Brits Echo US State Dept Soft Hand with Syria -- More UK Hypocrisy

UPDATING 7-13&20&21&23&24&25&27&8-4&6&9-2011 at bottom

BRITAIN ECHOES OBAMA POLICY ON SYRIA: The British are still waiting for Assad to carry out reforms!! Can you believe the naked hypocrisy?

Syria: London condemns the repression in Hama: "The violent repression in Hama will only undermine the regime's legitimacy a little more and raise serious question about its will to put into practice the reforms that it recently announced," William Hague, British minister of foreign affairs stressed in a communiqué. "No true political dialogue can take place at the moment when a brutal military oppression is being conducted," he added. At least eleven civilians were killed by Syrian forces on Tuesday in Hama, a city in the center of the country. [Guysen News 7-5-2011]

Syrie: Londres condamne la répression à Hama "La violente répression à Hama ne fera que saper un peu plus la légitimité du régime et soulèvent de sérieuses questions sur sa volonté de mettre en oeuvre les réformes qu'il a annoncées récemment", a souligné le ministre britannique des Affaires étrangères William Hague dans un communiqué. "Aucun véritable dialogue politique ne peut avoir lieu au moment où est menée une répression militaire brutale", a-t-il ajouté. Au moins onze civils ont été tués par les forces syriennes mardi à Hama, une ville du centre du pays.

London thinks [ostensibly] that Assad's regime still has some "legitimacy" left because it says, "The violent repression in Hama will only undermine the regime's legitimacy a little more ." When did the Assad regime in Syria --going back to the 1960s-- ever have legitimacy? The Hama massacre of 1982 did not undo the regime's legitimacy at all as far as Her Majesty's Govt was & is concerned.
7-5-2011 Washington is still wringing its hands over Syrian repression. "The United States is very troubled by the continuing attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Syria"-- State Dept. Harsh criticism? Maybe not in the circumstances. Anyhow the State Dept is not troubled enough to demand that Assad get out. Recall that Obama told Mubarak to get out for much less.

Syrie: les USA réclament le départ des troupes syriennes d’Hama (Guysen.International.News)Les Etats-Unis ont réclamé aujourd'hui le départ des forces syriennes de la ville d'Hama, exigeant aussi du régime qu'il cesse sa "campagne d'arrestations". "Les Etats-Unis sont très inquiets de la poursuite des attaques contre des manifestants pacifiques en Syrie", a souligné Victoria Nuland, la porte-parole du département d'Etat.

- - - - - -
Carlo Panella sees Bashar Assad's speech of 20 June 2011 as resembling a Goebbels speech [qui]. He thinks that Assad fears fitna, chaos within the Muslim community [Il Foglio, 21 Giugno 2011]. Among other things, Assad reported in the speech that 64,000 Syrians had been arrested or were being sought for arrest and punishment by Syrian security forces. Panella published his article on June 21, but UK chief diplomat, William Hague, was still calling Assad a potential reformer on July 5, 2011.
7-20-2011 Hilary/Obama backtracks on harsh words for Assad. Brutality is OK and the Syrian Opposition should cooperate with Assad Basher to bring reforms -- That's Washington's message about Syria as of now and the EU falls in line [here].
Tony Badran diagnoses earlier stages of the pathology of Obama Syria policy [here]
7-21-2011 Barry Rubin picks apart a lunatic editorial in the New York Times [State Dept mouthpiece] which tells the Lebanese prime minister to be a good boy and follow through on the international tribunal's indictments of the Hizbullah operatives who organized and carried out the murder of Rafiq Hairi & a score of others, and arrest them [here]. Unless the current Lebanese PM wants to end up like Hariri, he is quite unlikely to taken any meaningful action against Hizbullah operatives as long as the Hizb controls Lebanon. But the NYT can pretend that we are living in a civilized world.
Tony Badran now diagnoses the latest stages of Obama's pathological Syria policy [here]. Should we blame Obama's mentors, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lee Hamilton, or an ingrained and insane Third Worldism transmitted to him as a contagion from the Communist who served him as a father figure in his youth?
7-23-2011 Barry Rubin again ponders why Obama & Co. are still trying to prop up the Syrian Assad regime, although it is hated by most Syrians and is likely to be overthrown [according to Israeli intelligence] [here]. Instead of trying to work with the Syrian opposition --a heterogeneous group to be sure-- in order to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of a future Syrian power structure as much as possible, the Obama administration throws out several fraudulent arguments. One is the lie that Israel wants Assad and his regime to stay in power. Another is the danger that the Muslim Brotherhood might take power in a post-Assad Syria. But we can't trust that as being a real concern in Washington, since Obama and others speaking for him urged the powers that be in Egypt to allow "non-secular" forces to share power in a new, post-Mubarak Egypt, and one of Obama's "national security" clowns, Clapper, even minimized the Islamist nature of the MB by falsely claiming that it was "largely secular."
7-24-2011 Lee Smith calls the Obama White House's Syria policy "morally obtuse" [here]. Smith believes that the regime is doomed.
7-25-2011 Elliott Abrams judges the sincerity of Assad's offer to allow political parties to organize in Syria, provided that they respect "freedom and basic rights." [here]
Tony Badran offers ways that Obama & his administration could use to pressure Assad into leaving. But Badran makes the diagnosis that Obama is still reluctant to tell Assad to leave [here]
7-25-2011 Hossein Askari [here] writes: "While the Arab Spring has threatened the Assad regime, at first the White House lent support to Syria’s dictator, privately arguing that Assad’s fall would increase both instability in the region . . . . Such hypocrisy—backing oppressive regimes in Riyadh, Manama and Damascus while professing unquestioned support for human rights and democratic values—undermines U.S. credibility and influence in the Middle East . . . ."
8-3-2011 Fiamma Nirenstein on the Security Council's failure to speak out about the regime massacres in Syria [here]
8-4-2011 Catherine Ashton has given your ever loyal and ever modest blogger a helping hand. She told the world after Bashar Assad had taken "a step in the right direction" by issuing a new law permitting a multi-party political situation in Syria [here]. She did this after French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, had sneered at Assad's move as a joke and a "provocation." The rather dull-witted Mrs Ashton or Baroness Ashton is holding on to the old British position of forgiving indulgence for Assad after even Obama had taken a more hostile stance toward Assad. She helped me, as said above, because other leaders, like Obama and Juppe, had already distanced themselves more from Assad, thereby leaving me without as much to criticize in them as before. She is the EU foreign affairs commissioner and seems to becoming an embarassment for the EU. They should throw her out now in order to maintain any semblance of decency.
8-6-2011 Jonathan Tobin reports that UNESCO, headed by former Clinton honcho, Anthony Lake, continues to give money to Syrian govt programs --money raised from American children among others, while the regime keeps on slaughtering its people and while world powers finally rebuke Assad & his regime that [here]
8-9-2011 Eyal Zisser gives the 20th century historical background of Syria and the present regime [here]

Cameron as Anti-Israel -- Melanie Philips nails him

Melanie Philips has another knowledgeable and perceptive column on the UK's anti-Israel policy under the "conservative" govt of David Cameron's "conservative party."

I want to highlight her recounting of the relevant history of British betrayal of the Jews during the Holocaust when the UK was bound by its international commitment --the Palestine mandate-- to facilitate Jewish immigration into the Land of Israel and to aid Jewish "close settlement on the land" [the Mandate, Article 6]:

It was the British who, out of sheer breathtaking malice against the Jewish people, first incited the (hitherto mainly benignly disposed) Arabs against the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine in the early years of the 20^th century. It was the British who set out to undermine and reverse their own government’s policy to re-establish the Jewish national home in the land of Israel. It was the British who reneged on their internationally binding treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout Palestine – including the areas currently known as the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza – with the result that they kept out desperate Jews trying to flee Nazi Europe, causing thousands to be murdered in the Holocaust. At the same time, they encouraged Arab immigration from neighbouring countries and turned a blind eye to the pogroms carried out by these Arab newcomers against the Jews whose land it was supposed to be –thus laying the groundwork for the false claim that the Arabs were the rightful inheritors of the land. And all the time, the British cloaked this vicious treachery in the honeyed fiction that they were the true friends of the Jewish people and had their interests at heart.

