By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Greater Israel Map

"That's the Holy Land!" exclaimed a Palestinian refugee "the Holy Land belongs to everyone! It doesn't belong exclusively to the Jews!"

The machinery was switched on for the usurpation of the Holy Land at the direction of the Zionist Conference in Switzerland 1897.

Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary (September 1, 1897):

Were I to sum up the Basle Congress in a word - which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly - it would be this: At Basle I founded the Jewish State.^[2] If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.^[6]

Benjamin Freedman, an anti-Zionist Jew, said in 1961, "The Zionists and their co-religionists rule these United States as though they were the absolute monarchs of this country."

Freedman went on to explain that the Eastern European Jews who form 92% of the world's population of so-called Jews were originally Khazars, a Mongoloid race forced out of Asia into Eastern Europe. They were Pagans who selected the Talmudic faith.

To quote Freedman further, "There wasn't one of them who had an ancestor who ever put a toe in the Holy Land. Not only in Old Testament history, but back to the beginning of time. And yet they come to the Christians and ask to help repatriate God's Chosen People to their Promised Land."

"Could there be a bigger lie than that?" Freedman asks. "Because they control the newspapers, the magazines, the radio, the television, the book publishing business, and because they have the ministers in the pulpit and the politicians on the soapboxes talking the same language, it is not too surprising that you believe that lie."

The Pharisees and other scribes commenced compiling the Talmud in 375A.D. and later in Babylon in 500A.D. It is not based on spiritual faith but on laws, rules and tactics.

Israel Shahak, former professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was very critical of the Talmud, saying, "It must be admitted that the Talmud and Talmudic literature contain very offensive statements directed specifically against Christianity."

"For example, in addition to a series of scurrilous sexual allegations against Jesus, the Talmud states that his punishment in hell is to be immersed in boiling excrement...."

Shahak observes that Christians believe the Old Testament has the same central place and legal authority in Judaism that the Bible has for Christians.

"This is not the case, because the interpretation of the sacred texts is rigidly fixed by the Talmud rather than the Bible itself."

In the USA today, an estimated 60 million of the Christian Right support not only the creation of Talmudic Israel but the expansion of that State as well. Their belief is that when Israel is established it will bring about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

There is a misconnect here because Christ's message was of a Spiritual life whereas the Talmudists believe that when their messiah comes he will resurrect all the Jewish dead. It has been suggested that the Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem is the largest in the world because that is where the resurrection will commence.

Oswald Refeisen, a Polish Jew, voluntarily converted to Catholicism eventually becoming Father Daniel of the Carmelite Order. He immigrated to Israel in 1958. As he had a Jewish mother and considered himself a Jew, he applied for the status of an 'oleh (Aliyah) under the Law of Return.

When his request was denied, he took his case to the Supreme Court where a four to one majority decided that Father Daniel was not a Jew for the purpose of the Law of Return.

Stilberg, the presiding judge said, "A Jew who becomes a Christian cannot be called a Jew."

If the 60 million Christian Right expect a Second Coming of Jesus Christ into the Holy Land, they are in for a shock. His Jewish Mother would not be good enough to get Him residency.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

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Stability and peace in the Middle East are unattainable without first deconstructing the settler-colonial attitude upon which Israel is founded.

By Bassem Hassan * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Recent plans by the Israeli government and the Knesset to amend existing laws concerning citizenship rights in Israel have generated waves of criticism in liberal circles, including Israeli ones. The proposed amendments would institutionalise a loyalty oath to Israel as a "Jewish state" and would allow residential communities to bar families that "disrupt" their "social-cultural fabric" from residing there. As refreshing as these critical reactions have been (after all it is good to know that there are still some liberals out there who are willing to defend the ideals of democracy and equality rather than justifying violations of human rights -- especially those of Arabs and Muslims -- as a lesser evil, as several leading liberals became accustomed to in the last few years), the views expressed still suffer a major shortcoming.

Liberal critics of these plans stopped short of pointing out the real issue at hand, namely Zionism. In other words, they focussed on the effect rather than the cause. This is typical of liberal critics of the Israeli state who do not mind objecting to some of its policies -- for instance, house demolition and the construction of new settlements -- but that always shy away from critiquing the ideology that underpins them. For Western liberals, Zionism is the ideology and national liberation movement of the Jews who were persecuted in Europe for centuries, and as such should be immune to critique. While opposition to anti-Semitism is the only honourable position any decent person should adopt in the face of racism against Jews, it should not make one overlook the racist character of Zionism itself.

The racist and colonialist characteristics of Zionism were quite evident since its inception as an organised political movement in the late 19th century. In his attempt to sell the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine to the colonialist powers of the day, Theodor Herzl explained that such a state would constitute part of Europe's "wall of defence against Asia; [it] would serve as an outpost of civilisation against barbarism". But he was quick to add that the Zionists would take any country the European colonial powers would agree to give them. Notice that this was almost half a century before the heinous crimes of the Nazis against the European Jewry. Needless to say, the opinion of the indigenous people of whichever country the colonial powers would choose to allocate to the Zionists was of no significance to the latter. For whether it would have fallen on Palestine, Argentina or Uganda -- just to mention a few countries that were considered as a home for such a state -- it would have been considered a "land without a people for a people without a land."

