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Yahweh and Ethnic Cleansing
The Zionization of
the American Media by Edward Said
Confronting the Bible'sEthnic Cleansing
In Palestine
12
February, 2002
Orthodox
Jews Mass Protest Against the State of
Israel
Germany
and the Jews The Role of the Jews in WWI and WWII speech by Benjamin Freedman
The Thirteenth Tribe
by Arthur
Koestler. Random
House, 1976. 256 pp. Reviewed by Grace Halsell
Israel Can't
Hide From Its History Forever
by Greg Felton
THE NEW COMPLAINT OF
PORTNOY By Israel Shamir
March 18, 2001
Introduction
of Victor Ostrovsky and Comments on the USS Liberty by Republican Paul
N. McCloskey
After
19 years, The Truth at Last? By Robert Fisk The Independent
Gandhi
on "The Jews," November 26, 1938:
The
Jewish Laundry of Drug Money
[The material that follows
is taken from the December, 2000, issue of The Link, which is published by
Americans for Middle East Understanding. It may be reprinted in part or in full
without prior permission, but those who do so should send a copy of the
extracted material to: AMEU, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 245, New York, NY
10115-0245.]
About This Issue
Is Yahweh the Great Ethnic-Cleanser? Did He not instruct the Israelites to rid
their Promised Land of its indigenous people?
Few biblical scholars want to wrestle with these questions. Rev. Michael Prior
needs to wrestle with them. He's been to today's Holy Land and has seen today's
variation on biblically sanctioned genocide.
Dr. Prior is Professor of Biblical Studies in the University of Surrey, England,
and visiting professor in Bethlehem University, Palestine. He is a biblical
scholar and author of "Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral
Inquiry" and "The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique."
John F. Mahoney
Executive Director
Confronting the Bible's
Ethnic Cleansing
In Palestine
BY MICHAEL PRIOR, C.M.
It is mid-October 2000; to
date, at least 98 Palestinians and 7 Jews have been killed, and over 3,000,
mostly Palestinians, injured in the Holy Land's most recent un-holiness. That's
the math of it.
It is, however, the morality of it that has engaged me over the past quarter of
a century.
I would have been spared some pain had I not undertaken significant portions of
my postgraduate biblical studies in the land of the Bible. And although the
focus of my engagement was "the biblical past," I could not avoid the
modern social context of the region. As a result, my studying the Bible in the
Land of the Bible provoked perspectives that scarcely would have arisen
elsewhere.
For me, as a boy and young man, politics began and ended in Ireland, an Ireland
obsessed with England. It was much later that I recognized that the history I
absorbed so readily in school was one fabricated by the nationalist
historiographers of a newly independent Ireland, who refracted the totality of
its history through the lens of 19th-century European nationalisms. Although my
Catholic culture also cherished Saint Patrick and the saints and scholars after
him, the real heroes of Ireland's history were those who challenged British
colonialism in Ireland. I had no interest in the politics of any other region -
except that I knew that Communism, wherever, was wrong. Anyhow, the priesthood
beckoned.
My seminary courses on the Old Testament first sensitized me to the social and
political context of theological reflection. We inquired into the real-life
situations of the prophets, and considered the contexts of the Wisdom
Literature. Beyond the narratives of Genesis 1-11 and Exodus, however, I do not
recall much engagement with the Torah. The atrocities recorded in the Book of
Joshua made no particular impression on me. The monarchy period got a generous
airing, noting the link between religious perspectives and changing political
circumstances. But just as I was not sensitive at that stage to the fact that
Irish nationalist historiography had imposed a rigid nationalist framework on
everything that preceded the advent of interest in the nation state, it never
crossed my mind that the biblical narrative also might be a fabrication of a
past, reflecting the distinctive perspective of its later authors.
Prior to the 5-10 June 1967 war, I had no particular interest in the State of
Israel, other than an admiration for Jews having constructed a nation state and
restored a national language. In addition to stimulating my first curiosity in
the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israel's conquest of the West Bank, the Golan
Heights, the Gaza Strip and Sinai brought me "face to face," via TV,
with wider, international political realities. The startling, speedy, and
comprehensive victory of diminutive Israel over its rapacious Arab predators
produced surges of delight in me. And I had no reason to question the
mellifluous mendacity of Abba Eban at the United Nations, delivered in that
urbanity and self-assurance characteristic of Western diplomats, however
fraudulent, claiming that Israel was an innocent victim of Egyptian aggression.
Later that summer in London, I was intrigued by billboards in Golders Green,
with quotations from the Hebrew prophets, assuring readers that those who
trusted in biblical prophecy could not be surprised by Israel's victory. Up to
then, my understanding was that biblical prophecy related to the period of the
prophets, and was not about predicting the future. The prophets were
"forth-tellers" for God, rather than foretellers of future events. I
was intrigued that others thought differently.
I was to learn later, in the 1980s and 1990s, that the 1967 war inaugurated a
new phase in the Zionist conquest of Mandated Palestine, one which brought
theological assertions and biblical interpretations to the very heart of the
ideology that propelled the Israeli conquest and set the pattern for Jewish
settlement. After two more years of theology, ordination, and three years of
postgraduate biblical studies, I made my first visit to Israel-Palestine at
Easter 1972, with a party of postgraduate students from the Pontifical Biblical
Institute in Rome.
Seeing and Believing
The visit offered the first challenge to my favorable predisposition toward
Israel. I was disturbed by the ubiquitous signs of the oppression of the Arabs,
whom later I learned to call Palestinians. I was witnessing some kind of
"institutionalized oppression" - I cannot recall whether 'apartheid'
was part of my vocabulary at the time. The experience must have been profound
since, when the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973, my support for Israel
did not match my enthusiasm of 1967. I had no particular interest in the area
for the remainder of the 1970s, but I recall watching on TV the visit of Egypt's
President Sadat to the Israeli Knesset in November 1977, an initiative which
would culminate in a formal peace agreement in Camp David in 1979. Things
changed for me in the 1980s.
In 1981 I went with a party from my university to visit Bir Zeit University in
the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Because the campus was closed by the military
just before our arrival, carefully planned programs had to yield to Palestinian
"ad-hocery." Bir Zeit put a bus at our disposal, and equal numbers of
its and our students constituted a university on wheels. I was profoundly
shocked when I began to see from the inside the reality of land expropriation
and the on-going Jewish settlement of the West Bank. I began to question the
prevailing view that the Israeli occupation was for security reasons, but even
with such obvious evidence I could not bring myself to abandon it.
I spent my 1983-84 sabbatical year at Jerusalem's École Biblique researching
the Pauline Epistles. Again, the day-to-day life in Jerusalem sharpened my
sensitivities. I was beginning to suspect that the Israeli occupation was not
after all for security reasons, but was an expansion toward the achievement of
"Greater Israel," which, I was to learn later, was the goal of even
mainstream Zionism.
One incident in particular alerted me to the religious dimension of the
conflict. On a spring morning in 1984, the Voice of Israel radio reported that
during the night a Jewish terrorist group had been caught attempting to blow up
the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Haram al-Sharif (the Temple
Mount), only a few hundred meters south of the École. Subsequently the
newspapers published a picture of one of those convicted of the offence, wearing
the typical dress of the religious settler movement Gush Emunim. He had the Book
of Psalms in his hand as the judge read out the verdict. That an attempted act
of such enormous international and inter-faith significance sprang from
religious fervor shocked me. Settler Jews performed other acts of terror during
that year, and the name of the overtly racist Rabbi Meir Kahane was seldom off
the headlines.
I can date to that period also voicing my first displeasure at my perception
that the land traditions of the Bible appeared to mandate the genocide of the
indigenes of '"Canaan." At the end of his public lecture in Tantur, I
suggested to Marc Ellis, a young Jewish theologian who was developing a Jewish
Theology of Liberation with strong dependence on the Hebrew prophets, that it
would be no more difficult to construct a Theology of Oppression on the basis of
other biblical traditions, especially those dealing with Israelite origins that
demanded the destruction of other peoples.
Following my sabbatical in 1984, I returned to London where, later that year, a
colleague told me of the plea of Abuna Elias Chacour of Ibillin to pilgrims from
the West to meet the Christian communities, "the Living Stones" of the
land, and not be satisfied with the "dead stones" of archaeological
sites. Soon a group of interested people in London established the ecumenical
trust, Living Stones, which promotes links between Christians in Britain and the
Holy Land, and appointed me Chairman. In 1985 I co-led a study tour to Israel
and the Occupied Territories, and led a group of priests on a "Retreat
through Pilgrimage" in 1987 and made other visits in 1990 and 1991.
In 1991, I participated in an International Peace Walk from Jerusalem to Amman,
and although I did not reach the destination, I gained the acquaintance of
several groups of Israeli soldiers and police, enjoyed detention twice, and
faced into what appeared to be an inevitable spell in prison. Officially, my
crime, in the first instance, was to have trespassed into "a closed
military zone" on the outskirts of Ramallah, and in the second, to have
refused to leave a similarly designated area on the way from Taybeh to Jericho.
The real purpose of such designations was to halt the silent walk of some 30
"peaceniks" from about 15 countries. Our presence was having a
decidedly energizing effect on the Palestinians, who did not dare protest so
forthrightly.
A few hours into walking silently over the Judean hills, before beginning our
descent into the Jordan Valley, we were informed by the military that we were
inside "a military zone." While our negotiators were engaging the
Commanding Officer of the district, we sat on the side of the road and sang
peace songs. I opened with a rendition, in my bel canto Irish-accented Hebrew,
of Psalm 119 (118). My singing of this Passover song of deliverance had an
obviously disturbing effect on the young soldiers "guarding" us.
Formal arrest and several hours' detention in Jericho followed. To the policeman
who informed me that I could make one phone call, I replied that I wished to
speak to the Pope. "I am sorry, it cannot be international." My
comportment during the day-long detention - insisting on the group being fed,
being polite but firm under interrogation, refusing to sign my 'statement' of
incrimination, etc.- left the police in no doubt about whom I considered to be
the criminals.
After a long, wearying day in detention in sun-baked Jericho, we were driven to
what we were assured would be a "prison." This was not good news. The
principal of my college would not be pleased to read: "Sorry I cannot be
there in time for class - am in prison in the Holy Land!" In the event, we
were brought to a police station in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, and even
having refused to sign another declaration, we were released. The peacewalk
experience demonstrated how police, defense forces and the noble discourse of
jurisprudence itself, designed to protect the vulnerable, can legitimize
oppression, something I had experienced already in London while I struggled for
the human rights of gypsies.
It took some time for my experiences to acquire an ideological framework.
Gradually I read more of the modern history of the region. In addition to
bringing a university group in 1992, I spent August in the Ècole Biblique, and
while there interviewed prominent Palestinians, including the Latin Patriarch of
Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Timotheos, the Anglican
Bishop Samir Kafity, Canon Naim Ateek, and the Vice-President of Bir Zeit
University, Dr. Gabi Baramki.
I made three visits in 1993, one at Easter to prepare the Cumberland Lodge
Conference on Christians in the Holy Land, one for study in August, and the
third to bring a group of students. Although my academic concentration in that
period was on the scene of Jesus in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4.16-30), my
growing unease about the link between biblical spirituality and oppression
stimulated me to examine the land traditions of the Bible, and so I began to
read the narrative systematically with that theme in mind.
Yahweh and Ethnic Cleansing
What struck me most about the biblical narrative was that the divine promise of
land was integrally linked with the mandate to exterminate the indigenous
peoples, and I had to wrestle with my perception that those traditions were
inherently oppressive and morally reprehensible. Even the Exodus narrative was
problematic. While it portrays Yahweh as having compassion on the misery of his
people, and as willing to deliver them from the Egyptians and bring them to a
land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3.7-8), that was only part of the
picture. Although the reading of Exodus 3, both in the Christian liturgy and in
the classical texts of liberation theologies, halts abruptly in the middle of
verse 8 at the description of the land as one "flowing with milk and
honey," the biblical text itself continues, "to the country of the
Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the
Jebusites." Manifestly, the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, had
no lack of indigenous peoples, and, according to the narrative, would soon flow
with blood:
When my angel goes in front of you, and brings you to the Amorites, the
Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I
blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, or worship them, or follow
their practices, but you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars in
pieces (Exodus 23.23-24).
Matters got worse in the narrative of the Book of Deuteronomy. After the King of
Heshbon refused passage to the Israelites, Yahweh gave him over to the
Israelites who captured and utterly destroyed all the cities, killing all the
men, women, and children (Deuteronomy 2.33-34). The fate of the King of Bashan
was no better (3.3). Yahweh's role was central:
When Yahweh your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and
occupy, and he clears away many nations before you - the Hittites, the
Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites...and
when Yahweh your God gives them over to you...you must utterly destroy
them...Show them no mercy...For you are a people holy to Yahweh your God; Yahweh
your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his
treasured possession (Deuteronomy 7.1-11; see also 9.1-5; 11.8-9, 23, 31-32).
And again, from the mouth of Moses:
But as for the towns of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving you as an
inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall
annihilate them-the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites,
the Hivites and the Jebusites-just as Yahweh your God has commanded, so that
they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their
gods, and you thus sin against Yahweh your God (Deuteronomy 20.16-18).
It was some shock to realize that the narrative presents "ethnic
cleansing" as not only legitimate, but as required by the deity. The book
ends with Moses's sight of the promised land before he dies (34.1-3). Although
Moses was unequalled in his deeds, he left a worthy successor, Joshua, who,
after Moses had lain his hands on him, was full of the spirit of wisdom
(34.4-12). So much for the preparation for entry into the Promised Land.
The first part of the Book of Joshua (chapters 2-12) describes the conquest of a
few key cities, and their fate in accordance with the laws of the Holy War. Even
when the Gibeonites were to be spared, the Israelite elders complained at the
lapse in fidelity to the mandate to destroy all the inhabitants of the land
(9.21-27). Joshua took Makkedah, utterly destroying every person in it (10.28).
A similar fate befell other cities (10.29-39): everything that breathed was
destroyed, as Yahweh commanded (10.40-43). Joshua utterly destroyed the
inhabitants of the cities of the north as well (11.1-23). Yahweh gave to Israel
all the land that he swore to their ancestors he would give them (21.43-45). The
legendary achievements of Yahweh through the agencies of Moses, Aaron, and
Joshua are kept before the Israelites even in their prayers: "You brought a
vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it" (Psalm 80.8;
see also Psalms 78.54-55; 105.44).
By modern standards of international law and human rights, what these biblical
narratives mandate are "war crimes" and "crimes against
humanity." While readers might seek refuge in the claim that the problem
lies with the predispositions of the modern reader, rather than with the text
itself, one could not escape so easily. One must acknowledge that much of the
Torah, and the Book of Deuteronomy in particular, contains menacing ideologies
and racist, xenophobic and militaristic tendencies. The implications of the
existence of dubious moral dispositions, presented as mandated by the divinity,
within a book which is canonized as Sacred Scripture, invited the most serious
investigation. Was there a way of reading the traditions which could rescue the
Bible from being a blunt instrument of oppression, and acquit God of the charge
of being the Great Ethnic-Cleanser?
In that August of 1994, the École library had just received a Festschrift
consisting of studies in Deuteronomy. In addition to articles covering the
customary source, historical-critical, and literary discussions, it contained
one by F.E. Deist, with the intriguing title, "The Dangers of
Deuteronomy," which discussed the role of that book in support of
apartheid.1 It dealt with the text from the perspective of its reception
history, especially within the ideology of an emerging Afrikaner nationalism.
During that month I also read A.G. Lamadrid's discussion of the role of the
Bible and Christian theology in the Iberian conquest of Latin America.2 The
problem, then, went beyond academic reflection on the interpretation of ancient
documents.
Somebody must have addressed the moral question before, I presumed. Back in
Jerusalem in August 1995, I realized that this was not the case. Even though
Gerhard von Rad lamented in 1943 that no thorough investigation of "the
land" had been made, no serious study of the topic was undertaken for
another 30 years. Even W.D. Davies acknowledged later that he had written his
seminal work "The Gospel and the Land" at the request of friends in
Jerusalem who, just before the war in 1967, had urged his support for the cause
of Israel. Moreover, he confessed that he wrote both his 1982 "The
Territorial Dimensions of Judaism" under the direct impact of that war, and
its 1991 updated version because of the mounting need to understand the theme in
the light of events in the Middle East, culminating in the Gulf War and its
aftermath. I was intrigued by the frankness with which Davies publicized his
hermeneutical key: "Here I have concentrated on what in my judgment must be
the beginning for an understanding of this conflict: the sympathetic attempt to
comprehend the Jewish tradition."3
While Davies considers "the land" from virtually every other
conceivable perspective, little attention is given to broadly moral and human
rights issues. In particular, he excludes from his concern, "What happens
when the understanding of the Promised Land in Judaism conflicts with the claims
of the traditions and occupancy of its other peoples?" He excused himself
by saying that to engage that issue would demand another volume, without
indicating his intention of embarking upon such an enterprise. I wondered
whether Davies would have been equally sanguine had white, Anglo-Saxon
Protestants, or even white Catholics of European provenance been among the
displaced people who paid the price for the prize of Zionism. Reflecting a
somewhat elastic moral sense, Davies, although perturbed by the aftermath of the
1967 conquest, took the establishment of the State of Israel in his stride.
Showing no concern for the foundational injustice done to the Palestinians in
1948, Davies wrote as if there were later a moral equivalence between the
dispossessed Palestinians and the dispossessing Zionists. The rights of the
rapist and the victim were finely balanced.
Walter Brueggemann's "The Land" brought me no further. While he saw
land as perhaps "the central theme" of biblical faith, he bypassed the
treatment to be meted out to the indigenous inhabitants, affirming, "What
is asked is not courage to destroy enemies, but courage to keep Torah,"
avoiding the fact that "keeping Torah" in this context demanded
accepting its xenophobic and destructive militarism. By 1994, however,
Brueggemann was less sanguine, noting that while the scholastic community had
provided "rich and suggestive studies on the 'land theme' in the
Bible...they characteristically stop before they get to the hard part,
contemporary issues of land in the Holy Land." 4
It was beginning to dawn on me that much biblical investigation - especially
that concentration on the past which is typical of the historical-critical
method - was quite indifferent to moral considerations. Indeed, it was becoming
clear that the discipline of biblical studies over the last hundred years
reflected the Euro-centric perspectives of virtually all Western historiography
and had contributed significantly to the oppression of native peoples. The
benevolent interpretation of biblical traditions which advocate atrocities and
war crimes had given solace to those bent on the exploitation of new lands at
the expense of native peoples. While the behavior of communities and nation
states is complex, and is never the result of one element of motivation, there
is abundant evidence that the Bible has been, and still is for some, the idea
that redeems the conquest of the earth. This was particularly true in the case
of the Arabs of Palestine, in whose country I had reached these conclusions as I
studied the Bible.
By the autumn of 1995 I was well into a book on the subject, and in November I
went to discuss with Sheffield Academic Press a draft MS on "The Bible and
Zionism." The editor, apprehensive at my concentration on Zionism,
persuaded me to use three case studies. The task ahead, then, would require
further immersion in the histories of Latin America, South Africa, and Israel,
as well as a more detailed study of the biblical narrative and its
interpretation in the hands of the biblical academy.
Having had my moral being sensitized by the biblical mandate to commit genocide,
I was amazed that scholars had a high esteem for the Book of Deuteronomy.
Indeed, commentators conventionally assess it to be a theological book par
excellence, and the focal point of the religious history of the Old Testament.
