For Oil or for the New World Order?

UPDATINGs below-12-12-2010

Many people believe that the 2003 Iraq war was fought "for oil." No less a personage than Alan Greenspan, former head of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve Board, endorsed this claim. On the other hand, The administration claimed before the war that the Saddam Hussein regime was working on developing ABC weapons, atomic, biological, chemical. Other people justified the war on the fact that Saddam's regime was mass murderous, indeed genocidal, towards much of his own population.

Paolo Raffone took another view. He argued that the war was fought for the New World Order and globalization, in his book La Fredda guerra [= The Cold War; Adnkronos libri 2003].

Andrea Saronni, in a review for tgcom.it [30 April 2003], summarized Raffone's book:

Strange as it may seem, Bush is not at all interested in a "unipolar" system, as Raffone defines it. According to the author [Raffone], one aspect, that of "world order," weighed notably more than Iraqi petroleum, unanimously pointed to as the real American and British objective. In short, simplifying terms, Operation "Iraqi Freedom" might be read as one of the "hard" phases (and it will not be the last) of now inevitable globalization.

Per quanto possa sembrare strano, Bush non e` per nulla interessato all "unipolarita`," come la definisce Raffone. Un aspetto, quello dell' "ordine mondiale," che secondo l'autore ha pesato notevolmente di piu` rispetto al petrolio iracheno, indicato unanimemente come il reale obiettivo statunitense e britannico. Insomma, semplificando i termini, "Iraqi freedom" potrebbe essere letta come una delle tappe "dure" (e non sara` l'ultima) di una mondializzazione ormai inevitabile.

Note: A "unipolar" system refers to an international system in which the United States is the sole superpower.

Saronni recommends Raffone's book for those who believe that the war was all for "oil," as well as for those who

unconditionally applaud the American liberator [of Iraq] and think that everything was done only and exclusively to sweep away the dictator Saddam Hussein. Both groups [those who think that the war was for oil and those who think it was for liberation] should prepare to confront the next installment, because. . . the logic that unleashed all this has to do with other zones of the world, from the Middle East to the Persian Gulf to southeast Asia: the game has scarcely begun.

applaude incondizionatamente al liberatore stellestrisce e pensa che tutto sia stato fatto solo ed esclusivamente per spazzare via il dittatore Saddam Hussein. Entrambe le categorie si preparino affrontare la prossima puntata, perche` . . . la logica che ha scatenato tutto questo riguarda altre zone del mondo, dal Medio Oriente al Golfo Persico all'Asia sudorientale: la partita e` appena cominciata.

So Raffone does not see much relief from the phenomenon of war in the coming future.

As for ABC weapons [unconventional weapons] development by Saddam Hussein's regime, Prof Raphael Israeli believes that Saddam's regime was pursuing such R&D. Here are the reasons and evidence that Prof Israeli presents. If Israeli is right, then we are left with the troubling question of why the Bush Administration has been hushing up this matter or is allowing itself to be depicted as deceitful in its reasons for going to war in 2003, supposedly having falsified evidence about Saddam's ABC R&D.

UPDATING: Caroline Glick comments on US and Israeli neglect of the potential nuclear weapons threats from Syria and Iran.
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Coming: Condi and the false analogy between Abu Mazen and Dr Martin Luther King [a Zionist, in fact], Jews in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and Hebron, peace follies, propaganda, etc.
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UPDATING
12-12-2010 wikileaks documents show that "there were nuclear, chemical and biological materials in Iraq," as well as chemical weapons labs. Judith Klinghoffer asks: Why did W. remain silent? [here]. It was also reported: "In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called 'the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program': 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: 'The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk.'" Why did Prez George Bush II remain silent as he was regularly accused of lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?
Also see Larry Elder here.
2-26-2017 Deroy Murdock on The National Review website (10-16-2014)   [here] agrees with Prof Raphael Israeli that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was working on producing WMDs and had an active R&D program going on, and possessed a large stock of chemical weapons of mass destruction. Murdock asks why President George W. Bush did not pay attention to the evidence of Iraqi possession of stocks of uranium and poison gas --such as sarin-- and so on, and let himself be slandered as a president who went to war for no good reason and as having lied about active WMD research going on in Saddam's Iraq.

Star British Journalist Adores Walt- Mearsheimer's Anti-Israel Fraud

You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God)
The British journalist
But seeing what the man will do
Unbribed, there's no occasion to.
Humbert Wolfe, poet, 1930

Max Hastings is a veteran and eminent or maybe overrated British journalist. He praised the walt-mearsheimer travesty in a review for the London Sunday Times [2 Sept 2007]. His review was uncritical, even gushing, although he did complain about the style which he thought somewhat heavy.

Hastings endorses the ridiculous falsehoods of Walt-Mearsheimer. He summarizes their position as saying, inter alia, that America gives Israel's governments "unconditional support."

But they [walt-mearsheimer] are dismayed by America’s unconditional support for its [Israel's] governments’ policies, including vast sums of cash aid for which there is no plausible accounting process.

This is simply a lie. For instance, on Jewish settlements in Judea-Samaria. These areas were part of the Jewish National Home set up by the San Remo Conference in 1920, and endorsed by the League of Nations in 1922. They are legal. Yet, United States policy is opposed to them and considers them an "obstacle to peace."

It is not the settlements that are illegal. What was illegal --according to the League's Permanent Mandates Commission-- was the British White Paper policy starting in 1939 that prevented Jews from buying real estate in most of the National Home despite the clear principles enunciated by the Mandate issued to Britain in 1922. As to settlements, US policy opposes them, although the US is not so ready to declare them illegal as the UK is.

It may be forgotten in 2007 that in the spring of 2002, President Bush, very vehemently opposed Israel's Defensive Shield operation, aimed at overcoming the mass murderous terrorists operating out of the Arab cities controlled by the "Palestinian Authority." Bush demanded that Israel's army immediately turn around and leave those areas, this was after the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya, Israel, on the Jewish festival of Passover, that had slaughtered 29 Jews. Yet, Bush opposed necessary Israeli defensive actions. Indeed, many of the Bush Administrations policies toward Israel and the Arabs are harmful to Israel. Without providing a long list, I will mention the Bush State Department's plans for an "international conference" at Annapolis [see here & here] which can do no good for Israel, plus the massive funds contributed to the Palestinian Authority.