Of course, the Zionists were aware of the presence of people in Palestine. However, to them, these people, unlike the Jews of Europe, were not developed and civilised enough to be treated as a nation worthy of a state. The fact that this attitude was the zeitgeist of 19th century Europe does not make it less racist or acceptable. Even when the European empires started to show signs of fatigue due to the resistance of colonised peoples and internal opposition, Zionist leaders remained staunch supporters of colonialism. As Jabotinsky put it, they had the "unshakable resolve to keep the whole Mediterranean in European hands... [F]or the West has represented a more superior culture than the East in the last thousand years... and we today are the most prominent and loyal bearers of this culture." Golda Meir's infamous denial of the existence of the Palestinians is in essence just another expression of this logic. The Oslo Process -- which entailed some level of recognition by Israel of the Palestinians -- did not lead to a major change in this respect as the continuous dehumanisation of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers testifies.

These soon-to-be-implemented laws should be read in conjunction with the Israeli government's insistence that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state and the frequent warnings made by Israeli politicians and scholars of the demographic threat presented by the Arabs of 1948. Considering a sizeable portion of the citizenry an existential threat would seem quite absurd to anyone who believes in democracy, but not for Zionists (including liberal Zionists) who believe that being the state of the Jews not that of all its citizens is the raison d'être of Israel. Thus those Arabs who managed to stay in the land on which the Israeli state was established in 1948 -- following the ethnic cleansing of the majority of the indigenous population -- were placed under martial law for almost two decades. Terminating this state, shortly before the Israeli attack on Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967, did not mean that the life of the Arab community returned to normality. Over the years the Knesset made series of laws that were designed to forestall its cultural and economic development. Land confiscation, demolition of villages and denials of building permits are just some of the mechanisms employed to accomplish this goal. Persecution of leaders and massacres (eg Kafir Qassem) are also among the methods used to eliminate the "threat" of the Arab community.

The strategy -- if there ever was anything that merits this description -- of the Palestinian national liberation movement since the 1960s played into the hands of the Zionists and contributed to keeping the Arabs of 1948 off the radar. Until the Arab defeat in June 1967, the Palestinians had pinned their hopes on the armies of the Arab states to liberate Palestine. Following the battle of Al-Karama the fedayeen became the locus of hope. In both cases liberation was pursued through military efforts originating from outside historic Palestine; and throughout this period the "Palestine Question" pertained only to the segment of the population that was expelled from Palestine in 1948. Rarely, if ever, was anything mentioned about those who remained. Starting as early as 1974 and culminating in the Oslo Process, the transformation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation from a liberation movement into a bureaucracy interested in ruling a state on any part of Palestine -- no matter how small -- the Israelis were willing to withdraw from, seemed to have sealed the fate of the Arabs of 1948 for good.

Yet they proved to be as resilient as the cacti growing on the ruins of the 400 or so Arab villages destroyed in 1948, indicating their sites and serving as a living testimony of the crimes committed against the Arabs of Palestine. Of no less importance is the fact that this community's presence in the heart of the Israeli state exposes the flawed logic upon which the Oslo Process is based -- logic aptly described by the late Baruch Kimmerling as "separatist". A few years ago, Martin van Creveld, the celebrated Israeli military historian, succinctly summarised this logic. The solution to the conflict as envisioned by him took the form of a wall that separated the Israelis from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The wall was to be "so tall that even birds cannot fly over it... And then of course if anybody tries to climb over the wall, we kill him." This is the essence of the Oslo Process in a nutshell. Far from being about peace, coexistence and justice, the Oslo Process is about a less costly form of control that provides the Zionist project with a lifeline.

However, confining a segment of the Palestinian people to Bantustans in the West Bank and Gaza, aka the "Palestinian state", and dispersing another segment all over the world, will not solve the problem of the Israeli state. And its leaders know that, hence their pressure to secure Palestinian recognition of what they claim to be the Jewish character of the state and their latest systematic onslaught on the Arabs of 1948. Meanwhile, the same leaders never get tired of referring to their state as the only democracy in the region. Chutzpa!

Binyamin Netanyahu and company's pursuit of a final and complete victory over the indigenous people of Palestine will most likely backfire. It will certainly draw attention to the plight of the Arabs of 1948 and their struggles, and might rekindle debates over Zionism. This might explain why some hawkish figures warned of the loyalty oath law's potential negative consequences on their state's image. It remains to be seen whether the Palestinians and the Arabs in general will take advantage of this opportunity to expose the real face of Zionism, or whether they will persist in chasing a mirage.

As for Israel's liberal friends who support a two-state solution to "save Israel from itself", if sincere they would start advising their friends to de-Zionise their institutions and laws. For without such a move the Israeli polity will continue to be nothing but a Herrenvolk democracy and an apartheid system. This is no recipe for peace. On the contrary, it is a cause for conflict.

* The writer is a lecturer of political science at the British University in Cairo.

(Al-Ahram Weekly)

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By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

To maintain a façade of moral code, you do not kill a friend, you kill an enemy. You do not rob another man's house, you recover your long-forgotten property. These are the principles adopted in all wars and conflicts. That is why it was always the mission of the aggressor to depict the target of killing, i.e. the enemy, as an evil, bad person or people who deserve to be defeated, and if killed, that would be a natural end for their bad behavior. Similarly it was the mission of the occupier to claim that he is not robbing someone else but merely recovering back his property which he neglected to do for centuries.

Nobody perfected this art of deception, or double-speak, better than the Zionist agents. How else could you explain the success of a Hungarian man, like Herzl, sitting in a Vienna Café, and professing that a Jews' State will be established in 50 years in a faraway land he had never lived in? His success, almost solely in Europe at the time, was manifested by convincing colonial powers of the advantages of supporting his colonial project and convincing their people, the Europeans, that this conquest, killing, plunder and destitution of a people is a divine will, a miracle and a victory for western civilization.

Nobody had to create so many myths and falsehoods in their endeavors more than the Zionists. The reason is simple: they did not have credible facts to prove their case, so they had to invent dubious alternatives, relying on the readiness of the gullible people and the opportunistic politicians to believe them.