In the Nov. 14, 1995 Lattey Lecture in Cambridge University, Professor Norbert
Lohfink argued that it provides a model of an utopian society in which there
would be no poor.5 In my role as the formal proposer of a vote of thanks - I was
the chairperson of the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain - I
invited him to consider whether, in the light of that book's insistence on a
mandate to commit genocide, the utopian society would be possible only after the
invading Israelites had wiped out the indigenous inhabitants. The protocol of
the Lattey Lecture left the last word with me, and subsequently I was given a
second word, being invited to deliver the 1997 Lattey Lecture, for which I chose
the title, "A Land flowing with Milk, Honey, and People."6
O Little Bantustan of
Bethlehem
The final revision of my study on the relation between the Bible and colonialism
was undertaken in 1996-97 while I was Visiting Professor in Bethlehem University
and Scholar-in-Residence in Tantur Ecumenical Institute, Jerusalem. My context
was a persistent reminder of the degradation and oppression which colonizing
enterprises inflict on their indigenes. I also became more aware of the
collusion of Western scholarship in the enterprise.
Working against a background of bullet fire, and in the shadow of tanks, added a
certain intensity to my research. Several bullets landed on the flat roof of
Tantur on 25-26 September 1996. Two Palestinians, one a graduate of the
University, were killed in Bethlehem, and many more, Palestinians and Israeli
soldiers, were killed in the disturbances elsewhere in the West Bank. However,
with no bullets flying in Jerusalem on the 26th, I was able to deliver my
advertised public lecture in the Swedish Christian Study Center, entitled
"Does the God of the Bible sanction Ethnic Cleansing?" By mid-December
I was able to send the MS of "The Bible and Colonialism" to Sheffield
Academic Press.
I preached at the 1996 Christmas Midnight Mass in Bethlehem University, presided
over by Msgr. Montezemolo, the Holy See's Apostolic Delegate, a key player in
the signing of the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of
Israel on 30 December 1993. I reflected with the congregation that,
notwithstanding the Christmas rhetoric about God's Glory in the Highest Heaven
and Peace on Earth, the reality of Bethlehem brought one down to earth rather
quickly. I assured them that passing by the checkpoint between Bethlehem and
Jerusalem twice a day made me boil with anger at the humiliation which the
colonizing enterprise of Zionism had inflicted on the people of the region. I
suggested that the Christmas narratives portray the ordinary people as the
heroes and the rulers as the anti-heroes, as if assuring believers that the
mighty will be cast down, and that God is working for the oppressed today. I
would meet His Excellency again soon.
On 30 December, I listened to Msgr. Montezemolo lecture in Notre Dame on the
third anniversary of the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and Israel.
The audience was composed exclusively of expatriate Christians and Israeli Jews,
with not a Palestinian in sight.
Well into the question time, I violated the somewhat sycophantic atmosphere:
"I had expected that the Agreement would have given the Holy See some
leverage in putting pressure on Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, if only on
the matter of freedom to worship in Jerusalem - Palestinians have been forbidden
entry into even East Jerusalem, whether on Friday or Sunday, since March
1993."
His Excellency replied rhetorically, "Do you not think that the Holy See is
doing all it can?" At the reception afterwards, a certain Ambassador Gilboa,
one of the Israeli architects of the Agreement, berated me in a most aggressive
fashion for my question. Rather than assuming the posture of a culprit, I took
the attack to him on the matter of the Jews having "kicked out" the
Palestinians in 1948. "No, they were not kicked out," he, who was a
soldier at the time, insisted. "In fact helicop ters dropped leaflets on
the Arab towns, beseeching the inhabitants to stay put, etc."
I told him I did not believe him, and cited even the Israeli revisionist
historiographer, Benny Morris, whom he dismissed as a compulsive
attention-seeker. It was obvious all round the room that a not insignificant
altercation was taking place. In the hope of discouraging him from trying to
stifle the truth in the future, I assured him that he should have remained a
soldier, because he had the manners of a "corner-boy," and not what I
expected from a diplomat. I went home righteous.
Academic life rolled on. My 28 Feb. 1997 lecture on "The Bible and
Zionism" seemed to perplex several of the students of Bethlehem Bible
College. Most of the questions reflected a literalist understanding of the
Bible, and I struggled to convey the impression that there were forms of
discourse other than history.
Having visited the Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron as a gesture of
solidarity on 6 March, I returned home for the Tantur public lecture on
"The Future of Religious Zionism" by the Jewish philosopher, Professor
David Hartman. It was an eventful occasion. Hartman gave a dazzling exegesis on
the theme of covenant, from the Bible through the Rabbis, to Zionism. My journal
takes the matter up from the second half of his talk, devoted to questions:
I made the fourth intervention, to the effect that in being brought through the
stages of understanding of the covenant, from the Bible to Rabbinic Judaism, I
was enchanted, and much appreciative. However, I was shocked to hear Zionism
described as "the high point of covenantal spirituality." Zionism, as
I saw it, both in its rhetoric and in its practice, was not an ideology of
sharing, but one of displacing. I was shocked, therefore, that what others might
see as an example of 19th-century colonial plunder was being clothed in the
garment of spirituality.
Somewhat shaken, Professor Hartman thanked me for my question, and set about
putting the historical record straight. The real problem was that the Arabs had
not welcomed Jews back to their homeland. Moreover, the displacement of the
Arabs was never intended, but was forced on the Zionist leadership by the attack
of the Arab armies in 1948. Nevertheless, great developments in history
sometimes require initial destruction: consider how the USA had defeated
totalitarianism, although this was preceded by the displacement of the Indians.
On the following day, in the discussion time after my final session of teaching
on "Jesus the Liberator" in Tantur, one of the Continuing Education
students brought the discussion back to the previous day's deliberations. He was
very embarrassed by my attack on "that holy man."
There was a particularly lively exchange with several getting into the
discussion. A second student said that he was delighted with my question
yesterday and was sure that it represented the disquiet of many of the group. A
third responded enthusiastically to my liberation ethic, saying that it
disturbed him, but he had to cope with the disturbance. An American priest came
to me afterwards, saying how much he appreciated my courage in speaking
yesterday, and on a previous occasion, etc. His enthusiasm was not shared by
everyone. After the class, an advertising notice appeared on the board from the
overseer of the Scholar's Colloquium. It read, "Dr. Michael Prior presents
a largish paper, 'Zionism: from the Secular to the Sacred,' which is a chapter
from a book he is in the process of writing." The next paragraph read:
Zionism is a subject on which there are hot opinions - not least from the author
himself. Some have suggested to me that this disunity is a reason why we should
not discuss such matters at all. I believe the opposite: the quality of hot
opinions is best tested in a scholarly discussion, where they must be supported
by evidence and good argument. One can even learn something. Welcome!
The Swedish New Testament scholar, Bengt Holmberg, chaired the Colloquium.
The first scholar to respond to my paper, a U.S. Catholic veteran of the
Jewish-Christian dialogue, did so in a decidedly aggressive manner, accusing me
of disloyalty to the Church, etc.
The second was long in praise.
The third intimated that there was nothing new in the paper, and rambled on
about the Zionists' intentions to bring benefits to the indigenous population,
etc. Losing patience, I asked him to produce evidence for his claims, adding
that not only was there not such evidence, but the evidence there was showed
that the Zionist ideologues were virtually at one in their determination to rid
the land of Arabs.
A fourth scholar, a Dutch Protestant veteran of the Jewish-Christian dialogue,
chastised me for my audacity in addressing the question at all, insisting that I
should be silent, because I was an outsider and a Christian.
I rose to the challenge. Was I understanding him to say that, having seen the
distress of the Palestinian people for myself, I should now not comment on it?
Was he asking me to deny my experience, or merely to mute my critique? I assured
the Colloquium that as a biblical scholar, and an ongoing witness to what
transpired in the region, I considered it an obligation to protest what was
going on. Once again, the admiring remarks were made later, in private.
The proofs of "The Bible and Colonialism" arrived on Good Friday. I
got my first taste of teargas in the vicinity of Rachel's Tomb on my way to
Easter Sunday Mass at St. Catherine's in Bethlehem. On 3 April, I delivered the
Tantur public lecture, "The Moral Problem of the Bible's Land
Traditions,'" followed by questions, both appreciative and hostile.
Uniquely for the series, the lecture was not advertised in the Jerusalem Post.
In dealing with a trilogy of hostile questions I availed of the opportunity to
say that I considered Zionism to be one of the most pernicious ideologies of the
20th century, particularly evil because of its essential link with religious
values.
Stars from the West studded the sky over Bethlehem for the celebrations of
Tantur's 25th birthday (25-28 May 1997). Under the light of the plainly visible
Hale-Bopp comet, a frail Teddy Kollek was introduced at the opening ceremony as
though he were the founder of the Institute. A choir from the USA sang, one song
in Hebrew. Palestinian faces, not least that of Afif Safieh, the Palestinian
Delegate to the UK and the Holy See, looked decidedly out of joint throughout
the opening festivities. But the Palestinians were not altogether forgotten,
being thanked profusely for their work in the kitchen and around the grounds.
Moreover, for the lecture on "Christians of the Holy Land" which was
given on May 27, prominent Palestinians were invited to speak from the floor.
Although the lecture was billed to be presented by a distinguished expatriate
scholar "with local presenters," in fact the Palestinian savants had
been invited only to the audience floor. Having excused himself from dealing
with the political context, the lecturer delivered an urbane, accomplished
historical perspective.
The token Palestinians were invited to speak from the floor, first Naim Ateek,
then Mitri Raheb, and then Kevork Hintlian. After two rabbis had their say, also
from the floor, I was allowed to speak, wishing to make two points: that my
experience with the Palestinians had impressed upon me their unity, rather than
their diversity, and, secondly, that the Jewish-Christian dialogue had been
hijacked by a Zionist agenda. After one more sentence had escaped from my mouth
the Chair stopped me short. I had broken the Solemn Silence. This was the third
time that year I had been prevented from speaking in public. I paused, producing
a most uncomfortable silence, thanked him, and sat down.
Saturday 31 May, 1997 being the 28th anniversary of my ordination, I determined
to do something different. Since it was also the Feast of the Visitation, I
decided that I would go to Ein Karem, the traditional site of Mary's visit to
her cousin Elizabeth. But on the way, I would call at Jabal Abu Ghneim, the hill
opposite Tantur, which, despite UN condemnation, was being prepared for an
Israeli settlement. The teeth of the high-tech machinery had cut into the rock,
having chewed up thousands of trees. Joseph Conrad's phrase, "the
relentless progress of our race," kept coming at me.
On the way to Ein Karem, I visited Mount Herzl to see the grave of the founder
of Zionism. Knowing that I would also visit the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, I was
struck by the irony of the situation. Theodor Herzl was sure that Jews could
survive only in their own nation state. Nevertheless, he died a natural death in
Europe, and was re-interred in the new state in 1949, while Prime Minister
Rabin, born in Palestine, was gunned down by a Jewish religious zealot in what
was intended to be the sole haven for Jews.
Back in England
I returned to London in July 1997. By December, "The Bible and
Colonialism" and "Western Scholarship and the History of
Palestine" were hot off the press. In "The Bible and Colonialism"
I promised that I would discuss elsewhere the more theological aspects of
Zionism, and, while still in Jerusalem in 1997, I had laid out my plans for
writing the book I had really wanted to write some years earlier.
I submitted a draft MS to a distinguished publisher in November 1997, and even
though the anonymous reader found it to be "a brilliant book which must be
published," the press declined, because, I was informed orally, the press
had "a very strong Jewish list," and could not offend its Jewish
contributors and readers. While an American publishing company judged it to be
"a prodigious achievement of historical and theological investigation"
and "a very important work," it deemed that it would not really suit
its publishing program. Routledge "bit the bullet," publishing it
under the title "Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry."7
On the basis of his having read my "The Bible and Colonialism,"
Professor Heikki Räisänen of the University of Helsinki invited me to address
the most prestigious of the international biblical conferences, the Society of
Biblical Literature International Conference (Helsinki-Lahti, 16-22 July 1999)
on the subject, "The Bible and Zionism." The session at which I was
invited to speak dealt with '"Reception History and Moral Criticism of the
Bible," and I was preceded by Professors Robert Jewett (USA) and David
Clines (UK) on aspects of Paul and Job, respectively.
When my hour came, I invited biblical scholarship not to maintain an academic
detachment from significant engagement in contemporary issues. I noted that
"the view that the Bible provides the title-deed for the establishment of
the State of Israel and for its policies since 1948 is so pervasive even within
mainstream Christian theology and university biblical studies, that the very
attempt to raise the issue is sure to elicit opposition. The disfavor usually
took the form of personal abuse, and the intimidation of publishers."
In the light of what happened next I might have added that one is seldom honored
by having the substantive issues addressed in the usual way.
After I had delivered my 25-minute lecture the official respondent, who had my
paper a month in advance, said he would bypass the usual niceties ("A very
fine paper, etc."), and got down to his objections, which were so standard
as not to deserve my refutation. Instead I suggested to the Chair to open up the
discussion.
Some five Israelis in turn took up the challenge. "Jews have always longed
for the land." "They never intended displacing anyone." "The
land was empty - almost." "I was wrong historically: Herzl never
intended dislocating the Arabs."
I interrupted, quoting Herzl's 12 June 1895 diary entry - in the original German
for good measure - about his endeavor to expel the poor population, etc.
I was berated for having raised a '"political matter" in an academic
conference: "See what can happen when one abandons the historical critical
method!" Another Israeli professor began by saying, "I am very pleased
to have been here this morning," but added, "because I understand
better now how anti-Semitism can present itself as anti-Zionism, all under the
guise of academic scholarship." A cabal, including at least one Israeli and
a well-known scholar from Germany, clapped. The Chair had to restore order.
In the course of my "defense" I reiterated that it was the
displacement of another people that raised the moral problematic for me. I had
witnessed the effects of the oppression rather more than even most of the
audience. Having been given the last word, I professed that until Israelis
acknowledge their having displaced another people and make some reparation and
accommodation, there would be no future for the state.
In the course of the following day several who had attended expressed their
appreciation, albeit in private. A Finnish scholar congratulated me on having
raised a vital issue, adding, "The way you were received added sharpness to
your argument." A distinguished biblical scholar from Germany, who was very
distressed by my having raised the question, later pleaded that his people were
responsible for killing six million Jews.
The Importance of the Issue
I have learned that, distinctively in the case of Zionist colonisation, a
determined effort was made to rid the terrain altogether of the native
population, since their presence in any number would frustrate the grand design
of establishing a Jewish state. The necessity of removing the Arabs was
recognised from the beginning of the Zionist enterprise - and advocated by all
major Zionist ideologues from Theodor Herzl to Ehud Barak - and was meticulously
planned and executed in 1948 and 1967. In their determination to present an
unblemished record of the Zionist achievement, the fabricators of propagandistic
Zionist history are among the most accomplished practitioners of the strange
craft of source-doctoring, rewriting not only their history, but the documents
upon which such a history was based. The propagandistic intent was to hide
things said and done, and to bequeath to posterity only a sanitized version of
the past.
In any case, the argument for the compelling need of Jews to settle in a Jewish
state does not constitute a right to displace an indigenous population. And even
if it had never been intended from the start, which it most certainly was, the
moral problematic arises most acutely precisely from the fact that Zionism has
wreaked havoc on the indigenous population, and not a little inconvenience on
several surrounding states. Nor can the Shoah (Holocaust) be appealed to
credibly to justify the destruction of an innocent third party. It is a dubious
moral principle to regard the barbaric treatment of Jews by the Third Reich as
constituting a right to establish a Jewish state at the expense of an innocent
third party. Surely the victims of Auschwitz would not have approved.
My study of the Bible in the Land of the Bible brought me face to face with the
turbulence of Israel-Palestine and raised questions not only about the link
between biblical interpretation and colonial exploitation but about the nature
of the biblical narrative itself. An academic interest became a consuming moral
imperative.
Why should the State of Israel, any more than any other state, be such a
challenge to morality? The first reason, I suggest, derives from the general
moral question attendant upon the forcible displacement of an indigenous people
from its homeland. The second springs from the unique place that the land has in
the Sacred Scriptures of both Jews and Christians, and the significance attached
to it as the location of the state for Jews. In addition, there is the positive
assessment of the State of Israel on the part of the majority of religious Jews
of various categories, as well as in certain Christian ecclesial and theological
circles.
As a biblical scholar, I have been shocked to discover that the only plausible
validation for the displacement of the Palestinians derived from a naïve
interpretation of the Bible, and that in many Church and academic parties - and
not only the "fundamentalist" wing - biblical literalism swept away
any concerns deriving from considerations of morality. I contend that fidelity
to the literary genre of the biblical traditions and respect for the evidence
provided mainly by archaeological investigation demands a rejection of such
simplistic readings of the biblical narratives of land, and of the prophetic
oracles of restoration.
And to these academic perspectives, one must add one of faith, namely, that God
is fundamentally moral, and, for those espousing the Christian vision, loves all
his people, irrespective of race, etc.
Rather than relate the establishment of the State of Israel to the Shoah, I have
been led gradually to situate Zionism within the category of xenophobic
imperialism, so characteristic of the major European powers towards the end of
the 19th century. I consider the espousal of it by a majority of Jews world-wide
to mark the nadir of Jewish morality. Because I trust in a God before whom
tyranny ultimately dissolves, and because one learns something from history, I
have no doubt that a future generation of diaspora and Israeli Jews will
repudiate its presumptions, and repent for the injustices perpetrated on the
Palestinians by their fathers and grandfathers.
While I regret the descent of Judaism into the embrace of Zionism, there is
little I can do about it. However, the degree to which a thoroughly Zionised
Judaism infects the so-called Jewish-Christian dialogue - which I prefer to
designate "a monologue in two voices" - is a matter of grave concern.
I am perturbed that concurrence with a Zionist reading of Jewish history - that
Jews everywhere, and at all times, wanted to re-establish a nation state in
Palestine (with no concern for the indigenous population), etc.- is virtually a
component of the credo of the dialogue. In that fabricated scenario, the
planned, and systematically executed dislocation of the Palestinian population,
far from incurring the wrath of post-colonial liberalism, becomes an object of
honor, and even religious significance. While most Jews world-wide - there are
notable exceptions-allow themselves to be deluded by such perspectives, I see no
reason why Christians should.
God the Ethnic Cleanser?
Often I am asked: How do you as a Catholic priest and biblical scholar explain
to an ordinary believer the Yahweh-sanctioned ethnic-cleansing mandated in some
of the narrative of the Old Testament? Is not this also the Word of God? Such
questions have forced themselves on me in a particular way as a result of my
contact with the Holy Land. Let me indicate some of my perspectives. But first,
let us look at the stakes.
Recently a full-page advertisement in the 10 September 2000 New York Times,
signed by over 150 Jewish scholars and leaders, stated:
Christians can respect the claim of the Jewish people upon the land of Israel.
The most important event for Jews since the Holocaust has been the
reestablishment of a Jewish state in the Promised Land. As members of a
biblically-based religion, Christians appreciate that Israel was promised - and
given - to Jews as the physical center of the covenant between them and God.
Many Christians support the State of Israel for reasons far more profound than
mere politics. As Jews, we applaud this support.
Here we see clothed in the garment of piety the Zionist enterprise, which was
determined to create a state for Jews at the expense of the indigenous Arab
people - a product of the nationalistic and imperialistic spirit of 19th-century
Europe.
Whatever pangs of conscience one might have about the expulsion of a million
Palestinian Arabs, and the destruction of their villages to ensure they would
not return, the Bible can salve it. Zionism, a program originally despised by
both wings of Judaism, Orthodox and Reform, as being anti-religious (by the
Orthodox) and contrary to the universal mission of Judaism (by Reform Jewry), is
now at the core of the Jewish credo. And credulous Christians allow themselves
to be sucked into the vortex. Only when Zionism is being evaluated are normal
rules of morality suspended; only here is ethnic-cleansing applauded by the
religious spirit.
Many theologians on seeing how the revered sacred text has been used as an
instrument of oppression seek refuge in the view that it is the misuse of the
Bible, rather than the text itself which is the problem. The blame is shifted
from the non-problematic biblical text to the perverse predispositions of the
interpreter.
