the settlements expansion, especially as far as Jerusalem is concerned.
"Amazing story about Rwanda."
With countries like Israel, China, France, Belgium and South Korea getting in on the genocide, it was more disgusting than amazing. All the Tutsis and Hutus had until then were the machettes but thanks to countries like Israel, uzis and grenades were introduced and that's when the massive killings really started. Must have been very profitable for Israel.
Amnesty International had something to say about it in 1995:
link to grandslacs.net
"By all means divest! Please I’m asking you to- maybe then all the pretence of “mutual peace” loving Methodist christians can be droped and you’ll align yourself with an anti-Israel coalition."
dimadok, your self-pity is nauseatingly insincere.
From the National:
Tough road to Jerusalem for Palestinian Christians
Hugh Naylor
Apr 2, 2012 JERUSALEM // If he could, Ibrahim Khoury would bring his family to this city every Sunday.
But in his way are Israel's walls and bureaucracy that restrict him and other Christian Palestinians from entering Jerusalem.
Unlike the 280,000 Palestinians who hold Jerusalem residency, he - like most Palestinians from the West Bank, Christian as well as Muslim - must get Israel's permission to visit the city that is his cultural and spiritual home.
But yesterday, the Khoury family was part of a group of Roman Catholics from Ramallah allowed in to celebrate Palm Sunday.
Although a joyful experience a week before Easter, it was also bittersweet for Mr Khoury: he lamented the obstacles to visiting his most important holy sites such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Stations of the Cross.
"Israel tells the radio and the newspapers that there is freedom of religion here, but in reality, it's not like this at all," said Mr Khoury, 68, an architect who lives in Ramallah. It was his first visit to Jerusalem in more than a year.
link to thenational.ae
From 4 months ago in the Daily Star about Christians in Bethlehem having their lands stolen from them and being forced to leave:
West Bank Christians pray for threatened Cremisan Valley December 24, 2011 01:52 AM By Sara Hussein
CREMISAN VALLEY, Occupied West Bank: A handful of Palestinian Christians stand on a ridge under grey skies at an open-air mass, praying for protection for the sweeping valley that descends from their feet.
For decades, the dwindling Christian community of Beit Jala and Bethlehem has joined its Muslim neighbors to work the land of the Cremisan Valley during the week, and picnic here with their families at the weekend.
But the route of Israel’s controversial separation barrier will soon cut them off from the valley, placing it on the Israeli side and out of their reach – a route that residents say was designed to grab their land.
Locals say the barrier is part of a long-standing Israeli attempt to annex territory belonging to the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem, effectively separating it from Jerusalem, which is five kilometers away.
“With this confiscation, Jerusalem and Bethlehem will no longer be connected. That’s something that the Christian world should understand,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman who comes from a Beit Jala family.
Residents say the land grab is part of an Israeli plan to fragment the West Bank, and make the formation of a coherent Palestinian state impossible.
In Bethlehem, it has dispossessed the area’s once-thriving Christian community, pushing them to move overseas as their village lands are occupied to Jerusalem and eaten away by expanding settlements.
Cremisan Valley is well-known for its vineyards which are run by Roman Catholic monks from the Salesian order, and which provide wine to churches throughout the Holy Land.
Read more: link to dailystar.com.lb
Yes, Fred, the evicted family was most probably telling the truth and what Israelis did was nothing new; here's a bit more on it and how the thievery started back in 48 from Electronic Intifada that describes the theft in Jaffa:
"The largest armed robbery of the 20th century
After expelling most of Jaffa’s residents, militarily occupying the city and ghettoizing the remaining original inhabitants, Israeli authorities passed the Absentee Property Law (1950) through which it seized the property of all Palestinians who were not in possession of their immovable properties after the Nakba. Through the implementation of this unjust law, the state of Israel sent its operatives to all corners of the land, surveying the properties left behind by the expelled refugees, the internally displaced Palestinians banned from returning to their lands, and those relocated to the ghettos of Palestine’s cities. Title to these lands, buildings, homes, factories, farms and religious sites were then transferred to the state’s “Custodian of Absentee Property.” This is how the Palestinians of Jaffa, the refugees and the ghettoized, had their properties “legally” stolen by the State of Israel.
In the interviews conducted for our research, we heard dozens of stories from Nakba survivors telling us about how their homes, often just meters away from the ghetto, were seized, and how they could do nothing about it. Many told us stories of how their homes were given to, or simply taken by, new Jewish immigrants, and how they would try to convince the new residents of their homes to give them back some of their furniture, or clothes, or documents, or photographs. In some of these cases, the house’s new resident would give back some of the items, in most of the cases the response was to consider the original Palestinian owner an intruder, and to call the police or report him to the military commander. Former residents of the al-Manshiyya neighborhood, one of the city’s wealthier areas before the Nakba, described the sorrow they felt as they walked past their old houses, and the pain of seeing what remained of the neighborhood demolished to be replaced by a public recreation area.
