Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda

By Gideon Levy | 01.28.2010 | Haaretz
 

Zionists and government officials conjure a surreal world of spin, lies and propaganda. It makes one wonder if reality exists at all in this cruel and beautiful land...

Israel’s bigwigs attacked at dawn on a wide front. The president in Germany, the prime minister with a giant entourage in Poland, the foreign minister in Hungary, his deputy in Slovakia, the culture minister in France, the information minister at the United Nations, and even the Likud party’s Druze Knesset member, Ayoob Kara, in Italy. They were all out there to make florid speeches about the Holocaust.

Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and an Israeli public relations drive like this hasn’t been seen for ages. The timing of the unusual effort - never have so many ministers deployed across the globe - is not coincidental: When the world is talking Goldstone, we talk Holocaust, as if out to blur the impression. When the world talks occupation, we’ll talk Iran as if we wanted them to forget.

It won’t help much. International Holocaust Remembrance Day has passed, the speeches will soon be forgotten, and the depressing everyday reality will remain. Israel will not come out looking good, even after the PR campaign.

On the eve of his departure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Yad Vashem. “There is evil in the world,” he said. “Evil must be stamped out at the beginning.” Some people are “trying to deny the truth.” Lofty words, said by the same person who only the day before, not quite in the same breath, uttered very different words, words of true evil, evil that should be extinguished at the start, evil that Israel is trying to hide.

Netanyahu spoke of a new “migration policy,” one that is evil through and through. He malevolently lumped together migrant workers and wretched refugees - warning that they all endanger Israel, lower our wages, harm our security, make us into a third-world country and bring in drugs. He zealously supported our racist interior minister, Eli Yishai, who has spoken of the migrants as the spreaders of diseases such as hepatitis, tuberculosis, AIDS and God knows what else.

No Holocaust speech will erase these words of incitement and slander against migrants. No remembrance speech will obliterate the xenophobia that has reared its head in Israel, not only on the extreme right, as in Europe, but throughout government.

We have a prime minister who speaks about evil but is building a fence to prevent war refugees from knocking at Israel’s door. A prime minister who speaks about evil but shares the crime of the Gaza blockade, now in its fourth year, leaving 1.5 million people in disgraceful conditions. A prime minister in whose country settlers perpetrate pogroms against innocent Palestinians under the slogan “price tag,” which also has horrific historical connotations, but against whom the state does virtually nothing.

This is the prime minister of a state that arrests hundreds of left-wing protesters against the injustices of the occupation and the war in Gaza, while time grants mass pardons to the right-wingers who demonstrated against the disengagement. In his speech yesterday, Netanyahu’s equating Nazi Germany with fundamentalist Iran was no more than cheap propaganda. Talk about “degrading the Holocaust.” Iran isn’t Germany, Ahmedinejad isn’t Hitler and equating them is no less spurious than equating Israeli soldiers with Nazis.

The Holocaust must not be forgotten, and there is no need to compare it with anything. Israel must take part in the efforts to keep its memory alive, but in doing so it must show up with clean hands, clean of evil of their own doing. And it must not arouse suspicion that it is cynically using the memory of the Holocaust to obliterate and blur other things. Regrettably, this is not the case.

How beautiful it would have been if on this international day of remembrance Israel had taken the time to examine itself, look inward and ask, for example, how it is that anti-Semitism has reared its head in the world precisely in the past year, the year after we dropped white-phosphorous bombs on Gaza. How beautiful it would have been if on this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu had declared a new policy for integrating refugees instead of expulsion, or lifted the Gaza blockade.

A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it.

Ending Unlawful Wars

By Adel – PeaceMaker
February 12, 2010

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.

We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the world. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

The Uprising! from PuppetGov on Vimeo.

All human beings are equal in value. God gave all human beings rights that no other person or group can remove. Inherent rights for all human beings include the right to not be killed, the right to political and civil freedom, and the right to do what one chooses as long as no harm is done to others. The purpose of government is to protect the above rights; no more no less.

Humanitarian Imperialism

By Adel – PeaceMaker
February 10, 2010

There is evidence that the United States found oil in Haiti decades ago and due to the geopolitical circumstances and big business interests of that era made the decision to keep Haitian oil in reserve for when Middle Eastern oil dries up.

