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What is wrong with the media? (Part 2)

Why does the Israeli media also attack the Israelis?

Historical and Investigative Research - 20 August 2006
by Francisco Gil-White $Description: C:\Users\Francisco\Desktop\Transfer\web\hir\iraniraq\button1E.jpg$
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah7_2.htm

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In the previous article we saw how the Western media -- with faked photographs and who knows what else -- goes out of its way to attack the Israelis and apologize for her terrorist enemies. Amazingly, much of the Israeli media also attacks Israel with lies, printing articles that the Arab media can exceed only cosmetically, with volume and tone.

To convince you of this, I will make an extreme claim, and then I will proceed to defend it, with evidence. My claim is that Gideon Levy’s article, published in the middle of the war against Hezbollah (8 August 2006) in the important Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz with the title “The Real Estate War,” and containing Gideon Levy’s analysis of the war in Lebanon among related topics, does not contain one true claim, and moreover that every single one of its many errors is designed to attack the Israeli Jews.

Below I will examine Gideon Levy’s article in full, omitting nothing. It has to be seen to be believed. My demonstration of Gideon Levy’s outright lies and fabrications will raise the question: Why was anything like this published in a major Israeli newspaper? The next piece will attempt to answer this question.

Gideon Levy’s first sentence
____________________________

Gideon Levy’s “The Real Estate War” opens with the following sentence:

“This miserable war in Lebanon, which is just getting more and more complicated for no reason at all, was born in Israel’s greed for land.”[1]

We have here two contradictory claims, so let us focus on each in turn.

First, is it true that the war in Lebanon was getting “more and more complicated for no reason at all”? Not according to the Lebanese journalist Michael Béhé, who, writing from Beirut, explains that the Hezbollification of Lebanon has proceeded to a nightmarish degree, and that Hezbollah has been armed to the teeth by the Syrians and the Iranians with the sole purpose of destroying Israel. He states:

“Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram. At Beirut innocent citizens like myself were forbidden access to certain areas of their own capital. But our police, our army and our judges were also excluded. That was the case, for example, of Hezbollah’s and the Syrians’ command zone in the Haret Hreik quarter... A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by a Horla army,[2] possessing its own institutions, its schools, its crèches, its tribunals, its radio, its television and, above all… its government. A ‘government’ that, alone decided, in the place of the figureheads of the Lebanese government -- in which Hezbollah also had its ministers! -- to attack a neighboring state, with which we had no substantial or grounded quarrel, and to plunge us into a bloody conflict. And if attacking a sovereign nation on its territory, assassinating eight of its soldiers, kidnapping two others and, simultaneously, launching missiles on nine of its towns does not constitute a casus belli [i.e. a just cause for war, in this case for Israel to retaliate against Lebanon], the latter juridical principle will seriously need revising.”[3] (my emphasis)

According to Lebanese journalist Michael Béhé, then, the war in Lebanon was getting more and more complicated for extremely good reasons.

Here again is Gideon Levy’s first sentence:

“This miserable war in Lebanon, which is just getting more and more complicated for no reason at all, was born in Israel’s greed for land.”

Immediately after stating that the war in Lebanon is supposedly getting more complicated “for no reason at all,” Levy contradicts himself -- still in the first sentence -- and supplies a reason: “Israel’s greed for land.” Let’s ignore the contradiction and ask simply: Is there any substance to the accusation that Israel has shown any “greed for land”?

In the first half of the 20th century, in the context of widespread persecutions and mass murder of Jews (‘pogroms’[4]) that had been taking place all over what is now Eastern Europe, the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, voted in favor of creating a Jewish homeland in British Mandate ‘Palestine’ so the Jews might live in safety. The Jews had a right to immigrate and settle in the territory so defined, which initially included all of present-day Israel, plus what is now the Kingdom of Jordan. However, most in the British ruling elite did not want to fulfill their treaty obligations to the Jews, and so they allied with the most racist of the local Arab leaders, and collaborated with them in the production of massive anti-Jewish terrorist riots, there to provide themselves with an argument that, due to Arab opposition, creating the Jewish homeland was just too difficult, so the project should be abandoned.

The British did not succeed in aborting the project entirely, but they did use the anti-Jewish Arab violence which they themselves instigated as the excuse to reduce severely the territory in which Jews could settle. First, by changing the definition of ‘Palestine’ when they lopped off ‘Transjordan,’ which later became the Kingdom of Jordan, putting off limits to the Jews a full 75% of the territory originally designated by the League of Nations. The British later reduced the area open to the Jews to just 4% of the original Mandate territory. This was the mid-1930s, when Nazi persecution was reaching a high pitch. Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion accepted this outcome. All of this is documented in the following HIR piece:

“How did the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US”; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm

So, was the Zionist acceptance of a severe reduction of the Jewish homeland what Gideon Levy means by “Israel’s greed for land”? No, probably not.

After World War II, in which the European Jewish population was exterminated by the German Nazis and their numerous allies, the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition what remained of the territory where Jews could settle into two states, one Jewish, one Arab. This proposed Jewish state was absurdly small, and moreover divided into three, non-contiguous pieces.[5] The Arabs refused, explaining that, rather than an Arab state in what had been British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ they much preferred to exterminate the Jews and finish what the German Nazis had not, launching a combined Arab war meant to secure this result. Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, announced: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”[6] The Jews by contrast accepted the absurdly small Jewish state that the UN had condescended to allot them, and fought for it with their lives.

Could this further Zionist acquiescence in yet another reduction of the Jewish homeland be what Gideon Levy means by “Israel’s greed for land”? Can’t be.

Defending themselves successfully against the combined Arab genocidal attack of 1947-48, the Israelis miraculously won and even made some modest territorial gains. But this was not “greed for land.” The Israelis had fought for their sheer survival, and the new land was needed as a buffer against the next genocidal attack, which the Arabs were promising would come, as indeed it did come, several times. “In the period 1949-53 Arab attacks killed hundreds of Israelis, four-fifths of whom were civilians.”[7] In October 1955, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser beefed up his military considerably with help from the Soviet Union, and then announced a blockade of the Strait of Tiran, Israel’s only port south of Elat. Given Egypt’s genocidal intentions, amply demonstrated by the constant barrage of terrorist attacks launched by Egypt from the Gaza Strip,[7a] and given that the Soviet Union’s arming of Egypt would soon erase Israel’s military edge, Israel seized the Sinai peninsula as a buffer against Egypt. An infuriated US president Dwight D. Eisenhower forced the Israelis to withdraw.[8]

Could this withdrawal from Egypt be what Gideon Levy had in mind? Is this “Israel’s greed for land”? That is absurd: a withdrawal shows the opposite of “greed for land.”

For years prior to the 1967 war, there were terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians from the Jordanian and Syrian borders, while Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser continued to promise an impending Arab genocide of the Jews.[9] Then, in 1967 there was a general Arab mobilization on all of Israel’s borders. When Israel’s emergency diplomacy obtained nothing, the Israelis attacked in order to prevent the impending destruction of the country. Israel won and acquired some territory, notably the Golan Heights from Syria; the Gaza Strip from its illegal occupier, Egypt; the Sinai, also from Egypt; and the West Bank from its illegal occupier, Jordan.

Amazingly, immediately after this,

“[Israeli prime minister Levi] Eshkol [made a] secret offer to trade much of the newly won territory for peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria [but] was rejected by Nasser, who, supported by an emergency resupply of Soviet arms, led the Arabs at the Khartoum Arab Summit in The Sudan in August 1967 in a refusal to negotiate directly with Israel.”[10]

But this -- Israel’s immediate offer to return the conquered territories to her genocidal enemies (in exchange, mind you, for nothing more than a promise of peace) -- simply cannot be what Gideon Levy means by “Israel’s greed for land.”