As to funds unaccounted for, the Palestinian Authority --favored by the State Dept, the UK Foreign Office, the BBC, the EU, and in fact by President Bush-- is notorious for funds unaccounted for. Yet, it seems that walt-mearsheimer & Hastings are not concerned about how the PA spends or misplaces the huge sums donated to it.

[It is curious that Hastings does not mention a charge against the so-called Israel Lobby made in walt-mearsheimer's original article on that subject in 2006 in the London Review of Books and in their book. They charge that the Israel lobby was behind the Iraq War. It is peculiar that Hastings doesn't mention the accusation. In any case, Mearsheimer admitted the truth, contradicting his own and Walt's lie about the Iraq War in an interview with a journalist on US National Public Radio. Camera picked up this interview in which Mearsheimer gainsaid one of the central claims in his book, that the Bush Administration made war on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in order to serve Israel.]

And many Israeli government actions, including the expansion of West Bank settlements and the invasion of Lebanon, reflect repressive policies that do not deserve Washington’s endorsement: “While there is no question that the Jews were victims in Europe, they were often the victimisers, not the victims, in the Middle East, and their main victims were and continue to be the Palestinians." [w-m's words]

Hastings packs a lot of smear into a fairly short paragraph. Why is it "repressive" [Hastings' word] for the Israeli government to allow Jews to live in Judea-Samaria, the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland? The League of Nations' palestine mandate states [Article 6]:

"The Administration of Palestine . . . shall facilitate Jewish immigration . . . and shall encourage. . . close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."

This is what the Israel government has done and Hastings now smears it as "repressive." International law still recognizes Judea-Samaria & Gaza as parts of the Jewish National Home. The truly "repressive" action was that of the UK government in violation of the Mandate, as expressed in the 1939 White Paper policy and in various regulations to implement that policy. Some of these regulations forbid --in a racist manner-- land purchase by Jews in most of the country. And this on the eve of the Holocaust!

Furthermore, Israel was attacked from Lebanon by the Hizbullah in July 2006. The seizure of two wounded Israeli soldiers and the killing of several others was accompanied by a barrage of katyusha rockets on Israeli towns and villages along the northern border. The Hizbullah is an armed militia with a Judeophobic ideology containing Nazi-like elements. It operates independently of and in opposition to the parliamentary government of Lebanon. It is a protege of the Iranian and Syrian regimes, both of which make Nazi-like propaganda against Jews. Max Hastings, a respected British journalist, considers Israel's defensive actions in Lebanon to be "repressive." He has written an insidious, mendacious tract, using words for emotive purposes rather than rational meanings.

Hastings and walt-mearsheimer also reverse the historical relations between Jews and Arabs. Saying that the Jews were victims only in Europe but not in Arab-Muslim ruled lands is simply a lie. Jews in Arab-Muslim-ruled lands were subject to the oppressive dhimma rules of Muslim law, described below in our comments on Jimmy Carter. The Arab-Muslims in the Land of Israel historically oppressed and exploited Jews, precisely in Israel, precisely in Jerusalem. See here & here & here. As to the W-M claim about Jews being "victimisers" rather than victims of Arabs, Palestinian Arabs in particular, see the previous post about the role in the Holocaust of Haj Amin el-Husseini, British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem [see here & here too, etc]. It is curious that Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, utters similar falsehoods about the Arab-Jewish relationship, comparing Arab terrorism with the civil rights movement of American blacks. This is evidence that the walt-mearsheimer article and book were meant to serve State Department purposes, also in view of the fact that Walt & Mearsheimer have been State Department consultants.

Hastings goes on to present a distorted picture of outside lobbying and political-financial pressures on American foreign policy in the Middle East.

The authors argue that American policy towards Israel is decisively and unhelpfully influenced by the power of a domestic lobby spearheaded by AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee). This organisation wields extraordinary power in raising funds for American political candidates whom it favours, and bringing down wrath upon those whom it deems insufficiently supportive.

Comment: The Saudi lobby is not mentioned in the review, although it is likely much more powerful than the pro-Israel lobby and closer to the heart of the Bush family with its ties to the oil industry, although it is backed by a much smaller constituency in American public opinion. How about the fat speakers fees paid to ex-presidents like Carter and Clinton who give lectures in the Persian Gulf emirates [UAE]? How do we know how much money Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates and other wealthy Arabs may be donating to presidential candidates? Changing the relative size of the pro-Israel community --the body of pro-Israel opinion-- in the US is one of the main purposes of the w-m book.

Jimmy Carter too seems to be propounding the same big lie as Walt-Mearsheimer, Rice, and Hastings about the Arabs as victims of the Jews, reversing historical and current reality.

Former president Jimmy Carter incurred not merely criticism but vilification when he published a book entitled Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid, likening Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians to that of the old white regime in South Africa towards its black majority.

When someone terribly slanders someone else, what should the reaction be? How should Jews react when an ex-president of the US makes hate propaganda against Israel? Applying the label "Apartheid" to Israel is very false and very sinister, since the charge embodies other charges, such as racism, whereas Jews suffered from racism in South Africa and from something much like apartheid in traditonal Arab-Muslim society. Arab/Muslims suppressed, exploited, humiliated, oppressed Jews for more than a thousand years in the status of dhimmis. Dhimmis were non-Muslims tolerated in the Muslim state. But they were tolerated only in the inferior status of dhimmis. This status involved such things as special taxation, originally conceived of as a form of tribute in the Quran [9:29]. Muslim law [shari`ah] specifically aimed to humiliate the dhimmi, as in how one of the special taxes on dhimmis, the jizya, was to be paid. In some places, the dhimmi had to accept a blow on the back of the neck when he paid it. In other, milder cases, the dhimmi had to offer the Muslim official the coin with his hand open, palm upwards. The official would then lift up the coin from the dhimmi's hand. This was to prevent the dhimmi's hand from being above that of the official --as the case would be if the dhimmi dropped the coin into the official's hand-- which would constitute humiliation of a Muslim, in the eyes of Islamic law. In Muslim courts, the dhimmi's testimony was worth one-half that of the dhimmi, and a dhimmi woman's testimony was worth even less. For more on the dhimmi status, see here and here and other posts on this blog.