Take the slogan: "Palestine is a land without people". It was terra nullius, they say. Of course, Zionists knew that people lived there and built over 1000 towns and villages, most are 2000 years old, according to Eusebius the Bishop of Caesarea (313 AD) who recorded them. Yet Zionists submitted a map to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, showing Palestine as 'a grazing land for nomads'. They presented this map to the colonial powers, particularly the British and the French. The irony of course is that the British had finished their voluminous survey of Palestine, 40 years earlier, in 10 volumes, listing 12,000 historical sites including towns and villages, and the French finished their survey through their scholar, Victor Guerin, in 1863, who produced 8 volumes of his journey to almost every Palestinian village. Yet they chose to believe the Zionists and hoodwinked their public to support this 'noble and moral' conquest, in churches, newspapers and public debates.

What then is the meaning of terra nullius? It does not mean (to them) an empty land. It means that those who live there do not matter, they are worthless. It is like clearing woods from dry bushes and insects.

These are the exact words of Herzl,

"If we move into a region where there are wild animals to which Jews are not accustomed – big snakes etc. – I shall use the natives, prior to giving them employment in the transit countries [read: expulsion], for the extermination of these animals."

Of course he did not say this in his published book, only in his then unpublished diary.

Balfour said as much:

"... in Palestine, we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. Zionism [is] of profounder impact than the desires and prejudices [not the rights] of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land."

How was this colonial project in Palestine packaged in the diplomatic language? In Balfour Declaration, they called it a "home" for the Jews, national at that, not a state to the exclusion of the inhabitants of the country, in Palestine, not of Palestine. What about those inhabitants? Of course, there is a reference to them: "without prejudice to the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine", all 92 percent of them. A civilized afterthought indeed.

If your home and family are threatened by an unwelcome flood of (Jewish European) immigrants and you rise to fight it, you are called a "bandit". Your house is destroyed, your supplies are burnt, your son and father are killed or imprisoned. That is what the British did in 1939.

Ten years later, when the Zionists depopulated 675 Palestinian towns and villages and committed over 70 massacres, during al Nakba ethnic cleansing, some people naturally tried to return home, at least to rescue an old father, to water the garden or to feed the animals left behind. No one believed the exile would last over a couple of weeks. These returnees were shot by Israelis on the spot. Complaints were made to the Mixed Armistice Committee that those killed were "infiltrators", by the very same people who "infiltrated" Palestine only a few years earlier.

Thus conventional wisdom would have it that those who waded into the shores of Palestine from a smuggler's ship in the darkness of night are not "infiltrators", they are the masters of the land, and the real house owners who were expelled from their homes and tried to return home are "the infiltrators".

Twenty thousand five hundred days later this ruse is still applied. At the time of writing, Israel issued Military Order No. 1650 (Second Amendment) in which seventy thousand Palestinians residing in the West Bank from other parts of Palestine are liable to be deported as "infiltrators". By the same analogy, an Italian from Napoli found living in Rome under the Nazi occupation in WWII would be liable to be deported to Albania as an "infiltrator". One must concede that the crime of ethnic cleansing, regularly described by the Israeli propaganda machine as "transfer of population", has now reached new heights of sophistication. It is now called "Prevention of Infiltration".

A story is often told about Ein Haud, a lovely small village south of Haifa, with beautiful stone houses. Its population was expelled but they managed to remain within Israel. They built shacks on the opposite hill, looking every day at their houses, now occupied by artists from Romania who turned it into an "artists colony". Their land and houses were confiscated under the Absentees Property Law of 1950. "Absentees" means the expelled refugees.

The logic is that the state of Israel takes over the property of those who are "absent", because they "abandoned" their property, probably to spend their lovely exile days at the Riviera, not a refugee camp. Hence it is the duty of a "democratic" state to take care of their property (to use, rent, utilize) for the benefit of Jews only. This logic does not allow for the fact that they are absent because they were expelled. If they returned, they will be shot as "infiltrators".

The irony has no end. If somehow the village inhabitants remained in the area conquered by Israel, they have to be counted and given IDs. Therefore they are "present". But their property must be confiscated because they are "absent". Hence they acquired the oxymoron appellation of "present-absentees".

Wonders never cease. One of those "present-absentees" from Ein Haud could not bear it. So one day he walked across to the opposite hill and knocked on the door of his house. A Romanian artist answered. The owner asked who he was:

- I am Ephraim

- Where are you from Ephraim?

- From here of course, Ein Haud. Why do you ask? Who are you any way?

- I am Abu Ahmed, from Romania.

The massive ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which took place in 1948/49, the year of al Nakba (Catastrophe), unprecedented in modern history, has to have an appropriate name in the Zionist lexicon which hides its ugliness. They called it "War of Independence", which is precisely what the Palestinians were engaged in since Balfour's Declaration of 1917, that is, since the betrayal of the Allies and the collusion with the Zionists to deprive them of their homeland. This Zionist term was adopted, by Jewish immigrants who infiltrated Palestine, to describe the ethnic cleansing of the original inhabitants of Palestine. It was widely accepted by the West. Mercifully, cracks now started to appear in this edifice of deception. Now it is against the law in Israel to mention al Nakba. The monopoly remains exclusively for the deception.