In 1969 Egypt launched the War of Attrition against Israel, and in 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked again in what became the Yom Kippur War. And yet despite all this, under pressure from the United States, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt.[11] “Israel’s greed for land”? Well no.

“To date, approximately 93 percent of the territories won in the defensive war have been given by Israel to its Arab neighbors as a result of negotiations.”[12]

Since 1994, Israel has been participating in the so-called Oslo ‘peace’ process, the purpose of which has been to give the PLO more and more power in the West Bank and Gaza, in the direction of eventually giving this land away for a PLO state. In exchange for what? For peace, supposedly, but the PLO has not even tried to produce such peace. The government of Israel has been so hell-bent in giving away this land for nothing at all that in fact it cleansed the Jews who lived in Gaza and simply turned it over to the PLO/Hamas: the so-called Unilateral Disengagement.

And in the year 2000 Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, completely, asking in return simply that there be no more terrorism against Israeli civilians (something Israel didn’t get).

Israel is the only country in history to return territory willingly to enemies who lost it after launching a war of aggression, and it has done this several times, despite the fact that its enemies are genocidal. If there is a country in the world that has demonstrated -- beyond all reasonable doubt -- that it has no greed for land, it is Israel. But since Israel has no greed for land, it follows that “Israel’s greed for land” cannot be the cause of anything, and therefore it cannot be the cause of the war in Lebanon.

What Gideon Levy has written for opening sentence is a contradiction, yes. But if one ignores the contradiction what survives is a colossal absurdity.

Onward with the analysis, up to and including Gideon Levy’s fifth paragraph
______________

I now quote the rest of Gideon Levy’s first paragraph:

“Not that Israel is fighting this time to conquer more land, not at all, but ending the occupation could have prevented this unnecessary war. If Israel had returned the Golan Heights and signed a peace treaty with Syria in a timely fashion, presumably this war would not have broken out.”

After telling us that the reason for the war in Lebanon is “Israel’s greed for land,” Levy states in the second sentence that the war in Lebanon, after all, has nothing to do with “Israel’s greed for land.” Amazing. But notice: “Not that Israel is fighting this time [my emphasis] to conquer more land...” In other words, in previous wars, according to Levy, Israel has fought to conquer more land. As I have just reviewed, however, every single one of Israel’s wars has been a defensive war fought against enemies who were trying to exterminate the Israeli Jews.

Levy’s second paragraph likewise has nothing to do with documented history:

“Peace with Syria would have guaranteed peace with Lebanon and peace with both would have prevented Hezbollah from fortifying on Israel’s northern border. Peace with Syria would have also isolated Iran, Israel’s true, dangerous enemy, and cut off Hezbollah from one of the two sources of its weapons and funding. It’s so simple, and so removed from conventional Israeli thinking, which is subject to brainwashing.”

Levy claims that if Israel had returned the Golan Heights to Syria peace would have followed. But Hezbollah was created by Syria and Iran in order to exterminate the Israeli Jews.[13] Since Hezbollah has been attacking Israel for years, and since it recently escalated these attacks, this war, too, is a defensive war fought against a genocidal enemy: Syria (and Iran). In such circumstances, does it make sense to expect that returning the Golan Heights to Syria will bring peace? What planet is Levy from? The Golan Heights cannot be returned unless Israel wishes to commit suicide, and this is not my opinion but that of a Pentagon study done after the Six Day War (in which Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel).[14] Levy considers his intellectual opponents to be “brainwashed,” so this must be a synonym for the study of history.

Next Levy writes:

“For years, Israel has waged war against the Palestinians with the main motive of insistence on keeping the occupied territories. If not for the settlement enterprise, Israel would have long since retreated from the occupied territories and the struggle’s engine would have been significant[ly] neutralized. Not that a non-occupying Israel would have turned into the darling of the Arab world, but the destructive fire aimed at Israel would have significantly lessened, and those who continued to fight Israel would have found themselves isolated.”

But the historical facts are as follows.

Before the PLO was brought into the Jewish state Israel was not “waging war against the Palestinians.” On the contrary, these were the best of times for the so-called ‘Palestinians,’ who prospered as they never had before under the benign Israeli administration (skeptics should consult the footnote).[15] What Gideon Levy characterizes as a “war” has in fact been a process of continuous capitulation to PLO terrorism, with veritable hordes of antisemitic terrorists released from Israeli jails (other criminals do not enjoy such Oslo largesse -- in the Jewish state, you have to be a non-Jewish murderer of Jews in order to get a free pass out of jail). In addition, the Israeli government brought the PLO into the Jewish state in order to advance the Oslo ‘peace’ process that would gradually relinquish the West Bank and Gaza in exchange -- supposedly -- for no more terrorism. But Levy claims to see an Israeli “insistence on keeping the occupied territories.”

And notice that Levy is writing shortly after Israel handed Gaza to the terrorists unilaterally, which is to say in exchange for...nothing. Or else, Israel handed Gaza in exchange for more terrorism, because that is precisely what it got.

In yet another contradiction, Levy admits above that turning over these territories will not, in fact, buy Arab goodwill. And yet he claims that evacuating these territories “would have significantly lessened” the attacks on Israel. How does that follow? And even if it did follow, what would have to be the underlying principle in Levy’s moral reasoning? Applied to the personal level, it would mean that Levy would give the keys to his home to a criminal who had publicly promised to murder Levy's entire family, on the theory that by capitulating to the criminal this latter would spare Levy's children, though he would still kill Levy’s wife. Levy cannot be sure of this outcome, but he thinks the risk is worth taking (and the wife expendable, in any case).

Another problem is that Levy writes in the conditional: “[if we had produced a] non-occupying Israel...the destructive fire aimed at Israel would have significantly lessened.” This is like watching a parent wonder what kind of adolescents his already thirty-something children will make. We have hard historical data, already, on what a “non-occupying Israel” produces: the terrorism from Gaza increased after the so-called Disengagement, and this terrorism in fact helped produce the current war in Lebanon.[16]

Levy continues:

“The war against the Palestinians is therefore unequivocally a territorial war, a war for the settlements. In other words, in the West Bank and Gaza, people were killed and are getting killed because of our greed for land. From Golda Meir to Ehud Olmert, the lie has held that the war with the Palestinians is an existential one for survival imposed on Israel when it is actually a war for real estate, one dunam after another, that does not belong to us.”

‘We are guilty,’ says Levy, pounding his chest so hard that one wonders he doesn’t make an exit wound through his back. But Levy has given us nothing to support his allegation that “the war against the Palestinians” -- which is not a war against the ‘Palestinians’ -- is “a war for the settlements,” so Levy’s use of the word ‘therefore’ breaks the rules of logic. Because the rules of logic require that one precede the term ‘therefore’ with premises that actually support one’s conclusion.

Let me now provide some examples in the proper use of ‘therefore.’

Both the PLO and Hamas are organizations with ties to the German Nazis. Hamas was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, which allied enthusiastically with the Nazis during WWII.[17] And the controlling core of the PLO, Al Fatah, was created by Hajj Amin al Husseini, who first gained notoriety as the chief organizer of massive anti-Jewish terrorist riots in British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and then went on to become co-architect, with Adolf Eichmann, of the German Nazi extermination of the European Jews.[18] It is no surprise, therefore, that both the PLO and Hamas should explain with great clarity in their constitutions that their goal is the extermination of the Israeli Jews.[19] It follows, therefore, that neither the PLO nor Hamas cares one little bit about land: their goal is killing Jews. It is hardly a lie, therefore, that the Israelis are fighting for their survival. To give the terrorists land, therefore, is to improve their strategic position with regard to their genocidal goal. The settler movement that Gideon Levy scorns is, therefore, defending Gideon Levy from extermination.