One of the things that the Nazis did to ready their population and other Europeans and people elsewhere for the Holocaust was to constantly vilify the Jews. Carter vilifies the Jews --ostensibly only the state of Israel-- by libelling Israel as "apartheid," then Max Hastings claims that the Jews are vilifying Carter. For the record, in Israel, Arabs vote for the parliament, the Knesset, there is an Arab cabinet minister, Arab judges, including a supreme court judge. Arabs go to university with Jews. Arabs go to school with Jews, although most Arab parents prefer that their children get an Arab education with a Muslim religious component. Arabs ride buses with Jews [how else did the suicide bombers get on the buses?]. Arabs eat in the restaurants with Jews. Now in apartheid South Africa, this ethnic equality did not exist. I don't say "racial equality" since skin color is not the problem between Arabs and Jews. There is in fact a broad range of skin colors among both peoples, particularly among Jews and Arabs in Israel.

A major theme of the walt-mearsheimer tract is that Jews or the "Israel Lobby" dominate what the American media say about Israel. In my view, the Petro-Diplomatic Complex has more influence over what the American media write about Israel than Israel's supporters do. Anyhow, here is Hastings:

The American media, claim the authors, even such mighty organs as The New York Times and The Washington Post, do less than justice to the Palestinians, much more than justice to the Israelis. . . There is no American counterpart to such notably Arabist British polemicists as Robert Fisk.

The problem is that the New York Times and Washington Post have often published false reports libelling Israel. Hastings, uncritically approving w-m's claim, turns the situation around to have it that the NYT and WaPo favor Israel over those Arabs, now fashionably called "Palestinians." Bear in mind that one hundred years ago, the Muslim-Arabs themselves did not speak of "Palestine" let alone a "Palestinian people." As late as 1946, Palestinian Arab spokesmen testifying before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, demanded that the Palestine mandated territory --set up to embody the Jewish National Home in international law in 1920 at San Remo, endorsed by the League of Nations in 1922 and so on, confirmed by the UN Charter [Article 80] after WW2-- be a part of Syria or Greater Syria, in conformity with the traditional Arab geographical concept of bilad ash-Sham [Greater Syria, including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel, grosso modo]. Few Americans, certainly not friends of Israel, would agree that the NYT or WaPo are friendly to Israel. Now, as to Robert Fisk, he is a notorious journalistic liar. Fisk has an aversion to facts that don't fit his anti-Israel arguments. Fisk shames the British people. One of his lies was published in an article that I read after Iraq's conquest of Kuwait, a fellow Arab state, in 1990. Fisk claimed that there had been a "Province of Palestine" in the Ottoman Empire before WW One. This is completely false. At that time, the country on both sides of the Jordan was divided between the province of Syria [vilayet of Sham; also translated as "province of Damascus"], the province [vilayet] of Beirut, and the mutesariflik of Jerusalem [also called "independent sanjaq of Jerusalem"]. So when Robert Fisk claimed that there had been an Ottoman "province of Palestine," he was either lying or he was ignorant. Fisk's purpose was to project the "palestinian people" notion back into the past.

To be sure, Hastings criticizes the book's style.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s book argues its points at such ponderous length that it makes pretty leaden reading.

But this is a trivial point when he has uncritically accepted all of their political and historical claims. Then Hastings gets into high dudgeon about freedom of the press, etc.

. . . it is extraordinary that, in a free society, the legitimacy of the expression of their opinions should be called into question.

But is it legitimate to lie so grossly on important public issues?
Then Hastings quotes walt-mearsheimer wanting to have Israel downgraded as an ally of free, democratic countries besides Israel allegedly being immoral and oppressive to Arabs, in their terms.

“We show,” say the authors, “that although Israel may have been an asset during the cold war it is increasingly a strategic liability now that the cold war is over. Backing Israel so strongly helps fuel America’s terrorism problem and makes it harder for the United States to address the other problems it faces in the Middle East.”

Here Hastings, and w-m forget how US foreign policy --including in its so-called "realist" mode [walt & mearsheimer are supposed to be "realists" on foreign policy]-- has created problems in the Middle East which one may or not agree favor American interests but surely are harmful to Israel. For instance, was it good for the United States under President Carter --his foreign policy managed by Zbig Brzezinski-- to have supported the takeover of Iran by the Muslim fanatic Khomeini [1978-1979], whom Ahmadinejad obeyed at the time?? Does Hastings remember the Teheran hostage crisis, perpetrated by those whom the US had helped to take over Iran? Was it good for the United States to have favored the takeover of Lebanon by Syria, which it did under President Ford [in 1976, Kissinger was secretary of state] and under President Bush Senior [in 1990, James Baker was secretary of state, encouraging Syria to crush its last Lebanese opposition]?? Was it good for the United States to have helped Iraq, to have helped Saddam Hussein, in the 1980s, then having to fight Iraq in 1991 after it had conquered Kuwait and was threatening Saudi Arabia?

Americans ring-fence Israel from the normal sceptical processes of democracy, while arguments for the Palestinians are often denounced as pernicious as well as antisemitic.

Indeed, many arguments for the Arabs now called "palestinians" are "perncious as well as antisemitic." How about "the right of return"? The Palestine mandate and the Jewish National Home principle endorsed by the League of Nations stipulated a Jewish "right of return." However, the Arab political leadership of the Mufti Husseini and his Arab Higher Committee for Palestine called for cancelling that right, as the Nazis in Germany became more of a threat to the Jews. Precisely on the eve of the Holocaust, when the Jews needed a home more than ever, the British government accepted the Arab position and severely curtailed Jewish immigration into the internationally designated Jewish National Home, in violation of the Mandate, according to the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission.

Mearsheimer and Walt conclude, weakly but inevitably, with a mere plea for more open debate in the US about Israel. “Because most Americans are only dimly aware of the crimes committed against the Palestinians,” they say, “they see their continued resistance as an irrational desire for vengeance. Or as evidence of unwarranted hatred of Jews akin to the antisemitism that was endemic in old Europe.