Leaving aside the relevant questions of how well in advance the US knew the earthquake was about to occur or was it a HAARP operation carried out by the US, and what Pentagon plans were being laid before January 12, another issue emerges around the events in Haiti that might help explain the bizarre behavior to date of the major ‘rescue’ players – the United States, France and Canada. Haiti happens to lie in a zone that, due to the unusual geographical intersection of its three tectonic plates, might well be straddling one of the world’s largest unexplored zones of oil and gas, as well as of valuable rare strategic minerals.

In 2005, a year after the Bush-Cheney Administration deposed the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Baptiste Aristide, a team of geologists from the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas began mapping geological data of the Caribbean Basins. Directed by Dr. Paul Mann, it is called “Caribbean Basins, Tectonics and Hydrocarbons.” It is all about determining the potential for hydrocarbons—oil and gas.

Notably, the sponsors of the multi-million dollar research project under Mann are the world’s largest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, the Anglo-Dutch Shell and BHP Billiton. Given the immense, existing oil production off Mexico, Louisiana, and the entire Caribbean, as well as its proximity to the United States – not to mention the US focus on its own energy security – it is surprising that the region had not been mapped earlier. Now it emerges that major oil companies were at least generally aware of the huge oil potential of the region long ago, but apparently decided to keep it quiet.

Evidence suggests the US Administration may well have more in mind than just earthquake relief for Haiti and the Haitian people. In October 2008 a consortium of oil companies led by Spain’s Repsol, together with Cuba's state oil company, Cubapetroleo, announced discovery of one of the world’s largest oilfields in the deep water off Cuba. It is what oil geologists call a ‘Super-giant’ field. Estimates are that the Cuban field contains as much as 20 billion barrels of oil, making it the twelfth Super-giant oilfield discovered since 1996. The discovery also likely makes Cuba a new high-priority target for Pentagon destabilization and other nasty operations.

The remarkable geography of Haiti and Cuba and the discovery of world-class oil reserves in the waters off Cuba lend credibility to accounts of major oil discoveries in several parts of Haitian territory. It also could explain why two Bush Presidents and now special UN Haiti Envoy Bill Clinton have made Haiti such a priority. As well, it could explain why Washington and its NGOs moved so quickly to remove-- twice-- the democratically elected President Aristide, whose economic program for Haiti included, among other items, proposals for developing Haitian natural resources for the benefit of the Haitian people.

In March 2004, a Haitian writer, Dr. Georges Michel, published online an article titled ‘Oil in Haiti.’ In it, Michel wrote,

…[I]t has been no secret that deep in the earthy bowels of the two states that share the island of Haiti and the surrounding waters that there are significant, still untapped deposits of oil. One knows not why they are still untapped. Since the early twentieth century, the physical and political map of the island of Haiti, erected in 1908 by Messrs. Alexander Poujol and Henry Thomasset, reported a major oil reservoir in Haiti near the source of the Rio Todo El Mondo, Tributary Right Artibonite River, better known today as the River Thomonde.

Then in 2010 the financial news site Bloomberg News carried the following:

The Jan. 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies that included the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, he said Monday in a telephone interview. ‘A geologist, callous as it may seem, tracing that fault zone from Port-au-Prince to the border looking for gas and oil seeps, may find a structure that hasn't been drilled,’ said Pierce, exploration manager at Zion Oil & Gas Inc., a Dallas-based company that's drilling in Israel.

In an interview with a Santo Domingo online paper, Leopoldo Espaillat Nanita, former head of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (REFIDOMSA) stated, “There is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people.” Haiti’s minerals include gold, the valuable strategic metal iridium and oil, apparently lots of it.

When Aristide was President -- up until his US-backed ouster during the Bush era in 2004 -- he had developed and published in book form his national development plans. The publication of the plan sparked a national debate over Haitian radio and in the media about the future of the country. Aristide’s plan was to implement a public-private partnership to ensure that the development of Haiti’s oil, gold and other valuable resources would benefit the national economy and the broader population, and not merely the five Haitian oligarchic families and their US backers, the so-called Chimeres or gangsters.

Since the ouster of Aristide in 2004, Haiti has been an occupied country, with a dubiously-elected President, Rene Preval, a controversial follower of IMF privatization mandates and reportedly tied to the Chimeres or Haitian oligarchs who backed the removal of Aristide. Notably, the US State Department refuses to permit the return of Aristide from South African exile.

Now, in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 12, the United States military has taken control of Haiti’s four airports and presently has some 20,000 troops in the country. Journalists and international aid organizations have accused the US military of being more concerned with imposing military control, which it prefers to call “security,” than with bringing urgently needed water, food and medicine from the airport sites to the population.