Some of the most difficult stories are those of the Palestinian farmers and peasants from the villages of the Jaffa district. They describe how they were forced off of their land, how they managed to stay in Palestine, how the Israeli government handed their land over to Jewish settlers, and how these settlers then hired the same Palestinian farmers to work on their own land as day laborers exploited for the personal profit of the Jewish settler off the produce of the land that Palestinians had cultivated for generations. In fact, after their properties and enterprises were seized or shut down, the vast majority of the Jaffa Palestinians who remained became cheap labor for Jewish employers. Their employment was contingent on their “loyalty” to the new state. And so it was that the people who ran the economic hub of Palestine before 1948, became its orphans feigning loyalty to the ones who orphaned them in order to feed their own children."
link to electronicintifada.net
Thieves.
"I just wonder how long it will take until even the most naive Christian Zionists look at each other and realize they had been taken for a ride and the entire narrative that Israel crafted of “enlightened Judeo-Christians against evil Muslims” collapses. " (ahadhaadam)
Don't hold your breath, there's nothing naive about them. Christian Zionists or whatever they called themselves back then have been at it for a few hundred years and they need the occupation to continue cleansing the land for them for the big day. So they're really taking Israelis for a ride much more than the other way around and they're not going to let them quit for any reason.
Another holocaust being commemorated in Lebanon today, it was the first of the 2 Israeli massacres at Qana that happened in 1996 when 106 mostly women and children that had taken refuge in a UN compound were incinerated by Israeli shells. Robert Fisk described it in the Independent:
"It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disembowelled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world's protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong."
link to bintjbeil.com
Speaking of holocaust rememberance, today April 24th is the rememberance day of the Armenian one. One and a half million Armenians perished in the first genocide of the 20th century.
"Today in Palestine says:"
There you are!
Citizen, this is bigger than I thought.
"The neocons that pushed for and got the Iraq war they wanted sure do have a tremendous amount of Iraqi Christian blood on their hands for unleashing a civil war in that country."
MarkF, I don't think the plan was to kill Iraqi Christians but to simply relocate them out of the Middle East. This has been on the American and European drawing board for decades but not only for Iraqi Christians but for all Arab Christians everywhere. They are somehow in the way of Israel having its hegemony all over the area. In Iraq, you had the master neocon plan of cutting up the country into a federation of 3 areas and Christians did not fit into the plans of any of the 3 areas, so they were shifted put with the help of terrorism. In the past decade, over a million Christian Iraqi refugees have been received in the US, France and other European countries. I'm told that in Egypt today, immigration by the Egyptian Copts to the US is almost automatically approved and a couple of months back, Sarkozy invited the Lebanese Christian Patriarch to relocate the remaining Lebanese Christians to France where they'd be welcomed and supposedly safer. The Patriarch of course turned down the offer. When the civil war broke out in Lebanon in 75, the US sent a fleet of ships off Lebanon's shores to evacuate all the Christians but these refused to leave.
The ones emptying the Middle East of its Christians are not the Muslims but other Christians from the US and Europe for Israel's benefit.
"Poor Arab Christians caught between their religion and their nationality."
Oleg, Christian Arabs are more attached to their nationality than to their religion or to the pan-Arab ummah.
For Giladg and his question about violent Palestinians, the Church of the Nativity is where Israelis laid siege to the 200 or so Palestinian civilians, fighters, clergy and policemen that had taken refuge there 10 years ago 5 days after it started its "Operation Defensive Shield" to destroy the West Bank's infrastructures by bombing its schools, hospitals, police stations, churches, mosques, ministries and other government buildings and so on and shooting at anything that moved. Electronic Intifida described what had happened and how the Western press had distorted and lied about what Israel was doing. The standoff resulted in deporting about 40 Palestinians to Gaza and another 13 to various European cities that accepted them:
Israeli distortions during the siege on the Church of the Nativity
Nigel Parry
The Electronic Intifada
20 May 2002
On 29 March 2002, Israel began what it called “Operation Defensive Shield”, an unprecedented invasion of Palestinian towns to “defeat the infrastructure of Palestinian terror in all its parts and components” according to the Israeli Cabinet Communique that announced the massive military operation.
At approximately 2:00 a.m. on 2 April 2002, Israeli occupation forces invaded the neighbouring towns of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights:
“using approximately 250 tanks and armored personnel carriers, F-16 fighter jets, and Apache gunships. At approximately 04:30, they seized full control over the three cities, except the Old Town. In the invasion, which was accompanied by indiscriminate shelling, 60-year-old ‘Aaboud al-‘Ameri, from Bethlehem, a guard of a building in Beit Sahour, was killed.
