Haaretz in 1932: Hitler makes better impression than expected

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Haaretz in 1932: Hitler makes better impression than expected

Last update - 20:21 29/04/2008

By Ofri Ilany

Tags: Adolf Hitler, Nazis

		The Davar newspaper front page after Hitler's election victory in 1933

The date is January 28, 1932. Haaretz' correspondent in Berlin, Gershon Savitt, reports from the courthouse. In the defendant's chair is Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi party, who is facing a libel suit filed by his former friend, Walter Stennes. A year before his appointment as chancellor of Germany, Hitler is still not very well known to Haaretz's readers.

In the article, "Hitler up close and personal," he emerges as an exotic figure, somewhat peculiar. "I must note right away that the impression Hitler makes is immeasurably better than expected," writes Savitt. "He is 46, but looks younger. Incidentally: he is a bachelor. Self-satisfaction and self-confidence are apparent in his movements; he acts and feels as if he himself is a 'star.' Because the world's eyes are now turned upon him and this pleases him."

The Mandate-era Hebrew press watched with wonder mixed with concern at the unprecedented political phenomenon that surfaced in those years in Germany: the rapid gains of the Nazi party until it took over the government.

Ilana Novetsky-Bendet, a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is researching the Hebrew press' attitude toward events in Germany from the time of the emergence of the Nazis as a significant political force, until World War II. In Bendet's master's thesis, which covers the period up until Hitler's rise to power, she found that the Hebrew press showed an interest in and followed the growing strength of the Nazis as early as the late 1920s. However, the papers in Palestine had trouble discerning Hitler's political power and the centrality of the racist component of the party's ideology.

"The more the party's electoral power increased, the greater the interest in it," says Bendet, whose mentor for her doctoral thesis is Prof. Moshe Zimmerman. "But hardly any of the papers grasped the severity of Nazi anti-Semitism."

There were seven newspapers operating in mandatory Palestine at the time, and each one of them represented a different party or political line:

• Davar was the Histadrut labor federation paper;
  
• Hapoel Hatzair was the Mapai paper;
  
• Haaretz was the liberal paper;
  
• Hatzofeh was the paper of the religious;
  
• Haboker was the paper of the general Zionists; and there were a few other papers associated with the revisionists, including Doar Hayom, Hazit Ha'am and Hayarden.

The information from Europe they received came primarily from news agencies, and occasionally from trains that relayed the reports from Cairo to the land of Israel. Some of the papers also employed writers in Germany, most of them Russian Jews who immigrated to Germany in the 1920s, and who occasionally also reported for other papers around the world. According to Bendet, some of these writers remained in Germany even after the Nazis' rise and left only in the mid-1930s.

"The heroes of the most recent elections to the Reichstag are, undoubtedly, the Communists," wrote Yeshayahu Klinov in Haaretz following the July 31, 1932, elections, when the Nazis became the biggest party in the Reichstag.

After the November 6 elections that year, when the Nazis were slightly weakened, Haaretz - under the editorship of Moshe Glicksman - declared "the end of Hitler's career." An analysis published in the paper on November 11 stated: "Hatred of Israel, with all the appeal it has for darkened masses at a time of emergency, is not negotiable currency in Germany: this nation has absorbed too much culture to be able to agree to discriminate against citizens who live in the same homeland."

On December 7, the paper declared: "Hitler no longer has any hope of becoming the sole ruler in Germany, at most there is a chance that the Nazi party will earn only a few crumbs of power."

The shortsightedness of the Hebrew papers can be understood in light of the uncertainty and political chaos prevailing in the German political area during those months. According to Bendet, the information that arrived from Germany about the complex intrigues and political contacts between the different parties was partial, because the talks were secret.

"When Hitler was appointed chancellor, it was a complete shock to all the papers," she says. "Almost everyone trusted President Hindenburg because they said he despises Hitler and would not allow him to assume power. They didn't believe that the rules of the game could change so quickly.

In the doctoral thesis she is now writing, Bendet reviews to what extent Yishuv (pre-state Jewish community) society understood the essence of Nazi fascism after its rise to power, and how the Yishuv assessed the chances of another outbreak of war, and its results. Bendet says the only journalist who did discern the Nazis' strength was Itamar Ben Avi, the son of Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the editor of Doar Hayom.

"Itamar Ben Avi was not shocked by the Nazis' rise to power, because before then he already said that Hitler will in the end achieve what he wants."

Most Hebrew papers were stunned by the party's quick takeover of the institutions of power, and the racist persecution of Jews enacted in Germany. Many described the racist regime as "a return to the Middle Ages."

Only one paper took a completely contrary position to Hitler's ascendance: Hazit Ha'am, the journal of the right-wing of the Revisionists. "If the segments of our people draw the appropriate conclusions from the Hitlerism, then we will be able to say that something good came out of a bad situation," the paper stated a few days after Hitler's appointment as chancellor.

The paper even praised certain foundations of the Nazi ideology, primarily its fight against communism: "the anti-Semitic husk should be discarded, but not its anti-Marxist inside," the paper's editors wrote of Nazism. The praise of Nazism stopped only after the intervention of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who called for "a total end to this abomination." Around two years later, in 1935, Hazit Ha'am folded.

The newspaper headlines in the days after the burning of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933, and the passage of the law that granted Hitler dictatorial powers on March 24 clearly reflected the fear Nazism inspired: "A day of heavy boycotting of Germany's Jews. Goering came out of a mental institution to assume power!"; "Hitler will not budge from his position toward the Jews, says the German consul in London." "1933 is the darkest year in the last 500 years of the history of Germany and its Jews," the papers said.

"Will a general strike not break out? Will the German people really not rise up against the wild leadership of the barbaric dictator?" mused Davar two months after Hitler's rise to power.

But as the Nazi party established itself in power and radicalized its actions more, the papers recognized the severity of the threat. According to Bendet, "In the mid-1930s, when it emerges that Hitler is implementing the Nazi ideology and the race laws, there is growing concern that the Nazis will bring a tragedy upon Europe's Jews."