The Green Line is often used to describe the line dividing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in the West Bank and Gaza. What is this line? Why it is green? Its proper name is the "Armistice Line of 1949". It is the line at which Israeli invading forces stopped in 1949, whereby 78% of Palestine was conquered. That was a big jump from 5.5% Jewish-owned land during the Mandate and in excess of 24% over the suggested allocation of the Partition Plan. Israel signed 4 Armistice Agreements with Arab countries. Article 2 of these agreements states clearly that this line does not confer or deny rights to either party and has no legal meaning. No military forces are allowed to cross it, hence the armistice. It is simply a line separating Palestine that was occupied in 1948 from that occupied in 1967. Israel did cross it in 1967 in violation of international law. To obscure the legal meaning of the line and its crossing, it was dubbed by Israel as the Green Line, the colour of the pencil used by Israel on its maps. This simple device of renaming the line enables Israel to imply in its media machine that it has not violated any law and has not conquered any land. Thus, Netanyahu can announce boldly in CNN interviews that Jews should be able to live anywhere (in Palestine) without fear of contradiction. Now Israel removed this line altogether from its maps.

How could you steal a whole cake and eat it? You first steal half a cake. With no deterrent, you steal the other half. You eat the whole cake under the 'principle' that the two halves must be "unified" (in your stomach).

Israel occupied West Jerusalem in 1948 and East Jerusalem in 1967. Israel claimed that the city must remain "unified" under its control. The "unification" tag is meant to disguise the fact that both acts are not only illegal in view of international law, but, surprisingly, they are contrary to Israeli founding laws.

Israel's Declaration of 'Independence' states that its international legitimacy, feeble as it was, rests on the Partition Plan recommendation. But this Plan never puts Jerusalem under Israel. Israel occupied West Jerusalem, Lydda, Ramle, Galilee and parts of the south in violation of the Partition Plan. Israel's admission to the UN membership was conditional upon its compliance with the Partition Plan and the return of the refugees' resolution. It never complied. Needless to say that the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is a clear violation of "the inadmissibility of military conquest". Yet the "unification of Jerusalem" is touted by Israel and AIPAC as the justification to build anywhere (for Jews only) "in Israel's eternal capital, which is not a settlement".

Similarly, occupation of the West Bank is labeled as "liberation of Judea and Samaria". The Apartheid Wall, condemned by the International Court of Justice, is named the "security fence". The redeployment of occupation forces is described as "withdrawal".

Nothing can be more misleading than the withdrawal from Gaza Strip. Israel controls its land, above it, below it and around it. Gaza starvation has been described by Israeli officials as "putting the population on diet", a new device for slow death designed not to make world headlines.

The real name of this tragedy is "war crimes" and "genocide" according to articles 6 and 8 of the Rome Statute of 1998 creating the International Criminal Court. These two articles describe exactly the situation in Gaza.

The Gaza Palestinians are promised water, food and medicine and (partial?) removal of the blockade if they comply with the Quartet conditions: recognizing the Israeli occupiers and ceasing the resistance to them. Blair did not spare a media microphone without bleating into it that $ 4.5 billion are waiting to rebuild demolished Gaza if only Palestinians accept the Quartet conditions.

Blair is a patent liar. The media believed him or acted so. No official, no journalist, no learned 'expert' tells him he is lying. Only one man. Alvaro de Soto, the UN Mediator, in his End of Mission report, in May 2007, says in para 79, that the Quartet never imposed any conditions. These are US and European Union conditions based on their own policies, using UN and Russia as a shield for their demands.

A familiar name on TV screens is Sderot, the Israeli settlement, the victim of kitchen pipe projectiles which broke a window and killed one person in 8 years. Sderot mayor expresses his perennial fear of the unbelievably crowded Gaza Strip, the hotbed of terrorism, and is visited by dignitaries from European capitals and US Congress.

None of these dignitaries know, or wish to declare, that Sderot is a settlement built on the land of Najd village, whose expelled population lives mere two kilometers away in a refugee camp. They are throwing their home-made projectiles on their own land, at its occupiers, in a symbolic gesture to assert their right for their homes in the occupied land.

Those dignitaries lament the crowded conditions in Gaza, the misery, the poverty and the hopelessness. They shake their heads in sorrow. The brave ones visit Gaza in a whirlwind tour of two hours, with no contact with the real people, huddled by UN relief officials, to protect them from being devoured by the hungry people.

Did any one of those distinguished visitors ask why is Gaza Strip crowded and miserable? It is crowded because it is where the population of 247 Palestinian villages, the victims of ethnic cleansing in 1948, were crowded in an open air prison with an area of 1% of Palestine. They are crowded at a density of 6,000 persons per square kilometer whereas Sderot mayor and co. roam their land at a density of 6 persons per square kilometer.

Let them go back to their land and you will have no crowd, no poverty and no "terrorism". If you do not like that, give them what the Israelis have: F16 and Merkava tanks. "Terrorism" will stop and a nice lovely war will begin.

Israel gives itself the license to destroy any village and kill its people under the rubric "pre-emptive operation", sometimes called "retaliation". Under this principle, you are allowed to think that your neighbour has nasty looks and he may one day decide to kill you. So you decide to take action at once by catching him unaware and kill him. You do not need to see advancing tanks. You do not need any proof. Your mental mindset is enough, especially if you are a racist. That was the explanation given by Israel for the killings in Bureij camp, Qibya, Samou' and a dozen other places. This policy entered the language of international diplomacy as a respectable word. You see it now splashed on the newspapers' headlines, although it is in stark violation of the word and spirit of the UN Charter.

From the above examples, it is clear that the media manipulation and the loaded terminology are the undeclared army of the Zionists. This kind of army cannot be pinned down by Goldstone, Dugard or Falk. But it commits crimes just the same.

The Hasbara, fabricating Israel's lilly-white image, is a refined art. Its tools have been exposed recently in the Israel's Project's Secret Hasbara Handbook at the link:

No need to elaborate. But for those who are keen to know the facts, and they are luckily increasing in number, for those good people around the world who are guided by their moral compass and for the Palestinians of course, carriers of the burden of untold truths, for all those, the Israeli Hasbara is best described by a similar sounding Arabic word, Za'bara, which means: meaningless, convoluted loud words.