According to Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò') of the Haitian Lawyers’ Leadership Network, under the guise of emergency relief work, the US, France and Canada are engaged in a balkanization of the island for future mineral control.

In the age of humanitarian imperialism, globalization, financial colonialism and neocolonial-violence obscured behind forced assimilation and cultural imperialism, what exactly the major ‘rescue’ players go shopping in Haiti for: to plunder Haiti’s natural resources and the exploitation of the Haitian people. It’s all hidden, of course, behind the mask of being good and noble humanitarians.

Myths of the Just Wars

By Adel – PeaceMaker
February 4, 2010

Howard Zinn:
Myths of the Good Wars...

Myth of a benevolent America...

Myth of benevolent Western Civilization...

Myth of a good government...

The first and greatest heresy in the Christian faith occurred in the third century when Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as Augustine or St. Austin penned the "Just War Theory" which gave the church's OK to violence perpetuated by the empire and our problems stem from our acceptance of this “mythical system”.

On December 10, 2009, in Oslo, Norway, President Obama espoused the first heresy of Christianity in his Nobel Peace Prize speech when he cited the concept of a "just war" furthering the fallacy "that war is justified”.

The late Historian, Author, Playwright: Howard Zinn Sponsored by Cape Codders for

Peace and Justice Filmed by Paul Hubbard at the Wellfleet Public Library on 9-13-09.

There also is a MYTH of western democracies, which make more wars and creates more elite power concentration within societies. Everywhere the unjust governmental power increases, expands more and more everyday, and so is the level of people voluntary obedience. If you call this trend democracy, be my guest. I suspect that we have been living in a myth of democracy fable up till now… It's slavery in disguise.

In Oslo, President Obama was mindful of Martin Luther King's Nobel speech, but he made no mention of what his peer stated regarding Vietnam, "The true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, is when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition."

War is never necessary, but is an expression of the violence within an individual's heart that inhabits a body with a mind that has failed to evolve and is thus blind to The Divine that indwells all beings and is within all of creation.

For decades, the military built a sense of solidarity out of a singular purpose, the Cold War struggle between free markets and state-planned economies – the shining city on a hill versus the evil empire… Communism… the dark alternative should we fail to unite. The end of the Cold War deprived militant evangelicals of that clarity [and] the emergence of “radical Islam” [became] the object of a new “Cold War."

The roots of American evangelism sprang from the original altar call for Christians to stand up against slavery. What has been passing for Christianity in our military today is the antithesis of what Jesus was all about.

"Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent." ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

In his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" King noted:

Too long has The Peace Process been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. We must come to see that justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever and if repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives in the world can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

…its lack of moral legitimacy

Must-Read

An important story that is not being covered in the American press: Haaretz covers the delegitimization story, Israel’s mounting isolation in the world community. This is called honest reporting.

World isn't buying Israel's explanations anymore

By Aluf Benn

"Your situation isn't good," said a high-ranking European diplomat recently. "No one believes Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and we don't want any connection with [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman. Only a dramatic and surprising diplomatic move, like [former prime minister] Ariel Sharon's disengagement, will change the impression."

A few hours later, Time magazine published an interview with U.S. President Barack Obama, in which he expressed disappointment with Israel's unwillingness to make "bold gestures" toward the Palestinians.

In a speech at a conference not long ago, an Israeli diplomat serving in a European capital touted Israel's hoary PR line, distinguishing between "the only democracy in the Middle East" and its autocratic Arab neighbors. "We share common values," the Israeli told the Europeans. To his surprise, a member of the audience stood up and replied to him: "What common values? We have nothing in common with you."

In diplomatic conversations, Europeans are critical of Israel because of the Gaza blockade, the construction in the Jewish settlements, the home demolitions in East Jerusalem, the pervasive loathing of the right-wing government and even the social gaps and the way Israel is moving away from the European welfare-state model.

The Netanyahu-Lieberman government is nearly always described as "hard-line" in the foreign media. This is not entirely fair: The government of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni went to war in Lebanon and Gaza and built thousands of apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement blocs - many more than did Netanyahu, who has refrained from employing military force and has declared a 10-month freeze on settlement construction. But they liked the Kadima government because Olmert and Livni made the right noises about their desire for peace and a final status agreement, whereas they don't believe Netanyahu when he talks about "two states for two peoples." The fact that Olmert and Livni achieved nothing in the negotiations makes no difference. It's the intentions that count.