The history of the British in this terrible conflict between Jew and Arab is not merely a chronicle of the utmost perfidy and malevolent Judeophobic bigotry. It is also directly responsible for the continuation of the conflict to this day. For Arab aggression against the Jews has been rewarded and encouraged from the start, by robbing the Jews of their rightful inheritance and giving great chunks of it to their aggressors. But if aggressors are rewarded, the inevitable result is more aggression until they achieve their final terrible aim. [read it all here]

More on the US pro-Islam, pro-Arab Policy

US policy in the Middle East in the 20th century followed in the footsteps of British Middle Eastern policy, and can be seen as a continuation of it. It was no accident that the British upper crust called the American elite "our American cousins." Indeed, this was often true in a literal sense as many titled Britishers married rich American men and women. Therefore, cousins were found on both sides of the Atlantic.

British policy announced a pro-Islamic turn in 1920 when the Supreme Command of the WW One allies, the Entente powers, ordered the Greek army to stop advancing in Anatolia, and thereby to stop defeating the Turkish army. There is reason to believe that Britain was the leading power pushing for the order to the Greeks to stop. In that same year, British officers in Jerusalem --in what was then officially called Occupied Enemy Territory Administration-South-- encouraged Haj Amin el-Husseini to instigate anti-Jewish riots in order to discourage Great Power approval of the Jewish National Home principle at the San Remo Conference. This British encouragement for Arab violence against Jews in Israel was not at that time the official policy out of London but seems to have been a local initiative of British officers in the country, some or all of whom had been influenced by the notorious Tsarist forgery/plagiarism, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Later, the London policy towards the Jewish National Home followed the local initiative and became hostile to the Jews, encouraging Arab hostility to Jews in the country. In other words, the Arabs became a tool of London for its own anti-Jewish hostility.

Back in Anatolia, in 1922, naval ships of the UK, US and other Western Great Powers watched as Ataturk's new Turkish army drove the Greeks of Anatolia and Smyrna into the sea at the Smyrna port, although Greek boats of all sorts were allowed to pick up refugees. Meanwhile, the powers did not oppose renewed massacres of Armenians in the city [see George Horton, Marjorie Housepian]. The new revolutionary Soviet Union also sided with the Turks in those years, thereby taking the same stance as the Western capitalist powers.

In other parts of the British Empire, the British encouraged Muslims against non-Muslims, and Arabs against non-Arab Muslims. In India, the UK encouraged Muslim demands for a separate state ["pakistan", which had never existed before] against the aspiration of the Indian National Congress for a unified India. In the former Ottoman Empire, the UK saw to it that the vilayet [province] of Mosul, inhabited not by Arabs but by Kurdish Muslims , Assyrian Christians, Jews and smaller ethno-religious groups, be transferred to the new, British-sponsored Kingdom of Iraq and taken away from the new Turkish Republic. Some say that this was because oil had been discovered in and around the city of Mosul, which would be more under British influence as a part of Iraq --then under a British mandate-- than as a part of Turkey. In Iraq, the British winked at the massacre of thousands of Assyrians in 1933 at the hands of the Iraqi Arab army.

During WW2, the UK violated its mandate to foster development of the Jewish National Home by severely limiting the number of Jews to be allowed to immigrate into the Jewish National Home when the Jews most needed a home. This was the notorious 1939 White Paper policy. More generally, UK foreign minister Anthony Eden came out in support of pan-Arab nationalism by calling for formation of what became the Arab League. Eden's speech came on 29 May 1941, just three days before the notorious pro-Nazi pogrom against Jews in Baghdad [1 & 2 June 1941]. Hence, it would have been only natural for Eden to keep British troops outside Baghdad at that time from intervening to stop the massacre of the Jews. Be that as it may, British troops there at that time did not intervene.

When the Jewish underground in Israel was fighting for independence and to have the UK let Jewish Holocaust survivors into the country, the UK continued to refuse to honor its commitments under the mandate. Although Pres. Truman had called for 100,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors to be allowed into Israel by the UK in 1946, by 1947 the US State Dept and other USGovt agencies were encouraging the Arab war effort against the as yet unborn Israel. Here the US slipped into the role of continuing the British anti-Jewish, pro-Arab, pro-Muslim policy.
The UK in Israel supported Arab forces against the Jews, fighting the Jews directly in Yafo [Jaffa] and in Jerusalem.

In 1952, British and US operatives encouraged and helped Nasser and his pro-Hitlerite "Free Officers" to overthrow the parliamentary monarchy of King Farouq. Mubarak belonged to the regime put in place by Nasser and the "Free Officers" in 1952. In that year, American mainstream publications celebrated the fall of King Farouq by explaining that the rebels were against Farouq's "corruption." In Iraq, in the 1960s and 1970s, the USA supported the Arab national socialist Ba`ath Party, the crowning glory of which was Saddam Hussein. After Israeli aircraft had destroyed the Iraqi Osirak atomic development facility [1981], the US administration wanted to denounce Israel for this defensive action, although it did not because public opinion was with Israel. The US also formally "recognized" the PLO in November 1988, although high level contacts with the PLO had gone on for decades.

In early 1979, the Carter Administration --its foreign policy directed by the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Zbigniew Brzezinski-- helped the Islamist fanatic Ayatollah Khomeini, take over Iran. Was Zbig unaware of Khomeini's fanaticism and bigotry? It was no secret to specialists on Iran at that time where Khomeini stood. Likewise, James Clapper, Obama's director of national intelligence [Intelligence?], knows where the Muslim Brotherhood stands and pretended it was something else. Interestingly, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national insecurity advisor has also been an advisor to Obama. Zbig's grand theory was and --apparently-- still is to build up Islamic fanaticism. No doubt in pursuit of this purpose, Obama sent Zbig to Damascus in February 2008, months before his election. Zbig was probably supposed to tell Junior Assad that if Obama were elected, then the Assads would have a friend in the White House. The fact that Damascus and Assad's very own mouth are world centers of Judeophobic agitprop and hate indoctrination, did not deter either Zbig or Obama.

These facts among others are the background to Obama administration efforts to put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt. I think that the disciples of Zbig succeeded all too well in Iran. We don't need another Khomeini, this time in Egypt. But stopping Obama's goal from being realized needs constant criticism of Obama for the dangerous course that he is taking.

Sources
Mitchell Bard, The Arab Lobby (New York: Harper Collins 2010) [a lengthy excerpt is found here]
Isaiah Friedman, British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922 (2009) [see synopsis here & here]
Martin Gilbert, Exile and Return (London 1978)
George Horton, The Blight of Asia [Horton was the US consul in Smyrna in 1922]
Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair
Lord Kinross, Ataturk; A Biography of Mustafa Kemal (1965)

Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary
Jacques de Morgan, The History of the Armenian People (Boston: Hairenik Press 1918)
Horace Samuel, Revolt by Leave (London)
E K Sarkisian & R G Sahakian, Vital Issues in Modern Armenian History (Watertown, MA: Armenian Studies 1965)
Shlomo Slonim, "The 1948 American Embargo on Arms to Palestine," Political Science Quarterly, (Fall 1979)
Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945.
_ _ _ _ _ _. The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict 1917-1929. (British Historical Society)
Meir Zamir [see several online articles by Zamir on British policy in the 1944 to 1948 period in HaArets & Jerusalem Post]
William Ziff, The Rape of Palestine

- - - - - -
One Jerusalem on the changes in Egypt [includes link to Victor David Hanson].
2-24-2011 At least one mainstream journalist, Arnaud de Borchgrave, talks common sense about the Muslim Brotherhood. If he could only get the ears of Obama, Hilary, James Clapper, and the other fantasy mongers in the Administration [here]
Another MSM journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, also gives helpful info about the MB's hatred of Jews, specifically Qaradawi's explanation that Muslim hatred of Jews is rooted in Islam and that Muslims must kill all Jews before Judgment Day can come [here]. For those unfamiliar with Islamic lore, this article demonstrates that hatred for Israel is rooted in Islam's hatred for Jews and has nothing especially to do with "settlements" or "occupation."

British Minister Suggested a Boycott of "Settlement" Products to the "Palestinian Authority"

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

We have said before that the United Kingdom is a great enemy of Israel. Of course, I realize that many British people in all four components of the kingdom, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, are sympathetic to Israel, even very sympathetic. But the British government has been hostile to Jews and Israel for many years, although this hostility is usually covered by a mist of slick hypocrisy, sanctimonious posing and the like. Yet the hostility goes back to the beginning of British mandatory rule in Israel, designated as the Jewish National Home by the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations. Since then the UK govt has perpetrated several velvet-gloved assaults on the Jews and Israel. Among the highlights are the 1939 "White Paper on Palestine," the refusal to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the death camps like Treblinka, etc., the use of the British armed forces to keep Jews out of the Jewish National Home during the Holocaust, when the Jews most needed a home, the pressure by British diplomats on southern European countries not to let Jewish refugees embark from their ports to escape Nazi genocide, the acquiescence by Britain's Foreign Office in the 1941 Farhud massacre of Jews in Baghdad, the post-WW2 refusal to let Jewish Holocaust survivors into the Jewish National Home, the encouragement to Arab states and the palestinian Arab leadership to fight against the rise of a Jewish state [as envisioned in the Jewish National Home principle]. The last item entailed supplying weapons to Arab armies and actual intervention in combat against the Jewish forces by British tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, and ground forces.