Here Hastings & walt-mearsheimer come close to the shrill tones used by the "left" against Israel's alleged "crimes." They repeat --by implication and insinuation-- the lie that, yes, there was "antisemitism . . . endemic in old Europe" but not in the Arab world. Hence, this line indicates a convergence between the so-called "left" and Establishment foreign policy planners against Israel.

For Europeans, all this adds up to a bleak picture. Only America might be capable of inducing the government of Israel to moderate its behaviour, and it will not try. Washington gives Jerusalem a blank cheque, and all of us in some degree pay a price for Israel’s abuses of it.
After that remark, I shall be pleasantly surprised to escape an allegation from somebody that I belong in the same stable of antisemites as Walt and Mearsheimer.

So Hastings wants the USA to exert massive pressure on Israel's government, which is weak anyhow, in order to "moderate" Israel's behavior, whereas it is not considered that Arab behavior needs to be moderated, although Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority has not fulfilled any of the requirements of the so-called Road Map, such as ending hostile propaganda against Israel and disarming terrorist militias. Yes, I consider Hastings to be an antisemite, or rather a Judeophobe. Another British scribbler, one Daniel Levy, treated the walt-mearsheimer tract favorably in a review in HaArets [available in English]. This Daniel Levy is the son of Lord Levy, one of Tony Blair's major campaign contributors. Another British journalopropagandist, Gwyn Dyer, falsifies the status of the 1949-1967 armistice lines, calling them Israel's "legal borders." This is of course par for the course in British journalism, although journalists elsewhere spread the same lie. If Hastings, Dyer, & Fisk are exemplars of British journalism, then it's simply a propaganda industry, although Britain can do much better.

Walt-Mearsheimer are political scientists, so their book can be considered political science fiction.
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt
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Coming: Condi and the false analogy between Abu Mazen and Dr Martin Luther King [a Zionist, in fact], Jews in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and Hebron, peace follies, propaganda, war for order, etc.

Arab leaders had helped the Nazi Mass Murderers in the Holocaust

Walt-Mearsheimer argue in their book, The Israel Lobby, that when Arab leaders called for "throwing the Jews into the sea," back in 1947-1948, they didn't really mean it [see earlier post]. This is ridiculous. I mentioned in an updating to that post that there was a historical precedent for driving a hated ethnic group into the sea. This happened at Smyrna in 1922, when the Turkish nationalist army, supported in various ways by both Western capitalist powers and the new, "revolutionary" anti-capitalist Soviet Union, drove Greeks into the sea [see here].

Another reason that the walt-mearsheimer claim is ridiculous, more important in fact than that there was a precedent for driving people into the sea, was the collaboration of Arab nationalist, pan-Arabist, and Arab pan-Islamist leaders with the Nazis in general and with the Holocaust in particular. The chief Arab Nazi collaborator was Haj Amin el-Husseini [al-Husayni], the British-appointed mufti of Jerusalem and the head of the Supreme Muslim Council in "palestine," a body set up by the British which had not existed before. Indeed the name "palestine" [or Filastin] had not been used by the Ottoman or Mamluk empires which ruled the country between the Crusades and the British conquest in 1917.

Somehow, Husseini, who was often called simply "the Mufti" when he was active and people knew who he was, has been forgotten. By "forgetting" Husseini anti-Israel propagandists in the guise of academics, of "leftists" or of statesmen, can pretend that the Arabs, the palestinian Arabs in particular, were innocent in the Holocaust and that therefore the Jews/Zionists were unfairly punishing the "palestinians" for what was a German or European crime. The truth is that the Arab nationalists collaborated in the Holocaust in Europe, Husseini in particular, and also slaughtered Jews in the Arab countries [search for Farhud on this blog]. Such massacres took place in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere. Anwar Sadat and Gamal Abdul-Nasser and their Free Officers coterie collaborated with the Nazis. Even after the war, both Sadat and Nasser proudly affirmed their admiration for Hitler. In his book, Revolt on the Nile, Sadat expressed regret that the Nazis lost the war, and in particular he blamed Egyptian Jews for causing his and Nasser's pro-Nazi plot, in the framework of the Free Officers, to fail.

Husseini's role was described in 1947 by Bartley Crum, a noted American liberal and member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine [1946].

Sir Frederick [a British member of the Anglo-American Committee] and I visited the war trials while we were in Nuremberg, and I spent some time talking to the American investigators who were reconstructing the Nazi conspiracy, for the prosecution, from the massive archives which the Allies had unearthed.
I remembered Edgar Ansel Mowrer's scoop in London when he printed the text of an affidavit that incriminated the ex-Mufti [Husseini] in the mass murder of the Jews. I understood that there was a large file on the Mufti in the archives of the Allied War Crimes Commission . . .
. . . I visited Jackson [Mr Justice Jackson, Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg International War Crimes Tribunal] the next day. I mentioned the Mowrer affidavit to him. He replied that he was familiar with it, but . . . I could see that the subject was unpleasant to him, so I dropped it.
There were others much interested in seeing that the Mufti's story was told. An Army intelligence officer, at three o'clock one afternoon, made it possible for me to enter a room and sit down at a table upon which was a thick file of documents. . .
The record of the ex-Mufti's intrigues was fantastic. This file showed clearly that he had climaxed a record of Fascism, anti-British intrigues, and anti-Semitism by helping spearhead the extermination of European Jewry. I had my hands on a German document signed by an agent of the Mufti scarcely twenty-four hours before Germany surrendered. . . Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo specialist in Jewish affairs, who had been the confidant of the Mufti. . . And Nazi records show that, accompanied by Eichmann, the Grand Mufti, incognito, visited the gas chambers of Auschwitz. . . ". . . the extermination of European Jewry." The Mufti told Wisliczeny [Dieter von Wisliczeny, a Nazi war criminal] that he "considered this [extermination] a comfortble solution to the Palestine problem." . . . Hitler had instructed that in any ransoming of concentration camp inmates, no Jews were to be included because an agreement had been reached with the Mufti that all Jews be exterminated. . . Negotiations were under way at that time for the ransom of the Jewish community of Bratislava. These negotiations broke down because the Mufti refused to countenance their being ransomed and as a result the entire community was liquidated. . . A letter from the Mufti to Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, on July 25, 1944, complained of German clemency toward the Jews. . .
. . . On June 5, 1943, he protested to the Prime Minister of Bulgaria [an Axis ally] against a plan by the Bulgarian government allowing emigration [from the Nazi-fascist zones] of four thousand Jewish children. These children, he argued, presented "a degree of danger to Bulgaria whether they be kept in Bulgaria or be permitted to depart from that country." Instead, he said, they should be sent to a place in which they would be "under stringent control --as for instance, Poland." The Mufti's protest was successful. No children's transport left Bulgaria after July, 1943. [Bartley C Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947), pp 109-112]