This "solution" evades the problem. It must be acknowledged that
several traditions within the Bible lend themselves to oppressive
interpretations and applications, precisely because of their inherently
oppressive nature.
Towards a Moral Reading of
the Bible
My approach is set forth in a chapter of my book, "The Bible and
Colonialism. A Moral Critique."8 I begin by stressing how important it is
to acknowledge the existence of texts of unsurpassed violence within Sacred
Scripture, and to recognise them to be an affront to moral sensitivities. The
problem is not only theoretical. In addition to being morally reprehensible
texts, some have fuelled terrible injustices through colonialist enterprises.
The Holy War traditions of the Old Testament pose an especially difficult moral
problem. In addition to portraying God as one who cherishes the slaughter of his
created ones, they acquit the killer of moral responsibility for his
destruction, presenting it as a religious obligation.
Every effort must be made to rescue the Bible from being a blunt instrument in
the oppression of one people by another. If a naïve interpretation leads to
such unacceptable conclusions, what kind of exegesis can rescue it?
Some exegetes note that Christians read the Old Testament in the light of the
life and paschal mystery of Christ. In such a perspective, the writings of the
Old Testament contain certain "imperfect and provisional" elements,
which the divine pedagogy could not eliminate right away. The Bible, then,
reflects a considerable moral development, which finds its completion in the New
Testament. I do not find this proposal satisfactory.
The attempts of the Fathers of the Church to eliminate the scandal caused by
particular texts of the Bible do little for me. The allegorical presentation of
Joshua leading the people into the land of Canaan as a type of Christ, who leads
Christians into the true promised land does not impress.
The Catholic Church deals with the embarrassment of having divinely mandated
ethnic cleansing in the biblical narrative by either excluding it altogether
from public use, or excising the most offensive verses. The disjuncture between
this censoring of the Word of God and the insistence on the divine provenance of
the whole of the Scriptures has not been satisfactorily resolved.
There is another method which is more amenable to modern sensibilities, one
which takes seriously the literary forms of the materials, the circumstances of
their composition, and relevant non-literary evidence. According to this view,
the fundamental tenet of the Protestant Reformation that the Bible can be
understood in a straightforward way must be abandoned. Narratives purporting to
describe the past are not necessarily accurate records of it. One must respect
the distinctive literary forms within the biblical narrative - legend,
fabricated myths of the past, prophecy and apocalyptic, etc.
The relevant biblical narratives of the past are not simple history, but reflect
the religious and political ideologies of their much later authors. It is now
part of the scholarly consensus that the patriarchal narratives of Genesis do
not record events of an alleged patriarchal period, but are retrojections into a
past about which the writers knew little, reflecting the author's intentions at
the later period of composition. It is naïve, then, to cleave to the view that
God made the promise of progeny and land to Abraham after the fashion indicated
in Genesis 15.
The Exodus narrative poses particular difficulties for any reader who is neither
naïve nor amoral. It is the entrance (Eisodus) into the land of milk and honey
which keeps the hope of the wandering Israelites alive. It is high time that
readers read the narrative with sensitivity to the innocent third-party about to
be exterminated, that is, "with the eyes of the Canaanites."
Moreover, there is virtual unanimity among scholars that the model of tribal
conquest as narrated in Joshua 1-12 is unsustainable. Leaving aside the witness
of the Bible, we have no evidence that there was a Hebrew conquest. Evidence
from archaeology, extra-biblical literature, etc., points in an altogether
different direction from that propounded by Joshua 1-12. It suggests a sequence
of periods marked by a gradual and peaceful coalescence of disparate peoples
into a group of highland dwellers whose achievement of a new sense of unity
culminated only with the entry of the Assyrian administration. The Iron I Age
settlements on the central hills of Palestine, from which the later kingdom of
Israel developed, reflect continuity with Canaanite culture, and repudiate any
ethnic distinction between "Canaanites" and "Israelites."
Israel's origins, then, were within Canaan, not outside it. There was neither
invasion from outside, nor revolution within.
A historiography of Israelite origins based solely, or primarily on the biblical
narratives is an artificial construct influenced by certain religious
motivations obtaining at a time long post-dating any verifiable evidence of
events. Accordingly, pace the 150 plus Jewish scholars and rabbis who signed The
New York Times ad, the biblical narrative is not sufficient to transform
barbarism into piety.
Conclusion
Western theological scholarship, while strong in its critique of repressive
regimes elsewhere, gives a wide berth to Zionism. Indeed a moral critique of its
impact on the Palestinians is ruled out.
I try to break the silence in my "The Bible and Colonialism" and
"Zionism and the State of Israel." The former explores the moral
question of the impact which colonialist enterprises, fueled by the biblical
paradigm, have had on the indigenous populations in general, while the latter
deals with the impact of Zionism on the Palestinians. They are explorations into
terrain virtually devoid of inquirers, which attempt to map out some of the
contours of that terrain. They subject the land traditions of the Bible to an
evaluation which derives from general ethical principles and criteria of human
decency, such as are enshrined in conventions of human rights and international
law.
Such an enterprise is necessary. When people are dispossessed, dispersed and
humiliated, not only with alleged divine support, but at the alleged express
command of God, one's moral self recoils in horror. Any association of God with
the destruction of people must be subjected to an ethical analysis. The obvious
contradiction between what some claim to be God's will and ordinary civilized,
decent behavior poses the question as to whether God is a chauvinistic,
nationalistic and militaristic xenophobe. It also poses the problem of biblical
prophecy finding its fulfillment in what even unbelievers would regard as a form
of "ethnic cleansing."
I consider that biblical studies and theology should deal with the real
conditions of people's lives, and not satisfy themselves with comfortable
survival in an academic or ecclesial ghetto. I am concerned about the use of the
Bible as a legitimization for colonialism and its consequences. My academic work
addresses aspects of biblical hermeneutics, and informs a wider public on issues
which have implications for human well-being, as well as for allegiance to God.
While such a venture might be regarded as an instructive academic contribution
by any competent scholar, to assume responsibility for doing so is for me, who
has witnessed the dispossession, dispersion and humiliation of the Palestinians,
of the order of a moral imperative. It is high time that biblical scholars,
church people, and Western intellectuals read the biblical narratives of the
promise of land "with the eyes of the Canaanites."9
End Notes
1 Deist, F. E., The Dangers of Deuteronomy: A Page from the Reception History of
the Book, in Martinez, F. Garcia, A. Hilhorst, J.T.A.G.M. van Ruiten, and A.S.
van der Woud (eds), "Studies in Deuteronomy. In Honour of C.J. Labuschagne
on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday," 1994, Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill,
13-29.
2 Lamadrid, A.G., Canaán y América. La Biblia y la Teologia medieval ante la
Conquista de la Tierra, in "Escritos de Biblia y Oriente. Bibliotheca
Salmanticensis," Estudios 38, 1981, Salamanca-Jerusalén: Universidad
Pontificia, 329-46.
3 Davies, W.D., "The Gospel and the Land. Early Christianity and Jewish
Territorial Doctrine," 1974, Berkeley: University of California Press. See
also his "The Territorial Dimensions of Judaism," 1982, Berkeley:
University of California Press; and his "The Territorial Dimensions of
Judaism. With a Symposium and Further Reflections," 1991, Minneapolis:
Fortress.
4 Brueggemann, Walter, "The Land. Place as Gift, and Challenge in Biblical
Faith," 1977, Philadelphia: Fortress. See also his Forward in March, W.
Eugene, "Israel and the Politics of Land. A Theological Case Study,"
1994, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press.
5 Lohfink, Norbert, The Laws of Deuteronomy. Project for a World without any
Poor, in Scripture Bulletin, 1996, 26:2-19.
6 Prior, Michael, "A Land flowing with Milk, Honey, and People," 1997,
Cambridge: Von Hügel Institute; and in Scripture Bulletin, 28 (1998):2-17.
7 Prior, Michael, "Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry,"
1999, London and New York: Routledge.
8 Prior, Michael, "The Bible and Colonialism. A Moral Critique," 1997,
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
9 My study of the Bible in the Land of the Bible obviously aided me in seeing
"with the eyes of the Canaanites." Others, surely, have had no less
interesting experiences to tell, some of which I have collected in "They
Came and They Saw. Western Christian Experiences of the Holy Land," Michael
Prior, ed., 2000, London: Melisende. ?
The Thirteenth Tribe
by Arthur Koestler. Random
House, 1976. 256 pp. List: $9.95; AET: $7.95 for one, $9.95 for two.
Reviewed by Grace Halsell (as appeared in The Washington Report For Middle
East Affairs, June 1991)
AET and Washington Report e-mail: wrmea@aol.com
AET and Washington Report website: http://www.washington-report.org
Since 1948, when Zionists
succeeded in carving out a Jewish state from the land of the Palestinians, the
question "who is a Jew" has been endlessly debated.
Zionists (both Christian and
Jewish) often declare that "God gave the land" of Palestine "to
the Jews." They infer that God deeded territories, in perpetuity, to a
biblical tribe of Oriental Middle Eastern people.
Since millions of American
Christians accept a dogma that God has a Chosen Land and a Chosen People (the
Jews), then the question "who is a Jew?" takes on political
connotations that impinge on national and international decisions.
In his carefully researched
book entitled The Thirteenth Tribe, Arthur Koestler refutes the idea of a Jewish
"race." Moreover, he says that most Jews of the contemporary world did
not come from Palestine and are not even of Semitic origin. His research shows
that most Jews originated in what today is the Soviet Union. And that a group of
people there became Jews through conversion, on the orders of their king.
"The bulk of modern
Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian origin," Koestler writes.
"Their ancestors came not from the Jordan but from the Volga, not from
Canaan but from the Caucasus." And he stresses: "The mainstream of
Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across France and Germany
to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently western
direction, from the Caucasus, from the Ukraine into Poland and thence into
Central Europe."
While Jews of different origin also contributed to the existing Jewish world
community, "the main bulk originated from the Khazar country" in the
USSR.
Koestler, a Jew born in 1905
in Budapest, writes that the Khazars, who flourished from the 7th to the 11th
century, were a major power. Their empire extended from the Black Sea to the
Caspian and from the Caucasus to the Volga.
They were located "between two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire
in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Muhammad."
Since the world was
polarized between these two superpowers representing Christianity and Islam, the
Khazar Empire, representing a Third Force, "could only maintain its
independence by accepting neither Christianity nor Islam- for either choice
would have automatically subordinated it to the authority of the Roman Emperor
or the Caliph of Baghdad."
Not wishing to be dominated by either of the two, the Khazar king "embraced
the Jewish faith" in AD 740 and ordered his subjects to do the same.
Judaism thus became the state religion of the Khazars.
The king's motives in
adopting Judaism, Koestler stresses, were purely political.
At the peak of its power,
from the seventh to the tenth centuries AD, the Khazar kingdom controlled or
exacted tribute from some 30 different nations and tribes inhabiting the vast
territories between the Caucasus , the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains, the town of
Kiev and the Ukrainian steppes.
People under Khazar
suzerainty included the Bulgars, Burtas, Ghuzz, Magyars (Hungarians), the Gothic
and Greek colonies of the Crimea, and the Slavonic tribes in the northwestern
woodland.
According to the Jewish
Encyclopedia, in the 16th century Jews numbered about one million. Koestler
quotes scholars as docu-menting that "the majority of those who professed
the Judaic faith were Khazars."
Koestler, who after the
Second World War became a British citizen, and whose most famous book, Darkness
at Noon, was translated into 33 languages, has one main thesis: the bulk of
Eastern Jewry-and hence of world Jewry is of Khazar-Turkish, rather than
Semitic, origin.
As Koestler points out, Jews
of our times fall into two main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkenazim. The
Sephardim, descendants of the Jews who had lived in Spain until their expulsion,
with the Muslims, at the end of the 15th century, and who later settled in the
countries bordering on the Mediterranean, spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect,
Ladino. In the 1960s, the Sephardim numbered about 500,000.
The Ashkenazim, at the same
period, were about 11 million. Thus, "in common parlance, Jew is
practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew." However, Koestler adds, the
term Ashkenazim is misleading because it is generally applied to Germany, thus
contributing to the legend that modem Jewry originated on the Rhine. There is,
however, no other term to refer to the non-Sephardic majority of contemporary
Jewry, which came after conversion to Judaism from the Khazar country.
After the destruction of their empire (in the 12th or 13th century), the Jewish
Khazars migrated into those regions of Eastern Europe, mainly Russia and Poland,
where, at the dawn of the modem age, the greatest concentrations of Jews were
found. It is "well documented," Koestler writes, that the numerically
and socially dominant element in the Jewish population of Hungary during the
Middle Ages was of Khazar origin.
An Israeli scholar, A. N.
Poliak, a Tel Aviv University professor of medieval Jewish history, quoted by
Koestler, states that the descendants of Khazar Jews, "those who stayed
where they were (in Khazaria), those who emigrated to the United States and to
other countries, and those who went to Israel--constitute now the large majority
of world Jewry."
Since Israel's support among millions of American Christians is founded on a
concept that God had bequeathed territory to a biblical "tribe" of
Oriental Middle Eastern Jews, it becomes ironic to learn from Koestler's
research that most Jews today are not descended from natives of the "holy
land," or even of the Middle East.
Koestler, who originally published the Thirteenth Tribe in 1976, noted that the
story of the Khazar empire "begins to look like the most cruel hoax history
has ever perpetrated." The Palestinians, imprisoned and brutalized by
Zionism's "hoax," would be the first to agree.
Needless to say, the book
has been difficult to find. It disappears from many library shelves. A check at
the Library of Congress reveals that the most prestigious library of our land
had one reading copy. That one copy, however, is "missing from the
shelf."
Grace Halsell is a
journalist based in Washington, DC and the author of more than 10 books.
Read Arthur Koestler's
The
Thirteenth Tribe
on line
Israel Can't
Hide From Its History Forever
by Greg Felton
(Article first appeared in the May 11, 1997 Vancouver Courier. Reprinted in the
Jan/Feb 1998 Washington Report for Middle East Affairs.)
A country is part fact, part
myth. The former is a province of economists, politicians and other
practitioners of the mundane; the latter principally belongs to history, and is
no less important to a healthy country. For a country to be healthy and united ,
its leaders must promote a unifying national ethos replete with heroes,
traditions and celebrations of its past. It's all well and good to beat the
drums of pragmatism, fiscal and otherwise, but a people who needs to know that
it belongs to a larger community and to have that membership reinforced through
ritual and common celebration. Otherwise, there'd be nothing that could properly
be called a country -- just a community of communities.
However, myths and their
attendant celebrations have a dark side. If used to prop up ideologies and false
histories, their innate mendacity will sooner or later tear a country apart.
This brings me to Israel,
which celebrates its 49th birthday on Thursday. Given the events of the past
year, one wonders how many it has left. Notwithstanding the fact that it was
created by a United Nations decree, Israel is built on a lie.
The lie manifests itself
from time to time, as in last year's tunnel opening and the construction of the
latest Jewish colony in Arab East Jerusalem. In good Zionist fashion, prime
minister Benyamin Netanyahu has often declared that Israel is in the West Band
and Jerusalem to stay, and that all Jews have a historical right to settle
there. From the Israeli view, the Palestinians must accept this before there can
be peace. The Palestinians will have none of it, and for good reason. Although
Netanyahu's claim is familiar with Israeli history, it is entirely fallacious.
It fails to mention the Khazars.
The Khazars were a nomadic
Turko-Finnic people who migrated out of the Caucasus in the second century and
came to settle, broadly speaking in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine. In
AD 740, Bulan, the khagan (ruler) of Khazaria, declared that paganism
wasn't good enough for his people and decided to adopt one of the
"heavenly" religions: Judaism, Christianity or Islam. He sent for
representatives of each faith, but found their arguments unconvincing. Bulan
then asked each of them a question: if they had to give up their creed for one
of the others, which would it be. When the Christian and Muslim both said
Judaism, Bulan had his answer. From that moment, the Khazars lived according to
Judaic law.
The Khazar Empire lasted
until the Mongol invasions of the 13th century forced its Jewish population to
flee northwest into Poland, Germany, Russia and elsewhere. They quickly
outnumbered the established Semitic Jews who had come centuries earlier from the
Middle East. We know these Khazari Jews today as the Ashkenazim, or European
Jews.
The history of the Khazars
and their Judaic conversion is a documented, undisputed part of Jewish history,
but you see why it causes the Zionists fits. It proves that the European Jewry
is largely Caucasian, not Semitic. This means that Israel's Zionist founders
Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir and Golda Meir,
for example, cannot claim affiliation with Israel's biblical past. In fact, the
region's Semitic Jews, Christians and Muslims who have genealogies going back to
biblical times do have a right to live in Israel. It is with good reason that
author Alfred M. Lilienthal declared Judaism's Khazar's heritage to be Israel's
Achilles heel.
The false history of Israel
as a homeland for victims of European persecution is tied up with fallacies of
Israel's "war" of independence. Zionist history says the victorious
Jews won nationhood in a war against superior Arab numbers. We know this to be a
fiction. On May 15, when Israel received formal U.S. recognition, well equipped
Zionist forces included: 30,000 fully mobilized regulars, 32,000 second-line
troops; 15,000 settlement police, a home guard of 32,000, as well as 3000-5000
troops from the Irgun and 200-300 from the Stern Gang. Soldiers in the Arab
forces comprised fewer than 20,000 poorly trained and armed troops, including
volunteers of the Arab Liberation Army.
More than falsified history,
though, European Jews exploited the suffering of their own people to further a
policy of aggression and expropriation. As prof. Ilan Pappe of Haifa University
wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies (winter 1997): " generally
speaking, the Zionists succeeded in persuading large segments of world public
opinion to link the Zionist cause with the Holocaust. Against such a claim, even
able Palestinian diplomats --and there were not many in those days- could hardly
win the diplomatic game."
(Ironically, the term
anti-Semitic, so often used to label critics of Israel, is a misnomer; European
Jews are the true anti-Semites in Israel.)
Within Israel today, Pappe
said Zionist version of the truth are beginning to loose credibility. So-called
"New Sociologists" and "New Historians" are openly
criticizing traditional verities, such as Israel never provokes hostilities, and
whole peoples can be displaced and marginalized in the name of "national
security". They're even exposing the false history of 1948. While some
Zionists are willing to criticize Israel's post-1967 expansionism, Pappe says
the period 1882-1967 is still of limits.
Now that Israel's
expansionism in the West Bank is open to general debate, perhaps one day so too
will be the period 1947-48 and maybe even Zionism itself.
REFERENCES:
Khalidi, Walid. From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the Palestine
Problem until 1948. Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, DC, 1987.
Koestler, Arthur. The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage.
Random House, New York, 1967.
Lilienthal, Alfred M. What Price Israel? Institute for Palestine Studies,
Washington, DC, 1953.
New York
Times Reveals
that
European-Descended Jews have no Blood line to Abraham
The fact that most of those
who call themselves Jews are not Jews and have no claim to the lands of
Palestine because they have no genetic relation to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob can
no longer be suppressed. The October 29, 1996 N.Y. Times, in an article
entitled, "Scholars Debate Origins of Yiddish and the Migrations of
Jews," states:
"Arching over these
questions is the central mystery of just where the Jews of Eastern Europe came
from. Many historians believe that there were not nearly enough Jews in Western
Europe to account for the huge population that later flourished in Poland,
Lithuania, Ukraine and nearby areas.
"By reconstructing the
Yiddish mother tongue, linguists hope to plot the migration of the Jews and
their language with a precision never possible before.
"It has even been
suggested, on the basis of linguistic evidence, that the Jews of Eastern Europe
were not predominantly part of the diaspora from the Middle East, but were
members of another ethnic group that adopted Judaism.
"...One linguist has
recently argued that Yiddish began as a Slavic language that was 'relexified,'
with most of its vocabulary replaced with German words.