The rise of Israel and its survival and demonstrated ability to defend itself caused great disappointment among highly placed persons in London and throughout the Empire. The failure of conventional warfare by the Arab armies in 1948-1949 led to an intensified psychological and cognitive warfare effort against the Jews and the Jewish national state. This effort culminated in production of the "palestinian people" notion, a people invented for political/diplomatic purposes, a people that had never existed in history as a people or nation. The harm done to Israel and the Jews by this invented notion is incalculable. Of course, it cannot be easily proven that British psywar experts invented the "palestinian people," but there is much evidence for this assertion.

Now British diplomacy shows once again that the UK is as hostile and dangerous for the Jews as are the Arab states as a group. The Palestinian Authority deputy minister of the economy, Abdel Hafez Nofal, revealed that the British minister of trade had suggested to him that the PA institute a boycott of products of Israeli settlements, that is, products of any Israeli community or factory or plant across the 1949 armistice line from the pre-1967 Little Israel, the rump of the Jewish National Home territory left to the Jews after the War of Independence. So a British minister recently prodded the PA into ordering a boycott by its population of Jewish products made in the wrong place, that is, on the wrong side of the armistice line. To be sure, since Arab workers too work in many of the Jewish-owned plants, we could say that the products are also Arab in part. Here is the quote:

. . . Abdel Hafez Nofal, 56 years old, Palestinian deputy minister of the Economy. He is "Mr Boycott": "Everything started when the English minister of Trade said to me, 'We have decided to boycott the products of the settlements. And you?'"
[Il Sole- 24 Ore, 22 October 2010; p12]

. . . Abdel Hafez Nofal, 56 anni, vice ministro palestinese dell'Economia. "Mister Boycott" è lui. «Tutto è incominciato quando il ministro del Commercio inglese mi disse: "Noi abbiamo deciso di boicottare i prodotti delle colonie. E voi?"
[qui]

It is not fully clear whether, when the British minister said "We have decided. . .", that the "we" referred to the British or to the EU. In any case, it is likely that the UK took the lead in the EU in pushing for a boycott.

So here we have another British effort for greater peace and greater international understanding. And treating Jews like the British govt thinks that they ought to be treated. Of course, Britain, like the Arabs, does not want to admit any wrongdoing against Jews. But if the UK admitted its ugly Holocaust record of refusing refuge to Jewish refugees from the Nazis, that might be a contribution to Middle East peace. And if not to peace, then to a greater understanding of history.

CLARIFICATION:
The statement by the PA economics minister may not be totally accurate. This is because neither the EU nor the UK has an explicit, formal policy to boycott goods produced in Jewish communities across the Green Line [the 1949-1967 armistice line]. However, it's obvious that both EU and UK are tending in that direction.The EU requires products from Judea/Samaria to be labelled as such but does not require a distinction between goods made by Jews and goods made by Arabs. On the other hand, the UK government has a "voluntary" agreement whereby foodstuffs made/grown by Jews in Judea-Samaria are labelled differently from foodstuffs made/grown by Arabs in the same area.

Further, the constant vilification of Israel in UK media --not all to be sure, but significantly on the BBC which is a state body with its policy on foreign affairs dictated by the Foreign Office-- indicates the direction of UK state policy. The Guardian, Independent [sic!] and several other UK papers specialize in vilifying Israel, often using traditional Judeophobic themes. Then several ostensibly non-governmental bodies in the UK, such as the university teachers union, advocate a boycott of Israeli universities, whereas the Trades Union Congress [TUC], I am informed, advocates a boycott of settlement products. I have no doubt that these non-governmental bodies are not only influenced by hostile UK media but by govt officials as well as govt operatives within their ranks.

Both the previous Labour govt and the present "Conservative" govt are capable of favoring a boycott of settlements as well as a total boycott of Israel, as some loud-voiced academics already advocate. These "civil society" groups provide a moral cover for any anti-Israel move by the govt itself now or in the future. The British govt may have already taken a decision to implement a boycott of settlement products at some opportune moment in the future. In such an eventuality, it would be helpful if the Palestinian Authority were already implementing such a policy so that the UK govt would not seem to be "more Arab" or "more palestinian" than the Arabs/palestinians. If such a decision has already been taken and conveyed to the PA, as Minister Nofal asserts, then his statement would be both accurate and instructive.
- - - - - - - - -
The palestinian Authority's boycott policy in action [here].
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The notion of a "palestinian people," previously unknown to history, including to Arab historians, has its parallels in other states/peoples/nations without a history created for political convenience by Great Powers. Consider "Panama" which was simply part of Colombia, created in order to facilitate building of the Panama Canal by the USA, and Pakistan, formed by Britain out of mainly Muslim regions of India, to fulfill the demand of the Indian Muslims for a separate state so as not to be ruled by Hindus who were the majority in India.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Other links on British hostility to Israel and Jews.
here1&here2&here3&here4&here5&here6&here7&here8
&here9&here10

Brit Elite Rag -- The Financial Times -- Assaults Israel Again

UPDATING 3-4-2010 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic, has done another expert job of highlighting the Israelophobia [Judeophobia] of the British elite daily, the Financial Times. Recall that the FT is not a "leftist" paper. It is solidly pro-capitalist. Hence, Israelophobia or anti-Zionism, the up to date form of Judeophobia, is not limited to "leftists" or socialists. It is a mental disease cutting across class lines and supposed ideological divisions. Emet m'Tsiyon has featured the FT's anti-Zionism before [here]. Martin Peretz' latest response to FT agitprop is here. Some excerpts follow:

Hardly a day goes by that the Financial Times doesn’t do a hit job on Israel. The otherwise sober pink sheet has such an obsession with the Jewish state that I’ve come to wonder what its views were on the rescue of Jewish children into England during the Nazi onslaught on them and on their parents.
. . . . .
The paper simply refuses to name Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But it’s much worse than that. The Financial Times writes about the “government in Tel Aviv.’ This is not just weird. It is a lie. The FT wants to rewrite the history of the Middle East. If it can’t tell the truth about a simple geographical fact, on what, pray tell, can it be trusted?

Let's put that claim that Israel's capital is Tel Aviv in historical context. It was a regular feature of Soviet and Communist anti-Israel agitprop before the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, this pretense is employed by the --shall we say it again?-- capitalist Financial Times.

Right now the FT is screeching at Israel for the assassination of top Hamas murderer and operative, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai, which quite plausibly may have been carried out by Israel's Mossad spy agency. Maybe the FT regrets that there is one less top Hamas operative running around the Middle East, working to perpetrate mass murder against Jews. Anyhow, in order to properly chastise Israel for --presumably-- killing him, the FT minimizes his importance. It describes him as a mere "Hamas gun-runner." Well, if he was not so important, then why is the FT so upset? Mass murder goes in the Middle East almost every day. In Iraq, dozens of non-combatant civilians are slaughtered regularly. Those murders do not evoke as much gall and spleen from the FT --if any-- as does the assassination of one leader of Hamas whom that Iranian-sponsored mass murder organization officially mourned. Peretz comments:

. . . the FT has dismissed his [al-Mabhouh's] importance by calling him “a Hamas gun-runner in Dubai.” This is so far from the truth that it is actually laughable. He was a murderer, a certified murderer, and is an official of the far-flung Hamas movement, which specializes in the murder of Israelis. He is more than a gun-runner. But even gun- running for Hamas, recipient of military hardware from Iran and Syria, cannot be seen with indifference by Jerusalem.
http://www.tnr.com/print/blog/the-spine/another-hit-job-the-financial-times

Just to clarify the situation. Dubai is officially in a state of war with Israel as part of the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has been in a state of war with Israel since it became a state. The Hamas is not only in a state of war with Israel but openly proclaims the desirability of murdering all Jews. It does this in Article 7 of its charter. The Hamas TV in Gaza constantly brainwashes its population, starting with small children, with reasons for slaughtering Jews and for continuing war against the Jews until Israel and the Jews are destroyed. There is no possibility that any Hamas official could be extradited from Dubai to be put on trial in Israel or from elsewhere in the UAE or from Syria where Hamas has its headquarters or from any Arab state, be it the most "moderate" Arab state of all. Obviously, in a state of war the rules applying in relations between countries at peace do not apply.

