Semi-Official German Spokesman Wants to Promote the Nazi-like Hamas; His Office Is Near the Nazi Mufti's Former Property

UPDATING 8-21-2009 PHOTOS ADDED&8-2-2011

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

The Shimon haTsadiq area of Jerusalem has been much in the news lately. Here is a German connection to the neighborhood besides the link to Hitler's Arab helper, Haj Amin el-Husseini.

Very close to the Tomb of Simon the Just, an ancient Jewish sage, and the former Shepherd's Hotel, a plot of real estate formerly owned by Haj Amin el-Husseini, who belonged to a wealthy Jerusalem Arab family that enjoyed a privileged status in the Ottoman imperial governing class, we can find, if we go off Mt Scopus Road downhill towards the Nahal Qidron [the Qidron seasonal watercourse], theJerusalem offices of the German-government-linked Friedrich Ebert Stiftung [foundation]. The Germans conduct business in a large mansion, not noticed from the road, which is on about the same level as the tiny homes in the old Jewish quarter of Shimon haTsadiq, named after Simon the Just, above and adjacent to his presumed tomb, which is in a cave below a cliff further down the hillside towards the Qidron. While Transjordan, later called Jordan, ruled this part of Jerusalem, Jews could not pray at Simon's Tomb which had for centuries been a focus of Jewish pilgrimage, especially on the holiday of Lag b'Omer in the spring. According to the 1949 Rhodes armistice agreement, Jews were supposed to have access to Jewish holy places under Jordanian [in 1949, this was still Transjordanian] control. In fact, Jews did not have access to any of the Jewish holy places under Jordanian control, neither in Hebron, nor in Bethlehem, nor in Jerusalem. However, as far as Arabs and Western powers are concerned, agreements with Jews do not have to be honored. As President Obama has demonstrated by arrogantly denying even the existence of the agreement on settlement building between the United States, represented by President Bush, and Israel, represented by PM Sharon.

The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, named after a German socialist leader of the 1920s, is German-government connected and partly funded by it. It takes a very pro-Arab line in the conflict with Israel. Meanwhile, the Germans deploy another foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, which is more or less pro-Israel and cooperates with such Israeli bodies as the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs which publishes studies of current issues in and relating to Israel, usually quite reliable. So the Germans quite cleverly play on both sides of the street, both sides of the conflict. The Ebert Stiftung is very pro-Arab while the Adenauer Stiftung, named after the first non-Nazi leader of West Germany [the Federal Republic] after WW2 and the Holocaust, is somewhat pro-Israel. Perhaps the Adenauer operatives would be more pro-Israel if good manners and bon ton in the EU allowed that.

This is a directional sign pointing to the Ebert Stiftung offices up the street and to the right side of the street [on the downhill slope]. The building in the background behind the trees was once the residence of the wealthy Nashashibi Arab family. Opposite, that is behind the back of the photographer, is the Jewish quarter named after Simon the Just, Shim`on haTsadiq שמעון הצדיק. Photos of that quarter will appear in another blogpost. This street location is where the convoy of doctors and nurses going to Hadassah Hospital was ambushed in April 1948. More than 70 Jewish medical staff were massacred here on that occasion. British troops at the scene refused to intervene to stop the slaughter.

The Ebert Stiftung not only supports the PLO and its Palestinian Authority offshoot but has now come out for Hamas. Hamas openly calls for the mass murder of Jews, which Hitler never did. Hitler only supplied reasons for mass murdering Jews, leaving it to his listeners' imaginations to take the next logical step, although Hitler did warn/threaten on a couple of occasions that another world war in Europe would lead to the extermination of the Jews. He was of course also blaming the future war on the Jews, the main victims of that war, while exculpating Germany and himself. Just as the New York Times and other mouthpieces for American policy do today. As to Friedrich Ebert, he, like Hitler, called himself a socialist. Hitler's party was the National Socialist German Workers Party [National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei], while Ebert was a social democrat. Ebert's party's name was not quite as impressive as was Hitler's party name. Hitler's party was not only socialist but a party of the workers, maybe like those British and Canadian trade unions that have called for boycotting Israel. Anyhow, what was wrong with the German National Socialists? They were socialists, weren't they?

This is the entrance gate to the Ebert foundation offices. Steps going down to the building where the offices are located. The photo faces south.

Michael Bröning (director of the East Jerusalem office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung) is eager to bring the Hamas, Arab National Socialists from the point of view of their chosen enemy, the Jews, and their blood thirst regarding the Jews, into the "peace process." Like peace of course, the word socialist can have many meanings, one thing and its opposite. Bröning

cites the group’s [Hamas'] recent downplaying of the relevance of its own charter as a telltale sign that Hamas is turning around or even “growing up.” To be sure, the rhetoric of Hamas leaders has visibly changed in public statements. But in focusing on these statements alone, Bröning misses the real point: Hamas’s words have changed, but their actions have not. Hamas cannot be judged on the basis of its choice of vocabulary alone. Neither the relevance of each and every part of the Hamas charter (which Hamas leaders have expressly refused to revoke or update) nor the public statements of its leaders deserve as much weight as what the group actually does in judging whether or not it has truly evolved. The approach of solely examining what the group says, rather than what the group does—the approach upon which Bröning has relied—dangerously disregards Hamas’s actions on the ground.
[Matthew Levitt, in a critique of Bröning here]

This makes sense, especially since Bröning does not quote the bloodthirsty passages from the Hamas Charter in his own article on the website of the old tribune of the US foreign policy establishment, Foreign Affairs. He talks about the charter but does not quote it. Rather coy of Bröning, n'est-ce pas? Does he feel he must hide something

The Charter blames the Jews and Israel for various 20th century wars and other ills, much in the spirit of the Judeophobic forgery/plagiarism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Indeed, the charter refers explicitly and approvingly to the Protocols. This alone places Hamas in the Judeophobic camp of the German National Socialists whose rhetoric was similar. Hamas goes further however. Article 7 of the Charter quotes a medieval Muslim hadith to the effect that, at Judgement Day, the Muslims will kill the Jews, who will hide behind rocks and trees. The rocks and trees in turn will call out. O Muslim, a Jew is hiding behind me. Come kill him.