What is most amazing in the above is that Levy should characterize Ehud Olmert -- who was rushing to abandon the West Bank to the terrorists before Hezbollah forced him to retaliate lest he face a revolt in the Israeli officer class -- as somehow obsessed with real estate for Israel. Consider that, in the middle of the missile exchanges, Ehud Olmert committed what was reported as a 'gaffe' when he “suggested to an interviewer that the war in Lebanon could provide an impetus for his planned withdrawals from the West Bank.”[20] In other words, Ehud Olmert was undeterred by Hezbollah’s dramatic exposure of Israel’s vulnerability, and he was still hoping that he could get away with the cleasing of the West Bank Jews. The terrorist enemies of Israel were delighted to hear this, and in their view the significance of Olmert’s statement was that “[We are in] the beginning of a new era in the region [that] will break the psychological wall in the idea that Israel is invincible.” The statement is attributed to “Abu Maamun, a senior leader in Jenin of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group... the declared ‘military wing’ of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.”[21] Since Ehud Olmert, under terrorist attack, endorsed the policies preferred by Israel’s terrorist enemies, the ruling elite controlling the Jewish state may be described as allied with Israel’s terrorist enemies even when politically impractical. It follows, therefore, that the Israeli ruling elite is not waging a “war for the settlements” but against them. Anybody accusing the Israeli government of waging a “war for the settlements” must be, therefore, either an imbecile or a liar.

And I should point out that Levy’s chest-pounding nostra culpa that the land “does not belong to us” is again historically incorrect. The West Bank and Gaza were going to be part of the Arab state that the United Nations voted to create alongside a Jewish state in 1947. The Arabs refused this state, preferring to exterminate the Israeli Jews instead.[22] The genocidal attempt failed but Jordan managed to establish itself as an illegal occupier of the West Bank, and Egypt as an illegal occupier of the Gaza Strip. Egypt and Jordan then lost these territories after they used them as launching pads for yet another genocidal attempt on the Israeli Jews in the Six Day War of 1967.

Given,

1) that the Arabs (including, importantly, the so-called ‘Palestinian’ Arabs) first refused a state in these territories, preferring to murder Jews;

2) that neither Jordan nor Egypt were the least bit concerned about creating a ‘Palestinian’ state when they controlled these territories; and

3) that Israel gained these illegally occupied territories defending herself from a genocidal attack launched from them,

we may state, therefore, that if anybody has a right to this land, it is Israel.

If Gideon Levy has trouble with this argument we can ask him to imagine a personal version of it. He could imagine, for example, that he was accosted in the street by a man with a knife, intending to slit his throat, but Levy managed to grasp at the man’s wrist and, after a struggle, to wrest it from him, gaining the upper hand. Imagine further that Levy does not make an attempt to injure the man, who, from a distance, barks at Levy, “Okay, now give me my knife back.” Does this man have a right to get his weapon back? Certainly not. And Levy would be a suicidal imbecile to return it. In parallel fashion, when a piece of land is the platform to launch a genocidal attack, that piece of land is a weapon, just like the knife, and if the genocidal attacker loses it trying to exterminate your people, then he has no right to get it back. Period.

(This is all without mentioning that, as HIR has shown, the supposed 'Palestinians' -- the one's who supposedly rightfully own the West Bank and Gaza, according to Levy -- do not even exist: almost all of the people designated by this term immigrated to the area after the Zionist Jews came to British Mandate 'Palestine' and created an economic boom there.[22a])

What about the Golan Heights? In the next paragraph, Gideon Levy writes:

“The situation is different with Syria. For 33 years, the Syrians gave up the military effort to reinstate their occupied lands. Israel can pass a dozen Golan Heights laws to annex it, but occupied territory remains occupied territory. During those three decades, the prevailing view in Israel was that there was no need for peace with Syria: The Syrians sat quietly anyway, so why give them back the Golan?”

The above is false. Hezbollah has been attacking Israel with such regularity that providing here a full list since 2000, when Israel completely evacuated Lebanon (depriving Hezbollah of its previous excuse to attack innocent Jews), would take up too much space, so I have documented in the footnote a list of Hezbollah attacks against Israel just for the year 2005 (probably incomplete).[23] Given that HIR has already shown that Hezbollah belongs to Syria (and Iran), it follows that Syria has been attacking Israel.[24]

And why has Syria been attacking Israel?

Israel evacuated Lebanon in 2000; since then, Hezbollah has been claiming to attack Israel because it wants a minuscule territory called Shebaa Farms ‘returned’ to Lebanon. But didn’t Israel evacuate Lebanon in 2000? Yes. It turns out that Shebaa Farms was never part of Lebanon -- it was part of Syria, in the Golan Heights, and Syria lost it with the rest of the Golan in the Six Day War of 1967.[25] The Pentagon, by the way, also considers the Golan indispensable to the survival of Israel.[26] What all this means is that the Lebanese Hezbollah, Syria’s proxy, has been advancing a phony Lebanese claim to Shebaa Farms in order to help Syria regain a foothold in the Golan through Lebanon, which Syria controls. It is false, therefore, that, “for 33 years, the Syrians gave up the military effort to reinstate their occupied lands,” or that “the Syrians sat quietly away.” And since Syria lost the Golan after using the Golan to launch an attempted extermination of the Israeli Jews, the Golan no longer belongs to Syria, and, therefore, is not “occupied territory.”

I hope the proper use of ‘therefore’ is now clear.

The rest of Gideon Levy’s article
________________________________

Next Levy writes:

“This is the same dangerously foolish thinking that characterized the first 20 years of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians sat quietly, surrendered under the Israeli occupation boot, and it did not occur to anyone to return their territory. Instead, Israel established the settlements. Only when the Palestinians woke up and realized they were going to lose their lands forever did they begin a violent campaign; and only after blood was spilled, did Israel wake up from its dreams and realize that it could not hold onto all of the territories forever. Thus, with regrettable delay and years of bloodshed, the recognition of the PLO, the Oslo accords, the disengagement and the convergence were born -- all partial and fake solutions meant to postpone the end of the occupation.”

Contrary to what Levy writes, the first 20 years of Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza were the best of times for the Arabs who lived there, as pointed out above.[15] Ever since the PLO was invited in, things have been so bad for the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza that they’ve taken to nicknaming the PLO ‘police’ the “death squad,”[27] not coincidentally because it goes around robbing, extorting, and murdering Arab civilians (often in close coordination with Hamas).[28]

The Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza did not “begin a violent campaign” because “they were going to lose their lands forever.” As HIR has shown, the First Intifada was a terrorist war -- masquerading as supposed non-violence! -- launched by the PLO so that the media and the United States government could lead the world in representing the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza as victims, and thus impose on the Israelis -- with US threats -- the diplomatic circus known as the Oslo ‘peace’ process, the purpose of which was to bring the PLO into the Jewish state so that it could prepare the Arab population for genocide.[29] But this is not advancing fast enough for Levy, who labels the “disengagement” (the cleansing of the Gaza Jews so that PLO/Hamas can have total control over Gaza), and the “convergence” (which proposes to do the same thing to the West Bank), “partial...solutions meant to postpone the end of the occupation”!

(War is peace, freedom is slavery, and total, unilateral withdrawals are ways of “postpon[ing]...the end of the occupation.” George Orwell was not kidding around: a controlled media will speak like this, because the whole
point is to make political reasoning impossible.)