"...Even more
troublesome are demographic studies indicating that during the Middle Ages there
were no more than 25,000 to 35,000 Jews in Western Europe. These figures are
hard to reconcile with other studies showing that by the 17th century there were
hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe.
"...Some scholars
believe the roots of Yiddish, and even the Ashkenazic people themselves, lie
much farther east. In his 1976 book, The Thirteenth Tribe, Arthur
Koestler made the startling suggestion, never taken seriously by linguists, that
the Eastern European Jews were not really Semitic -- that they were largely
descended from the Turkish Khazars, who converted en masse to Judaism in
medieval times.
"More recently,
Koestler's controversial thesis has been revived and expanded in a 1993 book, The
Ashkenazic 'Jews': A Slavo-Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity (Slavica
Publishers), by Dr. Paul Wexler, a Tel Aviv University linguist.
"Wexler uses a
reconstruction of Yiddish to argue that it began as a Slavic language whose
vocabulary was largely replaced with German words. Going even further, he
contends that the Ashkenazic Jews are predominantly converted Slavs and Turks
who merged with a tiny population of Palestinian Jews from the Diaspora."
The Jews Are
Not A Race!
By Dr. Alfred
M. Lilienthal
Excerpt from his book, What Price Israel? (1953)
Today, to trace anyone's
descent to ancient Palestine would be a genealogical impossibility; and to
presume, axiomatically, such a descent for Jews, alone among all human groups,
is an assumption of purely fictional significance. Most everybody in the Western
world could stake out some claim of Palestinian descent if genealogical records
could be established for two-thousand years. And there are, indeed, people who,
though not by the widest stretch of imagination Jewish, proudly make that very
claim: some of the oldest of the South's aristocratic families play a game of
comparing whose lineage goes farther back into 'Israel'. No one knows what
happened to the Ten Lost Tribes of 'Israel', but to speculate on who might be
who is a favored Anglo-Saxon pastime, and Queen Victoria belonged to an
'Israelite' Society that traced the ancestry of its membership back to those
lost tribes.
Twelve tribes started in
Canaan about thirty-five centuries ago; and not only that ten of them
disappeared - more than half of the members of the remaining two tribes never
returned from their "exile" in Babylon. How then, can anybody claim to
descend directly from that relatively small community which inhabited the Holy
Land at the time of Abraham's Covenant with God?
The Jewish racial myth flows
from the fact that the words Hebrew, 'Israelite', Jew, Judaism, and the Jewish
people have been used synonymously to suggest a historic continuity. But this is
a misuse. These words refer to different groups of people with varying ways of
life in different periods in history. Hebrew is a term correctly applied to the
period from the beginning of Biblical history to the settling in Canaan.
'Israelite' refers correctly to the members of the twelve tribes of 'Israel'.
The name Yehudi or Jew is used in the Old Testament to designate members of the
tribe of Judah, descendants of the fourth son of Jacob, as well as to denote
citizens of the Kingdom of Judah, particularly at the time of Jeremiah and under
the Persian occupation. Centuries later, the same word came to be applied to
anyone, no matter of what origin, whose religion was Judaism.
The descriptive name Judaism
was never heard by the Hebrews or 'Israelites'; it appears only with
Christianity. Flavius Josephus was one of the first to use the name in his
recital of the war with the Romans to connote a totality of beliefs, moral
commandments, religious practices and ceremonial institutions of Galilee which
he believed superior to rival Hellenism. When the word Judaism was born, there
was no longer a Hebrew-'Israelite' state. The people who embraced the creed of
Judaism were already mixed of many races and strains; and this diversification
was rapidly growing...
Perhaps the most significant
mass conversion to the Judaic faith occurred in Europe, in the 8th century A.D.,
and that story of the Khazars (Turko-Finnish people) is quite pertinent to the
establishment of the modern State of 'Israel'. This partly nomadic people,
probably related to the Volga Bulgars, first appeared in Trans-Caucasia in the
second century. They settled in what is now Southern Russia, between the Volga
and the Don, and then spread to the shores of the Black, Caspian and Azov seas.
The Kingdom of Khazaria, ruled by a khagan or khakan fell to Attila the Hun in
448, and to the Muslims in 737. In between, the Khazars ruled over part of the
Bulgarians, conquered the Crimea, and stretched their kingdom over the Caucasus
farther to the northwest to include Kiev, and eastwards to Derbend. Annual
tributes were levied on the Russian Slavonians of Kiev. The city of Kiev was
probably built by the Khazars. There were Jews in the city and the surrounding
area before the Russian Empire was founded by the Varangians whom the
Scandinavian warriors sometimes called the Russ or Ross (circa 855-863).
The influence of the Khazars
extended into what is now Hungary and Roumania. Today, the villages of Kozarvar
and Kozard in Transylvania bear testimony to the penetration of the Khazars who,
with the Magyars, then proceeded into present-day Hungary. The size and power of
the Kingdom of Khazaria is indicated by the act that it sent an army of 40,000
soldiers (in 626-627) to help Heraclius of the Byzantines to conquer the
Persians. The Jewish Encyclopedia proudly refers to Khazaria as having had a
"well constituted and tolerant government, a flourishing trade and a well
disciplined army."
Jews who had been banished
from Constantinople by the Byzantine ruler, Leo III, found a home amongst these
heretofore pagan Khazars and, in competition with Mohammedan and Christian
missionaries, won them over to the Judaic faith. Bulan, the ruler of Khazaria,
became converted to Judaism around 740 A.D. His nobles and, somewhat later, his
people followed suit. Some details of these events are contained in letters
exchanged between Khagan Joseph of Khazaria and R. Hasdai Ibn Shaprut of
Cordova, doctor and quasi foreign minister to Sultan Abd al-Rahman, the Caliph
of Spain. This correspondence (around 936-950) was first published in 1577 to
prove that the Jews still had a country of their own - namely, the Kingdom of
Khazaria. Judah Halevi knew of the letters even in 1140. Their authenticity has
since been established beyond doubt.
According to these Hasdai-Joseph
letters, Khagan Bulan decided one day: "Paganism is useless. It is shameful
for us to be pagans. Let us adopt one of the heavenly religions, Christianity,
Judaism or Islam." And Bulan summoned three priests representing the three
religions and had them dispute their creeds before him. But, no priest could
convince the others, or the sovereign, that his religion was the best. So the
ruler spoke to each of them separately. He asked the Christian priest: "If
you were not a Christian or had to give up Christianity, which would you prefer
- Islam or Judaism?" The priest said: "If I were to give up
Christianity, I would become a Jew." Bulan then asked the follower of Islam
the same question, and the Moslem also chose Judaism. This is how Bulan came to
choose Judaism for himself and the people of Khazaria in the seventh century
A.D., and thereafter the Khazars (sometimes spelled Chazars and Khozars) lived
according to Judaic laws.
Under the rule of Obadiah,
Judaism gained further strength in Khazaria. Synagogues and schools were built
to give instruction in the Bible and the Talmud. As Professor Graetz notes in
his History of the Jews, "A successor of Bulan who bore the Hebrew name of
Obadiah was the first to make serious efforts to further the Jewish religion. He
invited Jewish sages to settle in his dominions, rewarded them royally... and
introduced a divine service modeled on the ancient communities. After Obadiah
came a long series of Jewish Chagans (Khagans), for according to a fundamental
law of the state only Jewish rulers were permitted to ascend the throne."
Khazar traders brought not only silks and carpets of Persia and the Near East
but also their Judaic faith to the banks of the Vistula and the Volga. But the
Kingdom of Khazaria was invaded by the Russians, and Itil, its great capital,
fell to Sweatoslav of Kiev in 969. The Byzantines had become afraid and envious
of the Khazars and, in a joint expedition with the Russians, conquered the
Crimean portion of Khazaria in 1016. (Crimea was known as "Chazaria"
until the 13th century). The Khazarian Jews were scattered throughout what is
now Russia and Eastern Europe. Some were taken North where they joined the
established Jewish community of Kiev.
Others returned to the
Caucasus. Many Khazars remarried in the Crimea and in Hungary. The Cagh Chafut,
or "mountain Jews," in the Caucasus and the Hebraile Jews of Georgia
are their descendants. These "Ashkenazim Jews" (as Jews of Eastern
Europe are called), whose numbers were swelled by Jews who fled from Germany at
the time of the Crusades and during the Black Death, have little or no trace of
Semitic blood.
That the Khazars are the
lineal ancestors of Eastern European Jewry is a historical fact. Jewish
historians and religious text books acknowledge the fact, though the
propagandists of Jewish nationalism belittle it as pro-Arab propaganda. Somewhat
ironically, Volume IV of the Jewish Encyclopedia - because this publication
spells Khazars with a "C" instead of a "K" - is titled
"Chazars to Dreyfus": and it was the Dreyfus trial, as interpreted by
Theodor Herzl, that made the modern Jewish Khazars of Russia forget their
descent from converts to Judaism and accept anti-Semitism as proof of their
Palestinian origin.
For all that anthropologists
know, Hitler's ancestry might go back to one of the ten Lost Tribes of 'Israel';
while Weizmann may be a descendant of the Khazars, the converts to Judaism who
were in no anthropological respect related to Palestine. The home to which
Weizmann, Silver and so many other Ashkenazim Zionists have yearned to return
has most likely never been theirs. "Here's a paradox, a paradox, a most
ingenious paradox": in anthropological fact, many Christians may have much
more Hebrew-'Israelite' blood in their veins than most of their Jewish
neighbors.
Race can play funny tricks
on people who make that concept the basis for their likes and dislikes.
Race-obsessed people can find themselves hating people who, in fact, may be
their own racial kith and kin.
Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, an
anti-Zionist Jew, is a graduate from Cornell University and Colombia Law School.
He is also a historian, journalist and lecturer. He is the author of five books.
The Zionization of
American Media
Nov. 2000
By Edward Said
The events of the past four
weeks in Palestine have been a near-total triumph for Zionism in the United
States for the first time since the modern re-emergence of the Palestinian
national movement in the late 1960s. Political as well as public discourse has
so definitively transformed Israel into the victim during the recent clashes,
that even though 140 Palestinian lives were lost and close to 5,000 casualties
have been reported, it is still something called "Palestinian
violence" that has disrupted the smooth and orderly flow of the "peace
process." There is now a small litany of phrases that every editorial
commentator either repeats verbatim or relies on as an unspoken assumption:
these have been engraved in ears, minds, and memories as a guide for the
perplexed, a manual or machine for turning out phrases that have clogged the air
for at least a month.
I can recite most of them by
heart: Barak offered more concessions at Camp David than any Israeli prime
minister before him (90 per cent of the territories and partial sovereignty over
East Jerusalem); Arafat was cowardly and lacked the necessary courage to accept
Israeli offers to end the conflict; Palestinian violence, directed by Arafat,
has threatened Israel (all sorts of variations on this, including the wish to
eliminate Israel, anti-Semitism, suicidal rage in order to get on television,
putting children in the front lines so that they would become martyrs) and
proved that an ancient "hatred" of the Jews motivates Palestinians;
Arafat is a weak leader who allows his people to attack Jews and incite against
them by releasing terrorists and producing schoolbooks that deny Israel's
existence. There are probably one or two more formulae that I have not
cited, but the general picture is that Israel is so surrounded by rock-throwing
barbarians that even the missiles, tanks and helicopter gunships that have been
used to "defend" Israelis from the violence are simply warding off a
terrible force. Bill Clinton's injunctions (dutifully parroted by his secretary
of state) for Palestinians to "pull back" goes a long way to suggest
that it is Palestinians who are encroaching on Israeli territory, not the other
way round.
It is also worth mentioning
that so successful has this Zionisation of the media been that not a single map
has been published or shown on television to remind American viewers and readers
-- notoriously ignorant of both geography and history -- that Israeli
encampments, settlements, roads and barricades crisscross Palestinian land in
Gaza and the West Bank. Moreover, as happened in Beirut in 1982, there is
a veritable Israeli siege of Palestinians, including of Arafat and his men.
Completely forgotten, if it was ever at all understood, is the system of Areas
A, B, and C by which the military occupation of 40 per cent of Gaza and 60 per
cent of the West Bank continues, and which the Oslo peace process was never
really designed to end, much less totally modify.
As suggested by the absence of geography in this most geographical of conflicts,
the resulting void is a vitally important point since the pictures that are
either shown or described are without context at all. I think the omission by
the Zionised media was a deliberate one at the outset and has now become
automatic.
It has allowed phony
commentators like Thomas Friedman to peddle his wares shamelessly, droning on
about American even-handedness, Israeli flexibility and generosity and his own
perspicacious pragmatism with which he berates Arab leaders and stuns his bored
readers. It has the result not only of permitting the completely preposterous
notion of a Palestinian attack on Israel to prevail, but it also further
dehumanizes Palestinians as being beasts without sentience or motive. Thus
little wonder that when the figures of the dead and wounded are recited no
nationalities are given: this lets Americans assume that the suffering is
equally divided between the "warring parties," and in fact elevates
Jewish suffering and reduces or eliminates Arab feelings entirely, except of
course for rage. Rage and its cognates remain as the only and certainly
the defining Palestinian emotion. It explains the violence, and indeed, it
reifies it so that Israel has come to represent a decency and democracy that is
forever surrounded by rage and violence.
No other process can
logically explain the stone throwers and the stalwart Israeli
"defense." Nothing is said of house demolitions, land expropriations,
illegal arrests, torture and the like. Nothing is cited about what is (except
for the Japanese occupation of Korea) the longest military occupation in modern
times; nothing about UN resolutions; nothing about Israeli contraventions of all
the Geneva Conventions; nothing about the sufferings of one entire people and
the obduracy of another. Forgotten are the catastrophe of 1948, ethnic
cleansing and massacres, the devastation of Qibya, Kafr Qassem, Sabra and
Shatila, the long years of military government for non-Jewish Israeli citizens
to say nothing of their continued oppression as a persecuted 20 per cent
minority within the Jewish state.
Ariel Sharon at best is a
provocation, never a war criminal, Ehud Barak a statesman, never the assassin of
Beirut. Terrorism is always on the Palestinian side of the ledger, defense on
the Israeli.
What Friedman and
pro-Israeli "peaceniks" fail to mention when they extol Barak's
unprecedented generosity is the real substance of it. We are not reminded that
his commitment to a third withdrawal (of about 12 per cent) made at Wye 18
months ago has never occurred. Of what value then are more such
"concessions?" We are told that he was willing to give back 90
per cent of the territory. What gets left out is that the 90 per cent is
of what Israel has no intention of giving back. Greater Jerusalem is well over
30 per cent of the West Bank; large settlements to be annexed are another 15 per
cent; military roads of areas have yet to be determined. So after all this is
deducted, 90 per cent of the balance isn't so much after all. As for
Jerusalem: the Israel concession was principally in being willing to discuss and
maybe, just maybe, to offer shared authority over the Haram Al-Sharif. The
breathtaking dishonesty of the matter is that all of West Jerusalem (principally
Arab in 1948) was already conceded by Arafat, plus most of a vastly expanded
East Jerusalem.
One detail further:
Palestinians' firing by small arms on Gilo is routinely made to seem like
gratuitous violence, whereas no one mentions that Gilo itself sits on land
confiscated from Beit Jala, the place from which the firing emanates. Besides,
Beit Jala was disproportionately shelled by Israeli helicopters using missiles
to destroy civilian houses.
I have made a survey of the major newspapers. Ever since 28 September, there
have been anywhere between one and three opinion articles per average day in the
New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles
Times and the Boston Globe. With the exception of perhaps three articles written
from a pro-Palestinian point of view in the Los Angeles Times, and two (one by
an Israeli lawyer, Alegra Pacheco, the other by a pro-Oslo liberal Jordanian
journalist, Rami Khoury) in the New York Times, all the articles -- (including
those by regular columnists like Friedman, William Safire, Charles Krauthammer
and others like them), have been in support of Israel, the US-sponsored peace
process, and the idea that Palestinian violence, Arafat's lack of cooperation,
and Islamic fundamentalism are to blame. The writers have been former US
military as well as civilian officials, Israeli apologists and officials, think
tank specialists and experts, officials of pro-Israeli lobbies and
organizations.
In other words, the total
blanketing of the mainstream has taken place on the assumption that no
Palestinian or Arab or Islamic
position on such matters as Israeli terror tactics against civilians,
settler-colonialism, or military occupation exists at all, or is worth
hearing from. This is simply without precedent in the annals of US
journalism, and is a direct reflection of a Zionist mind-set that makes Israel
the norm in human behavior, thereby excluding from equal consideration the
existence of 300 million Arabs and 1.2 billion Muslims. In the long run
this is of course a suicidal position for Zionists to be in, but such is the
arrogance of power that the thought seems not to have occurred to anyone.
The mind-set I have
described is truly staggering in its recklessness and, were it not very much a
practical as well as actual distortion of reality, one could quite easily be
talking about a form of private mental derangement. But it corresponds very
closely to official Israeli policy of dealing with Palestinians not as a people
with a history of dispossession for which in large measure Israel is directly
responsible, but as a periodic nuisance for whom force, and neither
understanding nor full accommodation, is the only possible response. Everything
else is literally unthinkable. This astonishing blindness is compounded in
the United States since Arabs and Muslims are scarcely paid attention to except
as (I have said in an earlier article) the butt of every aspiring politician. A
few days ago Hillary Clinton announced in a gesture of the most revolting
hypocrisy that she was returning a $50,000 donation from an American-Muslim
group because, she said, they supported terrorism; this in fact was an outright
lie, since the group in question had only said that it supported Palestinian
resistance against Israel during the current crisis, not in itself an untoward
position but criminalized in the American system only because a totalitarian
Zionism requires that any -- and I mean literally any -- criticism of what
Israel does is simply intolerable and the rankest anti-Semitism.
And this despite the fact
that (again literally) the entire world has criticized Israel's policies of
military occupation, disproportionate violence, and the siege of the
Palestinians. In America you must refrain from any criticism, otherwise you are
hounded as an anti-Semite requiring the severest opprobrium.
The further peculiarity of
American Zionism, which is a system of antithetical thought and Orwellian
distortion, is that it is impermissible to speak of Jewish violence, or Jewish
actions when it comes to Israel, even though everything done by Israel is done
in the name of the Jewish people, for and by a Jewish state. That such a
state is a misnomer, since almost 20 per cent of the population is not Jewish,
is never mentioned and this too accounts for the amazing, entirely deliberate
discrepancy between what the media calls "Israeli Arabs" and "the
Palestinians:" no reader or viewer could possibly know that they are the
same people in fact divided by Zionist policy, or that both communities
represent the result of Israeli policy -- apartheid in one case, military
occupation and ethnic cleansing in the other. In fine, American Zionism
has made any serious public discussion of
Israel, by far the largest ever recipient of US foreign aid, its past and its
future, a taboo not be broken in any circumstance. To call this literally the
last taboo in American discourse is by no means an exaggeration. Abortion,
homosexuality, the death penalty, even the sacrosanct military budget have been
talked about with some freedom (although always within limits).
The American flag can be
burned in public, whereas the systematic continuity of Israel's 52-year-old
treatment of the Palestinians is virtually unimaginable, a narrative with no
permission to appear. This consensus might be somehow tolerable were it
not for the fact that it makes the continuing punishment and dehumanization of
the Palestinian people an actual virtue. There is simply no people in the world
today whose killing on television screens seems to be considered by most
American viewers to be acceptable as well-deserved punishment.
This is the case with
Palestinians whose daily loss of life in the past month is herded under the
rubric "the violence on both sides," as if the stones and slings of
young men thoroughly tired of injustice and repression were a major offence
rather than the courageous resistance to a demeaning fate meted out to them not
just by Israeli soldiers armed by America, but by a peace process designed to
coop them up in Bantustans and reservations fit for animals. That the US
supporters of Israel could have plotted for seven years to produce a document
designed essentially to cage people like inmates in an asylum or prison -- that
is the real crime. And that this could be passed off as peace instead of the
desolation that it really has been all along, that surpasses my powers to
understand or adequately describe as anything less than untrammeled immorality.