The world will be a better place, and justice will have a chance to prevail, when Hasbara is recognized as it really is: merely Za'bara. When truth shines, it expels the clouds of myths.

* Dr. Salman Abu Sitta (born 1938 in Bir-al-Saba' in Southern Palestine) is considered one of the greatest Palestinian researcher and writers on the issue of the Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return. His published works include:

Dr. Abu-Sitta wrote this article for the Palestine Think Tank

Related posts:

• Israel and the “de-legitimization” oxymoron
• William A. Cook – Walled in by Myth and Deceit
• Palestine and The Demise Of Conscience

By Anait Brutian* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"Deep down, I believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for the Jews – reminds them who they are ... Anti-Semitism means oppressing Jews even more than they deserve" (New York Times Magazine, February 12, 1995 p. 65). These comments were made by Jay Lefkowitz, an Orthodox Jewish American politician and lawyer, who served as President Bush's Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea ⁽¹⁾. The fact that the comments originated with a lawyer is uncanny, but even more so because of his background in Orthodox Judaism and his status as a Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea. What the comments really demonstrate is that a desirable amount of anti-Semitism – Mr. Lefkowitz needs "a little anti-Semitism, not a lot – whenever absent, can and must be induced by provocation to perpetuate the cause of Zionism.

Mr. Lefkowitz shares this thought with Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, who witnessed anti-Semitism but instead of combating it, openly declared: "In Paris ... I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism" ⁽²⁾. The Dreyfus affair of 1890s that ended with his exoneration and reinstatement, largely through the efforts of French intellectuals headed by Émile Zola, did not meet Herzl's support as much as other political events of the time, notably the election victory of anti-Semitic Karl Lueger in 1895. Lueger's success in Vienna was used by Herzl to develop "a pragmatic strategy of non-resistance to anti-Semitism coupled with emigration of a portion of the Jews to a Jewish state in-the-making" ⁽³⁾. While the Habsburg Emperor refused to confirm Karl Lueger in office – 8 percent of the generals, considered the most loyal supporters of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were Jews – Herzl favoured the confirmation. On November 3, 1895 he met the Prime Minister Count Casimir Badeni and told him to "accommodate Lueger" ⁽⁴⁾.

A similar attitude underlies the events of 1965-1966 described in Rhonda Spivak's Jerusalem Post article of June 19, 2009. In 1965 Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) hired an ex-cop, John Garrity to "infiltrate the Canadian Nazi Party" ⁽⁵⁾. According to Ezra Levant, the event was more than "infiltration" – the CJC "helped organize the fledgling Canadian Nazi Party." Originally, made up of a dozen members with no political agenda, the party was puffed up to fake the status of "a national menace" ⁽⁶⁾. Rabbi Reuven Bulka of CJC dismissed the story: "all the CJC did for the Nazis was buy them a bottle of rum" ⁽⁷⁾. But Garrity did much more than "buy them a bottle of rum." Hired by CJC in September 1965, Garrity was in their employ for 13 months until his article was published in McLean's on October 1, 1966. His "duties," apart from supplying CJC with information on the names of party members and donors ⁽⁸⁾, included among other things, Beattie's personal security: "I'd often have to dash across to wherever Beattie was living to inspect a caller he'd refused to admit to his apartment, to make sure the man wasn't a potential assassin" ⁽⁹⁾.

Before spying for CJC, Garrity had sleuthed on John Beattie for another Jewish group N3, who felt that CJC "was not doing enough to confront the Nazi threat" ⁽¹⁰⁾. Garrity's evaluation of Beattie and his Nazi group does not fit the description of "Nazi threat." "There was just Beattie and a couple of teenagers ... in the Nazi business ... only a dozen active members, plus perhaps 100 unseen supporters ..." ⁽¹¹⁾. He called the group "harmless misfits," which one may assume, was the evaluation he transmitted to his bosses at CJC. CJC was aware of the status of John Beattie, a 24-year-old unemployed clerk that had been "evicted from his fifth apartment in a year for not paying his rent" ⁽¹²⁾. Even if the CJC had not obtained the information through N3, Garrity's characterization of the group and its leader – his testimony should have carried some weight because he acted as bodyguard and chauffeur that paid for Beattie's drinks for more than a year – should have made it sufficiently clear that there was real "Nazi threat." John Beattie's own statement: "I had no car ... Garrity drove me everywhere and Garrity fed me. He bought me lunches and snacks all the time, every day ... and sometimes he'd buy me groceries ... He bought me lots of drinks ... " ⁽¹³⁾ also supports this view.

According to Ezra Levant, CJC paid $200 per month for 13 consecutive months in fees plus expenditure that included food, transportation and security for Beattie. Describing the bizarre affair, Levant said: "The Canadian Nazi Party was often a party of one ... It wasn't even an organization in any legal sense. It didn't have a bank account. It didn't have a newsletter. It didn't have any formal organization – no bylaws, no constitution." ⁽¹⁴⁾.The source of Levant's information is the report of Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which described Beattie as "a poor leader and organizer" having no more than "50 followers" and "no membership." "It is not believed that Beattie could exert adverse influence on any person other than some supporters of the party and this would only be to a degree" ⁽¹⁵⁾. This profile is substantiated by Beattie's own statement. Explaining the photo of Garrity with a box, referred to as "correspondence" in McLean's article of October 1, 1966, Beattie said: "That box was filled with all of the newspaper clippings about me ... I craved all of the media attention ... I loved it ... " "It wasn't much of a Nazi Party ... There were a few characters who were anti-Jewish maybe four or five who where anti-Semitic. They liked to blame the Jews for everything" ⁽¹⁶⁾.