What follows from what Gideon Levy writes is that he feels no compassion for the Arabs whom the gangsters of PLO/Hamas daily oppress with absurdly brutal violence, mauling them also with a horrific ideology. As with non-Jewish antisemites, including especially the Arab ruling elite, it would appear that Levy is quite happy to sacrifice innocent Arab life if it can be used to attack the Jews.

Levy continues:

“We did not need all of that with the Syrians -- after all, they sat quietly all of these years. Now comes the war in Lebanon and proves that this was a mistake. Although the Syrians sat on the sidelines, the danger from that direction was not removed and the delusion that the Golan would forever remain in Israeli hands, without our being asked to pay for its occupation, is now slapping us in the face.

But the current war could yet turn out to be only an appetizer for the coming wars, which will be far more dangerous. The saying that time is on our side is another delusion. The Arab and Muslim world has armed, in all of this time, and the danger of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is already hovering over our heads. The only response to that is maximum neutralization of the flashpoints, before the bomb arrives. But Israel has chosen to close its eyes and build its future on a horrifyingly temporary quiet, or on more and more war operations.”

Again the false claim that the Syrians “sat quietly all of these years.”

Now, suppose that Gideon Levy believes that, when the nearby Muslims get their nuclear bombs, they will keep them in their missile silos as a deterrent. In this case he would not write that “The Arab and Muslim world has armed…and the danger of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is already hovering over our heads.” So Gideon Levy thinks that the Muslims want nuclear bombs in order to drop them on Israel, and therefore that they mean to exterminate the Israeli Jews -- because a nuclear attack on tiny Israel could not have a different purpose. “The only response to this danger,” Levy argues, “is maximum neutralization of the flashpoints, before the bomb arrives.” In the context of Levy’s other arguments, this means that the Israelis must give away all the strategic land from which genocidal attacks have been launched in the past, and as fast as possible, so that it is all ready by the time the Muslims acquire nuclear capability. No comment.

Levy continues:

“Just when territory is losing its military importance because of the development of new fighting technology, Israel is using security excuses to stay in the territories. Former-prime minister Ehud Barak criminally missed the opportunity to sign a peace treaty with Syria after he got ‘cold feet,’ as witnesses said, and retreated at the last minute. That’s how it works with us. When the other side is quiet, why return territories? And when they do go to war, ‘there’s nobody to talk to,’ and certainly not while we are ‘under fire.’

While we are ready to jump on any war bandwagon, as in this time, we endlessly procrastinate when it comes to peace negotiations. Now, too, when Syria, pushed around by the U.S., desperately wants to return to the ‘family of nations,’ is an excellent time to try to make peace with it -- but there are those who say now is not the time. What will the Americans say? They, after all, are against any deals with Bashar Assad of ‘the axis of evil.’”

It is false that Ehud Barak got “cold feet.” What is true is that Barak offered to give the Syrians everything they wanted, even though they were demanding not just the Golan, but also some important chunks of territory in the Galilee that had always been Israeli. And yet despite all this it was Syria’s Bashar Assad who refused Barak, because it is easier to stay in power in Syria if you are breathing fire against the Israelis: “Assad indicated that he was unprepared for a full peace with Israel no matter how forthcoming Barak was on ceding territory.”[30]

One could be forgiven for guessing that Gideon Levy is really a Syrian. He defends all sorts of radical falsehoods in the service of defending the view that now is an excellent time to make ‘peace’ with Syria -- even as Syria rains Hezbollah rockets on Israeli civilians. He also fumes that “Syria...[is] pushed around by the U.S,” a complaint that would make more sense coming from a Syrian than an Israeli. But whoever Gideon Levy really is, what he says is a falsehood: the US does not push the Syrians around. As the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin explained,

“...successive American administrations have been reluctant to openly push for an end to Syrian protection of Hezbollah. In fact, the United States has been unwilling even to publicly request that the Syrians end this protection. ...[there is a] long-standing American policy of avoiding public statements which mention or suggest that Syria controls Lebanese policy decisions.”[31]

And the Washington Post explained the US’s initial reaction to Israel’s act of self-defense as follows:

“President Bush and his top diplomats scrambled Thursday night to quell spiraling violence in the Middle East and protect the new democratic government in Lebanon as Israeli forces escalated their strikes.

Bush initially told reporters that ‘Israel has a right to defend herself,’ qualifying the statement only with a call to avoid toppling the Lebanese government, which he deems a model for the region.”[32]

In other words, the Lebanese state that the US government rushed to protect (and has now protected with its ‘cease-fire’), this ‘state’ which Lebanese journalist Michael Béhé explains is no longer a state at all, but merely a platform for Syria and Iran’s effort to exterminate the Israeli Jews, is precisely the kind of government that the US would like to see replicated all over the region (this is consistent with the entire history of US foreign policy towards Israel).[33]

War is peace, freedom is slavery, the enemy is your ally.

Finally, Gideon Levy ‘concludes’:

“So, there it is, another excuse to miss a golden opportunity, another mendacious excuse. As in the case of the peace with Egypt, the move that has guaranteed Israel’s security for years far more than any war, and which was put together behind the America’s back [sic], America would not be able to oppose a peace agreement with Syria. Now, after we’ve hit Hezbollah and ruined Lebanon, the prime minister of Israel should declare: the Golan for peace. That could contribute a lot more to our security than a thousand useless daring operations in Baalbek, but it would take a lot more courage than going off to fight another unnecessary and useless war.”

As if to confirm your suspicions that Gideon Levy is really the pen name of a Lebanese Shiite Islamist in the pay of the Syrian government, he comes out and he says it: “The Golan for peace.”

But, anyway, was the ‘peace’ agreement with Egypt “put together behind America’s back,” as Levy claims? For a different view, I shall quote the Encyclopedia Britannica, which cannot be accused of being outside the mainstream. Britannica says that after Egypt’s defeat in the Yom Kippur war of 1973,

“Egypt’s Sadat persuaded U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger [to]... pressure Israel to end the war short of a complete Egyptian military defeat and then, through intensive travel between the various capitals -- what soon was being called shuttle diplomacy -- achieved disengagement agreements on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts during 1974.”

Later,

“The faltering Egyptian-Israeli negotiations were finally rescued when Carter convened a summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David, Maryland, in September 1978. In this secluded site -- an “elegant jail,” Begin called it -- Carter shuttled between the two leaders over a 12-day period, and out of these negotiations emerged the Camp David Accords. …The Camp David Accords earned Sadat and Begin each a share of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace, but the subsequent peace process proved far more difficult than the parties expected. It took seven more months for Egypt and Israel to reach a final agreement, which was signed on March 26, 1979, and called for a three-year phased Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai...”[34]

In addition to the strong pressure applied by the US, and its micro-managing of the whole process, the US became a major arms supplier to Egypt in order to buy its cooperation with US wishes. But Gideon Levy would have you believe that the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement was put together “behind America’s back”!

War is peace, freedom is slavery, the enemy is your ally, and the fastidious executive producer was entirely uninvolved with the production.

Gideon Levy accuses that his opponents are “mendacious.” For those not fluent in English, here is Merriam Webster Online’s definition of that word: “given to or characterized by deception or falsehood.” Isn’t Levy’s accusation a bit cheeky? After all, his own article is a series of direct contradictions to standard, mainstream, documented history. And I point out that every single historical, logical, and moral error in Levy’s piece goes in the same direction: it defends the terrorist enemies of the Jewish people. Levy’s article reads, quite frankly, as if it had been written in Syria by the Hezbollah propaganda office. And perhaps it was.