The United Kingdom can rightly be seen as the most dangerous center in the world for anti-Israel agitprop. There must be a reason why British NGOs lead in smearing Israel for alleged "human rights" violations, why the movement to boycott Israeli universities is centered in Britain, why Muslim fanatics are allowed to preach murder of Jews [and all non-Muslims] in British mosques and to demonstrate publicly calling to "behead those who insult Islam", without being charged with sedition. Moreover, we may ask why terrorists who placed bombs on the Paris subway, the Metro, in the mid-1990s were taking directions from leaders based in -- London. It was French investigators who dubbed the British capital -- Londonistan. Why?

If there really is such a thing as an Israeli-Arab "peace process," then an expression of regret by the British government for the British government's role in the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945 would be helpful. Surely, the UK government should not be allowed to take part in any supposed "peace process" without an admission of guilt for the British government's past pro-Holocaust policies and without an expression of deep regret.

- - - - - - - - -
UPDATING 3-4-2010 Martin Peretz updates the story of FT's mourning over the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He links to an excellent article by British historian Andrew Roberts that puts the whole subject into a truthful, historical and contemporary perspective [here]. Apparently, even in Britain, a land so much of which is benighted, voices of outrage over the mad attacks on Israel in the FT were such as to lead the FT to publish Roberts' rebuttal of the anti-Israel fanatics.

Britain Fostered Arab-Jewish Conflict during the Mandatory Period

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

Isaiah Friedman has published a new book which concludes that British policy in the Land of Israel during the mandatory period fostered Arab-Jewish conflict, including encouraging the pogrom in Jerusalem in April 1920:

In this myth-shattering study, Isaiah Friedman provides a new perspective on events in the Middle East during World War I and its aftermath. He shows that British officials in Cairo mistakenly assumed that the Arabs would rebel against Turkey and welcome the British as deliverers. Sharif (later king) Hussein did rebel, but not for nationalistic motives as is generally presented in historiography. Early in the war he simultaneously negotiated with the British and the Turks but, after discovering that the Turks intended to assassinate him, finally sided with the British. There was no Arab Revolt in the Fertile Crescent. It was mainly the soldiers of Britain, the Commonwealth, and India that overthrew the Ottoman rule, not the Arabs. Both T.E. Lawrence ('Lawrence of Arabia') and Sir Mark Sykes hoped to revive the Arab nation and build a new Middle East. They courted disappointment: the Arabs resented the encroachment of European Powers and longed for the return of the Turks. Emir Feisal too became an exponent of Pan-Arabism and a proponent of the 'United Syria' scheme. It was supported by the British Military Administration who wished thereby to eliminate the French from Syria. British officers were antagonistic to Zionism as well and were responsible for the anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem in April 1920. During the twenties, unlike the Hussein family and their allies, the peasants (fellaheen), who constituted the majority of the Arab population in Palestine, were not inimical towards the Zionists. They maintained that 'progress and prosperity lie in the path of brotherhood' between Arabs and Jews and regarded Jewish immigration and settlement to be beneficial to the country. Friedman argues that, if properly handled, the Arab-Zionist conflict was not inevitable. The responsibility lay in the hands of the British administration of Palestine.
[above taken from here. The book is: British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922]

A real anti-imperialist would expose how imperialist powers instigate conflicts between peoples. Isaiah Friedman does that. Most so-called "Middle East scholarship" does not do that. To the contrary, most "Middle East scholarship" today serves the Judeophobic purposes set as British imperial policy as far back as 1920. During the mandatory period, Arnold Toynbee, an official at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, was a prime exponent of Judeophobia and anti-Zionism. After Israel's independence, Toynbee's journal, International Affairs, published through the RIIA, favored articles whitewashing the Arabs' actions in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, as well as embellishing Arab conduct towards Jews and in general throughout history. He was a prime architect of the UK's anti-Zionist policy during the mandatory period. He also whitewashed Ottoman and Turkish [that is, Muslim] ethnic cleansing and massacre --genocide-- of Armenians before, during and after World War I, reversing an ostensibly British pro-Armenian policy that had lasted from the Congress of Berlin [1878] until well into WW I. By favoring Turks and other Muslim peoples over Armenians and other non-Muslim Middle Eastern peoples [such as Jews], British policy curiously converged with Bolshevik/Communist/Soviet policy from before WW I until the fall of the USSR, whereas Western Communists and Russian nationalists have continued their anti-Zionism, Judeophobia, Israelophobia till today, again strangely converging with British policy.

Their anti-Jewish policy led to the British 1939 "White Paper on Palestine" which severely restricted Jewish immigration into the internationally designated Jewish National Home [the Land of Israel] when the Jews most needed a home. That is, during the Holocaust. Britain's severely enforced restrictive immigration policy was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Jews. Another aspect of the policy was encouraging Arab attacks on Jews, both by Arabs in the country --as Friedman points out [see above]-- and by Arab states in the 1945-1949 period [comprising Israel's independence struggle and the war against the Arab states' invasion of the country].

Toynbee also expressed his Judeophobia in his world history, called A Study of History, which takes a very contemptuously anti-Jewish tone. Now, Toynbee's granddaughter, Polly Toynbee, is still blaring on the "hate the Jews" horn at the Israelophobic Guardian newspaper. Britain's anti-Israel policy continues, today focussing its venom on the State of Israel.

Friedman's book was published very recently and I have not had a chance to see it. However, I have read several articles by Friedman in the scholarly journals. I also heard him speak years ago and had a chance to ask him some questions on the topic of this book, the period around 1920 in the Land of Israel and British policy at that time toward that place. So, I recommend the book knowing Friedman's work as I do. I will try to get the book as soon as I can.

- - - - - - - -
On British instigation of the 1920 "Nebi Musa" pogrom in Jerusalem, see:
Richard Meinertzhagen, Middle East Diary. Meinertzhagen was a British intelligence official for the Foreign Office in 1920, whereas he identifies UK army officers, such as Colonel Waters-Taylor, Ernest Richmond, and Ronald Storrs, as perpetrators of the anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist policy.
Also see William Ziff, The Rape of Palestine, &
Horace Samuel, Revolt by Leave.
Note that H Samuel refers to the 1936-1939 "Arab Revolt" as a revolt that took place with the permission of the British authorities in the country.

On this also see,
Ernest Hemingway, "On the Quai at Smyrna" and the epigraph to Chapter II, both in the collection In Our Time
George Horton, The Blight of Asia
Marjorie Housepian, The Smyrna Affair
Samuel Katz, Days of Fire & Jabo
Pierre van Paassen, Forgotten Ally &
Days of Our Years
Albert Londres, Le Juif errant est arrive (circa 1930).

The Obama Administration Moves into a Full Pro-Nazi, Judeophobic Position

When fascism comes to America,
it will be called anti-fascism.
[attributed to Huey Long]

Little comment from me is needed on Evelyn Gordon's short essay below on the Obama administration anti-Israel position. It is implicitly and fundamentally pro-Nazi. That is, it means to take away Jewish rights in the Land of Israel, national rights to govern the land, rights of residency throughout the Land, rights to Jewish religious and archeological sites, and so on. It means to set up a genocidal Arab terrorist state alongside Israel.

By implicitly rejecting Security Council resolution 242 of 1967 it means to throw Israel to the Arab wolves, without the "secure and defensible boundaries" that SC res. 242 called for. Mitchell is in fact rejecting any real negotiations. He is embracing the position of the Judeophobic Saudi wahhabite Muslim kingdom that actively spreads Islamic fanaticism around the world. Mitchell, Obama & Company are flouting the real international law that recognized the Jewish right to reconstitute the ancient Jewish state in the Jewish national home [Preamble to the League of Nations mandate].

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Evelyn Gordon

HONEST BROKER, ANYONE?

Nothing in George Mitchell’s interview with PBS last week received more attention than the envoy’s implied threat to revoke American loan guarantees to Israel. That’s a pity — because far more worrisome is the goal he set for the negotiations, as highlighted by Aluf Benn in today’s Haaretz. “We think the way forward … is full implementation of the Arab peace initiative,” Mitchell declared. “That’s the comprehensive peace in the region that is the objective set forth by the president.”

The Arab initiative mandates a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines — every last inch of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. It also demands a solution to the refugee problem “in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194,” which Arabs interpret as allowing the refugees to “return” to Israel.