At approximately 10:15, Israeli occupation forces fired three artillery shells at the house of Khaled Ibrahim ‘Aabda, 38. He and his mother, Sumaia Hussein ‘Aabda, 60, were killed by shrapnel. Israeli forces did not allow the evacuation of the bodies to hospital or their burial. The bodies remained with other residents of the house, including children, in the same room.
At approximately 11:30, Israeli occupation forces shelled Santa Maria Church in al-Madbasa neighborhood. A number of priests and nuns were wounded, including Father Jack As’ad, a Palestinian who holds the Italian citizenship, who was seriously wounded.
In the afternoon, three Palestinian gunmen were killed while confronting an invasion by Israeli occupation forces of a small neighborhood in Bethlehem… In addition, 18-year-old ‘Eissa Da’bous, from Bethlehem, was killed by a live bullet in the head, while he was in front of his house in the same area.”
Trapped between advancing Israeli forces in the center of Bethlehem, approximately 200 Palestinians — mostly civilians and policeman, along with some gunmen from local Fatah militias and Christian clergy — took refuge in the Church of the Nativity, the Christian holy site built over the traditional location where Jesus Christ was born. Palestinians had last sought refuge in the church during Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967."
Full story:
link to electronicintifada.net
Interesting that 60 Minutes sat on this report for almost a full year and is now releasing it in time for the upcoming Methodist meet on divestment that has been more or less inspired by the Kairos. 60 Minutes also refers to the important Kairos document and in fact actually highlights it in the report.; Sumud may have a point about the gauntlet being thrown down by CBS, especially with the timing of its release and in the way Bob Simon was allowed to wipe the floor with Oren.
Israel is more spooked for its existential mumbo-jumbo by the Christian Palestinians since they slipped through the net they have woven for Arabs and Muslims.
To have bothered calling to block it, Oren knew damn well what was in the report. Accepting to be interviewed about it by Bob Simon shows he knew exactly how damaging it was going to be to Israel's image. His gimmick about the Christians being threatened by Islamists isn't believed by anyone. The only predators making life miserable for Christians, building walls around them, stealing their land and water and preventing them from worshipping freely are Israelis.
I read somewhere that Israel hadn't paid Egypt for its gas since 2010 eventhough the grounds for terminating the contract were based on the unpaid supplies of the last 4 months.
Mayhem, Israel has been practically stealing Egyptian gas at $4.50 per million BTU when by its own admission, the going rate should be $16.00 per million BTU. Now it's out on the market desperately looking for replacement gas for the next year or 2 until its own starts flowing, and it's expecting to pay as high as $18.00 per million BTU for it. Instead of renegotiating a fair price with Egypt, which Egypt is willing to do, Israel prefers paying a much higher price from another source. From Haaretz yesterday:
Electric Corp. urgently seeking new gas supplier
Needs 5-month stopgap until Israeli gas starts flowing.
By Avi Bar-Eli and Itai Trilnick
Needing to fill the energy void left by the Egyptians canceling the sale of natural gas to Israel, the Israel Electric Corporation is trolling the world for a new source. The IEC has published an international tender for purchase of imported liquefied natural gas, hoping to start buying as much as $700 million to $850 million worth on December 1, 2012.
link to haaretz.com
Mayhem, about the difference between the 2 billion in arms Egypt gets annually and what it should be getting for its gas it had been selling to Israel, last year Haaretz wrote:
"Prime Minister Essam Sharaf's spokesman, Ahmed el-Samman, was quoted by MENA as saying that the review is aimed at bringing in the greatest returns for Egypt. El-Samman said revised contracts (with Israel) could boost income by $3 billion to $4 billion. "
link to haaretz.com
Mayhem, international laws determine the distribution of water between countries that share a waterway unless there's an agreement to the contrary between them such as the one between Jordan and Israel for the waters of the Jordan River. If more water is due to Ethiopia, it will get more water whether Egypt likes it or not. The article said that Burundi also wants more water. Your rant about Islamists, the price of gas and Egypt starting wars is absurd.
"It’s good to see all that stolen intectual property going to good use."
I don't get how Israel keeps getting caught time and again spying on and stealing military and industrial secrets from its main financial benefactor and even less how the benefactor does nothing about it. Those parasites have a strange way of showing their gratitude.
"I just ask you to give credit where credit is due."