One question that comes to mind, of course, is:

Who is this Gideon Levy?
_________________________

In October 2000, the Independent wrote the following:

“Palestinian antagonism is such that when two uniformed Israeli reservists stray into Ramallah -- not two undercover commandos, as the Palestinian media claims -- they get torn limb from limb...”[35]

It is a good idea to pause until this has been properly digested. What does it mean that two Israelis were “torn limb from limb” by a ‘Palestinian’ mob? It means this: their arms and their legs were literally ripped from their bodies by lunatics who thirst to bathe themselves in Jewish blood.

It is hard to decide what is more amazing, whether the deranged savagery of the PLO-indoctrinated Arabs in the West Bank, or the fact that the ‘authorities’ in the West Bank themselves handed these two Israelis to the mob for lynching.

“[The two reservists] were arrested by Palestinian police, and then were handed over to a mob that slaughtered and mutilated them.”[36]

Kenneth Levin writes in The Oslo Syndrome that, following this incident, Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea applied to fellow Israeli journalists what he called the “lynch test.”

“Barnea cited as failing the ‘lynch test’ those Israeli journalists who, even in the face of this savage episode, remained uncritical, knee-jerk apologists for the Palestinians and indicters of Israel.

Barnea noted in particular Haaretz writers Gideon Levy, Amira Haas, and Akiva Eldar... Levy, a few days before the lynchings, insisted that the Palestinians were right to resort to violence because only in the face of violence had Israel ever made concessions to the Arabs... Three days after the lynchings, Levy was writing in the same vein. The real obstacle to peace, he declared, was that Israel was not a peace partner. He mentioned the lynchings only to dismiss them as paling in significance beside the difficulties of the Palestinians.”[37]

So this is Gideon Levy: a man who finds it impossible to condemn -- and even applauds -- the crazy Arab terrorists even as they tear the arms and legs of two innocent Jews right out of their sockets.

Another important fact about Gideon Levy is the following:

“Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist for Ha'aretz and former spokesman for Shimon Peres.”[38]

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Gideon Levy is a former spokesman for the powerful Israeli politician who told the Israelis that the Fatah/PLO would bring peace to Israel if only it was allowed into the Jewish state. Shimon Peres neglected to inform the Israelis that Fatah/PLO was created by an architect of the German Nazi Final Solution, or to remind them that Fatah/PLO calls for the extermination of the Israeli Jews in its constitution. Naturally, someone as dishonest as Shimon Peres, and as hell bent on destroying the Jewish state, will want someone like Gideon Levy for spokesman.

Obvious questions that remain are the following: Why is someone like Gideon Levy getting published in a major Israeli newspaper?; Why is somone like Shimon Peres able to become prime minister of the Jewish state?; and, Are these people idiots or traitors?

Israel at War -- An HIR Series

< Who attacked Israel?

< What is Hezbollah?

< What caused this war?

< Understanding the US position | 1

< Understanding the US position | 2

< The Arab reaction, and what it means

< Who is killing Lebanese civilians? | 1

< Who is killing Lebanese civilians? | 2

< What is wrong with the media? | 1

< What is wrong with the media? | 2

_____________________________________________________

Footnotes and Further Reading
_____________________________________________________

[1] “The Real Estate War”; Ha’aretz; Wed., August 09, 2006 Av 15, 5766; by Gideon Levy.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/746698.html

[2] This is a reference to Guy de Maupassant’s “Le Horla.”

“Maupassant's most upsetting horror story, ‘Le Horla’ (1887)... was about vampire-like ghouls, madness and suicide.”

SOURCE: http://www.classicallibrary.org/maupassant/

[3] “The most hypocritical people on earth”; Metula News Agency; Sunday 30 July 2006; By Michael Béhé in Beirut.
http://www.menapress.com/article.php?sid=1479

[4] The following summary of the Kishiniev [Kih-shee-nuh-yev] pogrom, in 1903, is by historian Amos Elon:

“On April 19 an outrage occurred in the small Bessarabian town of Kishinev, which, in less than 48 hours, left 45 local Jews lying dead, and nearly 600 wounded; 1,500 shops and homes were pillaged or destroyed. The church bells were ringing on Easter Sunday, when a wild mob, undoubtedly acting on a given signal, rushed through the narrow streets killing Jews and setting fire to their homes and stores. In the past few decades Kishiniev's Christian population of some 60,000 had lived peacefully alongside 50,000 Jewish artisans and small shopkeepers. The only newspaper in the town was a sensational anti-Semitic journal, the Bessarabitz, subsidized by the czarist Ministry of the Interior from a special slush fund. In recent months the Bessarabitz had waged a vicious campaign against the Jews of Kishinev, accusing them of ritual murder of Christian babies and of sponsoring, at the same time, both socialist revolution and the capitalist exploitation of Christians.

The police made no attempt to interfere in the widespread killing, looting, and arson. For almost twenty-four hours, while the army was ordered by the provincial governor to remain in its barracks, the mob ran amok. Nails were driven into victim's skulls, eyes gouged out, and babies thrown from higher stories of buildings to the pavement. Men were castrated, women were raped. The local bishop drove in his carriage through the crowd, blessing it as he passed. Only on the evening of the second day did the police appear on the scene to disperse the mob. By then the devastation had been accomplished. It was generally believed that Konstantin Pobedenostsev, the Czar's close adviser and head of the Holy Synod, had inspired the outrage in order to divert popular sentiments from the social revolutionists.

Pobedenostsev's own solution of the Jewish problem was known to be three-pronged: a third would convert, a third would emigrate, and a third would die. It was widely reported that Wenzel von Plehve, the czarist Minister of the Interior, had instructed the provincial governor of Kishinev not to be overzealous in his protection of the Jews. At Kishinev the government was testing a new technique to drown the revolutionary fervor in Jewish blood. News of the pogrom was suppressed in the Russian newspapers, which merely stated that there had been a sudden outbreak provoked by the Jews.”

SOURCE: Elon, A. 1975. Herzl. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston. (pp.373-374)

[5] Below is the map of the 1947 UN partition.

( click to enlarge )

[6] SOURCE: Source: Howard M Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 333

If you would like to read about this in the context of US and British policy toward Israel, visit:

1947-48 -- Forced by external circumstances, the US government gave lukewarm support to the creation of the State of Israel. But then it reversed itself and implemented policies designed to destroy Israel; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1947

[7] Israel. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 8, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:9022/eb/article-219425

[7a] Prior to the 1956 Sinai campaign, "Israel had endured years of terrorist attacks across its border with the Gaza Strip, then under Egyptian control; attacks mounted by groups that Nasser's government financed, armed, trained, and directed."

SOURCE: Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (pp.265-266)

[8] 1955 -- The US forces Israel to withdraw from Sinai, but makes some concessions to the Israelis; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1955

[9] "…Syria used the Golan Heights, which tower 3,000 feet above the Galilee, to shell Israeli farms and villages. Syria's attacks grew more frequent in 1965 and 1966, while Nasser's rhetoric became increasingly bellicose: 'We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand,' he said on March 8, 1965. 'We shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.'"

SOURCE: The quotation about Syria shelling Israeli farmers in the Galilee from the Golan Heights is from: Howard Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 616.

Here is what Nasser said right before the Six Day War:

"If Israel embarks on an aggression against Syria or Egypt, the battle against Israel will be a general one and not confined to one spot on the Syrian or Egyptian borders. The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel. I probably could not have said such things five or even three years ago. If I had said such things and had been unable to carry them out my words would have been empty and worthless.

Today, some eleven years after 1956, I say such things because I am confident. I know what we have here in Egypt and what Syria has. I also know that other States Iraq, for instance, has sent its troops to Syria; Algeria will send troops; Kuwait also will send troops. They will send armored and infantry units. This is Arab power. This is the true resurrection of the Arab nation, which at one time was probably in despair."

