We are a Muslim community of 35 000 to 40 000 members including all different sects. The people who make statistics do not make a difference between a Shiite, bahaa’i, Habashi and a Sunni! These Muslims are assimilated in a Christian country of around five million citizens. Even the flag of the country presents the symbol of Christianity, which is the cross. During these last months one group of recently converted Muslims (Sunnis) formed a political party and as their goals they have e.g. trying to stop selling alcohol in the shops, and they went even further to claim that they want to establish sharee’ah in this Christian country! It has to be taken in consideration that the Muslims do not have even their complete usual rights like own graveyard, right to do ritual sacrificing of animals and so on!
Before we had a graveyard but it became full and because some errors had been committed in its handling additionally there is also some differing between the parties who will take charge of it, the authorities profited from all of that and made it difficult for us to have a new graveyard!
So now if some one dies, he is buried in the same graveyard with the Christians and atheists!!! These recently converted Muslims try to be united between each other and to be far from the qabaliyyah and hizbiyyah of the Somalis, and far from the “talks of the Arabs and their assimilation”.
Now the media is focusing on Islam and Muslims here in a negative way by bringing up subjects as: - Divorce is in the hand of the man and the women can not get her complete rights and be free in Islam if she does not want to stay married to her husband… -
Corporal punishment of children in homes (because it is a crime in this country if you slap your children) - Muslim families try to isolate their children from the society and not let them to participate in swimming hours (boys and girls together) and attending the music hours… - And whether Muslims would like to follow Islamic law or the law of the country.
The goal of the media is to distort the image of Islam and to grow hatred in the chests of the common people for they will hate Islam and Muslims: common people usually complain that we are taking their money and enjoying their services and now they will add to that the claim that we would like to apply here Sharee’ah which we do not even apply in our home countries!
And among the Muslims those who practise their religion are a minority while the majority has become assimilated!!! The media and the researchers base their research results on the opinions of every Tom, Dick and Harry i.e. every common ignorant person is qualified to answer. Especially when the most of people nowadays are just running after fame and worldly gains and are enough fed up with their origin and their home countries which neglect their rights and do not appreciate them as citizens.
So the appreciation of non-Muslims can make them to take whatever steps … even we heard some who gave up Islam for Christianity! When the head of this group that formed the political party was advised concerning the steps that he is taking, he merely answered that he is trying to get publicity to Islam… (this person was active in politics already in his youth). Now we ask from you to give a general advice to the Muslims in this country and especially to these recently converted Muslims, and to remind us all of our duty in a non-Muslim society and towards its citizens and authorities and to draw for us our limits for we will not be as a hammer that will be used to destroy our own homes or at least not to be a cause to stop even these few rights we enjoy because not everyone has got the possibility to emigrate to an Islamic country.
Please if you need more details about the subject you can contact us and we will be pleased to give you more detailed information. I wish to get a quick answer still when there is time to lock doors of evil and before it is too late! Wa jazaakumullaah khayran! There can be some mistakes in our expressions and you are allowed to drop such things that do not fit da’wah and to shape it in the way that you want. The thing that concerns us is to get a complete advice.
Praise be to Allaah.
We have read more about the country – Finland – in which you are living; some of it saddened us, but other things made us happy. We are saddened by the division that there is among you, and by the fact that many neglect to call people to Allaah or pay attention to their families and children. We are also saddened to learn that some Muslim women have married Christian men in that country, as these are invalid marriages; and that many people have failed to obey Allaah and adhere to His religion. All of that makes the burden of the people of knowledge and goodness even greater, and lays upon them a huge responsibility towards the Muslim community in that European land.
But what made us happy is the news that the number of Muslims in that country is increasing, and the Muslim community is now one hundred thousand strong, according to some reports, although we do not know how many of them are Sunnis. And we are happy to learn that many of the people of that country have entered the religion of Allaah.
What we advise you, and we hope that our words will have a good effect on your hearts and actions:
1.
First and foremost, every Muslim should try to return to his homeland, and those who have become Muslim should move to a Muslim country where they can practise their religion safely. They should leave that country where the religious commitment, minds and hearts of many Muslims have been corrupted, whenever they are able to do so.
2.
Those who cannot leave or who do not want to should fear Allaah with regard to themselves and the members of their household; they should advise them sincerely and take good care of them, and protect themselves and their families from the Fire of Allaah.
3.
You must strive to establish study circles for learning Qur’aan and (Islamic) knowledge, in which the ignorant may be taught and the young Muslims (?) may learn to obey Allaah. It is not permissible for you to be careless about this matter. We have read how the Tatars in Finland preserved their language and culture; your Islam and Arabic language are more important and you must take great care of them in your daily lives.
4.
Try to invite scholars and seekers of knowledge to come to you, so that they can undertake the duties of calling people to Islam, exhorting, guiding and teaching. Such meetings will play a part in uniting you and helping you adhere to the rulings of sharee’ah which have to do with the realities of your lives.
5.
Do not leave any room for the devils among mankind and the jinn to cause division in your ranks and spread disunity among you. You have to be aware that you are living in a Christian society, a Christian country, whose flag bears the cross! You have to remember that what happens between Muslims who have differences is not like your differences with other religions. The difference between Muslims who pray in the same direction (ahl al-qiblah) is may be a difference between Sunnah and bid’ah, and in some cases it may be the difference between a correct view and a less correct view, but the difference between you and the other religions is the difference between Islam and kufr. These are two different issues.
6.
With regard to this party that is trying to establish an Islamic state in Finland, they should think on the basis of reason and not emotion; they should look at reality and not turn a blind eye to it. You cannot even bury a Muslim in a graveyard that is just for Muslims, so would you be able to close liquor stores and establish an Islamic state there?!
What is this, O slaves of Allaah?! This is imaginary dreams and farfetched thinking, which may be excused in a man who does not know the reality of where you live and does not know anything about the difficulties that you face. But a man who sees what you see and knows what you know should think soundly on the basis of fitrah, sharee’ah and reason, and his efforts should be aimed at achieving whatever he is most able to of the Muslims’ interests in your country, and warding off whatever evils, harm and oppression he can.
Based on that, if those people have an Islamic party, they should invest their efforts in establishing Islamic institutions, schools, Muslim graveyards, and stop thinking about establishing an Islamic state, because in fact that is virtually impossible and is just an illusion, based on what we have seen of the Muslims’ inability to achieve that, even in their own countries, so how can they do it in a non-Muslim country? Just demanding an Islamic state will bring evil consequences such as only Allaah knows, so how about if they took practical steps towards it?
If the state is unable to stop them – which is not the case – then let them imagine their fate if the European Union were to get involved in stopping that. What would be the fate of all the efforts that have been made for decades? We have read about the situation of Muslim men and women in your country after September 11th, so how about if the anti-Islam establishments were to spread the idea that the Muslims only want to rule in order to apply Islam and limit freedoms and oppress women? Yes, they are exaggerating and lying, but we are giving them the ammunition that they are throwing in our faces.
7.
One of the priorities of that Islamic party should be to preserve Islamic identity and strive to spread the message of Islam, free of distortions; they should present it to the Muslims so as to bring them back to commitment and righteousness, and you should prove to non-Muslims that your religion is a religion of unity, brotherhood and cooperation in righteousness and piety.
8.
The Muslim brothers who are of that land should continue to call people to Allaah among their families and relatives, and tell others of the joy they have found by entering Islam. It seems that they will have more impact on the people of that land than Muslims who have migrated from other countries.
9.
Strive to buy a piece of land as soon as possible to be used for graves for Muslims who believe in Tawheed (the oneness of Allaah), and try to move the Muslims who were buried with non-Muslims to these Islamic graves.
10.
It should be a priority of Islamic groups and political parties, especially those that are trying to establish an Islamic state, as we said, to preserve the identity of the Muslims who are living there. One of the most important means of preserving their identity is for Muslim men to marry Muslim women and to strive to create an Islamic atmosphere in their social lives. In the Islamic parties and organizations there should be people who direct the Muslims’ private matters such as marriage, divorce and social relationships in accordance with the laws of Allaah, without trying to impose that on everyone in the Christian country which, as we have said, is a very farfetched idea, the consequences of which will be bad for you.
11.
We advise everyone to be gentle in calling people to Allaah and to follow the way of the Prophets and Messengers and successful daa’iyahs. You should direct your da’wah to leaders, politicians, decision makers, journalists, writers and all classes of people. Perhaps Allaah will guide one of them who will become very influential. And strive to remove evils from the lives of Muslims in the way that is best.
12.
You should always be in contact with your Muslim brothers in Europe and in the Muslim world, so that you can consult them about your affairs and ask the scholars about issues and problems that you are facing. The Muslim is the mirror of his brother, and two brothers together are stronger than one on his own.
And Allaah knows best.
Islam Q&A
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
David Littman addresses the UNHRC on Jewish refugees from Muslim Lands
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Human Rights Council
Thirteenth session
9:00 - 12:00 - 36th Plenary Meeting
3/27/10 8:24:09 AM World Union for Progressive Judaism
Friday, November 20, 2009
SPEECH BY MANFRED GERSTENFELD: NORWAY'S ATTITUDES TOWARD ISRAEL AND THE JEWS.......
Continued..... from here
In my book Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews, there is an article by Odd Sverre Hove, the editor of the small Norwegian Christian daily Dagen, who analyzes how the state TV station NRK systematically manipulated the news from Israel in the first days of the second intifada in 2000.
There are only two TV stations in Norway: the state NRK and the commercial station TV2. The latter has hosted the infamous comedian Jespersen who said that he commiserated with the lice and fleas who made the bad choice of going onto the bodies of Jews in concentration camps. Worse still is that these remarks were considered acceptable by the director of the TV2 station.
That same station TV2 paid for the Holocaust denier David Irving to come to Norway this year and had him interviewed for more than a quarter of an hour by one of its journalists who showed hardly any knowledge of the Holocaust.