And nevertheless, until the late 1930s, most papers felt that the democratic superpowers would succeed in preventing war, and that the Nazis were primarily a threat to German Jewry. Even after the annexation of Czechoslovakia on April 14, 1939, Jabotinsky still promised in the newspaper Hamashkif: "In the place where the confidence in the surety of a 'European' war stars, that is where any threat of war passes. And the strongest of the strong and the brazen of the daring, will be deterred at the last minute - meaning, a 'European' war is not a possibility."

According to Bendet, "most of the papers here assumed that Germany was unprepared for war. They thought that there was more 'noise and ringing' there than any real threat."

However, after the annexation of Czechoslovakia following the Munich Agreement of September 1938, the papers started voicing fear about the fate of the young Yishuv in Palestine.

"When they see that the conciliatory policies of Britain and France capitulate before Hitler, they worry that the British will sacrifice them as well, the Nazis will reach the gates of the land of Israel, and the Zionist enterprise will collapse," she says. "The Zionist enterprise is the focus of their interest and they worry about that more than about European Jewry."

Is it possible to learn something about the ability to predict future threats from the newspaper forecasts of the Nazis' aims? According to Bendet, "it is possible to discern a certain tendency to suppress threats. On the other hand, it's no great feat to pass judgment after the fact. It's hard to predict what will happen in real time. Sometimes the papers say: we're not prophets."

Hebrew Hitler jokes

The Davar newspaper published a column called Be'vat Tzehok (With a Smile) that included jokes about current events. In the 1930s, some of the jokes featured were about Hitler and about Nazism.

b American: Medical science here has advanced 10 steps forward. Look, not along ago they amputated a man's right leg and made him a wooden leg - he ended up being one of the best soccer players.
Frenchman: And here not long ago a man's arm was amputated and they made him an artificial wooden hand and he's now one of the best pianists.
German: And here, one man lost his head in the Munich beer hall putsch. They say he now has a wood head, and he's one of the leading rulers. (April 21, 1935)


b Hitler once went to a magician-fortune teller and asked her to tell him what would happen at the end of his life.
Fortune teller: Am I allowed to tell you everything?
Hitler: Yes, on the contrary, tell me everything without any fear.
Fortune teller: I see that you will die on the eve of big Jewish holiday.
Hitler: If so, I'll cancel all of the Jews' festivals and holidays.
Fortune teller: Even so, the day after your death will be a big Jewish holiday. (May 5, 1935)


b A soldier from the strike forces assaulted a passerby on a Berlin street and repeatedly struck him with deadly blows. The victim started shouting: "Murder! Beating! Help!" A guard approached him and said: "I ask you not to talk too loudly about politics!" (August 2, 1935)



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Hizbollah builds up covert army for a new assault against Israel

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Hizbollah builds up covert army for a new assault against Israel

Villages empty as Shia militia sends recruits to tough training camps in Bekaa Valley, Syria and Iran, reports Mitchell Prothero in southern Lebanon

by Mitchell Prothero,

• Sunday April 27 2008

The dead of southern Lebanon watch the living from the sides of buildings and from lampposts, their faces staring out defiantly from posters, heads often superimposed on bodies of generic men in uniform. These are Hizbollah's martyrs: men killed fighting against Israel before it abandoned the occupation of the south in 2000 or in the numerous clashes since, including the bloody summer war of 2006.

The images are often the only public acknowledgement of the individuals who make up this most secretive of institutions: Hizbollah's military wing.

But an Observer investigation has discovered that this covert organisation is quietly but steadily replacing its dead and redoubling its recruitment efforts in anticipation of a new, and even more brutal, conflict. Hizbollah has embarked on a major expansion of its fighting capability and is now sending hundreds, if not thousands, of young men into intensive training camps in Lebanon, Syria and Iran to ready itself for war with Israel. 'It's not a matter of if,' says one fighter. 'It's a matter of when Sayed Hasan Nasrallah [Hizbollah chief] commands us.'

The group's policy of refusing to discuss military matters extends to the highest levels. In speeches and rare interviews, Nasrallah refuses to answer even the simplest questions about the military wing, never referring even to the fact that his eldest son, Hadi, was a fighter himself. Life as a Hizbollah fighter is anonymous until death. But meetings with fighters, activists, Lebanese security officials, the UN peacekeepers along the border and residents of south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the group is most active, offered a glimpse inside the workings of a group rarely open to outsiders. None of the sources within the group can be named - Hizbollah has barred members from speaking with the Western media since the mysterious death of a top commander, Imad Mughniyeh, in a Damascus car bomb.

'The most important thing is to never talk,' says one fighter, who agreed to speak about the group without revealing his name or specific duties inside 'the Islamic Resistance of Lebanon', as the military wing of Hizbollah is known. 'From the moment we begin our training, we are told two things: never disobey an order and never talk about the resistance. Hizbollah is not a job, it is not a family. It is a mix of religion, honour, dignity and discipline. It is my life.'

But what is becoming more obvious, even as Hizbollah tries to hide it, is that the group has embarked on an unprecedented build-up of men, equipment and bunker-building in preparation for the war that almost everyone - Lebanese and Israeli - considers inevitable. 'The villages in the south are empty of men,' said one international official. 'They are all gone, training in Bekaa, Syria and Iran.'

A trip by The Observer through villages in the Hizbollah heartland confirmed a conspicuous lack of fighting-age men. Visible were several new martyr posters, but unlike the traditional ones they portrayed anonymous, fresh-faced youngsters without military garb. According to locals, these are boys who have been killed accidentally in the latest wave of training in Iran. In the city of Tyre, too, posters showing young men killed in training exercises are cropping up. One is of Ahmad Hashem, killed while instructing recruits in the use of rocket-propelled grenades.

The initial training and selection of recruits is done in Lebanon, with Iran preferred for training on specialities - use of certain weapons, RPGs and anti-tank missiles - that require firing live rounds. 'But mostly the training in Iran is in theoretical things: philosophy, religion. The best training for fighting is done here in Lebanon,' said a fighter. 'We are so close to Israel here that our training becomes real.'