SOURCE: Israeli Foreign Ministry:
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Foreign%20Relations/Israels%20Foreign%20
Relations%20since%201947/1947-1974/7%20Statement%20by%20President
%20Nasser%20to%20Arab%20Trade%20Unio

[10] Israel. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 8, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online:
http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:9022/eb/article-219429

[11] First,

“Egypt’s Sadat persuaded U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that his country was ready to abandon both its Soviet and Syrian allies for a fresh start with the United States; only Washington, in Sadat’s view, could effectively influence Israel to return the Sinai without further bloodshed. Kissinger, supported by Nixon, successfully pressured Israel to end the war short of a complete Egyptian military defeat and then, through intensive travel between the various capitals -- what soon was being called shuttle diplomacy -- achieved disengagement agreements on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts during 1974.”

Then,

“The faltering Egyptian-Israeli negotiations were finally rescued when Carter convened a summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David, Maryland, in September 1978. In this secluded site -- an “elegant jail,” Begin called it -- Carter shuttled between the two leaders over a 12-day period, and out of these negotiations emerged the Camp David Accords. …The Camp David Accords earned Sadat and Begin each a share of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace, but the subsequent peace process proved far more difficult than the parties expected. It took seven more months for Egypt and Israel to reach a final agreement, which was signed on March 26, 1979, and called for a three-year phased Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai...”

SOURCE: Israel. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 9, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:9022/eb/article-219433

[12] “Myths & Facts Online: The 1967 Six-Day War”; Jewish Virtual Library; By Mitchell G. Bard.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf6.html

[13] “WHAT IS HEZBOLLAH?: Is this a ‘militia’ or a terrorist army of extermination?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 22 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah2.htm

[14] The following piece quotes the relevant portions of the Pentagon study and analyses it in its political context, with links to the original document (to go directly to the Pentagon study, see further below):

“1967 -- After the Six-Day War, the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish the territory gained, even though it knew it was indispensable to Israeli defense”; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1967b

< PENTAGON STUDY:

»» This Pentagon document was apparently declassified in 1979 but not published until 1984. It was published by the Journal of Palestine Studies:

"Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense"; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Winter, 1984), pp. 122-126.< This file is especially useful because it shows a map with the "minimum territory needed by Israel for defensive purposes"
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pentagon.pdf

»» And by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs:
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/print.html?documentid=496

»» And as an appendix in:

Netanyahu, B. 2000. A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations, 2 edition. New York: Warner Books. (APPENDIX: The Pentagon Plan, June 29, 1967; pp.433-437)

[15] Israel's administration of the West Bank and Gaza followed a war provoked by the Arab states in 1967. Despite that, Israel's administration of these territories was quite benign. This is Newsweek, writing ten years later in 1977:

“Arab living standards [in the West Bank] have jumped more than 50 per cent in the past ten years, and employment has nearly doubled, largely because of the $250 million annual trade that has grown up between the West Bank and Israel. The Israelis have also kept the Jordan River bridges open, allowing 1 million Arabs a year to cross and to keep their markets in Jordan for such products as olive oil, soap and farm produce. The Israelis also allow the Arabs to elect their own officials, even though the winners are often radical activists. Still, the Arabs say they have never been more unhappy...”

SOURCE: Newsweek, June 13, 1977, UNITED STATES EDITION, INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 55, 849 words, The West Bank Today, Milan J. Kubic

So the Israelis installed a benign regime on the West Bank despite the fact that this was the population of one of its attackers in 1967, Jordan, in a war that was pledged to destroy Israel through genocide. But this enemy population was nevertheless allowed freedom of the press, the freedom to elect its own leaders, however radical, border crossings with Jordan, and the ability to take jobs in Israel.

If the Arabs were really saying that they had never been more unhappy, then their happiness must have something to do with the continued existence of the Jewish state, and nothing to do with their material and political conditions.

[16] “What caused this war? (Israel v. Lebanon 2006): Triggers have causes, and causes have prior causes...”; Historical and Investigative Research; 23 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah3.htm

[17] “…as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and '40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide" Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini -- incidentally the later mentor (from 1946 onward) of a young firebrand by the name of Yasser Arafat.”

SOURCE: Asia Times Online, 8 November 2002; Middle East; ‘Islamism, Fascism, and Terrorism,’ by Marc Erikson.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK08Ak03.html

From the article below you will see that Hamas is proud of the Nazi Hassan al Banna, and you will see that Hamas uses the same propaganda the German Nazis used. You will get a sense for the Hamas worldview.

Comment extra: Islam and Israel: The new anti-Semitism: A document once used by the Nazis to stir up hatred of Jews and long known to be a forgery is once again being circulated, this time by Muslim scholars. David Aaronovitch challenged them, The Observer, June 22, 2003, Observer News Pages, Pg. 26, 1831 words, David Aaronovitch

[ OBSERVER TEXT: ]

WE GOT TO Abdel-aziz al-Rantisi a couple of weeks before the Israelis almost did. Our yellow taxi-bus had taken us down an anonymous side-street in Gaza city, and stopped outside a grey-black four-storey apartment block. There was no decoration on the ground or first floors, just bare concrete steps, with no banisters. One flight up we passed a room in which a sub-machine gun sat, ownerless, on an armchair beside a sunny window. Mr Rantisi was in the room above.

The Hamas leader, a famous hardliner in that organisation of hardliners, was going, I hoped, to answer a specific question. Why, in article 32 of the Hamas covenant, was there an approving reference to a document, an anti-Semitic forgery of the early twentieth century, once described by a leading historian as a ‘warrant for genocide’?

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - supposedly a transcript of a meeting of the world’s top Jews, called to discuss the achievement of world domination - was concocted by an ultra-orthodox member of the Tsar’s secret police, Sergei Nilus in about 1903. By the early 1920s it was being widely circulated in Europe and America, was later taught in the schools of Nazi Germany and is now to be found on any good neo-nazi web-site near you. It is the classic of Holocaust-era anti-Semitism, portraying the Jews as a conniving, Machiavellian race…

So what on earth is it doing in the twenty-first century manifesto of an Islamic movement? The Covenant says that ‘the Zionists’ want an Israel that extends from Cairo to Basra, and then next stop, the world. ‘Their plan,’ says Mr Rantisi’s Covenant, ‘is embodied in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.’

RANTISI IS SERIOUS and measured (he was once a paediatrician [!]). His windows are veiled against surveillance, there is a picture of Hassan al Banna, murdered leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, on the wall. ‘When I first heard about this document [meaning the Protocols of the Elders of Zion],’ says Rantisi reasonably, ‘I didn’t want to believe it, but then I saw what was happening in Palestine, and I could see that it was genuine.’ That is his answer.

(…)

There is a great deal to shudder about. The amount of anti-Semitic literature, journalism and television in Arab countries is voluminous. The more sophisticated Arab governments, however, who tolerate this stuff, understand the need to turn a less contorted face to the West, with its anti-racist liberal campaigners. They play it down, or ignore it. It isn’t easy, though.

When you are confronted with the collected anti-Semitisms of the post-11 September Arab world, what is most striking is the weirdness of journalists and politicians raiding the ancient political sewers of old Europe for arguments. Take the example of what is called the ‘blood libel’. This is the old medieval story of how Jews kidnap Christians, kill them and use their blood in arcane rituals [see here for a short historical perspective on Western antisemitism]. We had a spate of these tales in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and many Jews lost their lives as a result.

So what on earth is the blood libel doing in a column in the respected Egyptian mass daily paper Al-Ahram , in a book by the Syrian defence minister and in broadcast sermons from various Palestinian mosques? The libel in question is the 1840 Damascus case, in which several Jews (including a David Harari) ‘confessed’ to the Ottoman authorities - under torture - to kidnapping a priest and stealing his blood.