I can tell you from my own experience that the TV2 people are major falsifiers of what a person says and the National Telegraph Bureau, which is the main provider of foreign news to the 300 Norwegian papers, is hardly any better. The situation is one of a mixture of manipulation and a widespread very low level of journalistic professionalism in Norway.
No Level Playing Field
Let me make this clear. Norway is a democratic country – it is not the Soviet Union under Communist rule. It is not that the ruling parties rigidly promote only anti-Israel hate. But once you promote hatred this overshadows everything else you do. There is no state sponsored anti-Semitism in Norway. The government however supports a reality which is conducive to anti-Semitism. This means that in Norway there is no real possibility for a battle of ideas. For that you need a level playing field, and that level playing field does not exist in Norway.
The reasons why there is no level playing field in Norway are many: Thete is this hard core extreme left elite, others are socialists who have a tendency to show solidarity with the weak. This includes whitewashing those weak people who are extreme criminals, such as genocidal Muslims. Added to this is the fact that there are no checks and balances resulting from foreign newspapers reporting on the Norwegian realities. That is also why there is so little selfcriticism in the country.
The situation is complicated by other factors. First is that with the immigration of a large number of Muslims into Norway, a number of extreme criminal anti-Semites have entered the country. This became evident in the riots during the Gaza campaign which, according to the police, were the most severe Oslo had seen in decades. Shops were burned on Oslo’s main street. Today the extreme anti-Semitic Muslims in Norway probably outnumber the 700 members of the Jewish community. (Slide 4)
Furthermore, there is a long tradition of anti-Semitism in the country. It is not true that what one sees in Norway is pure anti-Israelism, which has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Minister Halvorsen however did not leave the anti-Israel demonstration when there were shouts of “Death to the Jews.”
Another Obsession: No anti-Semitism
Besides the obsession with Israel, there is another obsession in Norway which concerns the Jewish people. That is the obsessive way in which one is told by many Norwegians that there is no anti-Semitism in Norway.
Because of that lack of anti-Semitism two of the three Jewish cemeteries have been desecrated in the last five years, the synagogue has been shot at in 2006, the cantor has been attacked on Oslo’s main street. Jewish children in schools have been harassed. Some Jews have received death threats. The community, the school and the old age home need heavy security. All these signs of lack of anti-Semitism show that Norwegian Jews are in a position which is typical of all other Norwegians.
There is nothing many Norwegians are more sensitive to than being reminded of Quisling, the war-time Norwegian prime minister whose name has become the expression of the archetype of a traitor in English and many other languages. It was not the German occupiers who arrested the Jews, but the Norwegian collaborators. They handed the Jews over to the Germans, to be sent to their death.
We are always told that Quisling had only limited support in the country. This is true as far as the elections are concerned, but the number of anti-Semites was far larger. A great majority of parliamentarians had voted to prohibit Jewish ritual slaughter already in 1929. In Germany this happened only when the Nazis came to power in 1933. A false claim is that the Norwegian prohibition derived from their concern for animals. If so, they should have long ago prohibited hunting and the killing of whales, which until today is still allowed in Norway.
Oil and Gas
Norway was an insignificant country until large quantities of oil and gas were found there. Prior to that, fishing and farming were its main activities. Today you might say that the country specializes in fish, oil and gas; one of my acquaintances has said that, to this, you have to add boredom.
The wealth gained from oil and gas has enabled the Norwegian government to build a new mythology. Norway may be small in population, but it is great in charitable, humanitarian aid. This is what I call Norway’s “humanitarian mask.” As Gerald Steinberg and Yael Beck show in an article in my upcoming book in Norwegian, under the heading “humanitarian aid” Norway provides substantial funds to Palestinian and other NGOs which incite against Israel.
The same wealth also gives the Norwegian government the feeling that it can criticize Israel, while at the same time being silent or soft on the endless crimes in the Arab world. To a certain extent, such an attitude contradicts one of the basic characteristics which Norway claims for itself : the so-called Jante Law. This law says that you should not think that you are better than someone else. The Norwegian government however thinks that it is better than Israel and can thus teach Israel some lessons. You might put it this way: to a certain extent, part of all that gas has gone to their heads.
Should Norway teach Israel lessons? The former commander of the Norwegian army General Robert Mood, is now based in Jerusalem, as part of a United Nations mission. In 2008, he said that the Norwegian army’s current capability is that it cannot defend the country, but it could defend one neighborhood in Oslo. I also read in Aftenposten that the Norwegians are only now investigating major war crimes by Norwegians in a prisoner camp during the Second World War,
The Jewish Community
Before I come to the most recent events, a few words about the Jewish community: In a country where you have two or three Jews at most among every 10,000 citizens, they of course play no role. But, the Jews in Norway play symbolic roles. When there are accusations of anti-Semitism, the Jewish community is supposed to say that it isn’t so bad.
In this way they have the symbolic role of whitewashers of the country’s misbehavior. In my recent essay, which is available here, I quote a number of examples of Norwegian Jews who, on various occasions, have said that the situation isn’t so great as far as anti-Semitism is concerned. And even the head of the Oslo Jewish community, a significant whitewasher has said on various occasions that the situation is problematic. This is the essence of the Diaspora existence in such a country. As one lives as a Jew in Norway and make his living there, one must promote the image of the country even if that means twisting the truth.
Elbit
Let me now conclude with short observations of the two most recent discriminatory events: The first one is the Elbit story. Out of so called ethical considerations, the large Norwegian pension fund disinvested from Elbit. The same pension fund however has no ethical problems with investing in companies which mine phosphate in the disputed Western Sahara. The local population there sees this as robbing their natural resources.
The Norwegian state-controlled Statoil Company is trying to get into Turkmenistan, one of the least democratic countries in the world. Statoil also is invested in a project of oil from oil sand in Alberta in Canada where it will destroy a forest the size of England. Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre says that the decision to divest from Elbit had nothing to do with the Norwegian government but is the decision of a private fund.
I always have the feeling that the difference between some Norwegian politicians and politicians- in other countries is that, when these Norwegians twist the truth, they do it more transparently. If it were a private pension fund, why was the decision announced by Minister Halvorsen?
The NTNU Affair
The other recent major discriminatory issue is the NTNU affair. The NTNU university in Trondheim already had an anti-Israel record. Its student union, of which membership is obligatory, boycotted Israel for almost a year in 2004. In May this year a number of professors from NTNU and the local Trondheim college Hist, asked the boards of the two institutions to boycott Israel. Apparently, the board of the college shortly afterwards voted against this.
In September a series of seminars on the Middle East, to be given over a few months, was announced. All six lecturers are anti-Israelis. Tomorrow night Ilan Pappe speaks there. The key organizers are all people who had signed the resolution to boycott Israel. Despite all this, the rector Torbjørn Digernes supported and financed a large part of the series. It was another pioneering act of anti-Israelism in Norway.
The NTNU affair requires a detailed case study and a detailed seminar on another occasion, so let me just summarize it briefly:
Entirely by chance someone discovered a few weeks before the board meeting on 12 November that the academic boycott of Israel was on its agenda. One NTNU professor, Bjørn Alsberg, prepared a petition to the board against the boycott. It would ultimately be signed by 103 NTNU professors, far more than those who had signed the pro-boycott petition. On the basis of Alsberg’s petition, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East prepared a petition against the boycott, which was signed by 3,500 academics all over the world, among whom were 13 Nobel Prize winners including the only two living Norwegian prize winners.
Other Jewish organizations, including ADL, AJCommittee, the Wiesenthal Center, CAMERA, World Jewish Congress, Academic Friends of Israel in the UK and many others, were very helpful. The boycott was also condemned by the Association of American University Professors, the Russell Group of the leading 20 UK universities, etc.
After all the bad international publicity finally the minister of higher education, Torah Aasland an extreme leftist herself, said that the board had no legal authority to support such an issue. Suddenly a few days before the vote, NTNU Rector Digernes who had partly financed the propaganda seminars organized by people who promote the boycott came to the conclusion that he had always been against the boycott. In the end the entire board was against the boycott.
Prof. Alsberg told me that the media present at the NTNU Board meeting were afterwards mainly interested in talking to the people who had supported the boycott. In a country where the battlefield for the battle of ideas is level, they would have been more interested in interviewing the winners, rather than the losers.
In this short introduction I could not cover all the incidents of the last year. These included Foreign Minister Støre maintaining the Holocaust memory abuser Trine Lilleng as a diplomat in Riyadh; the visit of Queen Sophia to a Muslim institution in Oslo, whose imam supports suicide bombings; and Norwegian government investment of $30 million in memory of the author Knut Hamsun, who dedicated his Nobel Prize for Literature to Goebbels and remained an admirer of Hitler till the end of the war.
The present Norwegian government was recently elected for four years. We can thus expect again many anti-Semitic and anti-Israelis incidents in Norway in the coming years. My conclusion is that we will have to gradually show the Norwegian Israel-haters and anti-Semites that there are no free anti-Semitic lunches. Thank you for your attention.
Monday, November 2, 2009
UK: PAKISTANI RAPIST GIVES IMMIGRATION OFFICE THE SLIP.......
Convicted rapist escapes immigration officials days before he was due to be deported to Pakistan
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224520/Convicted-rapist-escapes-immigration-officials-days-deported-Pakistan.html
A convicted rapist is on the run after escaping security guards at the Pakistan High Commission in London days before he was due to be deported.
Imtiaz Hussain, 44, had been transported from prison, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for rape, to the Pakistan High Commission to get a new passport in preparation for his deportation.
But the serial rapist gave immigration officials the slip, escaping through a window after claiming he needed the toilet.
He was last seen running along Sloane Square.
Police have now launched an nationwide manhunt for the sex attacker said to be 'very dangerous' and a 'serious threat to women'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224520/Convicted-rapist-escapes-immigration-officials-days-deported-Pakistan.html
A convicted rapist is on the run after escaping security guards at the Pakistan High Commission in London days before he was due to be deported.