The worst thing of all is
that so iron-like is the wall protecting American discourse about Israel that no
questions can be put to the minds that produced Oslo and that for seven years
have been passing off their scheme to the world as peace. One scarcely knows
which is more pernicious, the mentality that thinks of Palestinians as not
entitled even to express a sense of injustice (they are too low a form for that)
or the one that continues to plot their further enslavement. Were this the whole
it would be bad enough. But our miserable status as far as US Zionism is
concerned is compounded by the absence of any institution here or in the
Arab world ready and able to produce an alternative. I fear that the coverage of
those stone-throwing protesters in Bethlehem, Gaza, Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron
may not be adequately reflected in the dithering Palestinian leadership, unable
either to retireor to go forward. That is the ultimate pity of it.
Reproduced From: http://www.al-bushra.org/zionism/media.htm
THE NEW COMPLAINT OF
PORTNOY
By Israel Shamir
March 18, 2001
The Viennese Jewish shrinks
decided to disinvite the American Palestinian Professor Edward Said, who had
been called to lecture them in memory of Sigmund Freud. The Professor had been
seen throwing a stone towards an Israeli border. The psychiatrists said it
speaks a lot about his subconscious. They would never throw a rock, as the wild
Arab from Columbia University; they prefer Sharon’s missiles.
I think it is a right
approach, and it should be applied not only to professor Said. In the far-away
1969, Phillip Roth decided to probe the subconscious of his contemporary
American Jew. In the novel, Portnoy’s Complaint, Roth’s hero, Alexander
Portnoy, lies on the psychiatrist’s couch and tells of his inner feelings,
domineering mother and adolescent sex. What would a modern Portnoy blubber on
the newest reclining couch model 2001?
We can find this out by
turning towards the press. Philip Weiss[i] in the New York Observer noted that
the Jews are to politics and media what the blacks are to basketball. The
leading media powerhouses like the New York Times Corporation and the Washington
Post are fully kosher, owned by Jews and a substantial majority of the
editorials and the op-eds are written by Jews. They are representative of the
Jewish American opinion. With a very few exceptions, they are supportive of
Israel, its policies towards the Palestinians and its brave ruler, general
Sharon.
The situation in our land is
well known. The Jews rule supreme. The local non-Jewish inhabitants have few
rights. The majority of them is disenfranchised. Their property is seized at
will and their sources of independent livelihood are destroyed. Their cities are
besieged, activists assassinated, women and children starved. They have no
access to public media, to welfare; they are not allowed to even go to the
beach. None of this is secret. It is freely discussed in the Israeli media.
It would be a gross
exaggeration to say that the Jews of Israel hate goys and wish them all gone. To
borrow the expression of Conrad Black, the owner of British and Canadian
newspapers, it would be ‘a lie worthy of Goebbels’. Israel imports hundreds
of thousands of goys and shiksas: Chinese, Thai, Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians
and Africans. In just the last few months, the Israeli Ministry of Labour issued
thousands of new permits for guest workers. The Jews of Israel welcome goys, as
long as they have no rights, make no demands and agree to work for minimal wage.
At the first objection, they are taken by force to the first plane back home.
That is the country adored
by William Safire, Tom Friedman and other Jews in the mainstream media. ‘Tell
me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are’, goes the Latin adage. The
pro-Israel position of the American Jews in the media is a good indication of
their subconscious feelings towards the world at large.
Their favourite neo-liberal
globalist trend is but a tendency to turn the whole world, including the United
States, into a Palestine with a small ruling class, big security machine and
voiceless impoverished natives. But let us give their due to the gentlemen of
the press. They could be worse. The more vocal part of American Jewry considers
them rather soft. The US correspondent of Haaretz in Washington, Nitzan Horovitz,
writes in today’s edition (March 16, 2001), “The Israeli lobby in the US (AIPAC)
is more intransigent[ii] than any government of Israel, including that of
Sharon.” It is a Jewish supremacist organisation, according to Yossi Beilin,
an Israeli ex-minister who is not much of a liberal himself.
What do they hate in
Palestinians? The Palestinians have roots, they are living in harmony with their
environment, they love their villages, they stick to their land, they can live
without Jewish guidance. The Jewish supremacists wish to destroy their society,
to confiscate their land and turn them into slaves sweating in the Jewish
factories. If that is what Portnoy-2001 feels about Palestinians, why would he
feel any different about other goys? A good Viennese shrink would pronounce him
sick and possibly dangerous to his neighbours. He is as sick as any bigot of Ku
Klux Klan, but much more influential due to his control over the media.
What is the source of
Portnoy’s influence? Why did he change so much since 1969? Phillip Weiss
explains it by the success of the Jews to break through the barriers, to enrich
themselves and to occupy the commanding positions in the establishment. He
writes, “I don’t claim to know how Jewish the membership of the
establishment is. Twenty percent, 50 percent? I’m guessing 30”. Even 30%
would be sufficient to promote any idea, if the other 70% have no interest in
the subject. In many financial companies, a 10% controlling share is as good as
total ownership, as the rest is divided among small shareholders.
In the absence of solid
statistics for the US, it is instructive to consider the economy of
Apartheid-era South Africa. The Economist, hardly a ‘hate publication’,
estimated that the Jews who constituted 0.03% of the population owned sixty
percent of that rich country’s market capitalization. All other players,
Anglos, Boers, Indians and native Africans competed for the remaining 40%.
The power of money is
translated into the rule over the minds by the feudal structure of the media. At
the peak, there are media lords, the proprietors. They delegate authority to
their faithful retainers, the chief editors, who in turn, choose loyal soldiers.
The structure does not stand alone, but links to the financial and trading
structures, the main ad-suppliers. The ad-suppliers are more important than the
readers. In England, the Daily Herald, a newspaper targeted at a working class
constituency, went bankrupt. Although it had five times as many readers as The
Times, it only attracted half the advertising revenues. Advertisements account
for approximately 75% of the revenue of an average newspaper. In the case of
Radio and TV broadcasters, that figure leaps to almost 100%. It is no wonder
that the media is accountable to its ‘paying’ patrons, the privileged few
who are members of an elite club.
Contrary to the conventional
wisdom, the media is not the message. The media is not a line of business,
either. Lev Chernoi, a Russian-Israeli billionaire who sold his vast media
empire to another Jewish tycoon, Mr. Berezovsky, put it concisely in a recent
interview: “Media is politics”. The media is a means of shaping public
consensus; of swaying the consciousness of a nation. Once, the readership
provided a feedback, not anymore. Ordinary people still own most of the body
parts of America and they are the muscle, but the nerve system and the brain
have been taken over by the club of media lords and the managers of finance and
trade, a new dominant power in the world. They decide what Americans think.
Americans enforce their decision how we should manage our planet, from the rain
forests of the Amazon to the last besieged Palestinian village.
The Club disposed with the
pretence of the pluralism in press. Russian politicians and journalists
visiting the US often express amazement at how in this huge and heterogeneous
country the scope of expressed opinions is so narrow. “You succeeded where the
communists failed”, is a frequent refrain. Indeed, the differences between
American newspaper coverage and TV News have all but disappeared.
Noam Chomsky recently wrote,
“the editors of the NY Times, and their brethren, have refused - not
"missed," but refused to publish a single word about the sending of
unprecedented numbers of military helicopters to Israel. Last week, the latest
$.5 billion deal was struck between the Pentagon and the IDF for more advanced
Apaches. They recognize how the (US) population is likely to react. To date, the
total coverage of this massive transfer of public funds has been one opinion
piece in a newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina. I've actually attempted to
personally contact editors I've known for years. No use. The
discipline, and uniformity, are really impressive. People who thought that
Stalin had reached the limits of totalitarianism are quite wrong”.
Well, Joseph Stalin had no
such compliant media machine or the modern technology at his disposal. Its
potential is not fully realized yet, as the three major networks plan to launch
one united and unified news programme every night, to spread its message to
every house in America. A painter Diane Harvey wrote in despair: “its main
technique is through feeding the public an entire world-view made out of toxic
substitutes for information and truth. The 360-degree, surround-sound World Lie
most people believe is built and sustained by the non-stop flow of highly
purposeful, integrated and carefully directed fabrications. The spirit of truth
has departed, an upgraded version of global totalitarianism has been coalescing
into a new death-grip on human freedom”[iii].
Paradoxically, this machine
is vulnerable as it is too formidable. Subjugation and destruction of Palestine
is but one of its applications. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for
you, as no man is an island, said the Elizabethan poet, John Donne, proclaiming
the common humanity of Man. These words sent Ernest Hemingway to fight for
freedom in Spain in 1936, as freedom is indivisible. We repeated these words in
1968, we should repeat it now. The struggle for freedom in the US and the battle
for Palestine are but one war.
Whenever the Almighty sends
a malaise, says a Jewish wisdom, He sends the cure for it. The cure lies in
democracy. The media should be returned to people, taken out of the rich men’s
hands. Israel/Palestine should be democratised, equal rights provided to Jew and
Gentile alike. It would cure the New Complaint of Portnoy.
[i] New York Observer,
22.01.01
[ii] In Israeli parlance,
the Jewish supremacists are called ‘right-wing’, while national moderates
are called ‘left-wing’, though this division has no connection to their
social positions.
[iii] http://www.rense.com/general8/harv.htm
Israel Shamir is an Israeli
writer and journalist. His articles The Rape of Dulcinea, The Test Failed,
Galilee Flowers could be found on many Internet sites, http://www.thestruggle.org/
, http://www.antiwar/, http://www.nilemedia/
etc. He can be reached at shamiri_@netvision.net.il, or write P.O.B. 23714 Tel
Aviv 61236
Germany
and the Jews
The Role of the Jews in WWI and WWII
Speech By:
Benjamin H. Freedman
1961
Introductory Note:
Benjamin H. Freedman was
born of Jewish parents in 1890. He became a successful businessman in New York
City, and was at one time the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Company. He
broke with organized Jewry after World War II, and spent the remainder of his
life and at least 2.5 million dollars publicizing the facts of Jewish influence
on the United States. Mr. Freedman knew. He had been an insider at the highest
levels of Jewish organizations, and was personally acquainted with Bernard
Baruch, Samuel Untermyer, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy,
and John F. Kennedy, and many more of the movers and shakers of his time.
This speech was given
in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on behalf of a newspaper of
that time, Common
Sense.
Here in the United States, the
Zionists and their co-religionists have complete control of our government. For
many reasons, too many and too complex to go into here at this time, the
Zionists and their co- religionists rule these United States as though they were
the absolute monarchs of this country. Now you may say that is a very broad
statement, but let me show you what happened while we were all asleep.
What happened? World War I
broke out in the summer of 1914. There are few people here my age who remember
that. Now that war was waged on one side by Great Britain, France, and Russia;
and on the other side by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey.
Within two years Germany had
won that war: not only won it nominally, but won it actually. The German
submarines, which were a surprise to the world, had swept all the convoys from
the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain stood there without ammunition for her
soldiers, with one week's food supply -- and after that, starvation. At that
time, the French army had mutinied. They had lost 600,000 of the flower of
French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme. The Russian army was
defecting, they were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to
play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar. And the Italian army had collapsed.
Not a shot had been fired on
German soil. Not one enemy soldier had crossed the border into Germany. And yet,
Germany was offering England peace terms. They offered England a negotiated
peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis. That means:
"Let's call the war off, and let everything be as it was before the war
started." England, in the summer of 1916 was considering that -- seriously.
They had no choice. It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany
was magnanimously offering them, or going on with the war and being totally
defeated.
While that was going on, the
Zionists in Germany, who represented the Zionists from Eastern Europe, went to
the British War Cabinet and -- I am going to be brief because it's a long story,
but I have all the documents to prove any statement that I make -- they said:
"Look here. You can yet win this war. You don't have to give up. You don't
have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany. You can win
this war if the United States will come in as your ally." The United States
was not in the war at that time. We were fresh; we were young; we were rich; we
were powerful. They told England: "We will guarantee to bring the United
States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will
promise us Palestine after you win the war." In other words, they made this
deal: "We will get the United States into this war as your ally. The price
you must pay is Palestine after you have won the war and defeated Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Turkey." Now England had as much right to promise
Palestine to anybody, as the United States would have to promise Japan to
Ireland for any reason whatsoever. It's absolutely absurd that Great Britain,
that never had any connection or any interest or any right in what is known as
Palestine should offer it as coin of the realm to pay the Zionists for bringing
the United States into the war. However, they did make that promise, in October
of 1916. And shortly after that -- I don't know how many here remember it - -
the United States, which was almost totally pro-German, entered the war as
Britain's ally.
I say that the United States
was almost totally pro-German because the newspapers here were controlled by
Jews, the bankers were Jews, all the media of mass communications in this
country were controlled by Jews; and they, the Jews, were pro-German. They were
pro-German because many of them had come from Germany, and also they wanted to
see Germany lick the Czar. The Jews didn't like the Czar, and they didn't want
Russia to win this war. These German-Jew bankers, like Kuhn Loeb and the other
big banking firms in the United States refused to finance France or England to
the extent of one dollar. They stood aside and they said: "As long as
France and England are tied up with Russia, not one cent!" But they poured
money into Germany, they fought beside Germany against Russia, trying to lick
the Czarist regime.
Now those same Jews, when
they saw the possibility of getting Palestine, went to England and they made
this deal. At that time, everything changed, like a traffic light that changes
from red to green. Where the newspapers had been all pro-German, where they'd
been telling the people of the difficulties that Germany was having fighting
Great Britain commercially and in other respects, all of a sudden the Germans
were no good. They were villains. They were Huns. They were shooting Red Cross
nurses. They were cutting off babies' hands. They were no good. Shortly after
that, Mr. Wilson declared war on Germany.
The Zionists in London had
sent cables to the United States, to Justice Brandeis, saying "Go to work
on President Wilson. We're getting from England what we want. Now you go to work
on President Wilson and get the United States into the war." That's how the
United States got into the war. We had no more interest in it; we had no more
right to be in it than we have to be on the moon tonight instead of in this
room. There was absolutely no reason for World War I to be our war. We were
railroaded into -- if I can be vulgar, we were suckered into -- that war merely
so that the Zionists of the world could obtain Palestine. That is something that
the people of the United States have never been told. They never knew why we
went into World War I.
After we got into the war,
the Zionists went to Great Britain and they said: "Well, we performed our
part of the agreement. Let's have something in writing that shows that you are
going to keep your bargain and give us Palestine after you win the war."
They didn't know whether the war would last another year or another ten years.
So they started to work out a receipt. The receipt took the form of a letter,
which was worded in very cryptic language so that the world at large wouldn't
know what it was all about. And that was called the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration was
merely Great Britain's promise to pay the Zionists what they had agreed upon as
a consideration for getting the United States into the war. So this great
Balfour Declaration, that you hear so much about, is just as phony as a three
dollar bill. I don't think I could make it more emphatic than that.
That is where all the
trouble started. The United States got in the war. The United States crushed
Germany. You know what happened. When the war ended, and the Germans went to
Paris for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 there were 117 Jews there, as a
delegation representing the Jews, headed by Bernard Baruch. I was there: I ought
to know. Now what happened? The Jews at that peace conference, when they were
cutting up Germany and parceling out Europe to all these nations who claimed a
right to a certain part of European territory, said, "How about Palestine
for us?" And they produced, for the first time to the knowledge of the
Germans, this Balfour Declaration. So the Germans, for the first time realized,
"Oh, so that was the game! That's why the United States came into the
war." The Germans for the first time realized that they were defeated, they
suffered the terrific reparations that were slapped onto them, because the
Zionists wanted Palestine and were determined to get it at any cost.
That brings us to another
very interesting point. When the Germans realized this, they naturally resented
it. Up to that time, the Jews had never been better off in any country in the
world than they had been in Germany. You had Mr. Rathenau there, who was maybe
100 times as important in industry and finance as is Bernard Baruch in this
country. You had Mr. Balin, who owned the two big steamship lines, the North
German Lloyd's and the Hamburg-American Lines. You had Mr. Bleichroder, who was
the banker for the Hohenzollern family. You had the Warburgs in Hamburg, who
were the big merchant bankers -- the biggest in the world. The Jews were doing
very well in Germany. No question about that. The Germans felt: "Well, that
was quite a sellout."
It was a sellout that might
be compared to this hypothetical situation: Suppose the United States was at war
with the Soviet Union. And we were winning. And we told the Soviet Union:
"Well, let's quit. We offer you peace terms. Let's forget the whole
thing." And all of a sudden Red China came into the war as an ally of the
Soviet Union. And throwing them into the war brought about our defeat. A
crushing defeat, with reparations the likes of which man's imagination cannot
encompass. Imagine, then, after that defeat, if we found out that it was the
Chinese in this country, our Chinese citizens, who all the time we had thought
were loyal citizens working with us, were selling us out to the Soviet Union and
that it was through them that Red China was brought into the war against us. How
would we feel, then, in the United States against Chinese? I don't think that
one of them would dare show his face on any street. There wouldn't be enough
convenient lampposts to take care of them. Imagine how we would feel.
Well, that's how the Germans
felt towards these Jews. They'd been so nice to them: from 1905 on, when the
first Communist revolution in Russia failed, and the Jews had to scramble out of
Russia, they all went to Germany. And Germany gave them refuge. And they were
treated very nicely. And here they had sold Germany down the river for no reason
at all other than the fact that they wanted Palestine as a so-called
"Jewish commonwealth."
Now Nahum Sokolow, and all
the great leaders and great names that you read about in connection with Zionism
today, in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, and 1923 wrote in all their papers -- and the
press was filled with their statements -- that the feeling against the Jews in
Germany is due to the fact that they realized that this great defeat was brought
about by Jewish intercession in bringing the United States into the war. The
Jews themselves admitted that. It wasn't that the Germans in 1919 discovered
that a glass of Jewish blood tasted better than Coca-Cola or Muenschner Beer.
There was no religious feeling. There was no sentiment against those people
merely on account of their religious belief. It was all political. It was
economic. It was anything but religious. Nobody cared in Germany whether a Jew
went home and pulled down the shades and said "Shema' Yisroel" or
"Our Father." Nobody cared in Germany any more than they do in the
United States. Now this feeling that developed later in Germany was due to one
thing: the Germans held the Jews responsible for their crushing defeat.
And World War I had been
started against Germany for no reason for which Germany was responsible. They
were guilty of nothing. Only of being successful. They built up a big navy. They
built up world trade. You must remember that Germany at the time of the French
Revolution consisted of 300 small city-states, principalities, dukedoms, and so
forth. Three hundred separate little political entities. And between that time,
between the times of Napoleon and Bismarck, they were consolidated into one
state. And within 50 years they became one of the world's great powers. Their
navy was rivaling Great Britain's, they were doing business all over the world,
they could under sell anybody, they could make better products. What happened as
a result of that?
There was a conspiracy
between England, France, and Russia to slap down Germany. There isn't one
historian in the world who can find a valid reason why those three countries
decided to wipe Germany off the map politically.
When Germany realized that
the Jews were responsible for her defeat, they naturally resented it. But not a
hair on the head of any Jew was harmed. Not a single hair. Professor Tansill, of
Georgetown University, who had access to all the secret papers of the State
Department, wrote in his book, and quoted from a State Department document
written by Hugo Schoenfelt, a Jew whom Cordell Hull sent to Europe in 1933 to
investigate the so-called camps of political prisoners, who wrote back that he
found them in very fine condition. They were in excellent shape, with everybody
treated well. And they were filled with Communists. Well, a lot of them were
Jews, because the Jews happened to comprise about 98 per cent of the Communists
in Europe at that time. And there were some priests there, and ministers, and
labor leaders, and Masons, and others who had international affiliations.