This is clear incitement to murder Jews en masse. The German Nazis never were so explicit in public. Here we have a group that is more explicit, franker, more candid than the Nazis. They say it openly and they practice the principle when they can, as often as they can. And they express disappointment when they do not succeed. Of course, some may say that the mass murder of Jews is only for Judgement Day. But as Matthew Levitt says, this approach "disregards Hamas’s actions on the ground." They have murdered Jews en masse in the past, albeit in relatively small numbers compared to the Sunni Muslim slaughter of Shi`i Muslims in Iraq. But the small numbers were due to military conditions on the ground in Israel that have limited Hamas' numerical success. Nevertheless, the slaughter of hundreds at a time, as in Iraq, of thousands in a day as in Nazi German death camps, remains the Hamas' gold standard, as it were, its true avowed and unabashed goal.

May we compare Hamas to another Sunni Muslim ally of Germany? The Ottoman Empire massacred an estimated 1 1/2 million Armenians during WW One [1914-1918] and probably about one-half million from 1880 up to WW One [1914]. This is the most fitting comparison or benchmark for measuring Hamas' true aims, immoral capacities, and proclivities. During the Armenian Genocide [1914-1918], the Ottoman state, in which Palestinian Arabs held high posts, was supported --in the genocide too-- by the German Empire [the Second Reich] and by the Germanic Austrian Habsburg Empire. Even if the history were not as it is, should the Jews have to "coexist" [even if possible] with a body that openly declares that mass murder of Jews is its religious and political objective, in accord with medieval Muslim prejudices, passions and hates???

To be sure, Bröning makes light of the Charter. Well, then there is the constant hate agitation and indoctrination performed by Hamas in Gaza's Hamas-run schools, mosques, "university," TV, radio, press, etc. As to the Charter, Bröning pretends that it no longer has meaning for Hamas. Perhaps just as German politicians in 1933 argued that Mein Kampf and all the National Socialist prejudices, hates, and passions, no longer had meaning for Hitler and his followers. Avoiding mention of the Charter's call to genocide, Bröning writes that those who reject Hamas participation in the "peace process":

bolster their argument by referring to the Hamas charter, the group's 1988 founding manifesto, which outlines a militant doctrine aimed at "liberating the land of Palestine" by force and invokes such anti-Semitic tracts as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
However, such critics fail to grasp the transformation currently taking place within Hamas. Today, the charter has ceased to play a significant role in the group's ideology. As early as 1990, Hamas began to distance itself from the document, which has since fallen into neglect. Although Hamas has not officially renounced the charter, no references to it can be found in any of the group's recent statements. Moreover, Hamas leaders, such as Mahmoud Ahmad al-Ramahi, the secretary-general of the Palestinian Legislative Council, have recently begun downplaying the charter's relevance by clarifying that "it should not be confused with the Holy Koran."

Maybe al-Ramahi is a true moderate. Or maybe he and other Hamas leaders are downplaying or concealing their bloody goals of conquest and mass murder, like Hitler. Maybe Comrade Bröning --we can call him Comrade since he is a social democrat-- is being coy. He calls Hamas' doctrine "militant," not terrorist, mass murderous, genocidal. Is Bröning being naive? Is he ignorant? Did Article 7 escape his attention? Hence, Bröning misrepresents even what the Charter says and stands for. This is aside from the issue of whether the Charter no longer guides Hamas' action.
Maybe Bröning does not know that the Nazis did not merely look on passively as the French fought over policy towards Hitler's territorial demands. They actively cultivated the French public in order to lull it into complacency, just as the Hamas in the future might issue a reassuring declaration to the Jews of Israel. For the purpose of lulling the French, Nazi Germany initiated the Franco-German Declaration of Friendship of 6 December 1938, two months after the disastrous Munich Conference. The war began less than a year later at the culmination of the pre-World War 2 "peace process."

The Hamas is more frankly genocidal than Hitler and his Nazis ever were. And now, Western politicians and policymakers and diplomats, like Bröning, want to wash up the Hamas' filthy face and make it presentable in decent Western company. But there is no reason for Jews to believe in the decency of "decent Western company" given the EU record of succoring Arab genocidists, even those who murder their Christian brothers in the Arab domain. We ought to also bear in mind Western behavior in the pre-WW2, pre-Holocaust period. Can we now deny or refuse to believe that Western Europe is coming back to its old self as far as Jews are concerned?
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Michael Bröning's article here.
Hamas Charter here.
Analysis of the Hamas Charter here.
Matthew Levitt's analysis of Bröning's piece here.

On the Franco-German Friendship Declaration of 6 December 1938, see:Wolfgang Geiger, "La Declaration Franco-Allemande du 6 decembre 1938; Un Evenement sous estime," Les Temps Modernes (Aout-Octobre 1999).
8-2-2011 NGO Monitor on German govt funding for the Ebert Stiftung [here]