Holocaust denial is another widespread feature of Arab discourse, but for different reasons. In a school in Gaza, a middle-aged teacher of English interrupted my interview of several of his pupils, and launched into a tirade against the Jews. Were they not behind all wars? Had they not caused trouble wherever they were? Had they not caused troubles even for the Germans? ‘When?’ I asked him. ‘Before the reign of Hitler,’ the teacher replied.

A few blocks away I met Dr Musa Al-Zubut, chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council education committee, who had been trying to go and meet his colleagues in Ramallah for several weeks, but had been prevented by the Israelis. He was explaining why the history books for the new Palestinian curriculum contained no reference to the Holocaust. Zubut said he knew that the Holocaust was ‘of course’ exaggerated. It was not, he said, ‘1 per cent of what we have suffered in Palestine’. Besides, even if every Jew had been killed, what was that to do with the Palestinians?

Is this anti-Semitism? Or is it a profound ignorance about European history? Gaza is bad, but in two days in September 1941 at Babi Yar near Kiev, 34,000 Jews were shot by the Einsatzgruppen…

Elsewhere in Gaza, some of the most combustible imams preach against the Jews on the basis, they claim, of the Koran itself. A relatively new emphasis on certain passages leads these religious leaders to proclaim the eternal untrustworthiness of Jews, going back to the days of the Prophet. In this country last May, a Muslim preacher from Stratford, East London, was convicted of several counts of incitement to murder, partly based on a taped sermon entitled ‘No Peace with the Jews’. Faisal claimed that his views were merely those of the Koran, which - if true - would be profoundly worrying.

(…)

In Cairo I met the film producer Mounir Radhi. A self-proclaimed anti-racist, his last film concerned the relationship between a Muslim and a Coptic boy in a suburb of the Egyptian capital. His next, however, will be about the events in Damascus in 1840. But in Radhi’s project the blood libel has gone through a strange metamorphosis. Father Tomas is still killed by David Harari, but not for his blood. No, now he is murdered to prevent him speaking about a Zionist plot to move Jews from Damascus to Palestine.

Radhi is almost certainly sincere, but his story is nonsense. There were no Zionists in 1840, and Damascus and Palestine were then part of the same Ottoman province. This is just a mutation of the blood libel to suit modern politics, with Jews (sorry, Zionists) plotting to steal land rather than blood. Radhi may be an anti-racist, but he is perilously close to being an anti-Semite.

Still, it is mildly encouraging that Radhi’s film does not show mad Jews eating blood-baked matzohs, in the way that the Syrian defence minister believes they did. (…)

[ OBSERVER TEXT ENDS HERE ]

[18] The most complete documentation on this is here:

“HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT’ EMERGE? The British sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US.”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov4.htm

Some of this material was originally published here:

“Anti-Semitism, Misinformation, And The Whitewashing Of The Palestinian Leadership”; Israel National News; May 26, '03 / 24 Iyar 5763; by Francisco J. Gil-White
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=2405

[19] The 1968 PLO Charter states the objectives of the PLO as follows. Article 9 says that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine.” That’s worth chewing on for a second, because the PLO could have written the same thing like this: “it is required that Palestine be liberated in the act of killing people.” Killing which people? This is relatively obvious. Article 15 of the PLO Charter states that it is “a national duty to repulse the Zionist imperialist invasion from the great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence from Palestine,” and article 22 declares that “the liberation of Palestine will liquidate the Zionist and imperialist presence.” In other words, the PLO, which organization asserts that ‘Palestine’ may be ‘liberated’ only in the act of killing people, explains that its goal is purging and liquidating -- that is to say, exterminating -- “Zionists.” Doesn’t this agree perfectly with how the PLO, behaviorally, chooses to define ‘Palestine’ as ‘the territory that Jews live on’?

SOURCE: The PLO Charter articles were translated by: The Associated Press, December 15, 1998, Tuesday, AM cycle, International News, 1070 words, Clinton meets with Netanyahu, Arafat, appeals for progress, By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent, EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip.

Hamas is always saying in public that it means to destroy Israel, but in case that were not enough, article 32 of the Hamas Charter states very clearly that “Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason” (so one may not negotiate with ‘Zionists,’ one may only kill them).
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

[20] Israel's unlikely warrior MAN IN THE NEWS EHUD OLMERT: Thrust into the role of wartime leader, Ariel Sharon's protege has yet to prove himself, says Harvey Morris, Financial Times (London, England), August 5, 2006 Saturday, London Edition 1, COMMENT AND ANALYSIS; Pg. 9, 1090 words, By HARVEY MORRIS

[21] WND Exclusive FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU: TERRORIST: OLMERT'S STATEMENTS EMBOLDEN US; Israeli PM reaffirmed West Bank withdrawal amid fighting in Gaza, Lebanon; August 3, 2006

9:42 a.m. Eastern; WorldNetDaily; By Aaron Klein.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51369

[22] To read about the Arab reaction to the UN vote of 1947, and the US and British response to the Arab attack, visit:

1947-48 -- Forced by external circumstances, the US government gave lukewarm support to the creation of the State of Israel. But then it reversed itself and implemented policies designed to destroy Israel; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1947

[22a] "Was there, in British Mandate Palestine, a ‘nationally conscious’ ‘Palestinian Arab people’?"; from UNDERSTANDING THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT; Historical and Investigative Research - 30 April 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pal_mov2.htm

[23] “Projectiles that were fired by Lebanese guerrillas into northern Israel in recent weeks were made in Russia and sold to Syria, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported Thursday.” SOURCE: Projectiles fired from south Lebanon were made in Russia, sold to Syria: Report, Associated Press Worldstream, December 29, 2005 Thursday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 357 words, LAURIE COPANS; Associated Press Writer, JERUSALEM

“Washington, Israel's major ally, on Monday condemned Hezbollah attacks on Israeli forces along the border with Lebanon and urged restraint by the Jewish state in responding.” SOURCE: Lebanon celebrates Independence Day amid border bloodshed, Agence France Presse -- English, November 22, 2005 Tuesday, 6:04 PM GMT, 664 words, BEIRUT Nov 22

“The U.N. Security Council expressed concern about the Hezbollah attack and urged Lebanese authorities to control their territory.” SOURCE: Hezbollah guerrilla killed in battle with Israeli troops in Chebaa Farms, The Associated Press, July 4, 2005, Monday, BC cycle, International News, 256 words, BEIRUT, Lebanon.

“An Israeli soldier was killed on Wednesday in a Hezbollah attack after a period of relative calm on the tense border.” SOURCE: Lebanon PM-designate pledges sweeping reforms, Agence France Presse -- English, June 30, 2005 Thursday, 4:10 PM GMT, 661 words, BEIRUT June 30

“An Israeli army spokesman said guerrillas fired at least six shells at army positions in the north and the military responded with artillery. The spokesman said there were no casualties from the Hezbollah attack.” SOURCE: Hezbollah guerrillas attack Israeli positions in Chebaa Farms; Israeli army returns fire, The Associated Press, May 13, 2005, Friday, BC cycle, International News, 252 words, BEIRUT, Lebanon.

“One of the recent Hezbollah attacks was deadly. A January 9 explosion killed an Israeli officer and a French U.N. peacekeeper.” SOURCE: Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 19, 2005, Wednesday, Politics, 217 words, Israel's security cabinet OKs military operation in Lebanon, Jerusalem.