Husseini sent a like letter to the Rumanian foreign minister [Rumania too was an Axis ally]. Instead of letting Jewish children leave the Nazi-fascist domain

This time he again suggested Poland, pointing out that they would be under what he called "active supervision," a euphemism for the gas chambers. [Crum, p 112]

Whereas Husseini eagerly had Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust [ie, sent to Poland where Auschwitz was located], Arab propagandists and sympathizers of the Arab anti-Israel cause, like to accuse Israel of killing Arab children. However, when Arabs are doing the shooting they don't much mind. It seems that when Arabs shoot their own children [see here], that's OK.

Sources on the web for information on Arab collaboration in the Holocaust are here and here, to supply only a few of those sources available.
Remember Bartley Crum's book:
Bartley C Crum, Behind the Silken Curtain (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947)

Note that Justice Jackson, the American chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, did not want to prosecute Husseini. This was policy, the policy of the Big Four war time allies [the US, UK, France, USSR]. Husseini was under supervised residence in France after WW2 from May 1945. He was allowed to leave France in 1946 and return to the Middle East where he resumed his Judeophobic intrigues, including agitating for war on the Jews in Israel. So Walt-Mearsheimer are concealing the evidence when they pretend that the Arabs did not really intend to drive the Jews into the sea in the 1947-49 war. The Arabs --such as the Mufti Husseini-- intended a worse fate for the Jews. The fact that the Allies did not want to prosecute Husseini at Nuremberg --his pro-Holocaust doings notwithstanding-- belie two of Edward Said's usual arguments: 1) the Arabs were and are innocent, especially of harming the Jews, and especially of the Holocaust; 2) the major Western powers were always looking to harm the innocent Arabs, to restrain Arab nationalism, to besmirch Islam, etc.

Another important fact that Walt-Mearsheimer don't deal with is that the Arabs in the various Arab-Muslim-ruled lands oppressed, humiliated, economically exploited the Jews for a period of more than a thousand years. That fact too is significant and various posts on this blog have documented and illustrated it.
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Coming: a top British journalopropagandist in love with walt-mearsheimer, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, Land of Israel, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

A Prescription for War & Genocide -- Stop the Annapolis Conference Now!!!

The history of international conferences and congresses --with or without the "peace" label-- is not one to inspire confidence. Think of the conferences of Berlin [circa 1878], Versailles [circa 1918-1920], and Munich [1938]. They only laid the groundwork for future wars and massacres, the Second World War in the case of the Munich Conference. Today US secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice, arrived in Israel to pressure the basically unfit, incompetent, corrupt olmert government of Israel to make more concessions to the Arabs. She does this in the name of setting up a "palestinian state" for a fictitious people known as "palestinians" in the international media and diplomatic circles, claiming that such a state would bring peace with Israel in its wake. Yet, there never was a "palestinian" people in all history. Those now called palestinians are in fact Arabs and call themselves Arabs. The charter of the PLO states in Article I that the "Palestinian Arab people is part of the Arab nation and Palestine is part of the great Arab fatherland." So they consider themselves Arabs first of all. Only Judeophobes pretend that they are a separate people.

Rice wants to set up another Arab state, to be called "palestine," in Judea-Samaria, the very heart of the ancient Jewish homeland. This area was, however, allocated as part of the Jewish National Home set up by the San Remo Conference [1920], part of the post-World War One peace conferences. The Jewish National Home principle was ratified by the League of Nations in 1922. The borders of the National Home, as finally delineated in 1925, included both sides of the Jordan. But Britain, which committed itself to fostering development of the Jewish National Home by accepting the League of Nations mandate, violated its commitment, the mandate that had been entrusted to it. Britain limited Jewish immigration to the Jewish National Home when the Jews most needed a home, before and during the Holocaust, through the 1939 "Palestine White Paper." Very few Jews fleeing the Nazis were allowed into the National Home by the British governing authorities from 1939 to Israel's independence in 1948. So here we have a major Western power that violated a commitment to the Jews at a time very vital for saving Jewish lives. Moreover, the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission found that the UK government had violated its mandate. However, the British government did not change its policy.

We see frequent violations of commitments to the Jewish people and of commitments to international law on the part of major powers. Just a few years ago the the USA, the EU [including the UK], the UN and Russia issued the so-called Road Map. This document indicated stages to go through before an Arab state called "palestine" would be set up. The first stage included disarming of all militias that were not officially part of the Palestinian Authority armed forces, such as the militias [= terrorist groups] of Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc. This has not been done. The first stage also included ending the incitement to kill Jews, hate Jews, make war against Israel, on the palestinian authority media. This too has not been done.

Yet, Rice now wants to forget all about the commitment of the US, EU, UN, and Russia, as well as the palestinian authority, to the Road Map's principles. The Arabs have shown very clearly that they do not want peace with Israel. Abu Mazen makes more and more demands which do not deserve to be met --and he does not deserve to be called a "moderate." Fools or liars [take your pick] like olmert, Rice, tsipi Livni [Israel's mentally defective foreign minister], and others persist in calling Abu Mazen [Mahmud Abbas] a "moderate" despite all of the evidence. It turns out that the secretary of state [= foreign minister] of the US president who proclaimed a "War on Terrorism" is now aiding and encouraging terrorism -- and not merely terrorism against Israel. After all, if other Arab and Muslim factors see that the terrorism, the acts of mass murder, of Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad go unpunished, or even seem to be rewarded by the mighty Western powers, then they will be tempted to use terrorism against other targets of their hatred, prejudice, greed, and so on.