Israeli official statements suggest the increasingly aggressive recruiting results from the heavy casualties suffered by the group in 2006, a notion dismissed by sources within Hizbollah and even by the US military.

• While Israel contends that between 500 and 700 Hizbollah fighters were killed, the group itself said that about 80 fighters had died.
• Hizbollah sources admit that the losses were double that figure, while the US military study decided the death toll was 184.

'How could they be lying so much?' asked one resident of the south. 'People would not tolerate not having a funeral or posters of their son or husband. If it were 700 dead fighters, we would all know. We'd know more people killed, we'd be hearing the complaints from the families. Where can you hide 700 dead bodies in south Lebanon? It's too small.'

Losses aside, before 2006 most observers also widely overestimated the size of the military group. Some analysts put it as high as 5,000 men with more than 10,000 reservists, including its allied Amal - meaning Hope - militia supporting them.

'Ridiculous,' says the Hizbollah member. 'Before 2006 there were not more than 1,000 professional fighters, guys who manned bunkers and conducted operations full-time. The rest are trained and armed but lead ordinary lives unless called upon.'

This assessment is supported by regional intelligence services and Lebanese Shias, but now signs of the militia's dramatic expansion are alarming Hizbollah's domestic and international enemies.

The US military study described Hizbollah's military wing as 'completely decentralised'. Its commanders famously exercised this independence when they refused orders by the top command to abandon Bint Jebel in 2006 - then under massive Israeli ground assault. The town did not fall and Hizbollah rank-and-file today laud the refusal of orders as one of the biggest victories in the war. Recruiters closely watch youngsters for this kind of nerve and self-motivation, selecting the most talented boys for advanced training when they reach adulthood.

Hizbollah fighters describe a series of units - built around specialities such as rocket teams, heavy weapons experts, infantry, scouts and or part-time basis.

'Some units will be sent for training or operations for one, even two, years. Others continue to work or go to school. But even if you work your life is still Hizbollah. They call and that's it - you go. Maybe you tell your boss or professors you're going to Qatar or something for family reasons. But you never tell anyone what you're really doing.'

The decision to expand both the military wing and the supporting militias stems not from the losses during the 2006 war but from Hizbollah's success as a conventional military force in that conflict, says a Lebanese army commander who has worked with the group, his view being confirmed by the US military study.

'They were guerrillas during the occupation but shocked Israel in the war by standing and fighting from fixed positions. Even badly outnumbered, they held territory with minimal losses even under assault from tank units,' he says. 'Now they want to expand to make sure they can stop the next invasion before the tanks reach the flat plains of the Bekaa, where Israel's armoured units will have the advantage.'

Another crisis driving the build-up is Lebanon's political conflict, which pits Hizbollah and its allies against a coalition of Sunni, Druze and Christians supporting the Western-backed government. Street fights between Sunnis and Shias are becoming commonplace but Hizbollah cannot afford to take its men away from the bunkers in the south to fight on the streets of Beirut, say members of Amal and the Lebanese army.

'They know they can't send their best fighters, or the Israelis could attack. Israel will always be their main focus. But they have access to many that are good enough to fight with rocks, sticks and maybe some guns. They're training those guys to fight the Sunnis in Beirut,' says the army officer.

One Hizbollah fighter says he hopes that the situation doesn't deteriorate into them taking up arms against other Lebanese groups, but admits it is possible. 'God willing, I will never fight a Lebanese, but I will if ordered.'

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From the Nile to the Euphrates; The `Victims of a Map`

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ISRAELI E NEWS

From the Nile to the Euphrates; The `Victims of a Map`

Filed under Opinion Editorials, Israeli Palestinian relations, Israel's borders, Iraq war, Disputed territories, News, Poverty, UN, Palestinian society, Zionism, Refugees - on Sunday, April 27, 2008 By: Arbuthnot, Felicity

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When the State of Israel declared independence on 14th May 1948, her founding vow was to:

“... uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of religion, race, or sex; (to) guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education, and culture; will safeguard the holy places of all religions; and will loyally uphold the principles of the United Nations Charter. . . .” Israel called: “upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.”

Israel is about to celebrates sixty years of human rights violations against the region, Palestinians and destruction of their ever diminishing lands, revelling, in effect on graves, ancient bulldozed groves and over half a century of decimation of dreams, homes, heritage. The travesty of the theocracy's founding on the above untruth, its betrayal, from the State's inception, is encapsulated in the story of one child, caught in the early displacement of nearly three quarter of a million souls from the land of their birth. A forced flight and fragmentation of families, friends, communities, unceasing over six grinding decades.

The child was six years old in 1948. One night, that year, Israeli soldiers came to his home in al-Barweh. The family “...fled through a forest, bullets winging overhead and reached Lebanon, where they stayed for more than a year, living on meagre United Nations hand outs”. Finally, the child was led by his uncle, back across the border to the village of Deir al-Asad, in Galilee. They could not return to al-Barweh, for it had been obliterated by Israeli soldiers.

"All that had happened", he recounted in 1969, "was that the refugee had exchanged his old address for a new one. I had been a refugee in Lebanon and now I was a refugee in my own country."

Further, the first Israeli census deemed any Palestinian not accounted for as “an infiltrator” and “therefore not entitled to an identity card”. The child had been in Lebanon during the census and was, thus, illegal in his own country. His family and the Headmaster of his primary school used to hide him when police or officials appeared. Eventually, officials were told that he had been with the nomadic Bedouin during the census, thus finally obtaining an identity card, legalising him in the land of his birth.

From early on, literature and poetry were his passion. Whilst still at primary school, he was asked by his Headmaster to take part in Deir al-Asad's celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel. "I stood before a microphone for the first time in my life and read a poem, which was an outcry from an Arab boy, to a Jewish one.”

He still remembers the theme of his verses: "You can play in the sun as you please ... but I can't. You have a house and I have none. You have celebrations, but I have none. Why can't we play together?"