[24] For the Syrian role, see:

“WHO ATTACKED ISRAEL?: Hezbollah has a master”; Historical and Investigative Research; 21 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah.htm

For the Iranian role, see:

“WHAT IS HEZBOLLAH?: Is this a ‘militia’ or a terrorist army of extermination?”; Historical and Investigative; Research; 22 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah2.htm

[25] “WHO ATTACKED ISRAEL?: Hezbollah has a master”; Historical and Investigative Research; 21 July 2006; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hezbollah.htm

[26] The following piece quotes the relevant portions of the Pentagon study and analyses it in its political context, with links to the original document (to go directly to the Pentagon study, see further below):

“1967 -- After the Six-Day War, the US put pressure on Israel to relinquish the territory gained, even though it knew it was indispensable to Israeli defense”; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm#1967b

< PENTAGON STUDY:

»» This Pentagon document was apparently declassified in 1979 but not published until 1984. It was published by the Journal of Palestine Studies:

"Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense"; Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Winter, 1984), pp. 122-126.< This file is especially useful because it shows a map with the "minimum territory needed by Israel for defensive purposes"
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/pentagon.pdf

»» And by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs:
http://www.jinsa.org/articles/print.html?documentid=496

»» And as an appendix in:

Netanyahu, B. 2000. A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations, 2 edition. New York: Warner Books. (APPENDIX: The Pentagon Plan, June 29, 1967; pp.433-437)

[27] In the following quotation, try to ignore the obligatory media apology for the PLO, and focus on the how ordinary Arabs talk about the PLO:

“Since Arafat’s death Nov. 11, his successors have taken steps to restore confidence in a Palestinian leadership long accused of corruption, calling for elections to choose a new leader and promising to be more open and accountable.

As part of that effort, Palestinian Preventive Security chief Brig. Gen. Rashid Abu Shbak said Saturday he would abolish the Gaza Security and Protections unit -- nicknamed the ‘death squad’ by Palestinians -- in the wake of accusations that some members abused their powers and used intimidation to rule the streets of Gaza.”

SOURCE: Associated Press Online, November 27, 2004 Saturday, INTERNATIONAL NEWS, 991 words, Palestinian Security Unit to Be Disbanded, IBRAHIM BARZAK; Associated Press Writer, GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip

[28] The section entitled “How the PLO oppresses West Bank and Gaza Arabs” in the following piece has documentation on this:

“WHAT IS SEEDS OF PEACE?: Does this US Intelligence operation groom young Arab leaders who want peace with Israel, or who wish to destroy Israel?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 21 September 2005; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/seeds.htm#oppression

More documentation on this (including the PLO’s coordination with Hamas to attack ordinary Arabs) is in the following piece:

1994 -- Yasser Arafat was given a Nobel Peace Prize, and the CIA trained the PLO, even though Arafat’s henchmen were saying in public, this very year, that they would use their training to oppress Arabs and kill Jews; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1994

[29] On US-PLO cooperation to produce the First Intifada, read:

1987-1988 -- The ‘First Intifada’ was a US-PLO strategy used to represent the Arabs in West Bank and Gaza as supposedly oppressed ‘underdogs’; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally2.htm#1987

On how the US forced Israel with threats to participate in the so-called Oslo ‘peace’ process, read:

1991 -- Bush Sr.'s administration forced Israel to participate in the Oslo process, which brought the PLO into the West Bank and Gaza; from “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A Chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm

[30] “With regard to Syria, Barak essentially followed the path of his three predecessors, soon making clear that he was prepared to return the entire Golan to Syrian sovereignty in exchange for ‘peace.’ He apparently did so, again, like his predecessors, with the full expectation that Assad would ultimately accept Israel’s offer...

In December, 1999, Barak began American-mediated negotiations with Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Shara in Washington. The talks ended without a breakthrough, but over the following weeks Israel continued to pursue a Syrian agreement. The major territorial point of contention, according to news leaks, was whether Israel, in descending from the entire Golan, would withdraw only to the international border or, as Syria demanded, also leave those areas along the Sea of Galilee that Syria had seized [from Israel by force] prior to the 1967 war and that Israel had then retaken [in the war].

Even many supporters of Oslo and of the return of the Golan to Syria balked at Assad’s demand for more. They did so in part for pragmatic reasons, in particular because the additional territory potentially to be ceded, by extending Syrian control to the shores of Galilee, would present critical difficulties such as compromising this key resource of Israel’s water supply. But there were also issues of principle. The Arabs were demanding the return of all territory taken by force of arms and yet they were in this instance insisting that Syria be given territory it had taken by force of arms prior to the 1967 war. Nevertheless Barak, with the support of most of his government, indicated a readiness for additional concessions.

Still, the Syrians would not budge, even refusing to resume direct negotiations. In February, 2000, President Clinton met with Syrian President Assad in Geneva to test Assad’s intention and effect what he anticipated would be a major breakthrough. In the event, Assad indicated that he was unprepared for a full peace with Israel no matter how forthcoming Barak was on ceding territory...

[Just a few months earlier,] Syria’s state-controlled media [had been running] several stories with anti-Semitic themes. One such, in late November [1999], regurgitated the blood libel, the claim that Jews use blood of gentiles for their religious rituals, which was also the theme of a popular book by Syria’s defense minister, Mustafa Tlas (The Matzah of Zion, 1984). An editorial in late January [2000] in Syria’s leading newspaper, Tishreen, a mouthpiece for the Assad regime, focused on denial of the Holocaust while insisting that Israeli policies are worse than those of the Nazis... [Barak’s] most notable comment regarding the Syrian government during this period was his characterization of Assad as a 'courageous leader' (November 9, 1999).”

SOURCE: Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (pp.415-416)

[31] "Hezbollah: Between Tehran and Damascus"; Middle East Intelligence Bulletin; Vol. 4, No. 2; February 2002; by Gary C. Gambill and Ziad K. Abdelnour

[32] U.S. Urges Restraint By Israel; Democratic Government Seen Facing Jeopardy in Lebanon, The Washington Post, July 14, 2006 Friday, Final Edition, A Section; A14, 1052 words, Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer, STRALSUND, Germany July 13

[33] “IS THE US AN ALLY OF ISRAEL?: A chronological look at the evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm

[34] Israel. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 9, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:9022/eb/article-219433

[35] THE ISRAELI VIEW: HOW TWO TRUTHS MAKE ONE TRAGEDY; IN FEW CONFLICTS ARE THE STANDPOINTS OF THE PROTAGONISTS SO POLARISED AS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. WE ASKED WRITERS FROM EITHER SIDE FOR THEIR EXPERIENCES, The Independent (London), October 22, 2000, Sunday, COMMENT; Pg. 18, 794 words, David Horovitz

[36] Levin, K. 2005. The Oslo syndrome: Delusions of a people under siege. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus. (p.443)

[37] The Oslo Syndrome (pp.443-444)

[38] Gideon Levy | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Levy

www.hirhome.com

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Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy.

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ISRAEL
AT WAR

an HIR series

< Who attacked Israel?

< What is Hezbollah?

< What caused this war?

< Understanding the US position | 1

< Understanding the US position | 2

< The Arab reaction, and what it means

< Who is killing Lebanese civilians? | 1

< Who is killing Lebanese civilians? | 2

< What is wrong with the media? | 1

< What is wrong with the media? | 2


	What is most amazing in is that Levy should characterize Ehud Olmert -- who was rushing to abandon the West Bank to the terrorists before Hezbollah forced him to retaliate lest he face a revolt in the Israeli officer class -- as somehow obsessed with real estate for Israel.

Levy’s chest-pounding nostra culpa that the land “does not belong to us” is historically incorrect.

Those who lose territory after launching a genocidal war have simply lost it.

They have no right to get it back.

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