Later in the interview, Mitchell says this initiative requires “a negotiation and a discussion,” and that you can’t negotiate by telling “one side you have to agree in advance to what the other side wants.” Yet by saying his goal is “full implementation” of this initiative, he’s effectively saying, “You can have your negotiation and discussion, but Washington has no intention of being an honest broker: it fully backs the Arab position on borders, Jerusalem, and even (to some extent) the refugees.”

This is the administration’s clearest statement yet that it’s abandoning the position held by every previous U.S. administration: that Israel needs “defensible borders” — which everyone agrees the 1967 lines are not. Mitchell also thereby abandoned the position, held by every previous administration, that any deal must acknowledge Israel’s historic ties to the Temple Mount via some Israeli role there, even if only symbolic (see Bill Clinton’s idea of “sovereignty under the Mount”). The Arab initiative requires Israel to just get out.

And Mitchell effectively took Syria’s side on that border dispute: no Israeli government ever agreed to withdraw farther than the international border, whereas the Arab initiative mandates the 1967 lines — i.e., including the territory Syria illegally annexed pre-1967.

Even worse, the Arab initiative addresses none of Israel’s concerns, such as recognition as a Jewish state or security arrangements. That means Mitchell just announced support for all Arab demands without obtaining any parallel concession to Israel. Under those circumstances, why would the Arabs bother making any?

And his repeated demand that Israeli-Palestinian talks deal with borders first indicates that this was no slip of the tongue. After all, the only thing Israel has to give is territory; having once ceded that via an agreement on borders, it has nothing left to trade for, say, security arrangements — which, as a veteran Israeli negotiator told Benn, has actually proved one of the hardest issues to resolve in previous rounds of talks. Borders first, an Israeli minister summed up, is “a trap. We only give, we don’t get anything.”

George Bush’s Road Map viewed the Arab initiative as merely one of many “foundations” for talks. Mitchell’s adoption of its “full implementation” as a goal thus represents a deterioration in U.S. positions that ought to worry all Israel supporters.

- - - - - -end of article on Commentary's Contentions blog- - - - - - - -

This stance by Mitchell is Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter's dream. It fulfills their Judeophobic hatred. It was for the purpose of promoting such Judeophobic, pro-Nazi policies that the JStreet lobby was set up using the money of George Soros, the multi-billionaire. Mitchell of course is a flunkey not only for Obama but for the foreign policy establishment. No doubt the British partners in crime of the US foreign policy establishment will soon join in to support this position.

British Press Censors Historical Truth, Promotes Lies

UPDATE 12-25 & 27-2009 & 1-2 & 3-9-2010 at bottom

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools

In its smear campaign against Israel, much of the the British press --indeed of the British "quality" press-- both "leftist" like the Guardian and frankly business-oriented, pro-capitalist like The Financial Times, bash Israel with smears and lies. They promote falsifications of Jewish history as well as smears relating to current events, such as last winter's Israeli effort to stop Hamas rocket attacks on Israel's civilian population.

In this context, the FT censored significant historical facts in a book review. The FT asked one of its regular book reviewers, the respected historian Simon Schama, to review the book The Invention of the Jewish People, by Shlomo Sand. In this book, Sand, an Israeli Communist, seems to be trying to validate the claim of the former leader of his Communist movement, Stalin, that the Jews were not a nation in his time. Stalin wrote this in 1915, apparently to delegitimize Zionism. Since then, the Jews set up a state in 1948, obviously refuting Stalin. Neither Stalin nor Hitler nor the British Foreign Office had thought that a Jewish state should or could come into being. Of course, for hard-line Judeophobes, such as populate the Foreign Office, the problem then became how to destroy the Jewish State that had been established. Hence, a Communist's fanatical invention meant to confirm and update Stalin's claim of 1915 gets support in the capitalist United Kingdom. Without getting into Sand's book too deeply, suffice it to say that he claims that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from a medieval northern Caucasus or Turkic people called Khazars, whose ruling elite, at least, converted to Judaism but who disappeared after military defeat in the northern Caucasus-northern Black Sea region. Sand also claims that North African Jews are mainly descended from the Berbers of North Africa. Thus, modern Jews are not descended from ancient Jews, according to Sand, and thus have no historical right to return to the Land of Israel, nor does Israel have a right to exist as a state.

Arthur Koestler raised a similar argument about Ashkenazim being descended from Khazars about 30 years ago, although he was more tentative, less positive in his claims than Sand is today. Koestler got little scholarly support for his tentative argument. One strong critique was the demolition of his book by Edward Grossman. There were a lot of things wrong with Koestler's theory that were perceived 30 years ago. That did not deter Sand when he wrote his book a few years ago, although a whole new set of factual data refuting his and Koestler's theory had emerged since publication of Koestler's book. This data is the study of Jewish DNA. A number of researchers have found great genetic proximity among Ashkenazic, Sefardic, Oriental and Yemenite Jews. There is also proximity to various Arab groups as well as Armenians and Kurds. To a lesser extent, there is Jewish genetic proximity to Greeks, Turks and Italians. This scientific data effectively refutes Sand and Koestler's theory. But fanatics want to believe what suits their prejudices. So Sand dismisses and largely overlooks all of the DNA research by Professors Bonne-Tamir, Hammer and others. That very significant data does not fit the conclusion that Sand wants to reach. Of course, the DNA data was not available in Koestler's time, but now it is. Hence, Sand had less justification for publishing his crackpot theory than Koestler did. But that didn't stop Sand.

This has taken us far from censorship by the British press. The FT published, as said, a critical review of Sand's book, but the review seemed peculiar. Certain points that one would expect to be brought up in a critical review were not there. Then there is a passage in the review that very clearly seems to have been altered, tampered with, bowdlerized, censored, eviscerated. Schama outlined Roman anti-Jewish actions after defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt [131-135 CE]:

. . . there was also the mass extirpation of everything that constituted Jewish religion and culture; the renaming of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, the obliteration of the Temple, the prohibition on rituals and prayers. Sand asserts, correctly, that an unknowable number of Jews remained in what the Romans called Palestina. [here]

This outline, as it stands, is mainly correct, but it is misleading on a crucial point as well as incomplete. Indeed, Rome, under Hadrian, the emperor of the time, renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, Aelia referred to Hadrian's clan or gens and Capitolina to a hill in the historic center of Rome where a Roman temple was located. However, in addition to Jerusalem, the Romans also renamed the whole country, which up to the defeat of Bar Kokhba was called Provincia Iudaea [IVDAEA], Province of Judea. The Romans did call the country Palaestina, but that name came only after defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. According to most authorities [Michael Avi-Yonah, Felix Abel, Solomon Zeitlin, Mary Sherwood, inter alia, as I read them], the whole country, all of the Land of Israel, was called Judea by the Romans up to the aftermath of the Jews' defeat in 135 when it was renamed at the same time as Jerusalem, and made symbolically subordinate to Syria with the name Syria Palaestina. In this name, Palaestina is an adjective, not a noun, by the way.

Now, Simon Schama is a respected historian and I cannot imagine that he did not know that both Jerusalem and the Province of Judea were renamed by the Romans at the same time, and that Palestine was a name introduced by the Romans as a replacement meant to degrade and humiliate the Jews. The structure of the text that I have quoted also seems to support my surmise. It is likely that he wrote "the renaming of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina and of Judea as Palestina." Or perhaps he wrote: ". . . Jews remained in what the Romans thereafter called Palestina" or ". . . what the Romans henceforth [or from then on] called Palestina." After all, if he is writing about changing geographic names of political import, then why not also point out that the country too was renamed? Schama is aware of the name Judea for the country, since he uses it --or was allowed to use it-- elsewhere in the review. But that usage of the name does not indicate that it was the Roman official name for the country throughout the heyday of the empire up to Hadrian's difficult victory over the Jews led by Bar Kokhba.

I believe that burying the fact that the country was called Judea officially by the Romans is likely a policy in the British press. I say this from personal experience. Some years ago, a letter of mine was published in a prestigious British weekly, which I shall not name to protect my own identity. The letter was published in its entirety except for one sentence which pointed out that the official name of the country was Judea until Hadrian changed it upon defeating the Bar Kokhba Revolt. It seems that the British psychological warfare/cognitive warfare experts do not want their own people to know that the Land of Israel, all of it, not just the southern inland area, was called Judea by Rome at the height of the empire.