I'm not denying any of Israel's technical and medical contributions, I'm just saying that this has been made possible by Israel's parasitic existence that is founded on freeloading off America's and Europe's guilty consciences and not having had to pay for mostof what it has. Give any other country the same economic advantages and there'd be a good chance that the country would have the opportunity of making great discoveries too. Let any other country double its land mass simply by stealing it and have other countries contribute guilt money to build homes on them and you'd see a building boom there. Israel doesn't even pay for all the fuel used for its military aircraft, and vehicles; fuel for the military is supplied by the US for free and this item has nothing to do with the other 3 billion in freebies it gets annually from the US. If this is not parasitic, one of us doesn't know the meaning of the word.
"... And I suppose the Islamists that want to send Egypt back to the dark ages have no responsibility for all of this?
... Why are there no concerns expressed here about American taxpayers funding a radical Islamic regime?"
Mayhem, this is your view but to Islamists, it's moving the country from the darkness of colonialism and into the light. Maybe they're not all that wrong.
Israel with something like the world's 16th strongest economy is not in this position because of its smarts but because it has been a parasitically freeloading country since its inception when most of its infrastructures like the electricity and nuclear plants were donated by the Europeans and it has never had to pay for most of its land as it simply stole it outright along with the water. If the Americans with all their homeless, uninsured and unemployed don't mind getting milked by the better-off Israel, it's their business. But to expect a very poor country like Egypt to continue subsidizing the gas that the already richer Israelis are using is way over the top. Egyptians would be better off foregoing the 2 billions their military get in US equipment each year and getting instead a fair price for their gas that would benefit all Egyptians. It's obscene that Israelis pay a cheaper price for Egyptian gas than what the Egyptians themselves pay.
Citizen, this was initially good news but in the long run, Israel's godfather carries a much bigger stick than Egypt and it won't let it suffer long without stepping in. Also, I think the same pipeline supplies Jordan. There's been talk in the press in the last 2 or 3 years about another Arab country stepping in to supply Israel and Jordan with LNG also at good prices and for which Israel is already preparing a sea terminal.
Haaretz today: "... Before the sabotage, Egypt supplied about 40 percent of Israel's natural gas, which is the country's main energy source. Israeli officials have said the country was at risk of facing summer power outages due to energy shortages. Companies invested in the Israeli-Egyptian venture have taken a hit from numerous explosions of the cross-border pipeline and are seeking compensation from the Egyptian government of billions of dollars. Ampal and two other companies have sought $8 billion in damages from Egypt for not safeguarding their investment. "
On big sticks, it was insinuated in al-Akhbar last week that one is being waved over Egypt's head with the proposed Ethiopian plan to build a huge dam that would choke the life out of Egypt's Nile and that the US and Israel have a hand at pulling the strings.
It's good that Israel's cheap gas joy ride is ending as the Egyptian people are more deserving of that gas but Egypt too is heading into stormy weather on several fronts.
link to english.al-akhbar.com
News coming out of Egypt today:
"Egypt Terminates Gas Deal With Israel
CAIRO April 22, 2012 (AP)
The head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company says it has terminated its contract to ship gas to Israel because of "violations" of contractual obligations.
Mohamed Shoeb said Sunday Israel has not paid for its gas in months. He would not elaborate. He said it was a business and not a political decision.
Egyptian militants have blown up the gas pipeline to Israel 14 times since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak last year. Many Egyptians feel the deal gives Israel bargain prices. Egypt's parliament has called for the deal to be abrogated.
The Israeli side said the decision was "unlawful and in bad faith," accusing the Egyptian side of failing to supply the gas quantities it is owed. The dispute is under international arbitration.
link to abcnews.go.com
With what Roqayah is describing of her Dad's life and work and that of his 3 fellow workers, I know that in the end, he and the others will win.
"How nice that he is going to go back to work at his bakery. One hopes he won’t also go back to work as a senior leader in the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization."
From the above picture of Khader Adnan with his dughters, he sure doesn't look like a terrorist to me. From the Jazeera interview, he doesn't sound like one either. The terrorists were his Israeli jailers.
About the zaatar in the title and how it plays in the Palestinians' roots as Adnan is saying here, a reminder to go back to Jeff Klein's Mondo article of last June and how the Israelis are out to steal and control one of the last vestiges of Palestinian patrimony:
"... Lately, Palestinians in 1948 Israel have had to buy cultivated thyme rather than collect it wild, as was the tradition. The Israeli authorities have declared za'atar a “protected plant” and forbidden its harvesting on “state land.” Whether this is a sincere conservation measure, rather than a form of cultural repression, may be doubted. Cutting the wild thyme leaves allows the roots to remain intact and grow a new crop within a short time. And, of course, what the Israeli government calls “state land” was originally the expropriated collective property of the native Palestinians."