Imtiaz Hussain, 44, had been transported from prison, where he was serving a nine-year sentence for rape, to the Pakistan High Commission to get a new passport in preparation for his deportation.
But the serial rapist gave immigration officials the slip, escaping through a window after claiming he needed the toilet.
He was last seen running along Sloane Square.
Police have now launched an nationwide manhunt for the sex attacker said to be 'very dangerous' and a 'serious threat to women'.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Netanyahu Speech at the UN........
Linked from the Tundra Tabloids main blog.
Transcript of Prime Minister's speech to the UN.
Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.
I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.
Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.
Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?
A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?
This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie?
One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?
Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.
But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?
A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!
Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.
This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.
In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.
The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization. It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death. The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day.
Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially. It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.
What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come.
We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.
That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction, and the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?
Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood?
Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?
Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging.
Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.
For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.
We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.
In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis.
We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare.
You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.
Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded?
Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II.
During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.
That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances.
Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas. We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave.
Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way. Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel.
A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.
By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth! What a perversion of justice!
Delegates of the United Nations,
Will you accept this farce? Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.
If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity.
And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why. When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense.
What legitimacy? What self-defense?
The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!
Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?
We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow.
Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
All of Israel wants peace. Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein.
And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace.
In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it. We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state.
Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.
Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city - in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem. We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland.
As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.
But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.
That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.
We want peace.
I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order.
The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.
Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.
Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”
I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong.
I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.
In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.
Transcript of Prime Minister's speech to the UN.
Mr. President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.
I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.
The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events. Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth.
Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.
Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments.
Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?
A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?
This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie? And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie?
One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?
Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.
But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?
A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!
Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong. History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.
This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.
In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times. Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated.
The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization. It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death. The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day.
Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially. It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.
What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come.
We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.
I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances – by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.
But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after a horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind.
That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction, and the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?
Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood?
Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?
Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging.
Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.
For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks.
We heard nothing – absolutely nothing – from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.
In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis.
We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare.
You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.
Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded?
Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II.
During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians – Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.
That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances.
Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas. We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave.
Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way. Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel.
A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.
By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth! What a perversion of justice!
Delegates of the United Nations,
Will you accept this farce? Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.
If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity.
And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why. When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense.
What legitimacy? What self-defense?
The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us –my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!
Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?
We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow.
Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
All of Israel wants peace. Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein.
And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace.
In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples – a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it. We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state.
Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.
Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city - in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem. We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland.
As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.
But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.
That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.
We want peace.
I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order.
The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.
Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.
Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong.”
I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong.
I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.
In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Iran: Friday Prayers Turn Violent.......
The unrest in Tehran continues, but outside of the protesters who are trully pressing for real freedoms, who amongst the present opposition can the West honestly support without being taken for a fool?
The Tundra Tabloids is on record supporting the average Iranian who wants to diminish the role Islam plays in Iran's society, and build a more modern state, one that's free from supporting international terrorism.
What's happening inside Iran however, is not a national movement being led by credible leaders, but by radical and highly corrupted Islamic clerics who are worried that their base of power and financial wealth is at risk, due to Mahmoud(goodie two shoes) Ahmadinejad's reforms.
"Moodie's reforms" however, are nothing more than an attempt to restore the late Ayattolah Khomenie's Islamic revolution.
Nothing worthwhile there to scream about, let alone to support. KGS
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99GETSO0&show_article=1
Police tear-gas Iran protesters during prayer
"TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Tens of thousands of government opponents packed Iran's main Islamic prayer service Friday, chanting "freedom, freedom" and other slogans as their top clerical backer Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon bluntly criticizing the country's leadership over the crackdown on election protests.
Outside, police and pro-government Basiji militiamen fired tear gas and charged thousands of protesters who chanted "death to the dictator" and called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to resign. Dozens were arrested, piled in trucks and taken away, witnesses said.
Plainclothes Basijis stood in front of a line of riot police and pumped canisters of tear gas, which young protesters with green bandanas over their faces kicked away across the pavement, away from the crowds. Some set a bonfire in the street and waved their hands in the air in victory signs.
The opposition aimed to turn the Friday prayers at Tehran University into a show of their continued strength despite heavy government suppression since the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have won the election, sat among the worshippers, attending for the first time since the turmoil began. Many of the tens of thousands at the prayers wore headbands or wristbands in his campaign color green, or had green prayer rugs, in a crowd that filled the former soccer field where prayers are held and spilling into nearby streets."
The Tundra Tabloids is on record supporting the average Iranian who wants to diminish the role Islam plays in Iran's society, and build a more modern state, one that's free from supporting international terrorism.
What's happening inside Iran however, is not a national movement being led by credible leaders, but by radical and highly corrupted Islamic clerics who are worried that their base of power and financial wealth is at risk, due to Mahmoud(goodie two shoes) Ahmadinejad's reforms.
"Moodie's reforms" however, are nothing more than an attempt to restore the late Ayattolah Khomenie's Islamic revolution.
Nothing worthwhile there to scream about, let alone to support. KGS
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99GETSO0&show_article=1
Police tear-gas Iran protesters during prayer
"TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Tens of thousands of government opponents packed Iran's main Islamic prayer service Friday, chanting "freedom, freedom" and other slogans as their top clerical backer Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon bluntly criticizing the country's leadership over the crackdown on election protests.
Outside, police and pro-government Basiji militiamen fired tear gas and charged thousands of protesters who chanted "death to the dictator" and called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to resign. Dozens were arrested, piled in trucks and taken away, witnesses said.
Plainclothes Basijis stood in front of a line of riot police and pumped canisters of tear gas, which young protesters with green bandanas over their faces kicked away across the pavement, away from the crowds. Some set a bonfire in the street and waved their hands in the air in victory signs.
The opposition aimed to turn the Friday prayers at Tehran University into a show of their continued strength despite heavy government suppression since the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have won the election, sat among the worshippers, attending for the first time since the turmoil began. Many of the tens of thousands at the prayers wore headbands or wristbands in his campaign color green, or had green prayer rugs, in a crowd that filled the former soccer field where prayers are held and spilling into nearby streets."
Sunday, May 24, 2009
A Couple of Baits for Mr.Illman.......
Let’s stop talking about defamations. Lehto was also convicted of disturbing religious worship. According to the district court Lehto violated Muslims' religious worship by defaming the prophet Muhammad. Professor Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila has confirmed the interpretation according to which Muhammad is a revered figure in Islamic faith.
According to state prosecutor Mika Illman and Tampere district court insulting the prophet Muhammad is illegal, because Muhammad is revered by Muslims.
(On the other hand professor Hämeen-Anttila could certainly confirm that in Christianity Jesus and God are holy figures. Of course, this doesn’t prevent anybody to defame Jesus or God freely in the way he or she chooses.)
Next I intend to throw Mika a bait:
Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile and Islam reveres pedophilia as a religion. Islam is a religion of pedophilia. Pedophilia is Allah’s will.
Are these statements illegal? They certainly insult Muslim's religious feelings. Let’s approach the issue logically:
As a 50 year-old man Muhammad was engaged to six or seven year old Aisha. Their marriage was “consummated” when Aisha was nine years old. It is possible to think that they were living in another age and Muhammad’s deeds must not be judged according to today’s standards, but as we have learned during the last few years, schoolbooks from the 50’s were racist when they spoke about ”negroes” (even if ”negro” was not a racist term at the time by anybody’s standards), it’s equally justified to call a child rapist who lived 1400 years ago a child rapist .´
What has to be done so that the bolded statements were not true? You must insist that
a) ... Quran is not literally true (i.e Muhammad did not have sexual relations with a nine year old girl). This will not do, since according to Islamic doctrine and Muslims' opinion Quran is a literal word of Allah. Consummation and Aisha’s age cannot be denied without insulting Muslims.
b) ...Muhammad’s actions were not always acceptable. This will not do either, since according to Muslims (and Tampere district court) criticizing Muhammad is the same as criticizing Allah and therefore blasphemy. The penalty is death. Muslim’s believe that Muhammad’s actions were the will of Allah. Because Muhammad had sexual relations with a child, that was Allah’s will as well.
As we see, all the argumentative ways to disprove the bolded statements have been theologically exhausted. The fact that Muhammad was a pedophile and Allah supported pedophilia can only be denied either by denying the literal truthfulness of Quran or Muhammad’s status as a messenger of Allah whose actions are according to the will of Allah.
Therefore I repeat my claim:Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile and Islam reveres pedophilia as a religion. Islam is a religion of pedophilia. Pedophilia is Allah’s will.
The next bait reads:
Robbing by passers and living at taxpayers’ expense as a parasite is a national, possibly genetic characteristic of Somalis.
Is this claim inappropriate? My fellow blogger Kekke filed a complaint to the Media Council for the editorial that appeared in newspaper Kaleva, in which killing people while intoxicated was described as a national, possibly genetic characteristic of Finns. Media Council dismissed the complaint. According to Council secretary Nina Porra:
”The writer probably refers to studies, in which heavy drinking has been observed to be a specific feature in Finnish drinking culture. It has also been observed that there is a correlation between intoxication and violence. The genetic background of the problem is not handled as a fact, but the writer gives his own opinion.”
Naturally, the decisions made by Media Council are not legally binding so inquisitor Illman doesn’t have to take notice. But on the other hand, “incitement against ethnic group” is a felony and because Illman (whom the matter belongs to) has not reacted to the Kaleva article, it can be concluded that negative ethnic and genetic stereotypes can be published as long as they are not handled as facts.
We can’t think that there are different rules for different people in Finland, can we?
Naturally, not all Somalis commit robberies or live at taxpayers’ expense, but not all Finns kill while intoxicated either.Somalis who constitute 0.2 per cent of Finland’s total population commit 12 per cent of robberies reported to the Police. One in ten Somalis living in Finland has a job. Committing robberies and living at taxpayers’ expense are a lot more common among Somalis related to their share of the population than killing while intoxicated among the ethnic Finns. Therefore, I present my assumption (that I do not regard as fact):
Robbing by passers and living at taxpayers’ expense as a parasite is a national, possibly genetic characteristic of Somalis.