The violation by Rice of the Road Map in setting up the Annapolis Conference [May it fail!!] is reminiscent of Britain's violation of its commitment to the Jewish National Home principle in 1939 by issuing the White Paper. Now, if major Western powers cannot be relied upon to honor their commitments, then what is the purpose of Israeli concessions when the other side so lightly violates its commitments? When I say, "the other side," I am not talking merely about the Arabs, notorious for violating commitments, but about the Western powers which are not reliable either. Of course the powers may offer Israel "international guarantees" in return for concessions. But there really is no such thing as an "international guarantee." The very offer of such a guarantee is a hostile act. These "international guarantees" are easily violated and forgotten like other international commitments.

Therefore, why should Israel give away tangible strategic assets, like the strategic Judea-Samaria north-south mountain ridge, in exchange for paper concessions from the Arab side, concessions that can be easily revoked, if they are ever honored, like an ending to ethnic and religious incitement, which the Arabs were to have done long ago, as per the 1998 Wye Plantation accords????

Further, we should draw a comparison with Czechoslovakia's situation up to 1938. The mountainous Sudetenland, forming a natural boundary around the Czech lands, was a strategic area for the country's defense. Yet, the area was mainly populated by ethnic Germans, who began demanding --starting in 1933-- separation from Czechoslovakia and attachment to Hitler's German Reich. The British government was very sympathetic to the Sudeten German irredentist demands, which were encouraged and fully backed by Hitler, who even instructed the Sudeten German leadership [led by Konrad Henlein] to constantly add or increase demands on the Czechoslovak government so that their demands could never be satisfied by the Czechoslovak government. The British even prepared a "report" called the Runciman Report which remarkably contained accusations against the Czech government that are echoed nowadays by charges made against Israel by Arabs and their Western supporters and other supporters throughout the world. One such charge was that the Czechs were unjustly putting "colonists" in colonies or settlements in the Sudetenland. This reminds us of the revulsion in the circles of international diplomacy and the media over Israeli settlements in Judea-Samaria. This is actually a racist position that means to exclude Jews from parts of the ancient Jewish homeland and of the internationally approved Jewish National Home. It is a violation, perhaps unwitting, of the true international law on this matter. The anti-Jewish settlement sentiment today, like Lord Runciman's anti-Czech colonist arguments in the 1930s, justifies war by the allegedly wronged party [Germans then, Arabs today] against Czechoslovakia then and Israel now. Can we rightly draw an analogy between the Runciman Report on one hand, and the Baker-Hamilton Report, the Jimmy Carter tract falsely charging Israel with "apartheid," the walt-mearsheimer agitprop farrago, and the Christiane Amanpour "God's Warriors" series on CNN, on the other hand??

Another question is whether the remainder of Israel could withstand attack from that mountain ridge if it were in Arab hands. Would Israel's more vulnerable geostrategic situation tempt the Arabs to make war on Israel if all of Judea-Samaria were in their hands, including the mountain ridge??? If the Arabs won the war would they spare Jewish lives anymore than the Ottoman Empire, a Sunni Muslim empire which included Arabs among its loyal troops, administrators, and decision-makers, spared the lives of Armenians during World War One??? The Armenian massacre, properly called a genocide, was perpetrated by Muslim troops of the Empire, not merely by Turks but by Arabs and other Muslims. Or consider how the Greeks of the Smyrna region were literally driven into the sea by Ataturk's jihad troops in 1922 [Ataturk was still fighting in the name of Islam in 1922], while the Armenians in Smyrna who had survived the massacre were finally finished off.

Is it significant that in a relatively short period of time, from 2001 to 2007, a whole series of verbal attacks have been launched against Israel, from the 2001 Durban Conference, ostensibly against "racism" but in fact Judeophobic [in which the Ford Foundation funded Judeophobic propaganda by NGOs], the Baker-Hamilton Report, the Polk-McGovern Report, the carter tract [is carter really capable of writing a book by himself?], the walt-mearsheimer libel, not to mention the usual BBC anti-Israel agitprop, the CNN propaganda film by Amanpour mentioned above, etc??? Are these ostensibly separate writings and broadcast productions part of a concerted psywar campaign to besmirch and destroy Israel in public opinion before literally destroying Israel physically??? Was this campaign meant to prepare for an "international peace conference," such as the one that Condi Rice is now working on?

SOURCES:
J W Bennet, Munich, Prologue to Tragedy (New York 1964) [contains The Runciman Report].
Elliott A Green, "International Law Regarding the Land of Israel and Jerusalem," Midstream magazine (New York, February-March 1999). See here on the Internet.
Howard Grief, Legal Rights and Title of Sovereignty of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel . . . in International Law (Sha`arey Tiqvah, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research, 2003). See here.
Lord Runciman's Report, contained in Bennet's book, also British White Paper, Cmd. 5847, no. 1.
Arie Stav, Czechoslovakia 1938 -- Israel Today (Sha`arey Tiqvah, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research, 1997 ). See here and here.

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Coming: British journalopropagandist enthuses over walt-mearsheimer, Jews in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem, Hebron; peace follies, propaganda, etc.

A Gem of Absurdity from walt-mearsheimer

UPDATINGS at bottom -- original quote here below as of 12-2-2007

Finally got a look at walt-mearsheimer's magnum opus, a rather inflated tome called The Israel Lobby. Anyhow, I had a chance to read some of their slick but shallow arguments. Just leafing through the pages, I found a gem. In the chapter on Israel's moral case, they write that Israel's supporters could --in Israel's defense-- point to Arab threats to destroy Israel in several wars, 1948, 1967, 1973, etc. W-M admit that in 1948, some Arab leaders called for "throwing the Jews into the sea." But then they claim that the Arab leaders really didn't mean it. It was all just for domestic consumption, walt-mearsheimer claim. They go on to argue that this was because the Arab leaders knew that they couldn't destroy Israel. So here W-M make a leap of logic: Because the Arab leaders allegedly knew that the Arabs couldn't win the war against Israel, this means that they didn't want to destroy Israel.