The following day, the boy was summoned by the military governor who insulted and threatened him, concluding that: “If you go on writing such poetry, I'll stop your father working in the quarry.” The child wept bitter tears. "He was the first Jew I met and talked to ... If that was how Jews were, why should I speak to a Jewish boy?" He was saved from “the fire of distrust” by a Jewish woman teacher, who was “like a mother” and symbol of all that was good. She broadened his knowledge of poetry, refused to teach a curriculum "devised to distort and discredit our cultural heritage. She demolished the walls of distrust erected by the military governor." (1)

The boy was Mahmud Darwish, probably the world's best known Palestinian poet, recipient of the 1969 Lotus Prize and 1983 Lenin Peace Prize. Palestine's plight is reflected in the gentle, insightful screams of his haunting words, each poem a requiem to a land, history and people, raped by initial edicts from Whitehall and a world that has turned its face away from a “beloved country”, dismembered, piece by piece. To compare the lush richness of Palestine from the 1948 map and that of now, is to compare the vibrancy of beauty, become force-starved and mutilated, yet still fighting for precious life and future.

The contrast of Darwish's poignant lines with the obscene language of those who have risen to the highest political offices in Israel, is stark:

“We go to a country not of our flesh. The chestnut trees are not of our bones ....
“We go to a country that does not hang a special sun over us ...”

Another poem begins:

“We travel like other people, but we return to nowhere ...”

Another:

“The earth is closing in on us, pushing us through the last passage ....
“We saw the faces of those who'll throw our children
Out of the windows of this last space ...”

And his near unbearable:

“Give birth to me again that I may know in which land I will die,
In which land I will come to life again ...”

The lexicon, from which the leaders of Israel have pronounced over the years, must have come from the proverbial parallel universe. Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, opined of the Palestinians, as five hundred villages were being destroyed in sort of national house warming ceremony, unfettered violence raging: “The old will die off and the young will forget.”

Yitzhak Rabin, on the ethnic cleansing of residents of Gaza said: “Israel will create in the course of the next ten or twenty years, conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza….”

“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs..... Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever.” stated Menachem Begin, only to be outdone by Yitzhak Shamir: The Palestinians: “... would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Ehud Barak weighed in with: “Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more....”

George W. Bush's “man of peace”, Ariel Sharon, lynchpin of the 1982 Lebanon Sabra and Shatila massacres, voicing his action plan stated: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can, to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay... Everything we don't grab will go to them.”

Raphael Eitan, founder of the right wing Tzomet Party and clearly a soul mate of Sharon, stated: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” (2)

This Zionist wickedness, also mirrored in high places in Washington and Whitehall, also targets and denigrates the Jewish Diaspora in Israel and worldwide, who have devoted their lives - and often endangered or lost their careers - in their commitment to not alone a land, but a region where all can live in harmony, side by side. The vitriol, to which they are subjected by their own, includes being called “self hating Jews”. Even Orwell would be hard put to equate a passion for peace and “loving thy neighbour”, with “self hate”.

Whilst the United Nations Security Council threatens, has threatened and imposes embargoes against some of the world's poorest countries, for actual or perceived violations, breaches or non-compliance with Resolutions, Israel: “...enjoys a unique relationship with the United Nations. Despite its failure to comply with a host of UN Resolutions, no action is ever taken”, writes Geoff Simons, in his exhaustive study of the world body. (3) Simons lists a few Resolutions which have been casually tossed aside by the Middle East's “only democracy”: SCRs: 242, 338, 465, 672, 673 and 681.

The “important” Resolution 681 of 20th December 1990: “Deplores the decision by the government of Israel ... to resume the deportation of Palestinian civilians …” Israel responded shortly afterwards by further deportations.

Resolution 799 of 14th December 1992, was unanimous and also, uniquely, supported by the US and UK. It denounced Israel's further violation of International L aw, noting that: “In contravention of its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention ... deported on 17th December, hundreds of Palestinians ....” Further: “Strongly condemns the action ... Reaffirms the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to all the territories occupied by Israel ... Reaffirms also the independent sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon ... Demands that Israel as the occupying Power, ensure the safe and immediate return to the occupied territories of all those deported ...”

The then Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros Ghali expressed his “grave concern” over Israel's action. The UK Foreign Office temporarily developed the semblance of a spine and declared that Israel was in violation of International Law - and one diplomat predicted the outcome: “... Israel hears the UN Resolution and then does what it does anyway.”

The refugees had been dumped in a wilderness in the early hours of the freezing winter morning. Israel turned a deaf ear to the UN and Western nations stood by. Palestinians demonstrated in sympathy in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops opened fire, killing a ten year old girl and five others. By July 1993, Israel was back in Lebanon, decimating the tiny country, by land, sea and air. Lebanon has been revisited and redecimated again (with beautiful little Israeli children shown, on military bases, signing missiles, which were to drop on Lebanese children). Palestine's “long day's journey into night” continues, year after year, as does the world's silence.

Iraq lies in ruins for telling the truth to the United Nations (and the near five year assault on and plight of another Muslim nation, Afghanistan, barely flickers on the UN., or international radar.) As the marking of the seven hundred and twentieth month of Israel's betrayal of her vow to loyally uphold “the principles of the United Nations” is nearly upon the world, recent breaches include the killing of fifty nine Palestinians, including fifteen children and injuries to one hundred and five others in Gaza during April and three hundred and forty in just the fifteen weeks of 2008. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43336&hd=&size=1&l=e

Uruknet provides a litany of misery, taken from numerous sources; just three examples: The planned closure and take-over of several orphanages and boarding schools sheltering thousands of orphans and impoverished students. Many of the orphans’ parents had been killed by the Israeli army and paramilitary Jewish terrorists, also known as “settlers”...

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43382&hd=&size=1&l=e

The on-off halt of UNRWA relief operations in the Gaza because of lack of fuel supplies necessary to operate its trucks and centers deployed all over the Strip ...John Ging, the UNRWA's director of operations in Gaza, stated Wednesday that the magnitude of death, destruction and despair in the Strip is considerable and disgraceful ....