With this, I wish Mika a nice day.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Barry Rubin: All Israeli-But no Palestinian- Leaders want to End the Conlfict.......
By Barry Rubin
What is the most important theme of Israeli politics, policy, and thinking today? It is pretty simple but you will rarely see it explained in much of the world:
Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians don't want to make a comprehensive peace with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. Hamas doesn’t want it; the Palestinian Authority (PA) is both unwilling and unable to do it. Israel faces a hostile Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah, and various Islamist movements which all want to destroy it. In addition, it cannot depend on strong Western or international support in defending itself.
Therefore, it is not a moment for Israel to make big concessions or take big risks. Peace is not at hand. The priority—even while continuing negotiations and trying to help the PA to survive—is defense.
That’s what the people who voted for Labor or Likud or Lieberman, Kadima or Shas or National Union or Jewish Home or United Torah Judaism believed. More than 85 percent of Israelis voted for parties that hold that basic conception, while that concept itself is the product of a very serious assessment of very real experience. And that—whatever differences they have—is beyond any definition of “left” or “right.”
In contrast, what is the main theme internationally in evaluating the elections? The right in Israel is against peace, Israelis moved to the right in this election hence Israelis are against peace.
To make such a leap, it is necessary to avoid talking about the herd of elephants in the room: Palestinian politics. If anyone looked beyond the most superficial level of English-language interviews by PA leaders trying to make propaganda points, the conclusion is unavoidable that there is no possibility of an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement for years to come. This is regardless of who is Israel’s leader or anything within reason, or even somewhat beyond reason, which could be offered.
Here are some tips toward proving that point:
--Analyze the Fatah Central Committee's membership and the viewpoints expressed by the group’s top leaders. The number who can be called moderates ready to accept and implement a two-state solution stands at about 10 percent of them.
--Mahmoud Abbas is weak. He has neither charisma nor organized base. While relatively moderate he will not give up the demand for all Palestinian refugees to be able to live in Israel, something that is acceptable to no potential governing party in Israel. He is sick and will probably not last in office much longer. He has made no attempt to transform Palestinian political thinking or to provide an alternative vision of peace for his people.
--There is no moderate alternative Palestinian leader in Fatah or elsewhere. Are there those who voice a moderate two-state solution position and who advocate coexistence? Yes, there are some but they have no organization or power whatsoever. Moreover, they say so almost exclusively in English to Westerners and not to their own people. To express anything equivalent to Labor or Kadima, even Likud, positions is to risk your life.
--Schools, mosques, media and other institutions controlled fully or partly by the PA daily preach that all Israel is Palestine, Israel is evil, and violence against it is good. Hardly the most minimal steps have been taken to prepare the Palestinian masses for peace. For example, no one dare suggest that a Palestinian nationalist movement might want to resettle Palestinian refugees in Palestine, not Israel; or that Israel and President Bill Clinton made a good offer in 2000 and it was a mistake to reject it. Or a dozen other points necessary as a basis for real peace.
--Palestinian public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming support for hardline positions and for terrorism against Israeli civilians.
--An unyielding historical narrative still predominates that the whole land between the Jordan River and the sea is and should be Arab Palestine.
--Of course, Hamas governs about 40 percent of West Bank/Gaza Palestinians and opposes Israel’s existence explicitly. The PA and Fatah do not vigorously combat the Hamas world view, except perhaps for its idea of an Islamist state.
--On the contrary, Fatah and the PA put a higher priority on conciliation with Hamas rather than peace with Israel.
--This conflict is not continuing because there is a dispute about the precise boundary line between Israel and a Palestinian state. It is going on because the Palestinian leaders—all of them—are either unwilling or unable to accept Israel’s permanent existence, the end of the conflict, the abandonment of terrorism, and the settlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state.
--What should have been happening recently is that the PA sent delegations around the world to announce it was the sole legitimate government of the Gaza Strip, that Hamas seized power in a coup and murdered Fatah people in cold blood, that Hamas is an extremist terrorist group, and that the PA demands the international community restore its own rule to the area. Instead, it sent delegations around the world to blame Israel for every problem and tried to negotiate a deal with Hamas without requiring any change in that organization’s policy or goals.
None of the above arguments can be refuted. Literally none of these points—except for the barrier posed by Hamas’s rule over Gaza—is really understood by most governments, academics, or journalists.
Nevertheless, if you add all these factors together it’s clear that whoever governs Israel the PA is incapable of making comprehensive peace. There is no peace process but rather a long-term peace recess.
There’s nothing left or right wing about the above analysis. Tsipi Livni and Ehud Barak know these things. Equally, this analysis doesn’t mean Israel cannot work with the PA on such matters as stability, economic well-being for Palestinians, blocking terrorism, or keeping Hamas out of power on the West Bank.
There is a Palestinian partner for the above four issues, but not for a comprehensive solution ending the conflict forever in exchange for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. As we learned in the 1990s with the peace process and more recently with disengagement, Israel’s actions—no matter how conciliatory and concessionary—cannot make peace when the other side is unwilling and unable to do so. It’s time for the rest of the world to learn this fact.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, write me at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com.
Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians don't want to make a comprehensive peace with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state. Hamas doesn’t want it; the Palestinian Authority (PA) is both unwilling and unable to do it. Israel faces a hostile Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah, and various Islamist movements which all want to destroy it. In addition, it cannot depend on strong Western or international support in defending itself.
Therefore, it is not a moment for Israel to make big concessions or take big risks. Peace is not at hand. The priority—even while continuing negotiations and trying to help the PA to survive—is defense.
That’s what the people who voted for Labor or Likud or Lieberman, Kadima or Shas or National Union or Jewish Home or United Torah Judaism believed. More than 85 percent of Israelis voted for parties that hold that basic conception, while that concept itself is the product of a very serious assessment of very real experience. And that—whatever differences they have—is beyond any definition of “left” or “right.”
In contrast, what is the main theme internationally in evaluating the elections? The right in Israel is against peace, Israelis moved to the right in this election hence Israelis are against peace.
To make such a leap, it is necessary to avoid talking about the herd of elephants in the room: Palestinian politics. If anyone looked beyond the most superficial level of English-language interviews by PA leaders trying to make propaganda points, the conclusion is unavoidable that there is no possibility of an Israel-Palestinian peace agreement for years to come. This is regardless of who is Israel’s leader or anything within reason, or even somewhat beyond reason, which could be offered.
Here are some tips toward proving that point:
--Analyze the Fatah Central Committee's membership and the viewpoints expressed by the group’s top leaders. The number who can be called moderates ready to accept and implement a two-state solution stands at about 10 percent of them.
--Mahmoud Abbas is weak. He has neither charisma nor organized base. While relatively moderate he will not give up the demand for all Palestinian refugees to be able to live in Israel, something that is acceptable to no potential governing party in Israel. He is sick and will probably not last in office much longer. He has made no attempt to transform Palestinian political thinking or to provide an alternative vision of peace for his people.
--There is no moderate alternative Palestinian leader in Fatah or elsewhere. Are there those who voice a moderate two-state solution position and who advocate coexistence? Yes, there are some but they have no organization or power whatsoever. Moreover, they say so almost exclusively in English to Westerners and not to their own people. To express anything equivalent to Labor or Kadima, even Likud, positions is to risk your life.
--Schools, mosques, media and other institutions controlled fully or partly by the PA daily preach that all Israel is Palestine, Israel is evil, and violence against it is good. Hardly the most minimal steps have been taken to prepare the Palestinian masses for peace. For example, no one dare suggest that a Palestinian nationalist movement might want to resettle Palestinian refugees in Palestine, not Israel; or that Israel and President Bill Clinton made a good offer in 2000 and it was a mistake to reject it. Or a dozen other points necessary as a basis for real peace.
--Palestinian public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming support for hardline positions and for terrorism against Israeli civilians.
--An unyielding historical narrative still predominates that the whole land between the Jordan River and the sea is and should be Arab Palestine.
--Of course, Hamas governs about 40 percent of West Bank/Gaza Palestinians and opposes Israel’s existence explicitly. The PA and Fatah do not vigorously combat the Hamas world view, except perhaps for its idea of an Islamist state.
--On the contrary, Fatah and the PA put a higher priority on conciliation with Hamas rather than peace with Israel.
--This conflict is not continuing because there is a dispute about the precise boundary line between Israel and a Palestinian state. It is going on because the Palestinian leaders—all of them—are either unwilling or unable to accept Israel’s permanent existence, the end of the conflict, the abandonment of terrorism, and the settlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state.
--What should have been happening recently is that the PA sent delegations around the world to announce it was the sole legitimate government of the Gaza Strip, that Hamas seized power in a coup and murdered Fatah people in cold blood, that Hamas is an extremist terrorist group, and that the PA demands the international community restore its own rule to the area. Instead, it sent delegations around the world to blame Israel for every problem and tried to negotiate a deal with Hamas without requiring any change in that organization’s policy or goals.
None of the above arguments can be refuted. Literally none of these points—except for the barrier posed by Hamas’s rule over Gaza—is really understood by most governments, academics, or journalists.
Nevertheless, if you add all these factors together it’s clear that whoever governs Israel the PA is incapable of making comprehensive peace. There is no peace process but rather a long-term peace recess.
There’s nothing left or right wing about the above analysis. Tsipi Livni and Ehud Barak know these things. Equally, this analysis doesn’t mean Israel cannot work with the PA on such matters as stability, economic well-being for Palestinians, blocking terrorism, or keeping Hamas out of power on the West Bank.
There is a Palestinian partner for the above four issues, but not for a comprehensive solution ending the conflict forever in exchange for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. As we learned in the 1990s with the peace process and more recently with disengagement, Israel’s actions—no matter how conciliatory and concessionary—cannot make peace when the other side is unwilling and unable to do so. It’s time for the rest of the world to learn this fact.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, write me at profbarryrubin@yahoo.com.