"... Every Sunday the villagers of Al-Araqib, some now living in tents at the site of their destroyed homes -- along with many children who have been forced to move in with relatives away from the town -- gather to demonstrate at a nearby highway junction for the return of their land. One of their chants goes:
Samidoun, Samidoun,
Ma baqiyye Za'atar wa Zeitoun
We are staying, we are staying
As long as the Za'atar and the Olive remain"
(Jeff Klein)
Full Klein article:
link to mondoweiss.net
Seafoid is right; their end is near. Time for the Israelis to repent.
"Der Spiegel is available in English."
You're not getting those Dolphins for free because of your blue eyes. To criticize Israel in Germany is to be called an antisemite and a Nazi. Why did you think there was a fuss about Grass?
"whereas the zionists wanted them if they could come to Palestine."
Yes, the Zionists wanted them ONLY if they would be sent to Palestine, otherwise, they don't appear to have really cared what happened to them; remember Ben-Gurion's famous words about saving half the Jewish children of Germany. And prospective immigrants had to be "useful" to be eligible for transfer to Palestine and having a bit of money also helped.
Roha, you missed your Prime Minister's message. The day is commemorated twice each year, on the international day (January 27th)designated by the UN and April 18th by Israel:
Julia Gillard’s Yom Hashoah message
April 18, 2012 by J-Wire Staff
The Australian Prime Minister has sent a message to the community on the eve of Yom Hashoah…Holocaust Remembrance Day.
From Julia Gillard:
On this day, in Israel and around the world, millions pause to mark Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It is at once a day of intense memory, grief and reflection – and a day for commitment and renewal drawn from the lessons of this most horrific of crimes against humanity: the Nazis’ murder of over six million Jews.
From the days and months following the liberation of Europe, men and women throughout the world have struggled to come to grips with the scale of these atrocities, the depths of human depravity they exhibited, and the imperative of ensuring that such events can never, ever, happen again.
Undoubtedly, the world has learned from this genocide against the Jews, but we still have faced, in our times, other crimes against humanity in Cambodia, in Bosnia, in Sudan, and too many other places.
But the past has armed us with more than outrage. Because of the Holocaust, we are determined to expose and marshal the force of opinion, diplomacy and intervention wherever humanity faces killings on such a massive scale.
We would like to think that today, with technology and a wired world, what took so long to appreciate in all its horror – and it took years for the reality of the Holocaust to truly sink in – simply could not occur again.
The Jewish people survived the loss of six million souls, and rebuilt a homeland in Israel to ensure their future.
Today, on Yom HaShoah, we stand with the people of Israel in solemn memory, and we renew our commitment to Israel and its security.
link to jwire.com.au
From BW, this week:
Israel boosts budget for Holocaust survivors
JERUSALEM
The Israel Cabinet has boosted its budget for assisting Holocaust survivors.
Tuesday's move comes a day before the country marks its annual Holocaust Memorial Day for the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis in World War II.
Less than 200,000 aging survivors remain in Israel. Many live in poverty and previous governments have been criticized for not doing enough to allow them to live out their lives in dignity.
The government says the basket of services for Holocaust survivors will rise to $60 million for 2012, a 13 percent increase. An additional $13 million will directed toward increasing monthly stipends of particularly needy survivors. Stipends currently range between $530 and $1,900 each month.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was "urgent" to help survivors.
link to businessweek.com
"And a few years ago the Israelis approached the Germans moaning that the survivors needed money and the Germans looked at the figures and where the reparations went and told them where to go."
Not really, seafoid, It will never end; what is turned down in cash claims is compensated in other ways such as with the freebies on the Dolphins and other considerations. Last June, Germany revised its compensations eligibility program and added and additional 8,000 claimants victims that were able to prove they had been in a ghetto, in hiding, or living under false identity for at least 12 months during the Nazi era. Before, they had to prove that the time period was 18 months. This added another $649 million to be paid to the 8,000 claimants. The deal with the Germans was negotiated with the Jewish Claims Conference. For years, a gang of 17 swindlers siphoned off money from two compensation funds by falsifying thousands of applications from presumed victims of Nazi oppression. Six of them were JCC staff members. The gang stole a total of $42.5 million (€31 million).
link to spiegel.de
Next year should be a good one for the JCC. A claim is being studied against France's national railroads system for having transported victims to the death camps during the Nazi occupation of France. Lucrative contracts for the French railroads became at risk in Florida and other states a couple of months back pending its cooperation to provide full details of its involvement during WW II to Washington and Israel. Copies of all WW II manifests have been sent as requested.
link to lefigaro.fr
I have no problems with victims and survivors getting every penny of compensation possible for what they were put through. I have a problem when the money due to them is used by Israel to build apartments for people coming from Brooklyn that had nothing to do with the holocaust, while survivors of the holocaust are living in poverty in Israel.