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43342&hd=&size=1&l=e

The finding of the mutilated body of 15 year old Hammad Nidar Khadatbh in lands of the illegal Israeli settlement of Al-Hamra by his father. Hammad had left the house on Tuesday, 15th April to work on the family's land ... Hammadi's body was naked, bloated, and tortured. His neck was broken, and his face had been smashed in with rocks. One finger had been cut off and there were multiple holes in his torso ... An Israeli police officer who arrived on the scene to investigate the incident confirmed that Hammad had been murdered ... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43343&hd=&size=1&l=e

On Tuesday, 22nd April, IMEMC's Saed Bannoura reported: “A shipment of food aid for the people of the Gaza Strip was denied entry by Israeli military forces on Monday.... The World Health Organization has estimated malnutrition rates among children in Gaza may be as high as 45% due to the Israeli-imposed siege. Israeli politicians have openly declared that they plan to 'choke' and 'starve' Gaza into giving up resistance to the Israeli military occupation of their land.” Yitzhak Rabin's words in minimally different guise.

AP reported (25th April 2008) that: “The United States, Britain, France and other members walked out of a closed meeting of the UN Security Council late Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps in World War II.” Israel's Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai of course, last month, declared a holocaust for the people of Gaza. Libya clearly has no confusion over the use of lexicons.

Trauma surgeon, David Halpin responded to the BBC's Today programme (25th April) on which Israel's spokesman Mark Regev attempted to defend the indefensible. Halpin wrote: “The suffering of the 1.4 million people in Gaza, two thirds of whom are refugees and thus classified as persons due special protection, is beyond description and counting.”

In 1982, famed Syrian-born poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) wrote of the siege of Beirut :

“You do not die because you are created or because you have a body
You die because you are the face of the future ...”
And of: “being bombarded with darkness”.

As Israel celebrates by bombarding with darkness, the lights of humanity are going out, lost with their voice mute in those who walked from and closed the door on, the truth at the United Nations.

Britain's also struck dumb, pantomime “Middle East Peace Envoy”, Anthony Lynton Blair QC., is, of course, lost in transit. Perhaps he'll be unearthed somewhere in the uncountable thousands of missing bags at Heathrow's infamous Terminal Five and dusted down just in time to join Friends of Israel's birthday bash.'

Footnotes
(1) Darwish's background and selected poems, with the evocative works of Sami al-Qasim and Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said) the all, soul songs of the Middle East, from: Victims of a Map, Saqi Books. http://www.amazon.com/Victims-Map-Adonis/dp/0863565247
(2) Paradise: Lost, Professor Jamil I. Toubbeh, Palestine Chronicle, 22nd April 2008.
(3) The United Nations - A Chronology of Conflict, Geoff Simons, Macmillan, 1994. Please also see:
http://www.hanini.org/Al-Nakbagallery.html
Nakba May 1948 with pictures to cry for. Felicity Arbuthnot Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger's award-winning documentary,
"Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq".
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partID=4
and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of “Baghdad” in the “Great Cities” series, for World Almanac Books (2006.)
http://www.amazon.com/Baghdad-Great-Cities-World-Nikki/dp/0836850491/sr=1-5/qid=1171018142/ref=sr_1_5/105-9176229-7042804?ie=UTF8&s=books Please also see: United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF?OpenDatabase The Ghosts of Deir Yassin
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43426&hd=&size=1&l=e Why Palestinian Unity is Not an Option
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13739 Love and resistance in the Gaza Strip
Mona el-Farra, Guardian
http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=567&catID=3 Gaza is on the verge of bread crisis
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43435&hd=&size=1&l=e In Gaza: No shoe nor a drop of fuel
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43421&hd=&size=1&l=e Head of Catholic Church: Gaza will not die of hunger
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43419&hd=&size=1&l=e Video: Blockade halts food aid to Gaza
Michael Bailey: 70,000 Gazans have no drinking water; UN can't feed 700,000 refugees http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m43404&hd=&size=1&l=e Dutch journalist deported from Israeli airport
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=43325 Felicity Arbuthnot: Adopt a Doctor, Adopt a Patient, Adopt a Window, Adopt a Meal http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=4687&blz=1

Felicity Arbuthnothas written and broadcast widely on Iraq, and is one of the few journalists to cover Iraq extensively even in the mid-1990’s during the sanctions. She with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: Paying the Price - Killing the Children of Iraq. Her articles and broadcasts are used by MP's in Parliamentary questions. She is also the author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of recently published Baghdad in the educational Great Cities of the World Series for World Almanac Library. Arbuthnot was a moderator at the World Uranium Weapons conference in october 2003 in Hamburg with a lot of internationally renowned speakers. She lives in London, UK.

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Remembering What We Ever Knew about `Never Forget,` Deir Yassin, 9/11 and Israel Too

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ISRAELI E NEWS

Remembering What We Ever Knew about `Never Forget,` Deir Yassin, 9/11 and Israel Too

Filed under Israeli politics, Christianity, Christian Zionism, IDF/Military, Opinion Editorials, Terrorism around the world, USA foreign policy, Palestinian politics, Intelligence (foreign) - on

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

By: Fleming, Eileen

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Deir Yassin was once a peaceful Palestinian village on the west side of Jerusalem. On April 9, 1948 the lives of over 100 innocent men, women, and children ended by the hand of Jewish terrorists from the Irgun and the Stern Gang.

Deir Yassin is 1,400 meters to the north of Yad Vashem, the most famous Holocaust memorial, where the world is taught to “Never Forget.”

Might the world also remember that on May 15, 1948, the British left Palestine and the Israeli military force consisted of three independent groups:

• "The larger one was the Hagana. Within the Hagana there was a strike force known as the Palmah. Outside Hagana there were two more independent smaller forces.
  