Some background is in order:
In 1918-1919 the Communists took over Bavaria for a few days. Rosa Luxemburg and
Karl Liebknecht and a group of other Jews took over the government for three
days. In fact, when the Kaiser ended the war he fled to Holland because he
thought the Communists were going to take over Germany as they did Russia and
that he was going to meet the same fate as the Czar. So he fled to Holland for
safety, for security. After the Communist threat in Germany was quashed, the
Jews were still working, trying to get back into their former status, and the
Germans fought them in every way they could without hurting a single hair on
anyone's head. They fought them the same way that, in this country, the
Prohibitionists fought anyone who was interested in liquor. They didn't fight
one another with pistols. Well, that's the way they were fighting the Jews in
Germany. And at that time, mind you, there were 80 to 90 million Germans, and
there were only 460,000 Jews. About one half of one per cent of the population
of Germany were Jews. And yet they controlled all the press, and they controlled
most of the economy because they had come in with cheap money when the mark was
devalued and bought up practically everything.
The Jews tried to keep a lid
on this fact. They didn't want the world to really understand that they had sold
out Germany, and that the Germans resented that.
The Germans took appropriate
action against the Jews. They, shall I say, discriminated against them wherever
they could. They shunned them. The same way that we would shun the Chinese, or
the Negroes, or the Catholics, or anyone in this country who had sold us out to
an enemy and brought about our defeat.
After a while, the Jews of
the world called a meeting in Amsterdam. Jews from every country in the world
attended this meeting in July 1933. And they said to Germany: "You fire
Hitler, and you put every Jew back into his former position, whether he was a
Communist or no matter what he was. You can't treat us that way. And we, the
Jews of the world, are serving an ultimatum upon you." You can imagine what
the Germans told them. So what did the Jews do?
In 1933, when Germany
refused to surrender to the world conference of Jews in Amsterdam, the
conference broke up, and Mr. Samuel Untermyer, who was the head of the American
delegation and the president of the whole conference, came to the United States
and went from the steamer to the studios of the Columbia Broadcasting System and
made a radio broadcast throughout the United States in which he in effect said,
"The Jews of the world now declare a Holy War against Germany. We are now
engaged in a sacred conflict against the Germans. And we are going to starve
them into surrender. We are going to use a world-wide boycott against them. That
will destroy them because they are dependent upon their export business."
And it is a fact that two thirds of Germany's food supply had to be imported,
and it could only be imported with the proceeds of what they exported. So if
Germany could not export, two thirds of Germany's population would have to
starve. There was just not enough food for more than one third of the
population. Now in this declaration, which I have here, and which was printed in
the New York Times on August 7, 1933, Mr. Samuel Untermyer boldly stated that
"this economic boycott is our means of self-defense. President Roosevelt
has advocated its use in the National Recovery Administration," which some
of you may remember, where everybody was to be boycotted unless he followed the
rules laid down by the New Deal, and which was declared unconstitutional by the
Supreme Court of that time. Nevertheless, the Jews of the world declared a
boycott against Germany, and it was so effective that you couldn't find one
thing in any store anywhere in the world with the words "made in
Germany" on it. In fact, an executive of the Woolworth Company told me that
they had to dump millions of dollars worth of crockery and dishes into the
river; that their stores were boycotted if anyone came in and found a dish
marked "made in Germany," they were picketed with signs saying
"Hitler," "murderer," and so forth, something like these
sit-ins that are taking place in the South. At a store belonging to the R. H.
Macy chain, which was controlled by a family called Strauss who also happen to
be Jews, a woman found stockings there which came from Chemnitz, marked
"made in Germany." Well, they were cotton stockings and they may have
been there 20 years, since I've been observing women's legs for many years and
it's been a long time since I've seen any cotton stockings on them. I saw Macy's
boycotted, with hundreds of people walking around with signs saying
"murderers," "Hitlerites," and so forth. Now up to that
time, not one hair on the head of any Jew had been hurt in Germany. There was no
suffering, there was no starvation, there was no murder, there was nothing.
Naturally, the Germans said,
"Who are these people to declare a boycott against us and throw all our
people out of work, and make our industries come to a standstill? Who are they
to do that to us?" They naturally resented it. Certainly they painted
swastikas on stores owned by Jews. Why should a German go in and give his money
to a storekeeper who was part of a boycott that was going to starve Germany into
surrendering to the Jews of the world, who were going to dictate who their
premier or chancellor was to be? Well, it was ridiculous.
The boycott continued for
some time, but it wasn't until 1938, when a young Jew from Poland walked into
the German embassy in Paris and shot a German official, that the Germans really
started to get rough with the Jews in Germany. And you found them then breaking
windows and having street fights and so forth.
Now I don't like to use the
word "anti-Semitism" because it's meaningless, but it means something
to you still, so I'll have to use it. The only reason that there was any feeling
in Germany against Jews was that they were responsible for World War I and for
this world-wide boycott. Ultimately they were also responsible for World War II,
because after this thing got out of hand, it was absolutely necessary for the
Jews and Germany to lock horns in a war to see which one was going to survive.
In the meanwhile, I had lived in Germany, and I knew that the Germans had
decided that Europe is going to be Christian or Communist: there is no in
between. And the Germans decided they were going to keep it Christian if
possible. And they started to re-arm. In November 1933 the United States
recognized the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was becoming very powerful, and
Germany realized that "Our turn was going to come soon, unless we are
strong." The same as we in this country are saying today, "Our turn is
going to come soon, unless we are strong." Our government is spending 83 or
84 billion dollars for defense. Defense against whom? Defense against 40,000
little Jews in Moscow that took over Russia, and then, in their devious ways,
took over control of many other countries of the world.
For this country now to be
on the verge of a Third World War, from which we cannot emerge a victor, is
something that staggers my imagination. I know that nuclear bombs are measured
in terms of megatons. A megaton is a term used to describe one million tons of
TNT. Our nuclear bombs had a capacity of 10 megatons, or 10 million tons of TNT,
when they were first developed. Now, the nuclear bombs that are being developed
have a capacity of 200 megatons, and God knows how many megatons the nuclear
bombs of the Soviet Union have.
What do we face now? If we
trigger a world war that may develop into a nuclear war, humanity is finished.
Why might such a war take place? It will take place as the curtain goes up on
Act 3: Act 1 was World War I, Act 2 was World War II, Act 3 is going to be World
War III. The Jews of the world, the Zionists and their co-religionists
everywhere, are determined that they are going to again use the United States to
help them permanently retain Palestine as their foothold for their world
government. That is just as true as I am standing here. Not alone have I read
it, but many here have also read it, and it is known all over the world.
What are we going to do? The
life you save may be your son's. Your boys may be on their way to that war
tonight; and you don't know it any more than you knew that in 1916 in London the
Zionists made a deal with the British War Cabinet to send your sons to war in
Europe. Did you know it at that time? Not a person in the United States knew it.
You weren't permitted to know it. Who knew it? President Wilson knew it. Colonel
House knew it. Other insiders knew it.
Did I know it? I had a
pretty good idea of what was going on: I was liaison to Henry Morgenthau, Sr.,
in the 1912 campaign when President Wilson was elected, and there was talk
around the office there. I was "confidential man" to Henry Morgenthau,
Sr., who was chairman of the finance committee, and I was liaison between him
and Rollo Wells, the treasurer. So I sat in these meetings with President Wilson
at the head of the table, and all the others, and I heard them drum into
President Wilson's brain the graduated income tax and what has become the
Federal Reserve, and I heard them indoctrinate him with the Zionist movement.
Justice Brandeis and President Wilson were just as close as the two fingers on
this hand. President Woodrow Wilson was just as incompetent when it came to
determining what was going on as a newborn baby. That is how they got us into
World War I, while we all slept. They sent our boys over there to be
slaughtered. For what? So the Jews can have Palestine as their
"commonwealth." They've fooled you so much that you don't know whether
you're coming or going.
Now any judge, when he
charges a jury, says, "Gentlemen, any witness who you find has told a
single lie, you can disregard all his testimony." I don't know what state
you come from, but in New York state that is the way a judge addresses a jury.
If that witness told one lie, disregard his testimony.
What are the facts about the
Jews? (I call them Jews to you, because they are known as Jews. I don't call
them Jews myself. I refer to them as so-called Jews, because I know what they
are.) The eastern European Jews, who form 92 per cent of the world's population
of those people who call themselves Jews, were originally Khazars. They were a
warlike tribe who lived deep in the heart of Asia. And they were so warlike that
even the Asiatics drove them out of Asia into eastern Europe. They set up a
large Khazar kingdom of 800,000 square miles. At the time, Russia did not exist,
nor did many other European countries. The Khazar kingdom was the biggest
country in all Europe -- so big and so powerful that when the other monarchs
wanted to go to war, the Khazars would lend them 40,000 soldiers. That's how big
and powerful they were.
They were phallic
worshippers, which is filthy and I do not want to go into the details of that
now. But that was their religion, as it was also the religion of many other
pagans and barbarians elsewhere in the world. The Khazar king became so
disgusted with the degeneracy of his kingdom that he decided to adopt a
so-called monotheistic faith -- either Christianity, Islam, or what is known
today as Judaism, which is really Talmudism. By spinning a top, and calling out
"eeny, meeny, miney, moe," he picked out so-called Judaism. And that
became the state religion. He sent down to the Talmudic schools of Pumbedita and
Sura and brought up thousands of rabbis, and opened up synagogues and schools,
and his people became what we call Jews. There wasn't one of them who had an
ancestor who ever put a toe in the Holy Land. Not only in Old Testament history,
but back to the beginning of time. Not one of them! And yet they come to the
Christians and ask us to support their armed insurrections in Palestine by
saying, "You want to help repatriate God's Chosen People to their Promised
Land, their ancestral home, don't you? It's your Christian duty. We gave you one
of our boys as your Lord and Savior. You now go to church on Sunday, and you
kneel and you worship a Jew, and we're Jews." But they are pagan Khazars
who were converted just the same as the Irish were converted. It is as
ridiculous to call them "people of the Holy Land," as it would be to
call the 54 million Chinese Moslems "Arabs." Mohammed only died in 620
A.D., and since then 54 million Chinese have accepted Islam as their religious
belief. Now imagine, in China, 2,000 miles away from Arabia, from Mecca and
Mohammed's birthplace. Imagine if the 54 million Chinese decided to call
themselves "Arabs." You would say they were lunatics. Anyone who
believes that those 54 million Chinese are Arabs must be crazy. All they did was
adopt as a religious faith a belief that had its origin in Mecca, in Arabia. The
same as the Irish. When the Irish became Christians, nobody dumped them in the
ocean and imported to the Holy Land a new crop of inhabitants. They hadn't
become a different people. They were the same people, but they had accepted
Christianity as a religious faith.
These Khazars, these pagans,
these Asiatics, these Turko-Finns, were a Mongoloid race who were forced out of
Asia into eastern Europe. Because their king took the Talmudic faith, they had
no choice in the matter. Just the same as in Spain: If the king was Catholic,
everybody had to be a Catholic. If not, you had to get out of Spain. So the
Khazars became what we call today Jews. Now imagine how silly it was for the
great Christian countries of the world to say, "We're going to use our
power and prestige to repatriate God's Chosen People to their ancestral
homeland, their Promised Land." Could there be a bigger lie than that?
Because they control the newspapers, the magazines, the radio, the television,
the book publishing business, and because they have the ministers in the pulpit
and the politicians on the soapboxes talking the same language, it is not too
surprising that you believe that lie. You'd believe black is white if you heard
it often enough. You wouldn't call black black anymore -- you'd start to call
black white. And nobody could blame you.
That is one of the great
lies of history. It is the foundation of all the misery that has befallen the
world.
Do you know what Jews do on
the Day of Atonement, that you think is so sacred to them? I was one of them.
This is not hearsay. I'm not here to be a rabble-rouser. I'm here to give you
facts. When, on the Day of Atonement, you walk into a synagogue, you stand up
for the very first prayer that you recite. It is the only prayer for which you
stand. You repeat three times a short prayer called the Kol Nidre. In that
prayer, you enter into an agreement with God Almighty that any oath, vow, or
pledge that you may make during the next twelve months shall be null and void.
The oath shall not be an oath; the vow shall not be a vow; the pledge shall not
be a pledge. They shall have no force or effect. And further, the Talmud teaches
that whenever you take an oath, vow, or pledge, you are to remember the Kol
Nidre prayer that you recited on the Day of Atonement, and you are exempted from
fulfilling them. How much can you depend on their loyalty? You can depend upon
their loyalty as much as the Germans depended upon it in 1916. We are going to
suffer the same fate as Germany suffered, and for the same reason.
The above speech was given
by Benjamin H. Freedman at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D. C. in 1961.
Introduction
of Victor Ostrovsky
and Comments on the USS Liberty
Our last speaker will be
introduced by a very distinguished and interesting gentleman known to many of
you over the years as a maverick Republican, a liberal Republican, a pain in the
Republican butt, but always a Republican, and a great figure from the state of
California, a great former Marine from the Korean War. He holds two Purple
Hearts and a Silver Star and a man of great moral conviction and courage, the
Honorable Pete McCloskey.
Paul N. McCloskey
It is my privilege to
introduce to you one of the most exciting speakers on this continent, Victor
Ostrovsky. But before I do I want to tell you a story that Willis Carto gave me
permission to tell you about the meaning of Spotlight and one great achievement
of Spotlight.
It’s a story of the USS
Liberty that, some of you may remember, in 1967 was attacked by the Israeli
Navy, torpedo boats - aircraft. Suffered the casualties of over 190 young
sailors, and a ship that was literally unarmed; it was a surveillance ship off
the Egyptian and Israeli coast during the 1967 War. Israeli planes machine
gunned it, torpedoed it from torpedo boats, and when they lowered lifeboats,
machine gunned the lifeboats. The intent, that there would be no survivors. The
boat did survive, limped back to port. The story was covered up. Lyndon Johnson
had ordered airplanes to support it. When he learned that it was an Israeli
attack the airplanes were withdrawn. The U.S. Navy covered up the story for many
years, dispersed the crews and were told not to discuss it. You can imagine this
crew in 1967 having suffered probably more casualties than any naval engagement
since the battle off Guadalcanal of the Solomon Islands. They were devastated by
the fact that nobody recognized them.
One day a little town up in
Wisconsin in a town called Grafton, a town north of Milwaukee of twenty-thousand
people, they were conducting what is fairly rare in America. They wanted to have
more libraries, unlike turning away and closing libraries, the city of Grafton
determined that they would have a library. They put out a fund-raising effort.
They brought in a professional that told them, “If you’re going to raise
three-million dollars for a library you’ve got to find somebody that will give
a half of a million dollars. Then you get so many gifts at one-hundred thousand
dollars, so many at ten-thousand, and you raise the money like that.” You all
probably have been involved in that kind of campaign for the YMCA or something
in your own community. So they said, “How do we get this half of a million
dollars?”
There were two old men that
came over to this country in the early part of this century. They had founded a
machine tool shop that had become successful. All during the depression the Grob
Brothers, G R O B, the Grob Brothers did two things. They read Spotlight every
week and they also, whenever the town or the community needed money, would give
the money - such as a little league baseball team, nursing home, new wing for
the hospital. The Grob brothers were the heart and soul of the town of Grafton,
Wisconsin. Well they got Mr. Grob, one of the Grobs, to pledge the half million
dollars. They went to him and said, “Well Mr. Grob, do you want to call this
new library the Theodore Grob Memorial Library?” He said, “No!” He had
been reading in SpotLight about the USS Liberty and the injustice. He said, “I
want to name it the USS Liberty Memorial Library.”
It caused an international
sensation. They had just dedicated the Golda Meir Library of Milwaukee. The
entire Jewish community rose up and said, “We can’t have a USS Liberty.”
They accused them of anti-Semitism in the Milwaukee Journal. They had an ex-CPO
that was the mayor of the town and they stuck to their guns and finally
dedicated the USS Liberty Memorial Library.
The surviving crew members
came, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was a memorial, which had
the names of the thirty-four dead on that memorial. They had six old men that
fired a salute with the old Springfield rifle. They had a band and everybody was
just overjoyed. In the meantime the press was appearing them as an anti-Semitic
town.
That night I was invited to
dinner with Mr. Grob, who by reading the Spotlight had caused this crew to come
from all over the United States and restored their faith. It was a little like
the Vietnam War Memorial did for the Vietnam veterans. Sitting across from Mr.
Grob, he said, “McCloskey, I’ve read your record in the Spotlight over the
years. You’re right on this issue. But you’re a damn liberal.” And we have
been good friends ever since.
So when a voice speaks the
truth it can lead to great things. In the Spotlight, no matter how many times
over the years they have called me a liberal or disagreed with me on believing
with me on the United Nations or one of those liberal positions, I have never
ceased to thank them for what they did for the surviving sixty or seventy
members of the Liberty which take their faith from that dedication at the little
town of Grafton, which would not have happened but for Spotlight.
The man I am going to
introduce to you now has shown as much or more courage than many of the Marines
that I fought with in Korea and watched fight in Vietnam. Victor Ostrovsky is a
former member of the Israeli Mossad, a patriotic Israeli, his wife is a
patriotic Israeli, but they concluded some years ago that the Mossad control and
leadership over the Israeli government was such that somebody had to speak the
truth about it. Victor and his wife in Ottawa, Canada, Victor wrote a book
called By Way of Deception. He has written a follow up book called The
Other Side of Deception. Those two books should be mandatory reading for
every citizen in the United States. In the book By Way of Deception he
described that the Mossad has a network all over the world of Jewish
communities, in France, and Canada, London, the United States, who inadvertently
and sometimes knowingly and sometime unknowingly furnish information to the
Mossad which can be funneled back to Israel to discredit American citizens who
speak out against Israel. The Anti-Defamation League, of all the thirty-three
major Jewish organizations in this country, is the most pro-Zionist. If you take
your cue, as I do, from George Washington’s farewell address, you will
remember his cautioning against foreign entanglements, either great hatred
against a nation or great affection for a nation, which might lead the United
States into foreign policy positions which are inimical to the United States.
There is no foreign relationship of the United States today that becomes close
to the relationship with the nation of Israel. And there is no nation whose
foreign policy is sponsored and supported by a community of supporters in the
United States, who so rigorously controls Congress in all matters affecting the
Mid-East in Israeli policy.
When Victor Ostrovsky wrote
his book the Israeli government tried to suppress it. Our freedom of speech in
this country, freedom of the press permitted the publication of the book that
sold two-million copies and has done more to educate Americans about the
insidious excessive influence of the Israeli government and their supporters in
our political system than any book that I know. The courage that caused him to
publish that also subjected him to the very real possibility of assassination,
which he will describe, because of the dedication of certain elements in Israel
to the execution or suppression of voices who speak out critical to Israel.
I come from California where
Alex O’Day, an Arab-American who spoke out on a television program, indicated
that he thought what Yasar Arafat was saying was a voice of peace. He was blown
up by a bomb when he went into his office the next day. The plans of his office
were discovered in the possession of Roy Bullock, a paid agent of the
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, the plans for that office that was
blown up and had assassinated this American citizen who had spoken out in
criticism of the policies of Israel.
Victor Ostrovsky has spoken
the truth. Because the truth hurts, he is subject to assassination at any time.
I have particular thanks that I want to express to him. I served in a minor
capacity on one of the commissions, appointed by my friend George Bush. George
Bush outraged the American Jewish community, if you recall, by taking a position
that our aid to them of ten billion dollars should be conditioned on a
reasonable Israeli position toward a Mid East peace. Victor Ostrovsky spoke out
and said that the President of the United States is subject to the possibility
of assassination by a Mossad hit team when he goes to Spain to an international
convention. By his willingness to speak out he may have saved the life of the
President of the United States. In any event they have decorated me for various
things, Victor, for fighting in Korea. I know of no act of courage that begins
to match the courage that you have shown..
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisksabra.html
After 19 years, The Truth at Last?
By Robert
Fisk The Independent
Sana Sersawi speaks
carefully, loudly but slowly, as she recalls the chaotic, dangerous, desperately
tragic events that overwhelmed her just over 19 years ago, on 18 September 1982.