An omission from the review was any mention of the DNA evidence, which would seem to naturally come up in a critical review of Sand's book. However, I am less certain that Prof Schama had mentioned this in his review. But it is surprising that it is not there, unless the editors of the FT did not want it there.

Additional support for my belief that the review was tampered with, distorted, weakened deliberately by the FT editors is that they took the most unusual step of publishing a second review of the same book, a favorable review this time. Martin Kramer commented on the Financial Times' felt need to publish a second review of Shlomo Sand's tract:

The Financial Times decided one review of Shlomo Sand's 'The Invention of theJewish People' (reviewer, Simon Schama: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b74fdfd2-cfe1-11de-a36d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1J4C3P7CY) just wasn't good enough, and so runs another by Tony Judt, who knows even less about the subject than Sand. The result is entirely predictable: a rant against Israel in the thin disguise of a review.

Kramer's comment appeared on facebook [here].

This affair leads to the conclusion that the British press, daily and weekly, as well as many of the UK's supposed scholarly and scientific journals, are unreliable and politically guided and motivated where Israel is concerned and where Jewish history is concerned. It is no secret that the BBC is directed politically in regard to foreign affairs by the UK Foreign Office. The BBC long delayed reporting on the Holocaust as it was happening and then minimized its extent, thus failing to warn Jews and others in the Axis occupied countries who depended on the BBC for news. The BBC did this as part of a policy decided by the Ministry of Information [Orwell mocked it as the Ministry of Truth in his novel 1984] while the BBC's foreign news was directed by the Foreign Office. The British press, daily, weekly, scientific, professional, and scholarly has been mobilized, at least in large parts, to a Crusade of slander and demonization against the Jews and Israel, in which crucial facts are often omitted.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Here are some useful links:

Here is a strong demolition of Koestler's book by Edward Grossman.
Here are posts on the Bar Kokhba Revolt and its aftermath, including the expulsion of Jews from the area of Jerusalem: here & here & here & here & here & here & here & here
Arab auxiliary troops fought for Rome in the earlier war against the Jews which resulted in destruction of the Temple in 70 CE [here]
On the Arch of Titus in Rome as a monument to the Roman destruction of the Temple [החורבן] here.
Coins issued by Rome to celebrate victory over the Jews [here]
Names of the Land of Israel before and after the Bar Kokhba Revolt: here
A fairly well preserved ancient Roman metallic military diploma showing Roman use of Judea [IVDAEA] as the name of the Land of Israel [here].

Here are print accounts by ancient sources on the Jewish revolts against Rome. Some of these ancient works may be available online but I do not have the links.
Ancient accounts of the Jewish revolt and its suppression by the Roman Empire:
Orosius, VII, 9:5 f.
Sulpicius Severus, II
Dio Cassius [or Cassius Dio], Roman History [Italian edition: Cassio Dione, Storia Romana], LXIII, 22; LXV, 8:1-3, 9:2; LXVI, 1:1-4, 4-7, 9:2, 12:1
Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, vol. II (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences 1980), pp 64-67.
- - - - - - - - -
UPDATE 12-25-2009 Martin Peretz, editor of the New Republic, frankly calls The Financial Times, a "viciously anti-Israel newspaper" [here]
12-27-2009 Link to article on Jewish DNA, plus speculations on possible 11.5% Khazar genetic heritage among Ashkenazim [here]. H/T to Martin Kramer [here].
UPDATE 1-2-2010 The BBC in English disregarded an important story about Iranian involvement in mass murder of Jews. However, the BBC in Spanish did cover the story, which was reported by the Spanish-speaking media in any case [here].
UPDATE 3-9-2010 Martin Goodman, a historian of the Jews in Roman times, takes on Sand's tract in the TLS and throws it in the trash bin of history [here]

The Old Synagogue in the Shim`on haTsadiq Quarter

The Shim`on haTsadiq and Nahalat Shimon quarters in Jerusalem have been much in the news in the past few weeks. They are quite close to the Shepherd's Hotel plot, formerly owned by the Nazi-collaborationist Haj Amin el-Husseini, the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem who spent most of the World War 2 years in Nazi Germany and elsewhere in the Nazi-fascist domain. The names of both these quarters refer to Simon the Just, an ancient Jewish high priest believed to have met Alexander of Macedon during his conquest of Israel from the Persian Empire.

Here is a photo of a memorial dedication inscribed above the door of the synagogue in the Shim`on haTsadiq Quarter in Jerusalem adjacent to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood inhabited by some of the leading Arab families. Poor Jews lived in the Shim`on haTsadiq Quarter [also spelled Shimon haTzadik, etc] near wealthy Arabs, including Husseinis and Nashashibis, up to 29 December 1947, when the Jews fled their homes after attacks by Arab irregular forces under the command of the Husseinis through the Arab Higher Committee. George Antonius, the Arab nationalist propagandist, rented his home on a nearby property called Karm al-Mufti [the Mufti's Vineyard], from the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, a collaborator with the Nazis and instigator of the mass murder of Jews.

[click on photo to enlarge]
Note in the photo the Hebrew inscription above the arch above the door. It is hard to read the inscription because of the angle of the shot. However, the last word of the inscription --in the lower left corner-- is clear. It is an acronym in Hebrew תנצבה . This stands for a standard Jewish memorial phrase, quite commonly found on gravestones, although here it is used in the dedication of a synagogue in someone's memory.
תהי נפשו צרורה בצרור החיים

It means: May his soul be bound up in the bundle of life.

For women, the word נפשו [= his soul] is replaced by נפשה [= her soul]. The acronym remains the same in either case.

Tentatively reading the first line of the inscription, from right to left, I think I see
קידש לה' נדבת
Consecrated to the Lord an offering of . . .

This would, I think, have to be followed by the name of the donor and the name of the remembered deceased person. I think I see the name ישעיהו [= Yesha`ayahu = Isaiah]. I think I also see the acronym ז''ל which stands for זכרונו לברכה, meaning "May his memory be for a blessing" [a suitable change is made for a woman]. This acronym ordinarily follows the name of a deceased person. The letters standing for the number of the year on the Hebrew calendar may also be present.

A magen david מגן דוד [= shield of David] is seen below the inscription as part of the arch over the doorway at its crest. Also note five black iron hooks or bent rods around the inscription. Originally there were six such bent rods. Two each on the right and left, and two below. They once held a smooth stone plaque with a secondary memorial inscription carved on it. That is, an inscription in memory of a second person had been placed over the first inscription. This seems to indicate the poverty of these Jews, which we know of in any case. It seems that the community needed money later on and allowed someone to memorialize his departed loved one in return for a contribution or financial support. I saw the secondary inscription on the plaque when I visited the site in 1995. However, by the time that Jews took the synagogue back in the fall of 1998, the overlying plaque had altogether disappeared except for the iron rods or hooks. What provoked the Jewish return was that an Arab living adjacent to the synagogue on the east [about two, three, or four meters away] had begun to destroy the eastern wall of the synagogue in order, apparently, to expand his own home into the small synagogue building, which Arabs had not formerly settled into.

Be that as it may, the photo was taken between the summer of 1995 and the fall of 1998. The change in appearance in that time was that the plaque/secondary inscription --already cracked and partly broken off in 1995, had entirely disappeared. The building was restored to use as a synagogue in the fall of 1998 and is still in use.

This area of Jerusalem came into the news lately because of strenuous objections by the US State Department, the UK Foreign Office, and the European Union to Jews living in or building homes in what they like to call "East Jerusalem," a part of the city whence Jewish inhabitants were driven out during the Israeli War of Independence [1947-1949] by Arab irregular forces and the Arab Legion of the Kingdom of Jordan [then Transjordan]. These foreign powers do not want a Jewish return to a part of a city that has a meaning in history deriving from its role in Jewish history and religion. Jerusalem has also had a Jewish majority population since 1853, if not earlier. In 1853, the whole population of the city lived in the Old City which is considered part of "East Jerusalem." That is, in 1853, Jews were the majority in East Jerusalem.

What the World Needs to Know Now about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu flies to Washington to meet His Phoniness, here are some points to bring up to the world.


The US president during the Holocaust was Franklin D Roosevelt, known as liberal and a progressive, like Obama. FDR made no effort to help the Jews in the death camps, the labor camps, or on the railroads on their way to them, or the Jews in the ghettoes, as in Warsaw. The British policy was that their BBC "news" outlet could not report on the Holocaust until too much became known about it in London and continuing to ignore it would have lost credibility for the bbc. FDR made a few minor gestures in the last half of the war which supplied little help to the Jews. This was done under considerable public pressure.