• The bigger of the two was Etzel, which was the underground terrorist organization of the opposition party led by Menahem Begin, and
  
• the smaller one was Lehi, known also as the Stern Gang, a splinter group which separated from the Etzel a few years previously." [1]

"The Deir Yassin incident was part of the Middle East war of 1948, variously referred to as the Israeli War of Independence, the First Arab-Israeli War, or the First Palestine War. The conflict arose out of decades-old competing claims of nationalist Jews and Arabs for sovereignty over Palestine (today Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip). European Jewish nationalists, organized as Zionists in 1897, sought to establish a Jewish state through colonization of Palestine, while Arab nationalists sought an Arab state for Palestine's Arab majority. [2]

There are many versions of what happened in Deir Yassin on April 9, 1948. One report by then Colonel Dr. Me'ir Pa'ill, [who later represented the Meretz Party in the Knesset] a liaison officer representing the Palmah in the headquarters of the Hagana in Jerusalem gave an interview in the magazine Monitin, April 1981, Edition 32, page 36:

"Etzel and Lehi had decided to carry out one operation together. They counted their men and discovered that together they could supply 130 fighters. Among the Etzel members there was one, Joshua Goldshmid, who lived in Giv'at Shaul, a western suburb of Jerusalem close to Deir Yassin and he was the one that pushed for Deir Yassin. The place itself was a small village of 750 inhabitants. It did not have a strategic location and wasn't situated on any important road....Since the Hagana was holding the lines of communications, Etzel and Lehi asked David Sha'altiel, the commander of the Hagana's Jerusalem district for a meeting. I'm telling you this to show that I knew what was going on, because I was in the picture from the beginning. Sha'altiel told them that the plan of the Hagana was, that when the British army leave (shortly), they would take over Deir Yassin and level it to build an airport… [3]

"It was Friday, the 9th of April 1948 and I went in together with them. I had a Tommy-gun with a disc magazine, 50 bullets and proper boots. On that day I did not fire even one bullet. With me was a guy with a good Leica camera capable of taking 36 still, black and white pictures. Half of them were shot during the battle and half afterwards...The raid was supposed to start two hours before dawn. The road to Deir Yassin was open. It was not mined or obstructed because it was constantly in use. The plan was that the van carrying the Etzel/Lehi members would drive on this dusty road and a loudspeaker would call to the inhabitants to flee from the village. I was walking on this very road. They (Lehi) didn't know who I was. They were late and reached the village when it was already daylight…I thought that now a small skirmish would develop, but there was actually a battle. From my battleground experience I noticed that the Arabs had only rifles. All their shots were single shots. Only the attackers had automatic weapons...Suddenly; at about 11 o'clock in the morning, I heard the explosions of 2 inch mortar shells. I looked out of the window and I saw ten Palmah fighters under the command of the late Jacob Wog, descending and taking over the rest of the village…They (Etzel & Lehi), were not able to carry out even their own task. We had to send in a tired platoon to finish the job for them.

Suddenly I started to hear shooting from all directions in the village. I ran there with my photographer and I saw gangs of Etzel and Lehi running through the alleys. In my report I added: 'with bulging eyes' as if they were 'running amok'. They were running from house to house. They got inside, and butchered whoever was there by shooting, not by hand grenades! By shooting! I called it hot blooded murder. It was spontaneous, not planned. I ran after them shouting:' what are you doing?' They looked at me as if I was crazy, also with those bulging eyes. The photographer was taking pictures of scenes that I can still see, even now, with my own eyes: A corner in a room. A woman, children and an old man, butchered. [4]

"...On the Saturday, Etzel and Lehi notified David Sha'altiel: 'Tomorrow we leave the place. We are a crash unit. We don't hold to command posts. They were asked to at least bury the corpses. 'We don't care' was their answer. Two platoons of Gadna, seven and eighth grade students (a pre-military unit of the Hagana), were brought to Deir Yassin on the Sunday and they did most of the burying. They counted the corpses. The Red Cross arrived later on. There were 254 dead out of 750 people who had lived in this village. A third was killed, a third was evacuated and a third escaped." [5]

The massacre in Deir Yassin was neither the first of its kind nor the most horrific, but "its timing, scope, and historic long-term consequences have made Deir Yassin, in the words of philosopher Martin Buber, "infamous throughout the Jewish world, the Arab world, and the whole world."[6]

Also infamous is the 1954 incident when Israel attempted to bomb US government offices in Egypt and Israel's 1967 two hour attack upon the lightly armed spy ship the USS LIBERTY, which resulted in 34 dead sailors and a still traumatized crew who were commanded to keep silent by the LBJ Administration, who sacrificed the troops rather than embarrass an ally. [7]

Another infamous fact is that, "through the years, Israel has regularly spied on the US. According to the Government Accounting Office, Israel 'conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the United States of any ally.' Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger said of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard: 'It is difficult for me to conceive of greater harm done to national security.' And the Pollard case was just the tip of a very large iceberg; the most recent operation coming to light involves two senior officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel's powerful American lobbying organization." [8]

In December 2001, FOX News began a four part series [that has since been removed from their website] regarding Israel's spying on America. However, Information Clearing House has preserved those insights. In Part One, Part I, host Brit Hume stated,

"It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work. Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series." [9]

Carl Cameron reported, "Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States. There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." [10]

Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicated that even prior to September 11; as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States. Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that's been compiling evidence since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity." [11]

"Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.? A general accounting office investigation referred to Israel as country A and said, 'According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any U.S. ally.' [12]

"A defence intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said, 'the Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target…Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives.' "[13]

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Israel's economy was devastated, but then came 9/11, and "suddenly new profit vistas opened up for any company that claimed it could spot terrorists in crowds, seal borders from attack and extract confessions from closed-mouthed prisoners…Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of twenty-four-hour-a-day showroom--a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war…Israel now sends $1.2 billion in "defense" products to the United States—up dramatically from $270 million in 1999…That makes Israel the fourth-largest arms dealer in the world…Much of this growth has been in the so-called "homeland security" sector. Before 9/11 homeland security barely existed as an industry. By the end of this year, Israeli exports in the sector will reach $1.2 billion--an increase of 20 percent. The key products and services are …precisely the tools and technologies Israel has used to lock in the occupied territories. Israel has learned to turn endless war into a brand asset, pitching its uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the "global war on terror." [14]

Thinking people comprehend that all governments lie, that politicians get addicted to gaining and keeping power and that religion has been misused for eons.