Of course the whole argument is full of holes like swiss cheese --and it stinks like moldy cheese too. The Arab spokesmen were threatening war at the UN before the UN General Assembly made its partition recommendation on 29 November 1947. At that time, and up to 15 May 1948, Israel was not yet an established state. It was a dream, an idea, a hope. It had lightly armed forces that stayed in the underground during British rule. But it could not bring in heavy weapons as long as the British forces remained in the country, unless they could be smuggled past the British --who were actively pro-Arab at that time. So why would the governments of Arab states, that could bring in heavy weapons, and did get British supplies, know that they couldn't defeat the as yet unborn state of Israel? How do walt-mearsheimer know what the Arab leaders knew or believed at that time? The Arab League governments were NOT saying: We can't defeat the Jews. Indeed, they were boasting in their usual bellicose Arab rodomontade that they could win, and this view was shared by high officials in the British and US governments, for instance. Such as expert opinions produced by the UK & US governments that the Jews could not hold out against the Arabs. Abdul-Rahman Azzam, secretary-general of the Arab League, warned the UN that Arab states would use force against any partition plan and boasted of a bloody Arab victory in the coming war with the Jews:

'This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades.
'[Ahkbar Al-Yom, October 11, 1947 quoted in Jewish Agency for Palestine, Memorandum 1948; Howard Sachar dates this statement to the Spring of 1948, in his A History of Israel (New York: Alfred Knopf 1976), p 333; Leonard Davis & Moshe Decter date the statement to 15 May 1948, in Myths and Facts 1982 (Washington, DC: Near East Research 1982), p 20]

Can we imagine Arab officials telling each other at the Arab League conference at Bludan, Syria, in June 1946, as they reached a consensus to send forces to the Land of Israel to prevent emergence of a Jewish state: Of course, we can't win the war. And we really don't want to throw the Jews into the sea. But we must fight for the sake of fanatic domestic public opinion and we will be just delighted when we are defeated in a humiliating fashion. Public opinion will be delighted too. This defeat will bring us all closer together, governments and the fanatics in the street. Then we will plan together on how to lose the next war.

There may have been some well-informed and thoughtful Arabs who had doubts, who thought that maybe the Arabs couldn't drive Israel into the sea. However, since the Arab states had been established as states, they had been able to build regular armies, train troops, and import weapons -- which weapons exporting states were quite willing, if not eager, to supply [in the United Kingdom's case]. Further, the Arab Legion [al-Jaysh al-`Arabi] of Transjordan was British-commanded [by Sir John Bagot Glubb] , British-financed and equipped, and most senior officers were British.

Why should the Arab leadership have believed differently from the UK and US government experts?? Moreover, given their traditional contempt for Jews who were traditionally at the bottom of the social ladder in the Arab-Muslim countries, given the age-old Arab/Muslim teachings about their own military superiority and the inferiority of the Jews, what else could a normal Arab-Muslim, educated in his own tradition, think but that the Arabs would be gloriously victorious? Furthermore, the UK and US were urging the Arab League states to go to war against the as yet unborn state [about US policy, see the research of Professor Shlomo Slonim].

Now, the widely known Arab journalist, Muhammad Hassanayn Haykal [Mohamed Hassanein Heikal], wrote --on the eve of Soviet leader Khrushchov's visit to Egypt [1964]-- that the British had urged Egypt to go to war against the soon to be proclaimed Jewish state. He added that the British had given the Egyptian army weapons and ammunition from British stocks in the Suez Canal Zone, at that time under British control [of course, the Egyptian army had to go through the Suez Canal Zone in order to get to Israel, which may have been so obvious to Haykal that he didn't bother to point it out]. Haykal also claimed --after the fact [in 1964]-- that he had known in 1948 that the Arabs could not win and that he had discussed this with prime minister Nuqrashy Pasha who knew it too. Here, Haykal does what walt-mearsheimer do. He too indulges in after the fact psychologizing. He argues that the British knew that Egypt could not win and wanted Egypt to be defeated in the war with Israel in order to weaken Egypt's negotiating position when negotiations came up with Britain over the Suez Canal's status. That's why the UK pressured Egypt to get into the war, Haykal claimed.

Be that as it may, the decision-makers in Arab League states [in Egypt the king] decided to destroy Israel at birth. And their threats of war and massacre were heard at the UN General Assembly too. Here is the crucial question for Walt & Mearsheimer. Can they produce records of the deliberations at the Arab League meetings that decided to go to war? If so, can these records or minutes or protocols or proceedings demonstrate that the majority of Arab states at that time admitted an Arab military incapacity to defeat Israel?

Walt-Mearsheimer claim that the bellicose threats to Israel, the Arab rodomontade, were for domestic consumption. Indeed, there were attacks, pogroms, on Jews in Arab countries in that period, such as in self-governing Egypt and in Aden which was under British control. So the Arab home front or "street" wanted to kill Jews. But if the leaders knew that they could not win a war against the Jews, then why would they rationally send their armies into a certainly humiliating defeat [any defeat at the hands of the despised Jews would be humiliating!!]? Such a defeat could and DID lead to the overthrow of existing Arab governments --as in Egypt and Syria. They could instead have loudly and for a long time condemned Britain for not preventing a Jewish state from emerging, or a similar diplomatic-political subterfuge, engaging in a lot of sound and fury to satisfy the fanatics at home, with little shooting.

The argument and the book are ridiculous. Mearsheimer has even admitted, in so many words, that he was lying. As we recall, one of the charges made in the original w-m article in the London Review of Books in 2006 [Nota Bene: the London Review] was that Israel and/or the Israel Lobby had pushed the Bush administration into the war against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. However, in an interview on National Public Radio, Mearsheimer stated that the war on Iraq had been decided on by the US Govt before Israeli officials knew about it. According to Mearsheimer in this interview, the Israelis suggested that if there were to be a war, it should be against Iran, which Israel saw as more threatening an enemy at that time. But the Bush Administration decided otherwise. As to Walt-Mearsheimer, they knew that they were lying. As competent political scientists with the status of consultants to the State Department, they were part of policy making. They were in a position to know the truth. They lied knowingly and deliberately.