Even without the RCMP report, ex-cop John Garrity should have known the real rag-tag nature of this "organization." Indeed, one other important role that he played was to ensure that the Canadian Nazi Party would never rise to become a real organization: "I was chosen secret-service chief, with the job of checking applicants for membership. ... I did check about 15 prospective members, and turned down those who seemed intelligent and therefore dangerous" ⁽¹⁷⁾. Ellen Scheinberg of Ontario Jewish Archives acknowledged that Garrity's work in fact destroyed the Nazi Party by eliminating those who would have been useful to the party. To ensure the full trust and cooperation of Beattie, Garrity, on occasion, acted against his former employer N3, whose plan to disrupt a meeting with stink bombs was tipped off to the police by CJC. ⁽¹⁸⁾. Knowing full well that Beattie and his Nazis had never "even contemplated doing anything illegal and all of the violence he witnessed was directed at Beattie, usually by Jewish vigilantes, Garrity helped CJC to turn the Nazi Party into a media sensation: "Sadly, it is the ... anti-Nazi extremists who, in their attempts to destroy Beattie, provide him with most of the publicity he craves. If it weren't for the riots and the assaults and the public protest meetings they hold, there'd be no real news in Beattie" ⁽¹⁹⁾.

Garrity's claim is substantiated through an event involving a rally at Allan Gardens in Toronto on May 30, 1965, where, according to prior announcement, Beattie's supporters would wear swastika armbands. According to Ezra Levant, on May 28, just two days before the planned event, CJC issued a statement that read: "Toronto apparently faces the gross provocation of public Nazi demonstration ... The Canadian Jewish Congress feels that the very threat of attempting such a demonstration ... is insulting and provocative to the great majority of citizens of this city. It indeed poses a threat to the peace and good order of the community ... For the citizens of Toronto, there can be only one response: to condemn completely and unreservedly the acts of the self-styled Nazis, and to bring to bear the weight of an outraged public opinion against the provocations they plan" ⁽²⁰⁾. This statement was issued despite the fact that both CJC and N3 were aware of the fact that Beattie did not have a permit from the City Hall that would allow him to hold a demonstration and give speeches – Beattie had asked Garrity, who had "conveniently forgotten" to obtain the permit. Just as the self-proclaimed "Heinrich Himmler" had "forgotten" all about the permit, so had the CJC and N3 "forgotten" to mention this very important fact to the Jewish community: "The demonstration could have been averted had community leaders, from both Congress and the anti-Nazi organizations, informed the community in advance that Beattie did not have a permit" ⁽²¹⁾.

Ezra Levant claims that CJC "didn't inform the Jewish public of Beattie's not having a permit because it wanted an enraged citizenry to help it in its push for anti-hate laws." "They managed to parlay a second-rate carnival act into the raison d'etre for censorship laws that would otherwise have likely failed to become laws" ⁽²²⁾. Popping-up Beattie with his Nazi Party and creating media frenzy suited CJC, contributing to "convincing the Parliament to give them more 'hate' laws." Beattie's proposed Nazi rally, cunningly anticipated by CJC's May 28 statement, created the "much needed proof" that without censorship laws, public disturbance was unavoidable and law and order could be jeopardized. A crowd made up of 4000 Jewish demonstrators, a riot with violence and eight arrests were the finishing touch to the well-planned CJC masquerade.

Almost half a century ago, in 1952, the then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, proposed to send a team of saboteurs "to help redeem Jews" in countries where they were "absorbed in sinful self-satisfaction" ⁽²³⁾. The task of these saboteurs "would be to disguise themselves as non-Jews," and plague their targets with anti-Semitic slogans such as "Bloody Jews," "Jews go to Palestine," and so on ⁽²⁴⁾. A similar plot was adopted by Israeli government to force Iraqi Jews to move to Israel. "The rescue" of 125,000, in early 1950s involved "terrorizing the Jews" with planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and synagogues, followed by leaflets that urged Jews to "flee to Israel" ⁽²⁵⁾. To combat the perceived anti-Semitism in Iraq, Naeim Giladi joined the Zionist underground. He was caught, tortured and sentenced to death by the authorities. Giladi escaped, fled to Israel and later found out that the anti-Semitism and terrorism that plagued the Iraqi Jews were engineered by the Zionists to trick them to go to Israel ⁽²⁶⁾. While all of these nauseating revelations explain the Zionist mindset, they also demonstrate that their methods haven't changed in time. Today there is a growing Human Rights Industry in Canada, and Ezra Levant's Shakedown takes a deep look at it from its inception to its present-day abuses. Garrity's inflating of the importance of Canadian Nazis, with an explicit purpose of ensuring the censorship laws, established the pattern that was imitated in relation to another rag-tag group, the white supremacist Heritage Front ⁽²⁷⁾.

According to June 29, 2009 editorial of the Montreal Gazette, the Canadian Human Rights Commission defends its "authority to police the Internet – or any other electronic medium – for opinions that are 'likely to' expose people to hatred or contempt" ⁽²⁸⁾. An assault on Free Speech, Section 13 of the Human Rights Act is a censorship provision that prohibits transmissions deemed "offensive" to bureaucratic manipulators. Run by the "fanatical thought police at the Canadian Human Rights Commission" ⁽²⁹⁾, it has been used to attack writers, newspaper columnists, website owners, magazine publishers that have demonstrated the audacity to write on such "contentious issues" as the Israeli aggression, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and the criminal insanity of Israeli leaders. William A. Cook's article, Anti-Semitism: Silencing the Messenger of Truth with Canada's "Hate Provisions," details the author's "encounter" with "hate crime" – Mr. Cook was "charged before the Council of Human Rights with anti-Semitism by Mr. Harry Abrams with the support of B'nai B'rith of Canada ⁽³⁰⁾. In this and most other cases, the perpetrator of the real crime is the party filing the complaint. To put it differently, there is a real crime but it is directed at the individual who dares SPEAK THE TRUTH.