The UK issued the "White Paper on Palestine" in 1939 which in effect revoked unilaterally the UK's mandate from the League of Nations to foster development of the Land of Israel as the Jewish National Home. This was a violation of international law, as the League's Permanent Mandates Commission concluded. But the UK was not moved to allow Jews into Israel when the Jews most needed a home, even a temporary refuge. This was a precedent of a major Western power violating a solemn commitment to help the Jews. Israel can expect nothing better from Washington. Tony Blair in facts speaks of his pet project of another Arab state in the Land of Israel, as if the UK had never betrayed the Jews so severely.

The vehement anger in Washington and London against Jews settling in/moving to/ Judea-Samaria, parts of the internationally designated Jewish National Home, is RACISM. It is simply the old Judeophobia dressed up in fake anti-imperialist garb. Obama as a Black man should be the last US official to push this Judeophobic, RACIST policy. However, it is undeniably useful to the anti-Jewish racists that they have a brown-face as their front man to hide behind. It is forgotten that the US Govt energetically worked to bring Black Americans into neighborhoods that were purely white, including ethnic neighborhoods of Irish, Italian, and Polish Americans. This was all done for the sake of anti-Racism. Why can't US officials today realize and admit that their policy on Jews in Judea-Samaria is anti-Jewish Racism?

If these foreign policy paladins are unaware, their anti-settlement policy allows the Arabs to continue their age-old oppression of Jews. Condoleeza Rice tried to pretend that somehow the Jews were racist to the Arabs. In fact, throughout history since the Arab Conquest, the Arabs have had the upper hand and have oppressed, exploited economically and humiliated Jews. Tony Blair and Obama ought to be informed of this historical reality. Maybe they really don't know.

Anti-Zionism is the anti-imperialism of fools.

British Subject in Samaria Refuses to Host the Queen

A British Royal Subject Living in Samaria Tells the Queen that She Is Not Welcome while Her Government Tries to Choke the Jews Economically while Denying Jewish Human and National Rights

The British position is in fact Racist. It continues the British policy during the Mandate period in Israel and during the Holocaust to keep Jews out of Judea-Samaria and to allow/encourage the Arabs to drive out the Jews who were already there, especially as expressed in the 1939 White Paper policy. Of course, British policy encouraged Arabs to kill Jews in Baghdad [1941] and during the War of Independence [1947-1949], sending British troops to fight on the side of the Arabs. The official British information policy was to suppress news of the Holocaust as it was happening and could have been alleviated.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Your Majesty, You're Not Welcome

By edict of a subject of Her Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II

Item: The British Embassy in Tel Aviv has decided to boycott Israeli
companies that invest in Judea and Samaria.

Your Majesty, one of your Ambassadors, Tom Phillips, who represents you in Israel, has recently decided that he would boycott the Kirya Tower in Tel Aviv, because it is partly owned by Africa-Israel whose owner, Lev Levayev, also owns a subsidiary company that has built homes in Judea and Samaria.

Now, I must confess that I am not entirely surprised: the same ambassador, His Excellency Tom Phillips, decided back in July of last year that, even though I am still a British citizen, a subject of the Crown, I am no longer fit to be represented by him, when His Excellency decided to ban "settlers" from British Embassy functions. That is to say, I no longer enjoy your royal protection.

You see, I live in Kfar Tapuach, a "settlement" in the "Israeli-occupied West Bank". To be more precise, I live in the heart of Samaria, just a few miles due south of Shechem. When I go running with my dog to the small hill a few dozen yards from my house, we overlook the city that the Arab occupiers call "Nablus". Because I chose to make my home here, where my ancestors lived millennia ago, I am no longer worthy of the words inscribed in my British passport: "Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all
those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary". Unless - we should now add - the bearer happens to be an Israelite living in the heartland of Biblical Israel.

Well, with all due respect to Your Majesty and to His Excellency the British Ambassador to Israel, I am not exactly devastated by the blow. I never really expected your diplomatic services or security forces to look after me or my people, whether in the "West Bank," or "Israel proper," or anywhere else in the world.

I know that Britain was the only country in the entire world to voluntarily declare war against Nazi Germany, and I am aware of Britain's magnificent, impressive war effort during those hideously dark years - a record that will forever stand to Britain's credit - but still, Britain's record concerning Jews during the Holocaust is somewhat dismal. I am too weary to detail, once again, the Royal Air Force's refusal to bomb the railway lines taking Jews to the Nazi death camps even while bombing more distant targets; Martin Gilbert, in Auschwitz and the Allies, has documented this sorry episode far better than I could.

Are you aware that the entire British Empire accepted fewer Jewish refugees than the port of Shanghai? And do you remember the restrictions that the government of your father, King George VI, placed on Jews from Reich-occupied countries finding refuge in Britain? Again, I know that Britain's record in that regard is far better than that of most other countries, but it's not as if there was very stiff competition.

And do you remember that your father's government fought bitterly against Jewish independence anywhere in the Land of Israel? Are you even aware that during and after the Holocaust, when more than ever we needed refuge, and at a time when the God of Israel granted your father the infinite privilege of ruling over the Holy Land, the Royal Navy patrolled these shores to ensure that the survivors of Hitler's accursed inferno would not be allowed home? Are you aware that when the British Army left Haifa, Jaffa, Tzfat (Safed), Lod (Lydda), Ramle, and other places in 1948, they turned the police fortresses with their armouries and weapons over to the Arab forces?

As I said, I am not particularly surprised that His Excellency the British Ambassador is not entirely enamoured of what we Jews are doing today in your former colony.

I look over Shechem - the city where, three and a half millennia ago, when your ancestors in England were still living in trees and painting their faces with woad, my great-great- great (however many times over) grandfather Jacob saw his sons, Shimon (Simeon) and Levi, declare war against the entire city of Shechem because their prince dared to rape their sister Dinah. I needn't go into the gory details here, because it's clearly written in my people's national history book - Genesis, Chapter 34. (In 1611, your ancestor, King James I, commissioned an English translation of my people's holy book, so Your Majesty should have no difficulty reading the text.)

Ever since that day, 3,500 years ago, we have known to rely on no one's protection but our own and God's. It is an interesting concept of time and of history: your roots in England go back to 1066 - almost a thousand years; a history of which to be justifiably proud. Yet when your history was just beginning, our roots were already buried more than 2,500 years deep in Shechem. In fact, the village in which I live, Kfar Tapuach, gets its first mention in the Bible; again, look it up in Joshua 12:17, 16:8, 17:7, and plenty of other places. You see, my people's historical and geographical record pinpointed the location of Kfar Tapuach, and delineated the borders of our Holy Land, and defined the borders of the territory of each of the twelve Tribes of Israel well
over 2,000 years before the Domesday Book was ever compiled.

Well, I suppose that I, and hundreds of thousands of other Jews here in our Holy Land, will just have to get used to the idea that you and your kingdom find the idea of Jews settling their own land most distasteful. Very well, so be it. But I have to tell you, unaccustomed as I am to taking so discourteous a tone to Your Majesty, so long as this policy continues you are no longer welcome in my house here in Kfar Tapuach.

Your government's ideology concerning the appropriate location of Jews in Israel affects me about as much as my proclamation affects you. We will continue to live where we want in Israel, we will continue to build, we will continue to settle our Land as and where we want. Your father's army, navy and air force were unable to prevent us from building our national home even when Britannia ruled the waves and controlled the skies around these parts. Today, the British Empire is but a distant memory and your influence here is even lower than Ehud Olmert's credibility.

I understand that you and your government are anxious to appease the Muslims. On reflection, that's probably a wise policy. As much as we Jews had a written history in Shechem back when your ancestors in England were still living in trees, we will still be living here, building our Land and bringing sacrifices and singing psalms to God in our Holy Temple, long after your descendants will be living as dhimmis in the Islamic Republic of Englandistan.

Adar 12, 5769 / 08 March 2009
~=~=~=~=~=~= ~=~=
IRA L. JACOBSON
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[hat tip Sanda Lam]
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Unfortunately, Mr Jacobson is too confident that British influence in Israel is low. It is too high. Just consider that a few weeks ago Tony Blair somehow persuaded Ehud Barak, minister of defense, to allow British agent Gerry Adams, who masquerades as an Irish anti-imperialist, into Gaza in order to meet with Hamas for a photo op meant to humanize and defumigate those Nazi murderers.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There have been quite a few encouraging archeological developments recently but I have not had the time to sort them out and report them. Will try soon although the usual political/diplomatic crisis keeps me busy.