How many different holocaust rememberance days are there and why isn't there a rememberance day for the Armenian genocide, or one for the Nakba, or one for the other Europeans that died in the extermination camps? Why is there a UN remembrance day (Jan 27th) for the Jews and none at the UN for the other people of the world when the UN is supposed to be for all the nations of the world? There used to be the one minute of silence at 11 am on November 11th for the victims of world wars but not much else.
It's sad how little of of was actually paid for holocaust victims and survivors actually reached these people. It sure was good for Israel but not that good for the survivors.
It has existed long before it was given a proper name of its own. There was a good essay on its roots here last September by Nu'man Abd al-Wahid that has it originating with British colonialism over a hundred yers ago and in time being taken over and still manipulated by the American one:
"... All three strands of Islamism, the Egyptian, Saudi and Indian came to modern political formation during the British imperial reign in the Arab World and South East Asia. It is these three strands of Islamism that the United States “inherited” from Britain."
link to mondoweiss.net
Noland, they have always played on the same team but wore different jerseys to keep everybody confused; you're not the only one. Cheer up, the dictators are leaving one by one and in time, they will all be gone.
Annie, we've been around the block on this with Noland last August here on the Libya threads and he's still confused on what he wants. He doesn't want the old dictators to hang around and he doesn't believe that the Brotherhood is taking over everywhere. Now he doesn't believe the part about al qaeda moving in and he supports the Syrian insurgents but doesn't know that they want to make peace with Israel which would put the final nail in the RoR coffin. He believes Nasrallah but he doesn't believe Nasrallah. Very confused.
You're superficial, Izik, latching on to only 2% of a document intended as an anti-US, anti-Israel, anti-USSR and anti everything manifesto written shortly after the Iranian revolution, Sabra-Shatila and the horrible Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. Had you been on the receiving end of Israel's horrors during the occupation like being held at the mini-Auschwitzes Israel ran at the Ansar concentration and torture camp and at Khiam, you would have written a more bitter document. Here's a small sample:
"The sadism of the Israeli guards at Ansar rivaled the SS of World War 11. Prisoners were forced to "bark like the dogs you are" and to shout Long live Begin, long live Sharon." The Israelis pulled into the jaws of Ansar every male Palestinian in Lebanon they could get their hands on. "There appeared to be virtually no Palestinian men between the ages of 16 to 60 left free in southern Lebanon." One of these prisoners, who was held in Ansar for 155 days, testified that prisoners were laid "on special tables that have holds for legs and arms," and then beaten with sticks and iron rods. He saw deaths as the result of torture. The bodies of seven young men killed in an Israeli detention camp near Sidon in the early weeks of the invasion were found with hands tied and signs of having been beaten to death by an Israeli guard. One Lebanese witness saw a prisoner beaten to death by an Israeli guard. (30)
A Lebaneseprisoner in Ansar testifies that "prisoners were interrogated while being beaten with heavy clubs." The most severe beatings were reserved for teachers, businessmen, students and journalists. These "interrogation sessions" lasted from ten minutes to half a day at a time, according to the whims of the interrogator-torturers. Prisoners were forced to sleep on the ground, without blankets in the cold nights. Some were sent to other camps in Israel. There prisoners were attacked by guard dogs, and those who tried to defend themselves from being bitten by these vicious dogs were beaten by their Israeli captors.
Many prisoners were beaten with iron bars on the genitals, on the hands, and on the soles of the feet. One had four fingers broken. This man was hung by his feet "and they used me as a punching bag," he testified. When prisoners begged for water they were given urine to drink. Prisoners were forced to run like cattle while being beaten with clubs. Once they were made to sit for a solid week, most of the time with hands on their heads.
The worst times were Friday night and Saturday, when the guards celebrated the Jewish Sabbath by getting drunk and selecting some prisoners for special punishment, "to the accompaniment of laughter, full of hate." (31)
... The Israelis themselves have provided testimony to their barbaric behavior in Lebanon and to their aggressive designs on that country. "
Noam Chomsky also wrote about the Israeli horrors committed at Ansar. If the above is not gory enough for you; read the rest of it at:
link to palestine-encyclopedia.com
"You admire Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, although all of these forces advocate a very oppressive religious school of thought."
Izik, you have lots of misconceptions about what's really happening. Nothing oppressive about them eventhough I don't agree with some of their religious thoughts. The majority of Iranians voted for the current government, the majority of Palestinian voters wanted Hamas and the majority of Lebanon's Shia voted for Hizbullah and the majority of other Muslims and the Christians there (which makes it about 75% of the country) are with Hizbullah on its positions against Israel. Where do you see the oppression?