Since its first enactment, the law sustained two major changes that altered its original intent and turned Section 13 into an instrument for punishing "politically incorrect views." Today this legislation enables the Canadian Human Rights Commission to censor the Internet and harass the public for views that the Thought Police disagrees with ⁽³¹⁾. Unless the public wakes up to the real implications of the law, and challenges its constitutionality, we will see our most cherished FREEDOM OF SPEECH erode in the hands of vindictive manipulators and "social engineers that staff the Human Rights Commission" ⁽³²⁾ and work for the backroom politics of special interest groups that aspire to eradicate FREE THOUGHT and silence FREE SPEECH.

References:
(1) Jay Lefkowitz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Lefkowitz

(2), (3), (4) Lenni Brenner Zionism in the Age of Dictators
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/engl/zad/zad1.htm

(5), (9), (10), (11), (12), (13), (14), (15), (16), (17), (18), (20), (21), (22) Several Spies and a Bottle of Rum
http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184864673&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

(6), (7), (8), (19), (27) Ezra Levant
http://ezralevant.com/2009/04/why-did-the-jewish-congress-bu.html

(23), (24), (25) Anti-Semitism: Zionism's Indispensable Alibi
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/03/15/anti-semitism-zionisms-indispensable-alibi/

(26) The Zionist Protection Racket
http://www.savethemales.ca/000889.html

(28) Rights Commission Threatens our Liberty
http://www2.canada.com/montrealgazette/features/viewpoints/story.html?id=b084ee2b-ed22-4e08-a689-f1c7dc989a51

(29) Stop Section 13
http://www.stopsection13.com/

(30) Anti-Semitism: Silencing the Messenger of Truth with Canada's "Hate Provisions"
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/03/15/silencing-the-messenger-of-truth-with-canadas-hate-provisions/

(31), (32) History of Section 13
http://www.stopsection13.com/history_of_sec13.html

* Anait Brutian (B. Mus. with Honours in Theory, McGill University; M. A. in Music Theory, McGill University) is a student in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill. Her previous research includes a self-published book entitled: Reconciling Geometry, Rhetoric and Harmony: A Fresh Look at C. P. E. Bach. She is currently working on another book on mathematical paradigms in literature (Old and New Testaments), art, architecture, and music. She can be contacted at anaitbrutian@videotron.ca

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With all the religiophobia going around, specially when it comes to Palestinian issue, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, following article by Uri Avnery is a must read.

A War of Religions? God Forbid!
Uri Avnery, 19.2.06

ONE OF our former Chiefs-of-Staff, the late Rafael ("Raful") Eytan, who was not the brightest, once asked a foreign guest: "Are you Jewish or Christian?"

"I am an atheist!" the man replied.

"Okay, Okay," Raful demanded impatiently, "but a Jewish atheist or a Christian atheist?"

Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character.

THE HISTORICAL CONFLICT began as a clash between two national movements, which used religious motifs only as a decoration.

The Zionist movement was non-religious from the start, if not anti-religious. Almost all the Founding Fathers were self-declared atheists. In his book "Der Judenstaat", the original charter of Zionism, Theodor Herzl said that "we shall know how to keep (our clergymen) in their temples." Chaim Weitzman was an agnostic scientist. Vladimir Jabotinsky wanted his body to be cremated - a sin in Judaism. David Ben-Gurion refused to cover his head even at funerals.

All the great rabbis of the day, both Hassidim and their opponents, the Missnagdim, condemned Herzl and cursed him ferociously. They rejected the basic thesis of Zionism, that the Jews are a "nation" in the European sense, instead regarding the Jews as a holy people held together by observance of the divine commandments.

Moreover, in the eyes of the rabbis, the Zionist idea itself was a cardinal sin. The Almighty decreed the exile of the Jews as punishment for their sins. Therefore, only the Almighty Himself may revoke the punishment and send the Messiah, who will lead the Jews back to the holy land. Until then, it is strictly prohibited to "return en masse". By organizing mass immigration to the country, the Zionists rebel against God and, worst of all, hold up the coming of the Messiah. Some Hassidim, like the Satmar sect in America, and a small but principled group in Israel, the Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City) in Jerusalem, still adhere to this belief.

True, the Zionists expropriated the symbols of Judaism (the Star of David, the candlestick of the Temple, the prayer shawl that was turned into a flag, even the name "Zion") but that was only utilitarian manipulation. The small religious faction that joined Zionism (the "Religious Zionists") was a marginal group.

Before the Holocaust, we learned in the Zionist schools in Palestine to treat with pitiless scorn everything that was "exile Jewish" - the Jewish religion, the Jewish Stetl, the Jewish social structure (the "inverted pyramid"). Only the Holocaust changed the attitude towards the Jewish past in the diaspora, referred to in Hebrew as "Exile".)

Ben-Gurion made some concessions to the religious factions, including the anti-Zionist Orthodox. He released some hundreds of Yeshiva-students from military service and set up a separate "state-religious" school system. His aim was to acquire convenient coalition partners. But these steps were based on the assumption (common to all of us at the time) that the Jewish religion would evaporate anyhow under the burning Israeli sun and disappear altogether in one or two generations.