Monday, February 9, 2009
ISRAEL’S ELECTION IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
BY BARRY RUBIN
Many people don’t understand what’s happening now in Israeli politics, so here’s a brief, and non-partisan, appreciation. Compared to the past, there’s far less difference between the three main parties. This is largely due to the objective situation, which is rather inflexible.
It is easy to characterize some as rabid right-wingers who throw away chances for peace and others as rabid left-wingers who are ready to make too many concessions. Neither argument is correct except for the fringes, which are not going to shape Israeli policy. I am tempted to add that abroad, the left thinks we’re evil, while the right thinks we’re stupid. All of this has little to do with reality.
The dominant theme in international media coverage is to say Israelis are moving toward the right. Yet this is both misleading and misinterpreted. On the first aspect, the real Israeli move has been toward the center, which is represented not only by Kadima and Likud but also by Labor. The great majority of Israelis are about to vote for parties close to centrist positions than at any time in history.
The left-wing mantra is peace, though how we can reach peace with Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah is rather hard to see. With the PA the situation is a more complex but, briefly, it doesn’t control Gaza, is still full of radical elements, and has weak leadership.
The PA is nowhere near being able to make peace on a realistic basis. Everyone in the PA and in Israel’s leadership knows this; few in the Western media and academia seems close to comprehending it. A lot of governments understand the situation privately but talk quite different in public.
The right-wing mantra is victory, though how Israel is going to replace the Iranian and Syrian governments, or destroy Hamas and Hizballah is equally hard to see. Israel has minimal to no international support for these goals and lacks great alternatives to what exists at present.
What have Israelis learned over the last decade that shapes their thinking?
We discovered that Palestinians and Syrians are unwilling and unable to make peace.
We saw that Fatah is still full of extremism and its leadership is too weak and too hardline itself to make a comprehensive peace agreement.
We viewed the rise of Hamas as a group dedicated to permanent war with Israel and its seizure of one-half of the Palestinian-ruled territories, using land from which Israel withdrew as a base for attacks.
We experienced the continuing hatred of the Arab world and Muslim world toward Israel, largely undiminished by Israeli concessions.
We observed Iran’s rise as a power, potentially nuclear armed, whose regime explicitly seeks Israel’s extinction.
We noted the world didn’t reward Israel for making concessions and taking risks. Indeed, the more Israel gave, the higher the degree of slander and hostility rose in many sectors.
As a result of this, there has arisen in Israel a national consensus around the following points:
--Israel wants peace and will make real concessions for true lasting, stable peace and a two-state solution
--Few think the Palestinian leadership—PA, Fatah—is willing or able to make such an agreement for decades. The same applies to Syria.
--As a result, any real changes on Jerusalem, the Golan Heights or West Bank settlements are far off.
--No deal can be made with Hamas. But Hamas isn’t going to disappear either. The same applies to Hizballah.
--The key point is to defend Israel and its citizens so they pursue their normal lives.
--Iran is a real danger and when it appears about to get nuclear weapons, a big decision will have to be made on attacking these facilities.
As a result of this national consensus—accepted by Labor, Likud, and Kadima, along with many others—the next government can be a national unity government. Whoever becomes prime minister would do well to bring in one or both of the other two main parties. What is Israel’s consensus policy for the next government?
--To stress that we want peace, are ready for a Palestinian state, aren’t responsible for the conflict and violence continuing.
--To maintain deterrence and defend ourselves.
--To preserve the best possible relations with the United States, Europe, and other countries as long as it does not involve risks to Israeli national interests and citizens.
--Security cooperation with the PA to prevent terrorist attacks on Israel in exchange for helping them economically and against Hamas to ensure that it doesn’t take over the West Bank. Without illusions regarding Fatah and the PA, this effort seems to be working.
--To decide when to strike back at Hamas—and potentially Hizballah—based on any attacks on us. Precise response depends on timing, opportunity, and their behavior.
--To work for the isolation of Iran, Hizballah and Hamas.
Where are the main differences among the leading parties? They are more atmospherics than real: offering small concessions; making small demands. If much of the election revolves around personalities that is because strategy and policy are not hugely different among them. Bibi isn’t going to embark on a settlement-building campaign; Tzipi isn’t going to give away east Jerusalem.
And that’s a good thing for whatever faults they have, this trio is basically making appropriate responses to the situation.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To subscribe to Gloria Center publications for free, write profbarryrubin@yahoo.com.
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Story The Tundra Tabloids Broke: The Diantha Harris Story.......
Here is the list of links to the articles posted on the Tundra Tabloids concerning the Diantha Harris story, which the TT broke on the 6th of October, 2008. This is for the historical record, something of which I'm proud of. To break a story that reached the pages of The Drudge Report, is something that does not happen everyday to a small blog. Read if interested, and enjoy.
The video which caught an Obama supporting teacher, Diantha Harris berating a student that supported Johan McCain, in a N.Carolina school. The three minute clip was taken from a Swedish documentary filmed in the Spring of 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDEAYgm0Dv8&eurl=http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/
Here is the post that broke the news, be aware that the teacher is teaching in Fayetteville NC, not Asheville as I claimed initially. the links are from the oldest to the latest.
1.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/swedish-documentary-shows-ashville.html
2.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/update-on-asheville-teacher-diantha.html
3.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/little-green-footballs-cribs-story.html
4.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/robert-spencer-comes-to-aid-of-tundra.html
5.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/superintendent-william-c-harrison.html
6.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/tundra-tabloids-biantha-harris-story.html
7.) http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2008/11/smackdown-of-cumberland-superintendent.html
Links to the media that carried the story in chronological order.
The Citizen-Times: http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008811080340
ABC News 13: http://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/wlos_vid_1626.shtml
WRAL.Com: http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/3918046/
NOTE: WRAL linked to the wrong You Tube video, not the correct one which the Tundra Tabloids' broke the story with. Unfortunately, the Drudge Report linked to this story and video.
FayObserver: http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=309848
NOTE: Fayette Observer, mentions the Tundra Tabloids as the blog that broke the story.
Glenn Beck: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/17923/
Mike Ghallager: http://mikeonline.com/ Provided direct link to TT, but from a non-static page.
Michelle Malkin posts on it here: http://michellemalkin.com/2008/11/07/update-on-child-abusing-obama-teacher-superintendent-responds/
NOTE: Malkin was emailed by myself and from others and she refused to accredit the TT.
USA Today: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/11/todays-video-te.html
NOTE: Mentions and links to the Citizen-Times article that was the first to pick it up, (I called them) and it mentioned the Tundra Tabloids.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
A Tribute to Jörg Haider.......
By ESW
A little more than a week has passed since Austrians woke up to the news of Jörg Haider’s death. And it is still very difficult to comprehend the loss of this man whose death has caused Carinthia to lapse into a collective ocean of tears. Thousands of red and white candles, even more flowers, line the streets. Thousands of Carinthians lined up in front of the governments building to pay their respects to Jörg Haider, their beloved governor (and beloved he was, despite MSM commentaries to the contrary), lying in state in a simple casket draped with red roses and a wreath bearing the words of his widow: “With love, Claudia”.
His funeral service took place yesterday, exactly one week after his death, in Klagenfurt, Carinthia’s capital. It was a somber affair, without any disruptions from “right-winged neonazis”, as was feared (and I might add, perhaps even hoped for, as it would have shown Haider’s evil nature). As a matter of fact, the service was attended by almost all members of the caretaker government, the Austrian president, governors from all other Austrian provinces (even Vienna’s mayor, who is provincial governor at the same time as Vienna is also a province, and who is infamous for his hateful words on election night).
What angered me was the attendance of Gaby Schaunig, a member of the Socialist party and former member of Haider’s government, who had staunchly opposed anything and everything Haider ever said and did. She left the government prior to the elections, saying that she could no longer tolerate working with Haider. She explained that she no longer wanted to be insulted on a daily basis. Why would someone like Schaunig attend the funeral of someone she so obviously hated? I would have respected her decision to refrain form attending more than her attendance.
She is a hypocrite.
At least the Greens had the guts to stay away from the funeral. Not one member of the Green party attended. While this was also a snub to the politician Jörg Haider, I respect their decision. Perhaps — no, surely — it is much better for Austria if the Greens never become part of a coalition government. Imagine if they were forced by protocol to attend a funeral of a man or woman they so obviously dislike?
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi could also be seen in the crowd. He embraced Haider’s widow, Claudia, for a long time. Neither Le Pen nor Filip Dewinter attended the funeral service. No reason was given.
To return to the service: more than a million Austrians watch the live TV coverage, watching as friends and foe describe their feelings about Jörg Haider. Traditional Carinthian music is sung by a student choir; some tearful faces can be seen. Haider’s mountaineering friend, Teddy Inthal, speaks first, “The sun has fallen from the sky, the sun that Haider tried to reach all his life! His death is an error!”
Following these personal words, former minister of justice, Dieter Böhmdorfer, takes the podium to describe the political being of Jörg Haider. Uwe Scheuch, a long-time friend of Haider, describes his son’s reaction to the governor’s death, “Our governor cannot die!” Scheuch adds, “Jörg, we will take good care of your Carinthia!”
The following rendition of the song “Ich glaube” (I believe) by a popular Austrian singer-songwriter, Udo Jürgens, causes tears to flow freely, even from hard-boiled politicians, who are seen with tissues. Claudia Haider and her daughters also cannot hold back their tears, like the countless mourners lining the streets, watching the service on videowalls.
After another three more political speeches, caretaker chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer takes the podium for some conciliatory remarks on behalf of the government (and perhaps the socialist party, which hated Haider with a passion since his takeover of the FPÖ in the late 1980s). Gusenbauer calls Haider “an extraordinary man”, who was able to detect inevitable changes that needed to be made. He adds that “the only consoling fact about death is Haider’s ability to reconcile in death that which was irreconcilable in life. As a result of your death, perhaps some of those people will have the courage to come to terms with the human being, the man Jörg Haider. Governor, dear colleague, rest in peace” These words are followed by the Austrian national anthem and, as a deliberate climax to mark the end of the funeral service, the Carinthian anthem.