Now what are the context and the purpose of the w-m lies???
They and their article, book, media appearances, etc. are part of a concerted anti-Israel propaganda campaign by the Petro-Diplomatic Complex. Others taking part are former president Carter, James Baker-Lee Hamilton, Professor William Polk-George McGovern, etc. All those named have recently produced tracts that argue against either Israel's morality or moral rights, or against Israel's usefulness to the United States, that is, to US interests, or both. One problem is What are American interests abroad generally, and in the Middle East in particular? Another issue is: Who is to decide what these interests are? Is it the Petro-Diplomatic Complex that has had the upper hand in the US's Middle East policymaking over the years? The purpose of the campaign appears to be to besmirch Israel in public opinion in the US so much so that Israel is softened up for a diplomatic crushing at an international "peace" conference, which Secretary of State Rice is conveniently preparing for the end of November. This conference will be a conference in favor of Arab terrorism. It will reward Arab anti-Israel terrorism. Rice has already pressured Israel to release terrorist prisoners in order to supposedly support the "moderate" Mahmud Abbas [Abu Mazin].

The aims of the w-m book and of the campaign by carter, baker, et al., are objectively genocidal.

As evidence that US policy --especially under Bush-- is anti-Israel, Bush is the first US president to come out unequivocally for an Arab state to be named "palestine" to be set up in the Land of Israel. Such a state would inevitably threaten Israel militarily and economically. The Arabs are not now ready to make a real peace with Israel on any reasonable terms. Another sign of Bush's hostility to Israel were his demands at the beginning of Israel's anti-terrorist offensive in 2002 --the Defensive Shield operation-- that Israel's army immediately withdraw from the areas assigned to the Palestinian Authority --areas from which the mass murder bombers were coming. These demands are forgotten now in the present surreal air of political deception in which we live.

UPDATING #1-- There was a precedent for throwing a hated ethnic group into the sea: In 1922 Turkish nationalist forces led by Kemal Ataturk drove the Greek population of Smyrna into the sea. Smyrna had been a Greek-speaking city for more than 2,000 years. It remained predominantly Greek in population even after the Ottoman Empire conquered Smyrna from the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire hundreds of years before 1922. Smyrna also had a Turkish-Muslim minority, a Jewish quarter, an Armenian quarter, and many Europeans and Americans who had come for purposes of trade or were there for religious/missionary purposes. There were also Levantines, people with mixed European and Greek or Armenian ancestry. These Levantines too were mainly involved in trade and services for the European and American communities. In 1922 the Turkish nationalist army of Ataturk drove the Greeks out of the city, while it massacred the surviving Armenians in the city and set fire to Greek and Armenian neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the fleets of the major Western powers sat at anchor in the harbor of Smyrna. They had orders not to interfere with the slaughter perpetrated by the Kemalist forces and were reluctant to help the refugees. Greece sent a motley assortment of boats to take out the refugees, including surviving Armenians. Since the expulsion of the Greeks and the massacre of the Armenians, the city has been officially called Izmir. This is a historical precedent for what those Arabs may have been thinking who called for driving the Jews into the sea, as walt-mearsheimer admit they said.
Sources:
Ernest Hemingway, "On the Quay at Smyrna," in In Our Time [starting with the 1930 edition of the anthology In Our Time; New York, Scribner's]. This is a fictionalized account of the events at Smyrna that rings true. Hemingway was a reporter in Anatolia and the Balkans in that period. See his description of a Kemalist official in this post.
George Horton, The Blight of Asia -- Horton was the US consul in Smyrna in 1922, that is, he was an eyewitness.
Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair
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UPDATING #2 as of 12-2-2007 Original Quote from walt-mearsheimer

. . . some argue that the Arabs precipitated wars in 1948, 1967, and 1973 in order to "drive Israel into the sea."
While there is no question that Israel faced serious threats in its early years, the Arabs were not attempting to destroy Israel in any of these wars. This is not because the Arabs were happy about the presence of a Jewish state in their midst --they were not-- but rather because they have never had the capability to win a war against Israel, much less defeat it decisively. There is no question that some Arab leaders talked about "driving the Jews into the sea" during the 1948 war, but this was largely rhetoric designed to appease their publics. In fact, the Arab leaders were mainly concerned with gaining territory for themselves at the expense of the Palestinians, one of the many occasions when Arab governments put their own interests ahead of the Palestinians' welfare. [Walt & Mearsheimer, pp 83-84]

For more commentary on walt-mearsheimer: see this link.

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Coming: UK journalopropagandist, Max Hastings, gushes over the w-m book, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, peace follies, propaganda, etc.

Jewish navigation device in the hands of the Institut du Monde Arabe

Jews were a significant group among seafarers during late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. An account by a non-Jew, Synesius, of sailing on a vessel captained by a Jew with a mostly Jewish crew, is found in Menahem Stern's Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. III.

An artifact reminding us of this history is an astrolabe, a maritime navigation device, with Hebrew letters clearly visible around the rim. Yet, this device is not in the possession of Jews nor in any sort of Jewish museum nor in a maritime museum. It is in --you guessed it-- the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. The device has a long inscription in Hebrew letters -- while it has no inscription in any other alphabet. Yet, it is claimed as part of "Arab civilization" purely because the language of the inscription is Judeo-Arabic, a language spoken and sometimes written by Jews living in Arab-ruled lands. This language combined an Arabic and Hebrew [and sometimes Aramaic] vocabulary. Likewise, Jews in northern and eastern Europe usually spoke and often wrote in Yiddish, a language combining in its vocabulary medieval Germanic words with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic and Romance words. About 30% of the Yiddish vocabulary is estimated to be Hebrew-Aramaic in origin. By writing their inscription on the astrolabe in Hebrew letters, the Jews for whom it was made were clearly stating their Jewish identity. Even if the letters were Arabic, the mixed vocabulary would still indicate a Jewish identity for the owners of the piece and the piece itself.

To take another example, likewise, an Irish product would still be considered Irish even if it bore an English inscription. The Irish haven't lost their national identity just because almost all of them today speak English. The Spanish Jew Abraham Zacuto was famous for his work on navigation instruments and maritime charts, by the way.





Aeroports de Paris [no. 7 / 02/06]

Despite the identity of the owners and users and probable makers of the astrolabe, the Institut du Monde Arabe [Arab World Institute] insists that it is "Arab" and part of "Arab civilization." Likewise, Arab nationalist intellectuals sometimes like to boast of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides [Rambam] as part of "Arab civilization" despite Maimonides' opinion that Ishmael [the Arabs/Muslims] had treated the Jews worse than any people had treated them. See here.
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Coming: British journalopropagandist likes w-m's propaganda tract, peace follies, propaganda, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, elsewhere in the Land of Israel, etc.