BBC & Obama: Pretense and Imposture, Fakery, Phoniness, Propaganda & PsyWar

UPDATINGs 2-17 & 2-20-2008 see at bottom

Molière's Don Juan asks his valet, Sganarelle:
DJ: What? Do you take what I have just said for
the genuine article, and do you believe that
my mouth is in agreement with my heart? . . .
DJ: . . . if I said that I wanted to correct my
behavior and enter into an exemplary way of
life, it was a design that I had formed as a purely
politic measure, a useful stratagem, a necessary
facial expression. . .
DJ: . . . There are so many others like me. . .
who use the same mask in order to deceive the world!
DJ: . . . hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all
fashionable vices are taken for virtues.
The character of a decent man is the best of all
roles that one can play today, and the profession
of hypocrite has marvelous advantages. It's an
art of which the imposture is always respected. . .
nobody dares say anything against it.
[Molière, Dom Juan, Acte V, Scène II]

Parlant à Sganarelle, Dom Juan demande:
Dom Juan: Quoi? tu prends pour de bon argent
ce que je viens de dire, et tu crois que ma bouche
étoit d'accord avec mon coeur? . . . .
Dom Juan: . . . . si j'ai dit que je voulois corriger
ma conduite et me jeter dans un train de vie
exemplaire, c'est un dessein que j'ai formé par
pure politique, un stratagème utile. une grimace nécessaire. . .
Dom Juan: . . . . Il y en a tant d'autres comme
moi . . . qui se servent du même masque pour abuser le monde!
Dom Juan: . . . l'hypocrisie est un vice à la
mode, et tous les vices à la mode passent pour
vertus. Le personnage d'homme de bien est le
meilleur de tous les personnages qu'on puisse
jouer aujourd'hui, et la profession d'hypocrite
a de merveilleux avantages. C'est un art de qui
l'imposture est toujours respectée; . . . on n'ose
rien dire contre elle. [Molière, Dom Juan, Acte V, Scène II]

US Senator Barack Obama is now ahead in the contest for the Democratic Party nomination for candidate for US president in 2008. His campaign shows how theater, pretense, and fakery can go very far in American politics, especially if the so-called "news" media cooperate. The BBC has been in the fake news business for many many years. Their coverage of the execution --or assassination, if you like-- of `Imad Mughniyyah, one of the world's most skillful terrorist saboteurs, demonstrates their skills and techniques, and reveals their chief enemy. First Obama.

Senator Obama claims over and over to be against "Washington," different from "Washington," to be representing something "new." He shamelessly takes this line as if he himself were not part of "Washington," as if Zbigniew Brzezinski, a diamond-hearted, cold-blooded war planner, a Washington veteran from way back, were not one of his --Obama's-- advisors.

Jimmy Carter, widely considered by Americans who lived through his disastrous four years in the White House to be the worst president ever, also campaigned against "Washington" in 1976. Zbig B, among other things a professor at Columbia University, was Carter's national security advisor [or national insecurity advisor?]. Besides the shameful personal behavior of Carter and his brother, Billy, while Carter was president, his Administration perpetrated several disasters having worldwide impact. Israel, one of Zbig's pet hates [Zbig spent much of his childhood in Nazi Germany], was induced to give up the Sinai desert with its oil resources in exchange for a piece of paper called a "peace treaty." The Sinai was surrendered to Egypt, where the majority then and now was/is imbued with Muslim fundamentalist ideology [in the Muslim Brotherhood --Ikhwan al-Muslimin-- version] and where the government leaders, such as Sadat himself, were Nazi sympathizers. Sadat in fact conspired with German Nazi agents to help Nazi Germany win World War 2. He later blamed the foiling of the plot on Egyptian Jews, going on to claim that Germany had lost the war because of them [see Sadat's book, Revolt on the Nile, in French Revolte sur le Nil].

An equally great triumph for Zbig was helping Khomeini take over Iran, taking rule there away from the Shah who was accused of "human rights" abuses, which of course pale in the face of the Khomeini regime's human rights abuses. This means that ahmadinejad --the spiritual child of Khomeini, a probable participant in the 1979 hostage-taking of US embassy personnel in Teheran-- is also the result of Zbig's destructive policies. Then there was Zbig's buildup and training of Muslim fanatics in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. Hence, Zbig helped Osama bin Laden get started too.

On February 12, 2008, the day that Mughniyyah was removed from our suffering, Zbig B was supposed to be in Syria to "engage" with the bosses of the Syrian dictatorship. I don't know if the trip to Damascus came off after all, or if he had arrived before the execution of Mughniyyah, but left when the execution became known, since I haven't seen any press notices about it. Anyway, if Zbig did successfully "engage" with Damascus, perhaps he can consummate the engagement with a same sex marriage between himself and Bashar Assad.

Elliot Engel, a US congressman [Dem-NY], has been good enough to remember Zbig's role in Khomeini's rise:

Mr. Engel yesterday said he was not a particular admirer of Mr. Brzezinski's, though he praised his intelligence. He said the former Carter administration official addressed Democratic lawmakers last month at a retreat at Williamsburg, Va., on America's policy toward Iran. "I remember thinking, 'Why are we listening to him?' He was the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter 30 years ago. He proceeded to talk to us about Iran, and I said, 'Let me see, didn't the ayatollahs come to power, didn't we have this problem when you were in the White House?'" [New York Sun, 2-12-2008]

Another of Obama's advisors is Samantha Power. She's a prof at Harvard who specializes in "human rights." As we know "human rights" means excessive rights for some [for example Arabs in general and palestinian Arabs in particular], including the right to abuse the rights of others [such as Jews]. Samantha indicated a few years ago that she believed in the Jenin Massacre Myth propagated by arafat, sa'eb erikat, and the rest of the PLO, PA gang. I'm not sure that she still believes in that hoax but I'm sure that she still believes that Jews don't have rights, such as the right to life, especially if they are too Jewish [that is, Zionist]. As noted, "human rights" as a political tool and pretext was used by Zbig during the Carter administration against the Shah. So Barack Obama, far from representing something new, in fact represents something old, ugly, and grotesque, the misuse of humanitarian rhetoric for inhumane and immoral purposes.
- - - - - - - -

Now, how did the BBC, the world's premiere psywar propaganda purveyor, treat the execution of mass murderer `Imad Mughniyyah??? The BBC asserted that Jerusalem and Washington were happy over the execution, as if no else had reason to be happy about it --not France, not Argentina, not Lebanon. The BBC did not mention the slaughter of 58 French paratroopers in Beirut in 1983, in a bombing perpetrated by Hizbullah, at that time called The Party of God. The BBC did mention the bombings of the Israel embassy and a "Jewish center" in Buenos Aires. Apparently, the BBC did not want to properly call the AMIA a Jewish community and cultural center. Calling it a cultural center might get people to think that Jews have a culture or that they are a community or people. Though the bombings in Argentina were mentioned, the BBC did not show film of the bombed buildings or of victims, nor did the BBC give numbers of victims, as France24 did, for instance. Nor did the BBC mention the likelihood that Mughniyyah was involved in planning the truck bomb murder of Rafiq Hariri in Beirut on 14 February 2005, or any of the other murders of anti-Syrian politicians and journalists generally believed to have been perpetrated by Syria in Lebanon since the attempted murder of Marwan Hamadi in late 2004.

The stress of the story was on Mughniyyah's great talents as a terrorist saboteur --thus, trying to depict him as a hero-- and on alleged jubilation in Washington and Israel over the execution [yes, there was satisfaction in Israel over the killing]. The whole impression was that Mughniyyah was an enemy of Israel and US imperialism, that is, an "anti-imperialist," whereas no one else had a reason to celebrate [since his French and Lebanese victims were not mentioned]. To be sure, there were some facts in the BBC TV narrative. The BBC's main propaganda techniques here are that of the significant omission and the misplaced moral focus. Now, the BBC's imposture consists in the fact that it is an arm of the British Foreign Office, thus it itself is an imperialist agency [if we are permitted to call the UK imperialist]. The report can be considered a blend of truth and falsehood.

For the record, the AP report on execution of Mughniyyah follows the BBC line of falsification.

UPDATINGS 2-17-2008: Even a journalist protested the BBC's pro-terrorist editorializing. A journalist who had had a gun put to his head in Beirut by Hizbullah operatives in the 1980s, while his partner journalist was kidnapped, objected to the BBC's calling both Mughniyyah and Rafiq Hariri "great national heroes" in the same sentence.-- 2-20-2008 more on Zbig & Obama.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Coming: Peace follies, propaganda, psywar, Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, the rest of the Land of Israel, etc.