The official funeral service ends with the celebration of a mass in the Klagenfurt cathedral. Mozart’s Requiem is performed during the mass, again moving attendants to tears. After communion, Claudia Haider personally thanks all well-wishers, who “have offered words of solace on the hard and rocky road of mourning.” She adds, “One must not despair when something is lost for everything is returned in an even more magnificent way.”Haider’s last destination is the cemetery, where he is cremated at 4 p.m.
This leaves us — Austrians, Carinthians, supporters, critics — without Jörg Haider. While the above words and the tearful description of the funeral service might not be understood by those not residing in Austria and thus unfamiliar with Austrian politics, Haider was truly an asset to the political landscape. For decades, Austrian politics was dominated by SPÖ and ÖVP, either in coalition governments or with a majority government by either party. Austria badly needed a change, and Haider was the one who initiated change.
It was only natural that the ruling parties were wary, especially the SPÖ, whose leader at the time, chancellor Franz Vranitzky, was in charge of the doctrine of ostracism towards Jörg Haider. Ultimately, it was this doctrine that opened the door to the forming of the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition government after the 1999 elections, followed by the EU sanctions against Austria. Vranitzky passionately hated Haider, as did does Werner Faymann, today’s SPÖ leader and chancellor-in-waiting.To those waiting to hear critical words from me, an Austrian, regarding his controversial positions, I say this:You want to hear and read a condemnation.
What I can say is the following: He admitted his allusions to the Third Reich were wrong, having caused him one of the most painful moments in his life, namely his forced resignation from the position of provincial governor. I agree that these words were more than unwise. However, in my view they did not endanger Austria as a democracy. Following Haider’s words, there were no swastikas blowing in the wind, no Jews deported, no homosexuals beheaded. Haider was young at the time; he learned. He was punished (see above). This case should be closed.
Former chancellor Schüssel was a worthy opponent and pulverized FPÖ and Haider, causing Haider to mellow with time. As Serge Trifkovic notes, when Haider’s FPÖ entered the coalition government in 2000,
[…]
Haider’s ambiguous statements on the Third Reich […] ceased to be part of his politically operative vocabulary. On the other hand, his main message — that there are too many foreigners in Austria and that immigration threatens the country’s economy and traditional ethnic composition — is even more valid today than a decade ago. That message is now shared by two parties. One of them (FPÖ) Haider led to national prominence; the other (BZÖ) he created from scratch. They command 29 percent of the electorate between them, but were unlikely to cooperate because of the bitter personal animosity between Haider and the current FPÖ leader and former Haider protégé Heinz-Christian Strache. Ironically, the Austrian nationalist Right may be better poised to achieve unity that has eluded it for years now that its poster boy is no longer with us.
Although I was not in Austria when the government was formed in 2000, and I was unable to watch TV coverage of the demonstrations protesting this government, I still remember my outrage at the EU sanctions imposed on Austria.
Mr. Trifkovic sums up:
The move (the forming of the coalition government ÖVP-FPÖ) nevertheless caused an uproar in Brussels: the European Union decided to impose sanctions on Austria even before the government had announced its program. “There is a lot of excitement in the European chicken pen,” Haider quipped, “and the fox hasn’t even got in.”
This episode merits some attention because it reveals in a raw form the mix of authoritarianism and hypocrisy characteristic of Brussels. On January 31, 2000, the European Union informed Austria that it would face boycott if its new government included the FPÖ. On February 4 Chancellor Schuessel nevertheless went ahead and brought members of the Freedom Party into his coalition. He was acting in full accord with the rules of parliamentary democracy:
the new government had a clear majority of 104 out of 183 parliamentary deputies. EU governments duly severed all bilateral political contacts with the Austrian government. They also restricted the promotion of Austrians at EU headquarters and ignored Austrian ministers at EU meetings. The measures also included ban on school trips, cultural exchanges and military exercises. The U.S. joined the bandwagon and the State Department called Ambassador Kathryn Hall back to Washington for “consultations.”
Although the measures had no impact on the lives of ordinary Austrians, they triggered a backlash among the Austrian public. They also caused an outcry in some smaller EU nations — notably Denmark — fearful of the domination of more powerful members, such as France, which pushed for punitive measures. For months thereafter the EU’s Portuguese presidency maintained that the sanctions would remain, but after the EU foreign ministers’ Azores meeting in June 2000 it was obvious that the embargo could not be sustained.
The EU sanctions were illegal because the decision to apply them was taken outside the EU structures and without due process: the Austrian government was not allowed have its point of view heard before the other members states took action against it. The EU action was doubly contentious in view of the fact that Haider’s party was democratically elected and that it had not done or said anything contrary to Austria’s constitution or European law. Even those Austrians not sympathetic to Haider came to see Brussels’ heavy-handedness as an insult to their country.
Not all governments were happy with these sanctions. My father was ambassador to Greece at the time and told me that he did not feel the sanctions in day-to-day business dealings with the Greek government. It seems to me that some EU member states may have been bullied into supporting something they did not agree with. This bullying comes as no surprise. It is standard operating procedure in Brussels.
The first political result of his death was the decision of the ÖVP to start coalition talks right away, ostensibly because of the financial crisis, but those wary of the MSM know better. The conservatives seemingly decided that Haider’s 27-year-old successor, Stefan Petzner, was not the right material to form a government with. The general mood among political commentators is that BZÖ will not survive, and will ultimately merge with FPÖ. FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache has already offered “sanctuary” to BZÖ MP’s.
Stefan Petzner, Haider’s best friend, spokesman and protégé, is already being denounced by the MSM and political opponents. I believe that he should be given a chance to prove himself even though newspaper commentators are already calling for Haider’s widow to take charge of the party. Petzner could and should be taken seriously, at least by us in the Counterjihad movement, because he clearly knows what is at stake regarding Islam. He was quoted as saying that one of his foremost goals is to stop the creeping Islamization of Austria.
As I have said before, Austrians are in for interesting political times.
A little more than a week has passed since Austrians woke up to the news of Jörg Haider’s death. And it is still very difficult to comprehend the loss of this man whose death has caused Carinthia to lapse into a collective ocean of tears. Thousands of red and white candles, even more flowers, line the streets. Thousands of Carinthians lined up in front of the governments building to pay their respects to Jörg Haider, their beloved governor (and beloved he was, despite MSM commentaries to the contrary), lying in state in a simple casket draped with red roses and a wreath bearing the words of his widow: “With love, Claudia”.
His funeral service took place yesterday, exactly one week after his death, in Klagenfurt, Carinthia’s capital. It was a somber affair, without any disruptions from “right-winged neonazis”, as was feared (and I might add, perhaps even hoped for, as it would have shown Haider’s evil nature). As a matter of fact, the service was attended by almost all members of the caretaker government, the Austrian president, governors from all other Austrian provinces (even Vienna’s mayor, who is provincial governor at the same time as Vienna is also a province, and who is infamous for his hateful words on election night).
What angered me was the attendance of Gaby Schaunig, a member of the Socialist party and former member of Haider’s government, who had staunchly opposed anything and everything Haider ever said and did. She left the government prior to the elections, saying that she could no longer tolerate working with Haider. She explained that she no longer wanted to be insulted on a daily basis. Why would someone like Schaunig attend the funeral of someone she so obviously hated? I would have respected her decision to refrain form attending more than her attendance.
She is a hypocrite.
At least the Greens had the guts to stay away from the funeral. Not one member of the Green party attended. While this was also a snub to the politician Jörg Haider, I respect their decision. Perhaps — no, surely — it is much better for Austria if the Greens never become part of a coalition government. Imagine if they were forced by protocol to attend a funeral of a man or woman they so obviously dislike?
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi could also be seen in the crowd. He embraced Haider’s widow, Claudia, for a long time. Neither Le Pen nor Filip Dewinter attended the funeral service. No reason was given.
To return to the service: more than a million Austrians watch the live TV coverage, watching as friends and foe describe their feelings about Jörg Haider. Traditional Carinthian music is sung by a student choir; some tearful faces can be seen. Haider’s mountaineering friend, Teddy Inthal, speaks first, “The sun has fallen from the sky, the sun that Haider tried to reach all his life! His death is an error!”
Following these personal words, former minister of justice, Dieter Böhmdorfer, takes the podium to describe the political being of Jörg Haider. Uwe Scheuch, a long-time friend of Haider, describes his son’s reaction to the governor’s death, “Our governor cannot die!” Scheuch adds, “Jörg, we will take good care of your Carinthia!”
The following rendition of the song “Ich glaube” (I believe) by a popular Austrian singer-songwriter, Udo Jürgens, causes tears to flow freely, even from hard-boiled politicians, who are seen with tissues. Claudia Haider and her daughters also cannot hold back their tears, like the countless mourners lining the streets, watching the service on videowalls.
After another three more political speeches, caretaker chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer takes the podium for some conciliatory remarks on behalf of the government (and perhaps the socialist party, which hated Haider with a passion since his takeover of the FPÖ in the late 1980s). Gusenbauer calls Haider “an extraordinary man”, who was able to detect inevitable changes that needed to be made. He adds that “the only consoling fact about death is Haider’s ability to reconcile in death that which was irreconcilable in life. As a result of your death, perhaps some of those people will have the courage to come to terms with the human being, the man Jörg Haider. Governor, dear colleague, rest in peace” These words are followed by the Austrian national anthem and, as a deliberate climax to mark the end of the funeral service, the Carinthian anthem.
The official funeral service ends with the celebration of a mass in the Klagenfurt cathedral. Mozart’s Requiem is performed during the mass, again moving attendants to tears. After communion, Claudia Haider personally thanks all well-wishers, who “have offered words of solace on the hard and rocky road of mourning.” She adds, “One must not despair when something is lost for everything is returned in an even more magnificent way.”Haider’s last destination is the cemetery, where he is cremated at 4 p.m.