"... i remember that highly anticipated speech he was going to make involving the israeli spy ring they busted implicating israel in the death of hariri and then israel did some tree triming on the border the morning of the speech and all hell broke loose. the speech was delayed. "
Annie, it was a press conference in 2010, very long (2.5 hours), very technical and naming names and places that would probably be meaningless to you. In a nutshell, the first hour covers how Israel had set up HB to take the fall from as early as 4 years before the actual assassination up to the time it happened and the Israeli PR machine went into overdrive in accusing HB of having done it.
The second hour describes the complex network of spies Israel had set up within Lebanon's cell phone networks that were instrumental in framing HB's circumstantial involvement in the assassination and how HB had been hacking into Israel's video drone transmissions for years, how HB caught an Israeli drone transmission of a video tracing Hariri's route that he took on the day he was asassinated and how at the moment of the assassination, an Israeli drone and AWAC were in the sky over Beirut and Israel refused to provide details of the flights to the UN investigators (some experts believe Hariri was killed by a satellite-guided missile fired from a drone).
It was from such hacking of drone transmissions that HB got wind of a planned Israeli landing in Lebanon a few years before the Hariri assassination, laid a trap and succeeded in killing about a dozen invading commandos. The released HB video of the planned by drone mission and of the actual botched mission are now the subject of a claim against their government by Israeli families of the killed commandos as they had been lied to about how the commandos had died. They had been told that the commandos died in an accident. BTW, most HB members are fully fluent in Hebrew. If any non-Zionist had to venture a guess on whodunit, based on track records of which party is in the habit of assassinating people and stood to gain most by the assassination, he'd easily pick Israel.
If you want to watch the English-dubbed video:
link to youtube.com
"This Nasrallah you admire so much is considered a terrorist by the west, and supports enforcing Shar’ia on his own people."
No he doesn't enforce anything on anybody, Izik, as a Shia, he's more into the Walayat al-Fakih of Ayatollah Khamenei (as in Iran) and has declared that although it's his first choice, Lebanon's 17 different Christian and Muslim sects make it impossible to be applied there so he is perfectly happy with Lebanon's current form of government and wouldn't want to see it changed.
"Us American Jews tend not to do the things Israelis do."
I'm sure you and American Jews don't, Mark.
As to the body parts that Oleg is refusing to accept, full essay on the subject including details on Israel's chief pathologist involved in the business, Yehuda Hiss that also had a hand in covering up the missing Yemeni babies stories, and Zaki Shapira that had to relocate his harvesting business elsewhere. From the American Israel-watching organization, WRMEA:
"... a lecture last year sponsored by New York’s PBS 13 Forum, Scheper-Hughes explained that Israeli organ traffickers, “had and still have a pyramid system at work that’s awesome...they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”
Lest this sound simply like a successful international concern, it’s important to understand the nature of such a business.
As Scheper-Hughes describes it, organ trafficking consists of “paying the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies.”
link to wrmea.com
The blood libel is being pushed by Haaretz in 2010:
Israel police uncovers organ trafficking ring in north
Six men arrested, among them an IDF brigadier-general and two lawyers; woman was reportedly offered $100,000 for kidney.
By Jack Khoury and Eli Ashkenazi
Police on Tuesday arrested six men suspected of being involved in an organ trafficking ring in northern Israel. Among the suspects are an IDF reserves brigadier-general and two lawyers.
The department for fraud and misappropriation in northern Israel has been conducting an undercover investigation which began following a complaint by a 50-year-old woman from Nazareth, who replied to an advertisement in Arabic offering 100,000 dollars for a kidney.
The woman underwent medical examinations to ensure a match, and she was then flown a country in Eastern Europe where they extracted her kidney. The woman said that when she returned to Israel, she did not receive the money promised to her. Police say they have since received similar complaints.
Police also said that during the investigation they uncovered a large, very well-organized industry of organ trafficking. The ring includes organ traffickers, agents, and lawyers.
"The ring is operating throughout Israel and not only in the north, and appeals to the public through local media and internet," a police official said. "The organ traffickers somehow receive details about potential transplant candidates and they offer them their services," he said.
Full article
link to haaretz.com
"mayhem is excited about another libya."
So is France, Annie. While Syria won't let in more than 250 observers, Moon over the UN wants 300 and Sarkozy keeps asking for a humanitarian corridor (like the one France and NATO set up for Libya). There are now over 200,000 displaced Syrians in addition to the already existing 400,000 displaced Syrians from the Golan since 1967 but nobody gives a damn about these. Sarkozy probably never heard about these 400,000 refugees because it has something to do with Israel.
"Clinton on BBC: “Alqaeda, Hamas supporting Syria opposition.”
It became obvious when they closed shop in Damascus and opened in Doha.
"Walid, I think you have yours wires crossed. Eljay is most definitely *not* a zionist."