Netanyahu and his aides have answers to the accusations against Israel. The blame for the Gaza blockade lies squarely with the Palestinians, who chose Hamas to reign over them and kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. "You are worrying about the humanitarian rights of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. You should be worrying about one Israeli who is being held there," Netanyahu's people tell UN representatives.

In East Jerusalem, the government is hiding behind Mayor Nir Barkat and the planning and construction institutions, which are approving building plans for Jews and home demolitions for Palestinians. And for the diplomatic stagnation, it is blaming Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is refusing to renew the talks.

There is one little problem: The world isn't buying Israel's explanations and it isn't prepared to condemn Palestinian obduracy. Obama has split the blame for the stagnation between the two sides and has also taken some of it upon himself ("We raised expectations").

American envoy George Mitchell's appeal to the members of the Quartet that they urge Abbas to return to talks, has gone unanswered. This week he completed another frustrating visit to the region, with zero results.

Obama's approach - to "park" the diplomatic process for lack of achievements and to concentrate on domestic issues - has not surprised Netanyahu. Three months ago, a senior Israeli official said the Obama administration would probably put off the Israeli-Palestinian problem to his second term, explaining: "Now they're weak, they have unemployment and the economic crisis, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and they aren't emerging from that. They don't have the strength to complete an agreement. In the meantime, the maintenance will continue."

U.S. officials are hoping talks will be renewed within six months. The main thing is that there be some negotiations. They have no expectations of more than that.

Disturbing scenario

The Palestinian Authority is conducting a campaign to isolate Israel, based on the Goldstone report and the hatred for the Netanyahu government. Political scientists Shaul Mishal and Doron Mazza are calling it "the white intifada," which is aimed at enlisting international support for a unilateral declaration of independence in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. In a document they distributed last week, they warn of Israeli complaisance and present a disturbing scenario: The Palestinians declare independence, and Israel refuses to recognize it and is faced with a boycott. Regardless of whether it yields or reacts with force, Israel cannot win, and will also lose control of the process. Therefore the two scholars recommend a preemptive diplomatic move.

Diplomatic isolation can be costly. Former Foreign Ministry director general Gideon Rafael wrote in his memoirs that in the summer of 1973, he felt that the diplomatic stagnation, which was perceived as something taken for granted, and perhaps even desirable, was liable to become "a death trap."

Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat cut Israel off from its friends in the Third World, proposed a peace initiative to the Americans and was rejected. He then raised the demand for the return of the Sinai Peninsula in the UN Security Council and came up against an American veto.

In his book, "Destination Peace: Three decades of Israeli Foreign Policy, a Personal Memoir" (published in English by Littlehampton Book Services, 1981), Rafael wrote that Israel rejoiced in the veto and did not realize that closing the diplomatic door left Egypt with only one option - war.

In the coming weeks Israel apparently will request an American veto in the Security Council again, in order to bury the Goldstone report. Netanyahu is planning a fourth meeting with Obama, concerning the nuclear security conference in Washington on April 12 and perhaps even before then. The agenda will center on Iran - or "the new Amalek," as Netanyahu called it in Auschwitz on Wednesday. The question is whether alongside his demand that Obama take action against Iran, Netanyahu will also tell him that in exchange, Israel will take some sort of initiative vis-a-vis the Palestinians. This would be in an attempt to persuade the world to believe him and ameliorate Israel's increasing diplomatic isolation.

Confessions

By Adel – PeaceMaker
February 1, 2010

Confessions of Israeli and Zionist leaders makes very clear why the conflict started in Palestine over 60 years ago.

Over 700,000 Palestinians (more than half of the population at the time) were expelled in 1948, over 600 towns and villages were ethnically cleansed, and thousands were killed and maimed.

...the crimes continue to this day and so does the unjustified condoning attitude of the so called "civilized" governments of the world.

Below are some other quotes from influential Zionists and Israeli leaders that illustrate that Israel is a nation which was born in, expanded by and is maintained only by brutal and systematic policies of discrimination and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab people since before 1948:

"…spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried away discreetly and circumspectly." -- Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

"We must expel Arabs and take their places." -- David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

"It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire." Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense and Foreign Minister), on February 12 1952. Radio Israel.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to" -- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969

"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...." -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.

"We Jews, we are the destroyers and will remain the destroyers. Nothing you can do will meet our demands and needs. We will forever destroy because we want a world of our own." -- Maurice Samuels (p.155) wrote in his book, You Gentiles.

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." -- Rabbi Yaacov Perrin