This leaves us — Austrians, Carinthians, supporters, critics — without Jörg Haider. While the above words and the tearful description of the funeral service might not be understood by those not residing in Austria and thus unfamiliar with Austrian politics, Haider was truly an asset to the political landscape. For decades, Austrian politics was dominated by SPÖ and ÖVP, either in coalition governments or with a majority government by either party. Austria badly needed a change, and Haider was the one who initiated change.
It was only natural that the ruling parties were wary, especially the SPÖ, whose leader at the time, chancellor Franz Vranitzky, was in charge of the doctrine of ostracism towards Jörg Haider. Ultimately, it was this doctrine that opened the door to the forming of the controversial ÖVP-FPÖ coalition government after the 1999 elections, followed by the EU sanctions against Austria. Vranitzky passionately hated Haider, as did does Werner Faymann, today’s SPÖ leader and chancellor-in-waiting.To those waiting to hear critical words from me, an Austrian, regarding his controversial positions, I say this:You want to hear and read a condemnation.
What I can say is the following: He admitted his allusions to the Third Reich were wrong, having caused him one of the most painful moments in his life, namely his forced resignation from the position of provincial governor. I agree that these words were more than unwise. However, in my view they did not endanger Austria as a democracy. Following Haider’s words, there were no swastikas blowing in the wind, no Jews deported, no homosexuals beheaded. Haider was young at the time; he learned. He was punished (see above). This case should be closed.
Former chancellor Schüssel was a worthy opponent and pulverized FPÖ and Haider, causing Haider to mellow with time. As Serge Trifkovic notes, when Haider’s FPÖ entered the coalition government in 2000,
[…]
Haider’s ambiguous statements on the Third Reich […] ceased to be part of his politically operative vocabulary. On the other hand, his main message — that there are too many foreigners in Austria and that immigration threatens the country’s economy and traditional ethnic composition — is even more valid today than a decade ago. That message is now shared by two parties. One of them (FPÖ) Haider led to national prominence; the other (BZÖ) he created from scratch. They command 29 percent of the electorate between them, but were unlikely to cooperate because of the bitter personal animosity between Haider and the current FPÖ leader and former Haider protégé Heinz-Christian Strache. Ironically, the Austrian nationalist Right may be better poised to achieve unity that has eluded it for years now that its poster boy is no longer with us.
Although I was not in Austria when the government was formed in 2000, and I was unable to watch TV coverage of the demonstrations protesting this government, I still remember my outrage at the EU sanctions imposed on Austria.
Mr. Trifkovic sums up:
The move (the forming of the coalition government ÖVP-FPÖ) nevertheless caused an uproar in Brussels: the European Union decided to impose sanctions on Austria even before the government had announced its program. “There is a lot of excitement in the European chicken pen,” Haider quipped, “and the fox hasn’t even got in.”
This episode merits some attention because it reveals in a raw form the mix of authoritarianism and hypocrisy characteristic of Brussels. On January 31, 2000, the European Union informed Austria that it would face boycott if its new government included the FPÖ. On February 4 Chancellor Schuessel nevertheless went ahead and brought members of the Freedom Party into his coalition. He was acting in full accord with the rules of parliamentary democracy:
the new government had a clear majority of 104 out of 183 parliamentary deputies. EU governments duly severed all bilateral political contacts with the Austrian government. They also restricted the promotion of Austrians at EU headquarters and ignored Austrian ministers at EU meetings. The measures also included ban on school trips, cultural exchanges and military exercises. The U.S. joined the bandwagon and the State Department called Ambassador Kathryn Hall back to Washington for “consultations.”
Although the measures had no impact on the lives of ordinary Austrians, they triggered a backlash among the Austrian public. They also caused an outcry in some smaller EU nations — notably Denmark — fearful of the domination of more powerful members, such as France, which pushed for punitive measures. For months thereafter the EU’s Portuguese presidency maintained that the sanctions would remain, but after the EU foreign ministers’ Azores meeting in June 2000 it was obvious that the embargo could not be sustained.
The EU sanctions were illegal because the decision to apply them was taken outside the EU structures and without due process: the Austrian government was not allowed have its point of view heard before the other members states took action against it. The EU action was doubly contentious in view of the fact that Haider’s party was democratically elected and that it had not done or said anything contrary to Austria’s constitution or European law. Even those Austrians not sympathetic to Haider came to see Brussels’ heavy-handedness as an insult to their country.
Not all governments were happy with these sanctions. My father was ambassador to Greece at the time and told me that he did not feel the sanctions in day-to-day business dealings with the Greek government. It seems to me that some EU member states may have been bullied into supporting something they did not agree with. This bullying comes as no surprise. It is standard operating procedure in Brussels.
The first political result of his death was the decision of the ÖVP to start coalition talks right away, ostensibly because of the financial crisis, but those wary of the MSM know better. The conservatives seemingly decided that Haider’s 27-year-old successor, Stefan Petzner, was not the right material to form a government with. The general mood among political commentators is that BZÖ will not survive, and will ultimately merge with FPÖ. FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache has already offered “sanctuary” to BZÖ MP’s.
Stefan Petzner, Haider’s best friend, spokesman and protégé, is already being denounced by the MSM and political opponents. I believe that he should be given a chance to prove himself even though newspaper commentators are already calling for Haider’s widow to take charge of the party. Petzner could and should be taken seriously, at least by us in the Counterjihad movement, because he clearly knows what is at stake regarding Islam. He was quoted as saying that one of his foremost goals is to stop the creeping Islamization of Austria.
As I have said before, Austrians are in for interesting political times.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
David Littman in Haaretz Article.......
David Littman was interviewed by the Haaretz concerning the release of the movie "Operation Mural", which tells of the clandestine rescue operation of the 530 Jewish children from Morocco, through the help of the Littman's and other courageous operatives.
The original published English text contained some errors, so Mr.Littman asked whether the Tundra Tabloids would kindly republish the corrected version for the historical record. You may view the trailer to the movie here. KGS
NOTE: D.Littman adds: Although the article is very substantive and descriptive, errors crept in, as I was unable to advise Yael Sheleg for his final Hebrew text– and time was pressing. He checked one of Gad Shahar’s affirmation which I was able to correct before publication, but that was all I was asked about.
[...]
After publication, I did not have the translation of the Hebrew until publication of the English edition when I was able to read it for the first time. I then realized that there were mistakes that were unfortunate, but I was advised by friends not to bother to try to correct them with a letter to the editor, as it would be difficult to publish in Hebrew and English. It would not be fair to Yair Sheleg, who had written a long and detailed article (longer than intended at the beginning), most of which was well written and accurate.
D-Littman: "I had put in red script the mistakes by the journalist or the passages which could have been left out, with a (…). In smaller, blue passages, I explain which statements are inaccurate. This is done also for concerned friends and colleagues, as well as for my archives and the ‘historical record’."
Codename: Operation Mural
By Yair Sheleg
Tags: Mossad, aliyah, Switzerland
At the start of 1961, David Littman's life seemed to be moving along nicely. He was 27 years old at the time, from a wealthy Jewish family, a graduate of prestigious
[I was 27; my 28 birthday was on 4 July 1961. – not important, but I’m correcting it.]
Anglican schools. About a year earlier he had married Giselle, the daughter of a Jewish family that had immigrated to Britain from Egypt (today Giselle Littman, under the pseudonym "Bat Yeor," is a well-known historian and writer focusing on Jews and Christians in Islamic countries). They already had their first child, Diana, and had moved to Switzerland. Littman's original plan was to continue the family's real estate business, but he was not pressed for time, as he had already inherited considerable wealth from his father. And so he spent his time reading journalist William Shirer's thick volume, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich."
The book, he says, left him unsettled. "I asked myself two questions: What should a Jew who lived in neutral countries like Switzerland or Sweden have done in those times, and what could I do today for the sake of the Jewish people?" He decided to knock on the doors of all the Jewish organizations in Geneva to ask them to give him something to do. But none of the groups had anything to offer him. And then, just as he was about to give up, he approached an organization called OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux enfants - the Organization for the Rescue of Children), which dealt with rescuing Jewish children during and after the Holocaust. For the director of the organization, Prof. Jacques Bloch, Littman was heaven-sent.
Only two days earlier, the emissary of the Jewish Agency in Switzerland, Naftali Bar-Giora, had asked him for help in finding a volunteer for a secret mission to get Jewish children out of Morocco. Ever since 1956, when Morocco had won its independence from France, the authorities had prohibited Jews from leaving the country freely. Many Moroccan Jews suffered from harassment and the Mossad was organizing clandestine departures. But in January 1961, a disaster had occurred: The illegal immigrant ship Egoz, which had left Morocco in the dark of night, sank and all 44 passengers (about half of them children) perished.
A new route to Israel was needed, which was why the Mossad had come up with the following idea: One of the secret service's emissaries would pretend to be the representative of a Swiss humanitarian organization and would make the following proposal to the Moroccan government to take hundreds of children (not necessarily Jewish) for a vacation in Switzerland. The Jewish children gathered by the volunteer, who would be posted in Casablanca, would indeed go to Switzerland first - but after a brief stay they would continue on to Israel.To carry out this mission, a person was needed whose appearance and biography would befit that of the representative of a Swiss humanitarian organization. The tall, wealthy and supremely self-confident Littman seemed to fit this description like a glove. Thus Operation Mural (a name chosen at random) was born, in the course of which 530 Jewish children from Morocco immigrated to Israel. Last night, Channel 1 aired a documentary film about the affair, directed by veteran documentary film-maker Yehuda Kaveh ("Operation Mural - Casablanca 1961").