All this changed in the wake of the Six-day War. The Jewish religion staged an astounding comeback.

ON THE Palestinian side, something similar happened, but against a quite different background.

The Arab national movement, too, was born under the influence of the European national idea. Its spiritual fathers called for the liberation of the Arab nation from the shackles of Ottoman rule, and later from the yoke of European colonialism. Many of its founders were Arab Christians.

When a distinct Palestinian national movement came into being, following the Balfour Declaration and the setting up of the British Government of Palestine, it had no religious character. In order to fight it, the British appointed a religious personality to the leadership of the Palestinian community in Palestine: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who quickly assumed the leadership of the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist immigration. He endeavored to give a religious face to the Palestinian-Arab rebellion. Accusing the Zionist of designs on the Temple Mount with its holy Islamic shrines, he tried to mobilize the Muslim peoples in support of the Palestinians.

The Mufti failed miserably, and his failure played a part in the catastrophe of his people. The Palestinians have all but obliterated him from their history. In the 1950s, they idolized Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the standard-bearer of secular, pan-Arab nationalism. Later, when Yasser Arafat founded the modern Palestinian national movement, he did not distinguish between Muslims and Christians. Right up to his death, he insisted on calling for the liberation of the "mosques and churches" of Jerusalem.

At one stage of its development, the PLO called for the creation of a "Democratic secular state, where Muslims, Jews and Christians will live together". (Arafat did not like the term "secular", preferring "la-maliah", meaning "non-sectarian".)

George Habash, the leader of the "Arab Nationalists" and later of the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine", is a Christian.

This situation changed with the outbreak of the first intifada, at the end of 1987. Only then did the Islamist movements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, start to take over the national struggle.

THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli army in the Six-day war, which looked like a miracle, effected a profound political and cultural change in Israel. When the shofar sounded at the Western Wall, the religious youth, which had until then been vegetating on the fringe, occupied the center of the stage.

Suddenly it was discovered that the religious education system, which had been set up by Ben-Gurion as a political bribe and contrary to his own convictions, had been quietly turning out a fanatical religious product. The religious youth movement, which had suffered all these years from feelings of humiliation and inferiority, was filled with zeal and started the settlement drive, leading the main national effort: the annexation of the occupied territories.

The Jewish religion itself underwent a mutation. This mutant shed all universal values and became a narrow, militant, xenophobic tribal creed, aiming at conquest and ethnic cleansing. The religious-Zionists of the new sort are convinced that they are fulfilling the will of God and preparing the ground for the coming of the Messiah. The "national-religious" cabinet ministers, that had always belonged to the moderate wing of the government, gave way to a new, extremist leadership with tendencies towards religious fascism.

Israel has not become a religious state. It still has a large secular majority. According to the authoritative Israeli Government Bureau of Statistics, only 8% of Israeli Jews define themselves as "Orthodox" (Haredim), 9% as "religious" (meaning Religious Zionists), 45% as "secular, non-religious" and 27% as "secular, traditional".

However, because of their role in the settlement enterprise, the "religious" have acquired a huge influence over the political process. They have practically prevented any move towards peace with the Palestinians. They have also provoked a religious reaction on the other side.

THE PALESTINIAN resistance to the occupation, which reached a peak with the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, has given a big push to the religious forces. Until then, these had been growing quietly (not without the encouragement of the occupation authorities, which saw in them a counterweight to the secular PLO.)

The first intifada led to the Oslo agreement and brought Yasser Arafat back to Palestine. But the new Palestinian authority failed in its aim of putting an end to the occupation and establishing a secular Palestinian state. With settlements continually expanding all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian public increasingly tended to support armed resistance. In this struggle, and with the limited means available, the religious factions excelled. A religious person is more ready to sacrifice his life in a suicide attack than his secular cousin.

The anger of the Palestinian public over the corruption that has infected sections of the secular Fatah leadership (but not the ascetic Yasser Arafat, whose reputation remained clean) has increased even more the popularity of the religious, whose honesty is unquestioned.

FOR YEARS I have been haunted by a nightmare: that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would change from a national to a religious confrontation.

A national conflict, terrible as it may be, is soluble. The last two centuries have seen many national wars, and almost all of them ended in a territorial compromise. Such conflicts are basically logical, and can be terminated in a rational way.

Not so religious conflicts. When all sides are bound by divine commandments, the attainment of a compromise becomes far more difficult.

Religious Jews believe that God promised them all of the holy land. Thus, giving away any of it to "foreigners" is an unforgivable sin. In the eyes of Muslim believers, the whole country is a Waqf (religious trust), and it is therefore absolutely forbidden to surrender any part of it to unbelievers. (When the Caliph Omar conquered Palestine some 1400 years ago, he declared it a Waqf. His motive was quite practical: to prevent his generals from dividing the land between themselves, as was their wont.)

By the way, the evangelical fundamentalists who dominate Washington at this time also see the Holy Land as a religious property, to which the Jews must return in order to make possible the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Is a compromise between these forces possible? Certainly yes, but it is much more difficult. A devout Muslim is allowed to declare a Hudna (armistice) for a hundred years and more, without condemning his soul to hell. Ariel Sharon, who began the evacuation of settlers, spoke about "long-range temporary arrangements". In politics, "temporary" measures have a tendency to become permanent.

But wisdom, sophistication and a lot of patience are needed to reach a resolution of the conflict in these circumstances.

On the day Arafat died, many Israelis were angry with me for saying (in a Haaretz interview) that we shall yet long for this secular leader, who was both willing and able to make peace with us. I said that his elimination removes the last obstacle to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine and the entire Arab world.

One did not need to be a prophet to see that.

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