Shortly after my first of five trips to occupied Palestine, in 2005, a USA Episcopal priest and I exchanged a few emails before he left America to work with Yad Vashem, the Jerusalem Holocaust memorial, where the world is taught to “Never Forget.”

I wrote to the priest about my concern that the fastest growing cult in the U.S.A. is the cult of Christian Zionism and that approximately 25 million U.S. Christians choose the simple answers of fundamentalism rather than struggle with a God of justice, mercy and compassion.

Christian Zionists, such as John Hagee cling to Genesis 12:3: "I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse: and in you all the families of the world are blessed" as if God meant blessings to be political power and military might.

The ancient Israelites and today's religious fundamentalist nationalist Zionists hold to the belief that a particular religion and race are more chosen, worthy, special and esteemed by God over and above any other. Looking down on one’s enemies to foster one’s own tribal interest and praying to God to smite one’s enemies is what the ancients did.

The fact that Genesis 12:3 was promised even before Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, and Isaac, the Jew, were born is overlooked and ignored by Christian Zionists, who also fail to comprehend that the very first mention of Israel is when Jacob was renamed Israel for having wrestled and struggled with God. Thus, in the Biblical sense, anyone and everyone who struggles and wrestles with God is Israel, too, for Israel means more than a geographical location.

The Episcopal priest insisted that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of the prophetic scriptures, and God’s covenant with Israel is eternal, exclusive, and will not be abrogated. He referred me to Genesis 12:1-7, 15:4-7, 17:1-8; Leviticus 26:44-45; and Deuteronomy 7:7:8.

I wrote back that for Christians, the New Testament holds greater weight than the Hebrew Scriptures and I referred him to Matthew 5:43-45, which not only critiques Genesis 12:3; it blows it apart, for Jesus commanded his followers to, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, that you maybe children of your Father."

I asked that priest to consider the fact that blind allegiance to the Israeli government has allowed our 'best friend' in the world to become a very big bully. I questioned that priest regarding how God is always on the side of the oppressed and if we truly love our friend, wouldn't we hold them accountable when they cross the line and practice injustice?

I asked that priest to consider how the views of Christian Zionists who have come to see the political state of Israel as a replacement for Jesus is at the center of their Christian faith, and that certainly is not Christianity.

I asked that priest how he could take Genesis 12:3 to literally mean that blessings equal land and political power, and ignore God’s promise in Genesis 21:17-20 to ‘make a great nation out of Ishmael’s descendents’ and that ‘God was with the boy.’

I charged that priest that his way of thinking allows for the continuing military occupation of Palestine and oppression of people that God also made promises too, and I asked him aren't Christians to be on the side of the oppressed and marginalized?

I cautioned that priest that whenever religion and politics get in bed together, we the people for justice and peace always get screwed!

I alerted that priest if he ever considered that the Israeli government is using uninformed, misinformed Christians like him to become apologists in support of their agenda of illegal occupation and settlements in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Golan, and Gaza, on literal biblical misinterpreted grounds taken out of context.

I admonished that priest to consider how American Christians blind allegiance to every act of Israel as being orchestrated by God and therefore is to be condoned, supported, and even praised, should instead compel all people of integrity and good will to instead question and challenge the true motives of Christians who actually relish the idea of Armageddon-and who love to speculate on who gets left behind on Judgment Day.

After three email exchanges, I never heard from that priest again, but a parishioner of his from his Central Florida church wrote me that he had moved to Jerusalem and was now working at Yad Vashem.

Jesus' other name is The Prince of Peace, and he was very clear that on the final day, there will be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who were so sure they were in, because they get left out.

If only the self-righteous and militant minded amongst us could remember what they have never even known and seek to do what Jesus promised; be peacemakers, for the peacemakers shall be called the children of God.

1.http://www.deiryassin.org/shimontzabar.html
2. http://www.deiryassin.org/mh2001.html
3.http://www.deiryassin.org/shimontzabar.html
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. http://www.deiryassin.org/mh2001.html
7. Ennes, James E., Assault on the LIBERTY
8. http://www.counterpunch.org/weir04042008.html
9. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm
10. Ibid
11. Ibid
12. Ibid
13. Ibid
14. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070702/klein

Eileen Fleming, is an American journalist and the Editor of WAWA: http://www.wearewideawake.org
a blog about the daily life of Christians in the Holy Land. She is the author of "Keep Hope Alive" and "Memoirs of a Nice Irish American 'Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory". Eileen Fleming is the Producer of "30 Minutes With Vanunu" and "13 Minutes with Vanunu"

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How Israel got Trashed: History

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ISRAELI E NEWS

History
How Israel got Trashed

Filed under Israeli politics, Anti-Semitism, Opinion Editorials, Anti-Israel publications, Anti-Israel academics, Israeli Palestinian relations, Media objectivity, Settlements, Palestinian politics, Anti-Israel activists, Israeli media, Terror attacks on Israel -

on Friday, April 25, 2008

By: Liebler, Isi

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How was it possible? Only 30 years ago, we were still being hailed as the greatest success story of the 20th century. We were regarded as the people who rose from the ashes of the Holocaust and resurrected ourselves into an independent democratic nation, an oasis in a region dominated by tyrannies and despotisms. We were applauded for having successfully resisted the violent efforts of our neighbors to destroy and deny us our right to exist as a sovereign Jewish nation. Yet today, even in Western Europe, we are reviled as the greatest threat to world peace, just behind a rogue state like Iran. What happened? Why and how were we so effectively vanquished in the battlefield of the war of ideas?

In the early days, the Zionist leaders and founding fathers of Israel were at all times conscious that the war of ideas was a critical element in the struggle to establish and retain a Jewish state.

Prior to the Oslo Accords, when Israelis presented their case to the world, they did so with undiluted passion, convinced beyond doubt that justice was on their side. In those days, our diplomatic representatives were recognized as being among the most outstanding in the world. They were invariably dedicated idealists and also capable of articulating the case for Israel with style.

The 1967 Six Day War was a turning point. Until then, as the plucky little country struggling for survival against overwhelming odds, we enjoyed the support of most Western nations. But we were always sensitive to the fact that the world was traditionally more inclined to comfort Jews as victims rather than admiring them as victors.