Gad Shahar, a Mossad immigration emissary in Morocco during those years, relates that in order to maintain the mission's secrecy and also to prevent Littman from revealing unnecessary information by mistake (or under interrogation), "Throughout the entire length of the operation, he [Littman] himself did not know that he was working for the Mossad. He thought he was working for the Jewish Agency and that the masses of children and parents who were knocking at the door of his office in Casablanca had come to him in response to advertisements that had been published in the Moroccan press. In fact, hardly a single Jew had seen those notices. They were important only for the cover. The parents and children came to him as a result of our secret work, going from door to door and to reach the members of the community."
[The above is inexact. Gad is a close friend, but at 84, errors can be made by anyone. I obviously knew everything, as any ‘response to advertisement’ that I put in newspapers (there were 2 or 3) would pass through my office. Gad appears to have forgotten that money given by his misgeret group to parents to pass to me (for the cost of the holidays & transport) was returned by me to him or another at our evening meetings. How could I imagine that these parents had seen my newspaper advertisement, as I handed back the money they received (from the misgeret) to Gad, and did not keep it in our bank account to cover costs?
Yair Sheleg called me very early before publication and asked me if it was true that I didn’t know that the children would finish up in Israel. I was astonished and told him that this ‘suggestion’ was absurd. I hadn’t volunteered in Geneva ‘to bring Jewish children for Swiss holidays’. The film makes this point clearly and I had also emailed my January 2004 Ashdod speech which contains all such details. Unfortunately, I was not asked anything else about other affirmations, otherwise I would have advised him to leave out other quoted inaccuracies in his text.]
Beyond the difficulty of deceiving the Moroccan government, it was of course anything but simple to separate young children from their parents. In order to tempt the parents, the Mossad emissaries promised that those who agreed to send their children would be given priority on the list for immigration of adults. This was definitely a significant catalyst, but still the decisions were not easy. Yossi Shahar (no relation to Gad Shahar), one of the children who came to Israel as a result of Operation Mural, relates:
"Some of my friends had signed up for immigration to Israel, and I very much wanted to go, too, especially since some of my relatives had already immigrated and I was in charge of the correspondence with them. But I knew that my parents would not agree because I was their eldest child and I was only 11 years old. So I started to organize the initial arrangements for myself. At a certain stage it was no longer possible to conceal this from my parents and the immigration emissaries came for a talk with them. "This conversation was far from easy, but in the end my father agreed. I think that in the end he realized that if I did not leave, the family would never leave, because it was hard for him to give up his shop. The moment he consented, he did not even need my mother's agreement. In our patriarchal family, it was enough that he had decided."
His mother, Rachel Sabbagh, remembers a different story: "I very much wanted to immigrate to Israel, because most of the family from my side already lived there and I had remained pretty much alone. But my husband was opposed, because he was a merchant and made a good living, and he was afraid to leave everything behind. I knew that only the immigration of one of our children could possibly persuade my husband. Therefore I agreed that Yossi would immigrate. In fact, one of the girls was supposed to go with him [it had been decided to try to send at least two siblings from every family so the children would not be entirely alone in Israel], but the children needed permission from the principals of their schools and it just so happened that right then her principal was not in Morocco. After Yossi immigrated, my husband also began to talk about immigration and 10 months later we were already in Israel."
Another problem was linked to the question of what to do with the Muslim children who had signed up for the program. Littman relates that it was the parents' propensity for haggling that saved the operation. "To make the story credible, we charged the parents a symbolic sum of 10 francs per day for each day of the vacation. The price was very low but the [non-Jewish] parents nevertheless wanted to negotiate the sum. We haggled and haggled and each time I dropped the price a little, but by the time the negotiations were completed the project had already come to an end."
[No Muslim children came to my office to sign up (at SFr. 10 a day x 30 days + travel). Sheleg misunderstand what I told him. I was negotiating withing two days of my arrival on 16 March – I only met Gad @ 26 March – with directors of Muslim organizations in Rabat (“Martyrs of the Resistance”, etc.), as stated in the film. Otherwise, the ‘haggling’ point is correct – but it was with heads of those organizations, not any of the parents.]
Nevertheless, the fact that all those who left were Jewish nearly scuttled the operation. When the list of children came to the desk of the police commander in Casablanca, who was supposed to sign it, he exploded: "You know you are partner to a Zionist plot," he said to Littman. "All the names here are Jewish." Littman responded with surprise and anger: "I attacked him - how dare he accuse me of serving Zionist interests. At the same time, I hastened to meet with one of the heads of the Moroccan secret service, with whom I had formed a social relationship earlier on and I complained to him about the police official who was making problems for the wonderful humanitarian initiative and even daring to accuse me of Zionism."
[The idea that I “attacked” the khalifa of the 1st district of Casablanca is strange. In fact, I took on an air of great surprise and was extremely polite – and that led to my success.]
Littman's playacting was successful. The senior official ordered his subordinate to approve the list and the operation took its course. Moroccan policemen even helped the children load their baggage onto the buses. But the risks were far from over. It was clear from the get-go that it would be impossible to take all the hundreds of children who had signed up in one go. Back in those days, the planes were too small and one large group was liable to arouse suspicion. The 530 [not 630] children who had signed up were supposed to reach [delete: fly to] France in five [not six] separate groups (all of them were set to leave during the summer vacation, before the first group was supposed to return to Morocco), and to continue on to Switzerland to spend a number of weeks there.
Only then would the children travel to Israel. But Gad Shahar relates that as the first group was settling into the guesthouse in Switzerland, the Mossad emissary in France decided that such a stay was a waste of money for the Israeli taxpayer and that it was better to put the children on a flight to Israel directly from the airport in Marseille.
[There were never “hundreds of children who had signed up in one go”. It was a very slow process begun in late May, and it depended on how many I could ‘process’ with the various Moroccan authorities. In the last days, I could process 50 passports in 2 days; at the start only a few. It was not the 1st group that was sent by Youth Aliyah to Israel, but I believe the 2rd group (10 July), straight from Lyons airport.
This decision had nothing to do with ‘a waste of money for the Israeli taxpayer’, but resulted from a lack of place in an available home in Switzerland, because OSE had not anticipated such remarkable results. But our security was put at stake by this irresponsible act, which thus brought “Operation Mural” to an end. The only children to pass by Marseille came by ship (those in the 26 June convoy of the S.S. Ionia, who went to Morgins by bus and stayed there a month; and the 4th convoy of 22 July which arrived on 25 July – a day after my departure with the 5th convoy on 24 July – when all were then flown straight to Israel.]
When the second [delete: first] group landed in Israel, rumors began to circulate and ultra-Orthodox circles kicked up a political and public storm about how religious children from Islamic countries were once again falling into the clutches of secular education. To the horror of those involved in the operation, this allegation was even broadcast on Israel Radio, even though some of the children, as well as Littman and his family, had not yet left Morocco, which could have endangered all of them.
Shahar says that to this day he does not understand how the censor allowed the report to be broadcast on the radio. Fortunately, the argument did not come to the attention of the Moroccan authorities. Nevertheless, the heightened sense of anxiety did cause the operation to come to an early end and one of the groups was canceled. In the end five groups, numbering a total of 530 children, left in the operation.
[No group was cancelled by me. I increased the 5th group to include all and some more.]
Yossi Shahar says that he never regretted leaving his family in the framework of the operation: "Of course I experienced moments of sorrow, especially because I did not witness the birth of my little brother in Morocco, but I never had any regret. I was sent to a wonderful Youth Aliyah boarding school, Shfeya, near Zichron Yaakov. I received an excellent education there and it changed my whole life for the better."
Journalist Shmuel Segev, who published a book in the 1980s about the larger immigration operation, which was known as Operation Yakhin, says there was no direct connection between it and Littman's activity: "The main connection is that Operation Mural was among the factors that persuaded King Hassan II that in any case his country was wide open to the Israelis and that it was better for him to reach an agreement with them that would serve his interests. At that time he was a new ruler, with quite a number of enemies, and he needed help. The Israelis provided him with money and, what was more important, we helped him organize his security services and we also provided him with important information about his enemies at home."
[This is not all what Shmuel Segev said, so he informed me. He actually replied: “Yes and No” – and then explained what he meant by that. All such details, and others, will be covered in his forthcoming book in Hebrew: The Moroccan Connection: Secret contacts between Israel and Morocco (Preface Efraim Halevy), Matar, January 2008), especially in the comprehensive chapter:: “Egoz” / “Mural” / “ Yakhin”.]
The one who was forgotten in all this was Littman, a hero of Operation Mural. Not only did he not request and has never received payment for his work - apart from the funding of his stay in Morocco - to this day he relates bitterly that, "After the operation, they offered me an invitation to Israel and a tour. I said to them: Don't waste your money. Just send me a thank-you letter. They didn't even do that. Three months after the operation had ended, the Jewish Agency held an exhibition in Geneva on the subject of immigration. They didn't even send me an invitation. That is why I told my wife that I didn't want to set foot in Israel. Only in 1964 did she manage to convince me to come anyway and Moshe Kol [then head of the Youth Immigration department at the Jewish Agency] insisted on honoring me."
[This is strange to be mentioned here. In fact, it was agreed that the JA would pay for my hotel, office, and ‘expenses’ incurred. I had never requested a salary for my work.]But the public and official rectification of the injustice came only many years later. In 1986, on the 25th anniversary of the operation, a gathering was held in Tel Aviv [delete:Ashkelon] of all of the children who had immigrated in its context. The Littmans (who to this day live in Switzerland) were invited, they met with the now grown-up children and Littman was awarded an official certificate of recognition for his activity.
[This meeting with 120 (of 530) children took place on 15 May (via much publicity in the newspapers), two weeks after the 1 May 1986 Mimouna ‘Beyahad’ event in Sacher Park, Jerusalem, when then Prime Minister Shimon Peres honoured us both. The 2nd time was at Ashdod on 13 January 2004 when Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz gave me a certificate of recognition. The reference to Ashkelon concerns the “Jewish Eye” Film Festival when “Operation Mural” was screened on Opening Night, Wednesday, 14 November 2007.]
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