As one of the survivors prepared to testify against the Israeli prime minister
Ariel Sharon-- who was then Israel's defence minister--she stops to search her
memory when she confronts the most terrible moments of her life. "The
Lebanese Forces militia [Phalangists] had taken us from our homes and marched us
up to the entrance to the camp where a large hole had been dug in the earth. The
men were told to get into it. Then the militiamen shot a Palestinian. The women
and children had climbed over bodies to reach this spot, but we were truly
shocked by seeing this man killed in front of us and there was a roar of
shouting and screams from the women. That's when we heard the Israelis on
loudspeakers shouting, 'Give us the men, give us the men.' We thought, 'Thank
God, they will save us.'" It was to prove a cruelly false hope.
Mrs Sersawi, three months
pregnant, saw her husband Hassan, 30, and her Egyptian brother-in-law Faraj el-Sayed
Ahmed standing in the crowd of men. "We were told to walk up the road
towards the Kuwaiti embassy, the women and children in front, the men behind. We
had been separated. There were Phalangist militiamen and Israeli soldiers
walking alongside us. I could still see Hassan and Faraj. It was like a parade.
There were several hundred of us. When we got to the Cite Sportif, the Israelis
put us women in a big concrete room and the men were taken to another side of
the stadium. There were a lot of men from the camp and I could no longer see my
husband. The Israelis went round saying 'Sit, sit.' It was 11am. An hour later,
we were told to leave. But we stood around outside amid the Israeli soldiers,
waiting for our men."
Sana Sersawi waited in the
bright, sweltering sun for Hassan and Faraj to emerge. "Some men came out,
none of them younger than 40, and they told us to be patient, that hundreds of
men were still inside. Then about 4pm, an Israeli officer came out. He was
wearing dark glasses and said in Arabic: 'What are you all waiting for?' He said
there was nobody left, that everyone had gone. There were Israeli trucks moving
out with tarpaulin over them. We couldn't see inside. And there were jeeps and
tanks and a bulldozer making a lot of noise. We stayed there as it got dark and
the Israelis appeared to be leaving and we were very nervous. But then when the
Israelis had moved away, we went inside. And there was no one there. Nobody. I
had been only three years married. I never saw my husband again."
Today, a Belgian appeals
court will begin a hearing to decide if Prime Minister Sharon should be
prosecuted for the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Chatila
refugee camps in Beirut in 1982. (Belgian laws allow courts to try foreigners
for war crimes committed on foreign soil.) In working on this case, the
prosecution believes that it has discovered shocking new evidence of Israel's
involvement.
The evidence centres on the
Camille Chamoun Sports Stadium-- the "Cite Sportif". Only two miles
from Beirut airport, the damaged stadium was a natural holding centre for
prisoners. It had been an ammunition dump for Yasser Arafat's PLO and repeatedly
bombed by Israeli jets during the 1982 siege of Beirut so that its giant,
smashed exterior looked like a nightmare denture. The Palestinians had earlier
mined its cavernous interior, but its vast, underground storage space and
athletics changing-rooms remained intact. It was a familiar landmark to all of
us who lived in Beirut. At mid-morning on 18 September 1982--about the time Sana
Sersawi says she was brought to the stadium--I saw hundreds of Palestinian and
Lebanese prisoners, probably well over 1,000, sitting in its gloomy, dark
interior, squatting in the dust, watched over by Israeli soldiers and plain-
clothes Shin Beth (Israeli secret service) agents and men who I suspected were
Lebanese collaborators. The men sat in silence, obviously in fear. From time to
time, I noted, a few were taken away. They were put into Israeli army trucks or
jeeps or Phalangist vehicles--for further "interrogation".
Nor did I doubt this. A few
hundred metres away, inside the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camps, up
to 600 massacre victims rotted in the sun, the stench of decomposition drifting
over the prisoners and their captors alike. It was suffocatingly hot. Loren
Jenkins of The Washington Post, Paul Eedle of Reuters and I had only got into
the cells because the Israelis assumed--given our Western appearance-- that we
must have been members of Shin Beth. Many of the prisoners had their heads
bowed. But Israel's Phalangist militiamen--still raging at the murder of their
leader and president elect Bashir Gemayel--had been withdrawn from the camps,
their slaughter over, and at least the Israeli army was now in charge. So what
did these men have to fear?
Looking back--and listening
to Sana Sersawi today--I shudder now at our innocence. My notes of the time,
subsequently written into a book about Israel's 1982 invasion and its war with
the PLO, contain some ominous clues. We found a Lebanese employee of Reuters,
Abdullah Mattar, among the prisoners and obtained his release, Paul leading him
away with his arm around the man's shoulders. "They take us away, one by
one, for interrogation," one of the prisoners muttered to me. "They
are Haddad [Christian militia] men. Usually they bring the people back after
interrogation, but not always. Sometimes the people do not return them."
Then an Israeli officer ordered me to leave. Why couldn't the prisoners talk to
me, I asked? "They can talk if they want," he replied. "But they
have nothing to say."
All the Israelis knew what
had happened inside the camps. The smell of the corpses was now overpowering.
Outside, a Phalangist jeep with the words "Military Police" painted on
it--if so exotic an institution could be associated with this gang of
murderers--drove by. A few television crews had turned up. One filmed the
Lebanese Christian militiamen outside the Cite Sportif. He also filmed a woman
pleading to an Israeli army colonel called "Yahya" for the release of
her husband. (The colonel has now been positively identified by The Independent.
Today, he is a general in the Israeli army.)
Along the main road opposite
the stadium there was a line of Israeli Merkava tanks, their crews sitting on
the turrets, smoking, watching the men being led from the stadium in ones or
twos, some being set free, others being led away by Shin Beth men or by Lebanese
men in drab khaki overalls. All these soldiers knew what had happened inside the
camps. One of the members of the tank crews, Lt Avi Grabovsky--he was later to
testify to the Israeli Kahan commission--had even witnessed the murder of
several civilians the previous day and had been told not to
"interfere".
And in the days that
followed, strange reports reached us. A girl had been dragged from a car in
Damour by Phalangist militiamen and taken away, despite her appeals to a nearby
Israeli soldier. Then the cleaning lady of a Lebanese woman who worked for a US
television chain complained bitterly that Israelis had arrested her husband. He
was never seen again. There were other vague rumours of "disappeared"
people.
I wrote in my notes at the
time that "even after Chatila, Israel's 'terrorist' enemies were being
liquidated in West Beirut". But I had not directly associated this dark
conviction with the Cite Sportif. I had not even reflected on the fearful
precedents of a sports stadium in time of war. Hadn't there been a sports
stadium in Santiago a few years before, packed with prisoners after Pinochet's
coup d'etat, a stadium from which many prisoners never returned?
Among the testimonies
gathered by lawyers seeking to indict Ariel Sharon for war crimes is that of
Wadha al-Sabeq. On Friday, 17 September 1982, she said, while the massacre was
still (unknown to her) underway inside Sabra and Chatila, she was in her home
with her family in Bir Hassan, just opposite the camps. "Neighbours came
and said the Israelis wanted to stamp our ID cards, so we went downstairs and we
saw both Israelis and Lebanese Forces [Phalangists] on the road. The men were
separated from the women." This separation--with its awful shadow of
similar separations at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war--were a common feature
of these mass arrests. "We were told to go to the Cite Sportif. The men
stayed put." Among the men were Wadha's two sons, 19-year-old Mohamed and
16-year-old Ali and her brother Mohamed. "We went to the Cite Sportif, as
the Israelis told us," she says. "I never saw my sons or brother
again."
The survivors tell
distressingly similar stories. Bahija Zrein says she was ordered by an Israeli
patrol to go to the Cite Sportif and the men with her, including her 22-year-old
brother, were taken away. Some militiamen--watched by the Israelis--loaded him
into a car, blindfolded, she claims. "That's how he disappeared," she
says in her official testimony, "and I have never seen him again
since."
It was only a few days
afterwards that we journalists began to notice a discrepancy in the figures of
dead. While up to 600 bodies had been found inside Sabra and Chatila, 1,800
civilians had been reported as "missing". We assumed--how easy
assumptions are in war--that they had been killed in the three days between 16
September 1982 and the withdrawal of the Phalangist killers on the 18th, that
their corpses had been secretly buried outside the camp. Beneath the golf
course, we suspected. The idea that many of these young people had been murdered
outside the camps or after the 18th, that the killings were still going on while
we walked through the camps, never occurred to us.
Why did we not think of this
at the time? The following year, the Israeli Kahan commission published its
report, condemning Sharon but ending its own inquiry of the atrocity on 18
September, with just a one-line hint--unexplained-- that several hundred people
may have "disappeared" at about the same time. The commission
interviewed no Palestinian survivors but it was allowed to become the narrative
of history. The idea that the Israelis went on handing over prisoners to their
bloodthirsty militia allies never occurred to us. The Palestinians of Sabra and
Chatila are now giving evidence that this is exactly what happened. One man,
Abdel Nasser Alameh, believes his brother Ali was handed to the Phalange on the
morning of the 18th. A Palestinian Christian woman called Milaneh Boutros has
recorded how, in a truck-load of women and children, she was taken from the
camps to the Christian town of Bikfaya, the home of the newly assassinated
Christian president-elect Bashir Gemayel, where a grief-stricken Christian woman
ordered the execution of a 13-year-old boy in the truck. He was shot. The truck
must have passed at least four Israeli checkpoints on its way to Bikfaya. And
heaven spare me, I realise now that I had even met the woman who ordered the
boy's execution.
Even before the slaughter
inside the camps had ended, Shahira Abu Rudeina says she was taken to the Cite
Sportif where, in one of the underground "holding centres", she saw a
retarded man, watched by Israeli soldiers, burying bodies in a pit. Her evidence
might be rejected were it not for the fact that she also expressed her gratitude
for an Israeli soldier--inside the Chatila camp, against all the evidence given
by the Israelis--who prevented the murder of her daughters by the Phalange.
Long after the war, the
ruins of the Cite Sportif were torn down and a brand new marble stadium was
built in its place, partly by the British. Pavarotti has sung there. But the
testimony of what may lie beneath its foundations--and its frightful
implications--might give Ariel Sharon further reason to fear an indictment.
"Let the
Jews, who claim to be the chosen race, prove their title by choosing the way of
non-violence for vindicating their position on earth."
--Mahatma
Gandhi, Nov. 26, 1938 (full text below)
M.K. Gandhi,
Towards Lasting Peace, ed. by Anand T. Hingorani (Chowpatty: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1956)
Gandhi
on "The Jews," November 26, 1938:
Several letters have been
received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in
Palestine, and the persecution of Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation
that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.
My sympathies are all with
the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became
life-long companions. Through these friends, I came to learn much of their
age-old persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The
parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables
by hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for
the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the
friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my
sympathy for the Jews.
But the sympathy does not
blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the
Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible
and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine.
Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their
home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?
Palestine belongs to the
Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English, or France to the
French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going
on in Palestine to-day cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The
mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely, it would be a crime
against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to
the Jews, partly or wholly, as their national home.
The nobler cause would be to
insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews
born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in
France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the
idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are
settled? Or, do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry
for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German
expulsion of the Jews.
But the German persecution
of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went
so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal.
For, he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism, in
the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here
and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited
upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a
justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to
prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.
But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war
is, therefore, outside my horizon or province.
But if there can be no war
against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews,
surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be an alliance
between a nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which
is the declared enemy of both? Or, is England drifting towards armed
dictatorship and all it means.
Germany is showing to the
world how efficiently violence can be worked, when it is not hampered by any
hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how
hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.
Can the Jews resist this
organized and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their
self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there
is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn.
Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the
Mussalmans or the Hindus, though, as a matter of fact, in essence, He is common
to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews
attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs,
they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and
earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest
gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or caste me in the dungeon;
I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for
doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil
resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest would were bound
to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription
here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily
undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy, which no number of
resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if
Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they
can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may
even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the
declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for
voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a
day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race
even at the hands of they tyrant. For to the God fearing, death has no terror.
It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more
refreshing for the long sleep.
It is hardly necessary for
me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my
prescription. And they have in the Indian Satyagraha campaign in south Africa an
exact parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the
Jews occupy in Germany. The persecution had also a religious tinge. President
Kruger used to say that the white Christians were the chosen of God, and Indians
were inferior beings created to serve the Whites. A fundamental clause in the
Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the Whites
and the colored races, including Asiatics. There, too, the Indians were
consigned to ghettos, the same types as those of the Jews in Germany. The
Indians, a mere handful, resorted to Satyagraha without any backing from the
world outside or the Indian Government. Indeed, the British officials tried to
dissuade the Satyagrahis from their contemplated step. World opinion and the
Indian Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And that,
too, was by the way of diplomatic pressure, not of a threat of war.
But the Jews of Germany can
offer Satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of South
Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogenous community in Germany. They are far
more gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organized world
opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can
arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair
can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has
to-day become a degrading man-hunt can be turned into a calm and determined
stand, offered by un-armed men and women possessing the strength of suffering
given to them by Jehovah. It will be, then, a truly religious resistance offered
against the godless fury of dehumanized man. The German Jews will score a
lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have
converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have
rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans
as against those who are to-day dragging , however unknowingly, the German name
into the mire.
And now, a word to the Jews
in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it the wrong way. The
Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their
hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national
home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious
act cannot be preformed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle
in Palestine only by the good-will of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the
Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They
can offer Satyagraha in front of the Arabs, and offer themselves to be shot or
thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will
find the world opinion in their favor in their religious aspiration. There are
hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help
of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in
despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.
I am not defending the Arab
excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they
rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But
according to accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the
Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.
Let the Jews, who claim to
be the chosen race, prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for
vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home, including
Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me
a book called The Jewish Contribution to Civilization by Cecil Roth. It gives a
record of what the Jews have done to enrich the world's literature, art, music,
drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse
to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronized. He can
command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation
of God, instead of being man, who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by
God. They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of
non-violent action. (end quote) -- Harijan, Nov. 26, 1938 ----
Maariv, September 2, 1994
By: Ben Kaspit, the New York
correspondent
The
Jewish Laundry of Drug Money
Rabbi Yosef Crozer fell
because of his big mouth. "I launder money, a lot of money", he
once told an acquaintance. "Every day I take $300,000 from 47 Street in
Manhattan, bring it to the synagogue, give a receipt and then take a
commission". The man who heard that story from Crozer was, how sad, an
undercover Jewish agent of the U.S. agency for fighting drug use, DEA. A
month later, in February 1990, Crozer was arrested by agents on his way from
47 Street to Brooklyn. They found on him prayer books, five passports, and
also $280.000 dollars in cash in the trunk of his car. He traveled that
route every day. He would arrive at the gold trading oflice on 47 Street in
the afternoon, and leave shortly later, carrying suitcases and bags loaded
with cash. From there he drove to the "Hessed Ve'Tzadaka"
["Mercy and Charity"] synagogue in Brooklyn, which was turned into
an instrument for laundering millions of dollars, the revenue from drug
sales in the New York area.
That was how Crozer made
his living. Assuming that the commission for laundering money ranged in the
area of 2-6%, Rabbi Crozer can be presumed not to have suffered from hunger.
The investigators who questioned him faced a simple task, A respectable and
pious Jew who never imagined that he will be interrogated, a son of a highly
respected rabbi who headed a large yeshiva in city of New Square, Crozer
broke down and cooperated. But then his lawyer, Stanley Lupkin, argued that
his client, a pious Jew, had no idea that he was laundering drug money.
Crozer, according to his lawyer, believed that he was laundering money for a
Jewish diamond trader "who trades in cash and not for Gentile drug
traders, and was using the situation to make some extra money just for his
synagogue. It seems that this argument had some effect since Crozer was
sentenced to one year and one day imprisonment. In exchange for a lenient
sentence, he supplied his interrogators with valuable information which
helped them to capture a person whom they had been seeking for a long time:
Avraham Sharir, another pious Jew, the owner of a gold trading office on 47
Street, who was really one of the biggest sharks of laundering drug money
in New York City. Sharir, an Israeli Jew aged about 45, to whom we will
later return, subsequently confessed to having laundered $200 million for
the Colombian drug cartel of Kali.
The drug trade is
considered to be tbe most profitable branch of crime in the world. The
profit margin ranges in the area of 200% for cocaine and 1, 200% for heroin.
The amounts of money circulated in the branch are larger than the budgets of
many small states. The temptation is great. The main problem of the
Colombian drug barons who control a significant part of world drug trade is
how to get rid of the money. It is a problem of the rich, but a nagging one.
Two major Colombian drug cartels operate in the U.S.: the Kali cartel and
the Medellin cartel. The killing of the head of the Medellin cartel, Pablo
Escovar, by Colombian authorities in December 1993, greatly weakened this
cartel, which had controlled the drug trade in the New York area. The Kali
people, in contrast, hold a monopoly over the Los Angeles and Miami area
markets. At present, the Kali people distribute about 80% of the world's
cocaine and a third of heroin. The Kali drug cartel makes $25 billion
each year within the U.S. alone. The money must somehow be shipped out of
the U.S. without arousing the attention of the American authorities.
Besides, the cash must be given a seal of approval and, one way or another,
become legitimized. Around this complex issue a mega-business has sprung up:
laundering and smuggling drug money. American customs investigators have
found millions of dollars in containers supposed to have contained dried
peas, in double-sided gas tanks, in steel boxes attached to freight ships.
In 1990 they found $14 million in cash in a shipment of cables, supposed to
have been sent from a Long Island warehouse to Colombia. According to
records found on the site, that was shipment no.234 (multiplied by 14
million, calculate it yourselves). The same year, at Kennedy Airport, in a
warehouse, 26 large containers were found which were supposed to have
contained bull sperm. The latter was not there, but there were $6.5 million.
In May of this year American investigators raided a bowling ball plant in
Long Island. They picked the balls, cut them in half and found within
210,000 dollars, in used $100 bills.
Despite their active
imagination, the drug barons find it hard to keep up. $25 billion is a lot
of money and it must fill a lot of space, since most of the money gained in
drug deals conies in bills of $l0-20. And that is how the match was made
between the drug cartels and the 47 Street in Manhattan, That street is the
world center for trading diamonds, gold, jewels and precious stones.
Hundreds of businesses are crowded in there, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue,
Shops, businesses, display halls. In the back rooms and on the top floors,
far from public access, the action takes place. That is where the major
traders sit, that is where the deals are made. Diamonds, gold and jewels
pass from hand to hand, with a handshake. The frantic activity there offers
an ideal cover for illegal transfers of money. "In fact, even
legitimate business appears, on 47 Street, to be dark and mysterious",
said a customs official. "Merchandise arrives constantly, boxes,
suitcases and packages are constantly opened, everything arrives in armored
cars, under heavy security and a shield of secrecy. Now, go find the black
money".
"The match between
the drug barons and 47 Street", an American customs investigator told
"Maariv", " is ideal." The gold and diamonds industry
circulates large amounts of cash. The diamond traders are accustomed to
transporting large amounts of money in cash, from one state to another,
efficiently and without leaving a trace. Large amounts of money pass from
hand to hand on 47 Street, without arousing suspicion. A diamond trader
might launder $5 million every day, without arousing special attention. It
is difficult to monitor the deals, to locate the sources of the money and it
is very difficult to infiltrate that closed field, which is based on
personal acquaintance and trust. Added to it is the fact that in the course
of the past five years, the diamond industry on 47 Street has been in a deep
slump, which led many traders into bankruptcy. "A trader like
that", said an investigator, "faces the choice of bankruptcy or
making easy, quick and relatively safe money. Not everyone is strong enough
to withstand the temptation".