Apologies to Eljay for the insult. Haven't been paying attention lately and mixing up the good guys with the bad ones.
Oleg, I would have thought that you guys are too embarrassed to talk about body parts; have you already forgotten about the revelations in the Swedish papers about Israel's coroner dealing in Palestinian and Israeli body parts with Israel's universities even after having been convicted of the same crime a few years ago?
About Hizbullah dealing in body parts, regettably it's true but it's a practice they learned from Israelis that started it years and years before Hizbullah started doing it. Look at all the bodies of Lebanese it had been keeping since over 30 years for that specific purpose.
Most despicable among Israel's actions in 2006, was having abandoned fallen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon because they were preoccupied with dragging across the Israeli border cadavres of fallen Hizbullah fighters to use in future trades. Those abandoned Israeli bodies and parts of other ones were used in the trade for Kuntar. You'd find more Mengele types in Israel than in Lebanon. Along with the dead Hizbullah bodies it took back to Israel, it captured an old ex-Hizbullah fighter suffering from schizophrenia that it kept in captivity for over a year in spite of the Red Cross having provided Israel with the sick man's medical records. One can only guess what the Israelis did with him or to him during the year. Israel has a track record.
"I am soliciting the opinion of the Mondoweiss coterie. Would you make a deal with a Sadaam Hussein. Mubarek, Gaddafi or Ben Ali? Would you grant legitimacy to a despot who has murdered thousands of his own people?"
The coterie wouldn't, but the US, the UK. France and Israel sure did. With all of them.
Eljay, for a little while back in 2006, Israelis believed him more than their own leaders. From YNet:
Poll: Israelis believed Nasrallah over Peretz
Polls conducted by Dr. Udi Lebel, political psychology lecturer, found sad picture of Israeli PR
Anat Breshkovsky Published: 09.03.06, 16:38 / Israel News
During the poll, entitled "the management of Israeli PR during the second Lebanon war," members of six groups were asked to watch video recordings of Israeli PR in Israel and abroad, and to answer questions. Lebel says he held polls in the past on issues of strategic press, political psychology, and army-media relations. The result of his latest poll show that Israeli PR was so lacking, that in my cases the public was forced to rely on the reports of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah..."
link to ynetnews.com
"So, my point was simply that while his proclamation sounded very nice, it was nothing more than PR. He was right to employ it, but it’s nothing to get excited about."
Eljay, you appear to be the only Zionist to not be excited about the man. From Haretz a couple of years back:
"Hezbollah chief's speeches sway Israeli opinion more than any Arab leader
Hassan Nasrallah is the first Arab leader in 30 years to affect the Israeli public through his rhetoric, according to military intelligence report.
By Amos Harel
... Nasrallah's speeches were widely covered in Israel during the 2006 war and drew harsh responses from senior political and military officials. Ronen says the rhetoric and content of the speeches were influenced by Nasrallah's understanding of the development of the war, based on information from the field. He argues that had Israeli decision makers analyzed these speeches in real time it could have altered the course of the war.
The main term that Nasrallah repeated throughout the war in his speeches was "sumud," Arabic for "standing firm" or "steadfastness." Ronen says that Nasrallah's rhetoric was aimed at supporting and strengthening the "steadfastness" in terms of social unity and solidarity among the Lebanese; among the Hezbollah combatants and the Shi'ite civilian population; and in the context of deterring Israeli attacks.
Nasrallah focused on what he took to be proof of the IDF's weakness. He prided himself on "surprises" such as the missile assault on an Israel Navy destroyer and tried to create a deterrent against an Israeli ground offensive. Israel's weakness, as Nasrallah saw it, was its concern about the economic damage and the loss of human life in Israel resulting from Hezbollah rockets.
"The Israelis are interested in blood and money," Nasrallah said in one speech."
link to haaretz.com
"You attribute the constant spin and manipulation of PR exercised by western and Israeli politicians to Nasrallah ... "
Frankie, here's one side of Nasrallah you'll never hear about in the western press; it's his sermon against the use of drugs, especially against selling it to the Israelis as it's claimed in Israel as this is forbidden in Islam. This contrasts with Israelis that poison water wells of Palestinians. At the 8th minute mark, he describes in a funny way how Israelis discovered a poisonous fish and named it "Nasrallah".
link to youtube.com
"they don’t believe god is inclined to procreating through a human womb"
Although the Quran denies any paternal connection between God and Jesus, it does acknowledge the virgin birth of Jesus.
"Abraham is no minor figure in the Quran. He’s the “Friend of God,” and very near and dear to Muslim hearts."
"friend of God" in Arabic is "al-Khalil". Al-Khalil is also the Arabic name for the city of Hebron, where about 500 Zionists are making life miserable for 175,000 Palestinians. Crazy numbers.