Indeed, between the Six Day War and the Oslo Accords, the global support we had enjoyed eroded dramatically. That did not happen simply because Arabs had assumed a new underdog role. It was largely a consequence of the attitude of the newly empowered sabra elites, who displayed open contempt for hasbara, arrogantly asserting that military strength was the only factor to be considered. They dismissed the war of ideas as so much hot air.

The Israel sea change occurred at the onset of the Oslo Accords. Land for peace negotiations with the Palestinians bitterly split the nation. Despite all evidence to the contrary, our government became frenetically obsessed in trying to persuade the people that Arafat was a genuine peace partner. In desperation, it began covering up and making excuses for the criminality of the Palestinians. It even resorted to creating false illusions about our "peace partner," highly reminiscent of what we are witnessing today.

In addition, then deputy foreign minister Dr. Yossi Beilin persuaded Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that Diaspora Jews lobbying on behalf of Israel were hindering Israeli negotiations with the Arabs. Rabin brutally told AIPAC and other Jewish groups that their interventions on behalf of Israel were counter productive and instructed them to butt out.

At the same time, the high standard of Israeli diplomats eroded dramatically virtually overnight, as jobs for the boys and seniority rather than merit became the main criteria for key ambassadorial postings. Simultaneously, Beilin engineered early retirement for many old timers in the Foreign Ministry, replacing them with people fully aligned with his approach. The new diplomats were instructed to concentrate on promoting the peace process, explain the need to accommodate the rights of two peoples to the land, and avoid acrimonious debates. As a consequence, Israeli spokesmen tended to avoid confronting Arab lies, and instead conceded that both sides had made mistakes, suggesting that the time had arrived to move forward and avoid dwelling on contentious issues from the past.

It was truly a sea change. From passionately promoting our case, we had turned a full circle. Not only did we recoil from repudiating falsehoods, but when Arab casualties incurred as a consequence of IDF efforts to defend targeted Israeli civilians, the government began instinctively apologizing instead of blaming the murderers.

The final nails on the coffin were struck when Haaretz, the prestigious Israeli daily newspaper, launched an English print and Internet version which inter alia published articles implying that Israel had been born in sin and radically disparaged, even deionized, Israeli policies. Prior to this, mainstream Western media outlets rarely carried such articles.

Haaretz effectively provided the mainstream Western media with a kosher certification to incorporate the most extreme anti-Israeli content. "If Israeli papers can publish this, why should we be less inhibited?" became the standard response of numerous editors when accused of anti-Israeli bias and double standards.

To make matters worse, most foreign embassies in Israel began relying as an authority on the English Haaretz version, and its radical post-Zionist critiques were incorporated into reports dispatched to their governments.

• Our global standing plummeted as international public opinion began to regard us as a rogue state. I recollect discussing this with Prime Minister Rabin and his successors, who were all either unwilling or unable to relate to the problem. Their eyes simply glazed over whenever the subject of the war of ideas was raised.

The situation worsened under Ehud Barak's premiership, when cabinet responsibility collapsed and individual ministers began publicly contradicting one another on crucial issues. In contrast, the Arabs and their allies became more disciplined and ensured that their spokesmen all parroted the same falsehoods. Regrettably, other than Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli leaders failed to appreciate the importance of refuting these lies. Soon, the distorted Arab narrative not only received greater global prominence, but became increasingly accepted in many quarters as the true one. Israel's interests were further undermined when Education Minister Yuli Tamir gave greater credence to the falsehood that Israel had been born in sin by agreeing to incorporate the Nakba (the Palestinian day of mourning for the creation of Israel) into the Israeli Arab state school curriculum.

Yet in retrospect, despite this self-inflicted denigration, our government's greatest failure was its reluctance to expose to the world the criminal nature of our Palestinian neighbour, the PA no less than Hamas. To this day, we continue understating the barbaric culture of death and the ongoing anti-Semitic incitement which permeates every sector of society under the jurisdiction of our Palestinian neighbour:

• mothers joyfully dispatching their own children to Paradise as suicide bombers;
  
• schools (even kindergartens), mosques and media inciting to kill Jews;
  
• Mahmoud Abbas, our peace partner, providing pensions for families of terrorists;
  
• spontaneous street celebrations erupting whenever terrorists succeed in killing Israelis in restaurants or shopping malls. The failure by our government to internationally expose such barbaric behavior reflects its slavish denial of reality.

In fact, despite all the evidence to the contrary, we ourselves still promote the lie that the conflict with the Palestinians is a struggle between two peoples over land. Were that so, we would have achieved a peace settlement many years ago. It is Islamic xenophobia denying the Jewish people the right to sovereignty which remains the root of the conflict. This was even reaffirmed as recently as Annapolis, when Mahmoud Abbas reiterated his determination never to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

Over the past few years, matters have sank to an all time low. To pave the way for the unilateral disengagement, Sharon became the first Israeli leader to formally describe the Jewish presence over the Green Line as "the Occupation."

Annapolis was the final straw, when Olmert, desperate to please President Bush and appease the Palestinians, endorsed the Arab narrative on refugees. Feeling empowered, the impotent Mahmoud Abbas refused to concede anything. Just recently, in an interview with a Jordanian newspaper, Abbas brazenly stated that "At this time I am against armed struggle because we cannot achieve it, but things might be different in the coming stages." That the Olmert government failed to even condemn and alert the world after such an outrageous statement by our duplicitous "peace partner," who has described our efforts to protect our civilians from rocket attacks as "worse than the Holocaust," demonstrates the depth of self delusion we have reached and exemplifies why we continue losing the war of ideas.

Isi liebler, a veteran international Jewish leader, headed the Australian Jewish community for many years. He also served in various senior capacities with the World Jewish Congress, including chairman of the Governing Board. Leibler's main international involvement was first Asian-Jewish Colloquium including a historic encounter in Beijing between international Jewish and Chinese scholars preceding diplomatic relations with Israel. He now lives in Israel and heads the JCPA's Israel-Diaspora Commission.

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