All of that would not
have been of interest to us if not for the massive Israeli or Jewish
presence on 47 Street. "At least 50% of the diamond traders there are
Israelis", so an Israeli diamond merchant who wishes to remain
anonymous, told "Maariv.". 'Not a few Israelis also operate in the
field of jewels, precious stones and gold. All of them came to New York to
make fast money, conquer the market, get their big break. Not all of them
succeeded, especially not recently". But Jewish presence on 47 Street
is much greater than that. Experts in the field estimate that 75-80% of the
active traders on the street are Jews. A large part of them are very
talous Orthodox Jews, mainly Hassids. There is also a respectable
representation of Jews from Iran and Syria, usually also very pious. One can
get along fine in Hebrew on 47 Street. There are many more kosher
restaurants in the area than in the entire Tel-Aviv. The place is also
the biggest laundry for drug money in the U.S..
The expansion of the
phenomenon of laundering drug money in the U.S. in general and on 47 Street
in particular, led to the establishment of a special American task force, to
combat the phenomenon. The unit is called Eldorado, after the mythical South
American city of gold. It is staffed with 200 agents, officials of the U.S
customs and internal revenue agencies. Eldorado, established in April 1990,
investigates the money laundering in general. Fifty of its agents dedicate
their time just to 47 Street. "It is work that demands tremendous
manpower, said Robert Van Attan, an Eldorado officer, since the money has to
be monitored along the length and breadth of the continent, sometimes also
abroad". The target of the Eldorado agents is money, and money alone.
They are not interested in drug imports, drug deals or drug dealers.
"We want to put our hands on the money. To hit their pockets", say
members of the unit.
The task is difficult.
In America there is no law that prohibits possessing money. On the other
hand, when a large amount of cash is found in the possession of a launderer,
the agents confiscate the money. If the person can prove that the source of
the money was legitimate, he gets it back. That does not happen. The
launderers are experienced. When one of them is caught and several million
dollars are found in his possession, he willingly hands over the money, but
asks for a receipt. "The money is not mine, I want you to confirm that
you took it," is the common request. Incidently, their lives depend on
that receipt. It is not a simple matter to trail them. The eyes of a typical
launderer are glued to his rear-view mirror. He makes sudden stops, moves
from one lane to another, chooses long and twisted routes from one place to
another. Eldorado has an answer. The investigators follow their targets with
eight, ten, sometimes 12 vehicles. If necessary they use one or two
helicopters. There is also sophisticated equipment, the wonders of American
technology in the fields of tapping. surveillance and code-breaking. In the
first two years of its operations, Eldorado captured 60 million dollars and
arrested 120 launderers. Compared to the scope of overall laundering, that
is peanuts. "That is not the point," say the Eldorado agents.
"Obviously, it is impossible, with the existing legal restrictions, to
put an end to the phenomenon. Our warfare is psychological". Incidently,
Eldorado is not the only agency combatting money laundering. The DEA, the
American Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI, also conduct lively activity
in that field. Not always is that activity coordinated.
In recent months the
Eldorado agents discovered a new center of operations. It is termed The
Cocaine Triangle. Its sides are: Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewish money
launderers. Jewish-Russian mafiosi. The Colombians funnel the money, the
Israelis launder it, the Russian mafiosi (who have recently overrun New York
in droves), provide the security and the muscle. A New York journalist
recently told "Ma'ariv"; "The Israeli Jews are gaining
notoriety in the money laundering market. You need only look at the list of
arrests and the inditements of the past 3 years, in order to grasp the
enormous scope of Israeli involvement in that field".
One reason for the
growing power of the Jews in the laundering drug money business is the Law
of Return with its easy possibility of escape to Israel. In May 1993,
five members of Jewish international laundering which had worked with the
Kali cartel were arrested. The ring was exposed following an FBI 'sting'
operation, in the framework of which it established a dummy corporation
called Prism, which served the gang for laundering money. In the course of
less than one year $22.5 million were laundered through the company. The
head of the ring was an Israeli named Zion Ya'akov Evenheim, known as 'Zero'
Evenheim who had a dual Israeli and Colombian citizenship, stayed in Kali,
from where he coordinated the activity and supervised the transfers of
money. Most of the ring's members were arrested in May 1993. Evenheim was
arrested by Interpol in Switzerland and extradited to the U.S.. He is
cooperating with the FBI. Additional Israeli detainees; Raymond Shoshana,
38, Daniella Levi, 30, Binyamin Hazon, Meir Ochayon, 33, Alex Ajami, 34.
Many other suspects, to whom we will later return, escaped to Israel, and
there are difficulties in extradicting them to the U.S.
In the course of the
investigation, FBI agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations in
Hebrew among the Israeli suspects. For the purpose of translating the
material, they employed, among others, Neil Elefant, a Jewish resident of
New Jersey who had lived in Israel for some time and who spoke fluent
Hebrew. Elefant translated and translated, until one day in May 1992 he was
amazed to discover among the speakers a friend, Jack Zbeida, an Jewish
antique dealer from Brooklyn. Elefant was in a difficult dilemma. He
approached his rabbi, Elazar Teitz, who told him that his religious duty
is to warn Zbeida. Elefant then secretly met Zbeida and told him that he
was targetted by the FBI. Alex Ajami, an Israeli Jew who was one the heads
of the gang, was also present. Zbeida and Ajami hurried to the FBI offering
to cooperate, turning in Elefant, who was arrested and charged with
interfering with legal procedures. He argued that one of the reasons for his
decision to warn Zbeida was the zealousness, almosst approaching
anti-Semitism, which he found among the FBI agents trying to involve State
of Israel in drug affairs. Judge Kevin Duffy sentenced Elefant to 18 months
imprisonment. In the meantime the FBI was forced to hurriedly arrest all
those involved in the affair. In spite of the hurry, many involved Israeli
Jews fled to Israel. Some few of the tens Israeli and American Jews who fled
on this occasion to Israel are: Raymond Shoshana, Adi Tal, David Va'anunu,
his nephew Yishai Vanunu, Ya'akov Cohen. Most of them came out of the affair
with a lot of money which they also took to Israel. The Americans know
that the chances of any one of them being extradited to the U.S. are close
to nil.
The story of Adi Tal is
worthy of elaboration. He is an impressive youth, handsome, with a good
record in the army, a son of a fine Israeli family, formerly a security
guard at El-Al. All that did not hinder Tal from becoming involved in
laundering drug money already in 1988. In March 1988 the American
authorities arrested 11 members of the laundering ring, including Tal and
his good friend, also an Israeli, Nir Goldstein. The investigators at the
time said that Tal and his friends had operated cautiously, used aliases and
codes and lived in constant fear. They would receive large amounts of money
from Colombian couriers, divide the money into sums of less than 10,000
dollars (any amount over 10,000 dollars that is deposited in an American
bank requires a report), deposit the sums in banks and convert them into
travellers checks which they sent, by means of international couriers, to a
dummy corporation in Panama. The most popular code which Tal's gang used was
taken from diamond industry. When information was transmitted about the
transfer of a diamond of 30.4 carats, it meant the sum of $30,400. Tal
worked for the money launderer of the Kati cartel, Jose Satro. The
Colombians constantly pressured him to increase the scope of the laundering.
Tal was afraid. "He lived in constant fear, his bags were always packed
and he was prepared to flee at any minute to Israel", one investigator
said.
An important member of
Tal's laundering ring was Rabbi Shalom Leviatan, a Lubavitch Hassid, head of
the branch in Seattle. It is assumed that all the considerable political
power of of these Hassids and of their rebbe (then alive), were exerted in
favor of that laundering ring. "My intentions were good" Leviatan
said after he was captured. "A person learns from experience", he
added. According to him, he did not know that he was laundering drug money,
and he was certain that he helps Iranian Jews trying to smuggle their money
out of Iran. Leviatan got out cheaply and was sentenced to 30 days community
service. Tal, who confessed to laundering $10 million, was sentenced to 52
months imprisonment. He served his sentence at Danbury jail in Connecticut,
but did not learn his lesson. When he was released, he joined a gang which
was captured in the FBI's 'sting' operation. This time he managed to flee to
Israel where he apparently remains, to this day.
The gold and diamond
industry has recently become the favorite of the drug barons, due to the
numerous possibilities for laundering which it contains. One of the popular
methods is laundering by means of trading in gold. This is how it works: the
drug money is converted into gold, which is smuggled to Colombia, from where
it is exported to Milano and used to make jewellry which then legitimately
returns to 47 Street. "The funniest thing in this business", say
the investigators, "is that the jewellry comes here under favored
import conditions because the gold seemingly originates from Colombia, and
that state has favored trade conditions with the U.S." There are also
other methods. Drug money is deposited in the accounts of diamond merchants
as though it were their profits and is later transferred to Colombia.
Sophisticated diamond deals are made between various parties with the aim of
'releasing' large amounts of money on the side. Sums of less than $10,000
are deposited in various bank accounts, converted into travellers' checks
and are then transported to their final destination. But in spite of the
ingenuity, undoubtedly one of the most popular and successful ways to
launder money is through Jewish religious institutions, such as yeshivas and
synagogues. Since the majority of the 47 Street gold and diamond
merchants are religious Jews the process is made easier. The Jewish
religious institutions badly need funds. The Colombians drug traders can be
generous. They transfer their drug money "us donations, which go to the
Jewish religious institutions one way and come out by the other way back to
the donors. On the way the synagogue or yeshiva obtain a respectable
percentage for its pious uses. Everyone is happy: the drug barons who
launder their money quickly and efficiently and the synagogue or yeshiva
which makes easy money.
The lirst laundering
operation in which a Jewish institute in New York was involved was exposed
already in 1984. A ring which laundered about $23 million while making a
profit of $2 million operated at the oldest yeshiva in the city, "Tifereth
Yerushalayim", located in Manhattan. The laundering was performed for
the Kali cartel. The contact man was David Va'anunu, mentioned in the
context of the Prism affair, who worked with the cartel's major launderer,
Jose Sairo. The yeshiva's representative was a very pious Hassid, Mendel
Goldenberger who daily received cash from Va'anunu and deposited the money
in the yeshiva's accounts. Goldenberger, who claimed not to have known the
source of the money, was convicted of forging bank documents and given five
years suspended imprisonment. Vanunu was convicted, sentenced to eight years
imprisonment but released much earlier after he became an informer for the
DEA. Later, as was stated, he ran into trouble again and fled the U.S.. Nine
persons were convicted in that affair, including Rabbi Israel Eidelman, Vice
President of the yeshiva, and some of its dignitaries. Tiferet Yerushalayim
faced financial difficulties at that time. Its leaders attempted to maintain
the number of students by paying them from the laundering drug profits.
That phenomenon,
incidently, is very common among the New York Jews. Many Jewish
congregations are dying out because their members are leaving the city or
their former neighborhoods. Thus, they are losing their sources of income
and facing large debts. In that situation the road is short for the
synagogue or yeshiva to launder drug money as a pious duty, since it means
easy money, and lots of it. "Laundering money is extremely
beneficial to the yeshivas and other Jewish religious institutions",
said a source close to the investigation. "They are in a difficult
situation and therefore they turn a blind eye to the drug problem. They
don't ask what is the source of the money as long as it keeps coming
in". The attitude of the pious Jewish community, according to the same
source, is "drugs are sold anyway. As long as it does not harm our
own community and only does good for it, it doesn't matter if we benefit
from drug trade". The role of the Israel is is, in many cases, to
make the connection between the religious Jewish communities of New York and
the Colombians.
The Colombians are more
satisfied with this method of laundering than with any other because, for
political reasons, it is a relatively secure way which could be assumed
initially not to be forcibly investigated by the U.S. authorities. Only in
July 1990 the situation began to change. The Federal authorities renewed an
investigation of some Williamsburg's Hassids, owners of jewellry shops on 47
Street, who were suspected of laundering drug money. The investigation
focussed on brothers Naftali, Miklosh and Yitzhak Shlesinger, and on Ya'akov
Shlesinger (Naftali's son) and Milon Jakoby his nephew. The investigators
found evidence of close connections between the Shlesingers and the Andonian
brothers, members of a Colombian family accused of laundering almost one
billion dollars. The Shlesingers were suspected of laundering money by means
of a subsidiary called Bali, through checks drawn from the account of
"Camp Yereim" [Camp of the Pious"] - a Hassidic summer camp
in the Catskills. Camp Yereim denies any connection with those checks. On
April 7 of this year, Rabbi Abraham Lau, a prominent Hassid from "Magen
Abraham" synagogue in Los Angeles was convicted of conspiring to
launder drug money. Lau is married to the niece of the Satmar Rebbe, Moshe
Teitlebaum who wields enormous political influence in New York State.
Unfortunately, Lau told an undercover FBI agent about a "sacred
network" of Satmar Hassids in which other Orthodox Jews had also
participated. The "sacred network", whose membership was strictly
limited to pious Jews, operated in the 47 Street area in New York and was
capable of laundering up to $5 million weekly, thanks to its widespread
contacts with Jewish charitable institutions.
Unfortunately, law
enforcement agents in New York do not believe that the "sacred
network" and the many other Jewish laundering rings have any sanctity.
In the past year the Federal activity concerning Israelis and Jews on 47
Street has greatly increased. The investigators now employ the services of
many Hebrew translators since the rings, even if composed of native American
Jews, employ only "the sacred language" (i.e. Hebrew] for their
operations. Aharon Sharir is, undoubtedly, the major Israeli launderer. He
was born in Iraq about 45 years ago, immigrated to Israel with his family at
the age of one year, graduated from an Israeli high school, served with
distinction in the army and became an expert in fixing delicate mechanical
instruments used to mend gold jewellry. In 1979, Sharir came to New York on
a tourist visa with $6,000 in his pocket. He went into the gold business,
established a small plant for manufacturing gold jewellry and did well.
Then, through another Israeli diamond trader, he discovered the laundering
business. Sharir reached a laundering scope of about $160,000 per day, six
days per week (laundering is not done on the Sabbath) but in 1985 his wings
were clipped when he was accused of having swindled a New York bank to the
tune of $3 million. He quickly returned the money and was sentenced to a
fine and a suspended imprisonment sentence. In 1988 Sharir's laundering
activities reached amazing heights. His gold shop on 47 Street became one of
the greatest laundering centers in the entire U.S. "Three times a
week", Sharir told the court at one of the many trials in which he is
now testifying, "we received the cash. It used to arrive in canvas
sacks, in carboard boxes or in suitcases. Sometimes there were a million
dollars in one shipment". Ruy Lopez, representing the Colombian cartels
would especially arrive from Miami equipped with a document sent from
Colombia which contained detailed coded instructions about where to send the
money. "Even with automatic money counting machines it was difficult
to count the money"e;. Sharir testified. "It arrived in bills
of 5, 10 and 20 dollars. The bills, most of which had been used to sniff
cocaine, had a strong odor of coke. A real stink. My employees could not
stand it. Every 2-3 hours they had to take a break, go out for some fresh
air, so as not to get high".
Sharir's role was to see
to it that the money would be transported out cf the U.S. and arrive in the
bank accounts of the Colombian cartels in Panama and in Colombia. For that
purpose he deposited money into his bank accounts, as though it was his
profits from the shop, purchased assets for the use of the drug cartels,
bought and sold gold at inflated prices from merchants who were part or the
conspiracy, concealed money through various manipulations. Finally, all the
money was turned into checks drawn on the accounts of Jewish religious
institutions. Sharir received from the Colombians for his labors 6% of the
turnover. Within a short period of time he moved with his family to a
luxurious house in Woodmere, on Long Island. He purchased a luxury Jaguar
car, showered his wife, Miryam, with expensive jewels, and donated lavishly
to Jewish charities.
The troubles began in
late 1988. In December his shop was raided by American customs and internal
revenue agents, after they received notice from his banks concerning the
volume of his deposits. They brought dogs to sniff out drugs, carried out a
meticulous search of the offices and took away cars full of documents.
Sharir did not lose his cool. While the agents were milling around his
offices, he managed to conceal $600,000 which were in his bank account at
the time, and transfer the money to a safe place. Simultaneously, Sharir
fell out with his Colombian operators who claimed that he stole from them
$26 million of drug money. Sharir, who denied the accusation, hired an
Israeli professional investigator, Lihu Ichilov, to solve the mystery.
Ichilov soon became Sharir's partner. He flew to Panama, established two
dummy corporations there, opened bank accounts and improved the laundering
routes.
Following the Federal
agents' raid on his offices Sharir did not give up. Within two weeks he
opened two other offices on 47 Street and resumed work. When asked by one of
his lawyers how he had expected to escape the attention of the law, Sharir
replied: "I changed my system and believed that now, with God's help, I
would never be caught". Sharir's new system included Rabbi Yosef Crozer
whom we discussed earlier. Crozer's big mouth brought Sharir down, and he
was arrested in March 1990. Crozer also led to Sharir confessing to having
laundered $200 million. His wife, Miryam, was arrested together with him.
Sharir, under the pressure of the interrogation agreed to cooperate in
exchange for his wife's release and for the cancellation of the charges
against her. The prosecution agreed.
It was an extremely good
deal as far as the prosecution was concerned. For three months Sharir fed
the Federal investigators with most valuable information concerning the
Jewish laundering industry. The information included names, methods of
operation, codes, and bank accounts. Sharir led them to the exposure of what
is termed the new "cocaine triangle". He led to the incrimination
of more than 35 Jewish launderers, the capture of $10 million and the break
up of numerous Jewish laundry rings. Among others, Sharir incriminated the
biggest laundering shark in the history of the U.S., Stephan Scorkia. Sharir,
who testified at his trial, directly led to his conviction. Scorkia was
charged with laundering $300 million, and was sentenced to 660 years
imprisonment.
Sharir is now enrolled
in the U.S. witness protection program. He lives under an assumed identity,
released on bail, travels under heavy security between New York, Rhode
Island, Arizona and other states, testifies in criminal trials and goes on.
His wife, Miryam divorced him shortly after the affair erupted. She refuses
to comment on the matter and told Daily News; "I have no intention of
talking. I divorced Aharon in order to distance myself from him and from his
friends, and that is exactly what I am doing." Sharir was directly
responsible for the flight of at least 35 Colombians from the U.S. back to
Colombia. One of the escapees was Duvan Arbolda, one of the Kali cartel's
major launderers. Arbolda was charged in a Manhattan court of laundering on
a vast scale, following Sharir's testimony. When he completes testifying,
Sharir himself will stand trial. The prosecution will agree to a very low
sentence, but this does not improve his chances of survival. "At
present, Aharon Sharir heads the Kali cartel's wanted list" said an
American customs official. Charges have also been served against Lihu
Ichilov, Sharir's partner. However, Ichilov fled to Israel on the eve of his
trial, in January 1991. That was the period of the Gulf War and the judge,
Richard Owen, who tried Ichilov in absentia, said: "Mr. Ichilov
apparently prefers to face the horror of Scud missiles falling on Israel
than the American justice system".
12
February, 2002
Orthodox
Jews Mass Protest Against the State of
Israel
Estimated
20,000 Orthodox Jews demonstrating on Tuesday February 12th, in front of the
Israeli Consulate in New York City, organized by the Central Rabbinical Congress
of USA and Canada, to voice their opposition to the existence of the state of
Israel, their suppression of religion and brutal treatment of religious people.
The
posters read as follows: [L-R]
"Israel"
dos not represent world Jewry
Rabbinical
leaders fought Zionism since its inception
Authentic
Rabbis always opposed Zionism and the State of Israel
Zionism
have no right to rule over any part of the holy land
No
doubt! Herzl's dream was a catastrophe for Jews
Zionism
stole the name of Jews
"Israel"
dos not represent world Jewry
Jews
mourn 53 years existence of "Israel"
True
Jews will never recognize Israel
Torah
Jewry is united against Zionism & the State of Israel
Zionist
ideology opposes the Creator
Oh
No! Zionism will never succeed
We
are against "Israel" because we are Jews
Zionism
and Judaism are extreme opposites
Background
sign: Israeli government: stop oppressing religious Jewry in the State of Israel
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