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Sanctions Are War
Daniel Larison
Broad economic sanctions are a form of warfare, and the U.S. is by far the most frequent economic belligerent in the world. Our government’s overuse and abuse of sanctions has increased by leaps and bounds in just the last two decades. Sanctions designations increased significantly during the Obama years, and then they exploded under Trump with 1,457 designations in the year of 2018 alone. Trump’s multiple “maximum pressure” campaigns represented a dramatic escalation of economic warfare against Iran, North Korea, and Syria, and so far Biden has kept all of them intact. In each case, the US chose to launch these economic wars to try to compel capitulation by the targeted states as if they were rebellious subjects that needed to be brought to heel rather than the sovereign and independent countries that they are.
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What Makes American Jews Feel Jewish? For Most, Holocaust Remembrance is at the Top of the List
M. Boigon - Forward
The vast majority of American Jews view remembering the Holocaust as essential to their Jewish identities — more than religious activities like observing Jewish law or cultural ones like eating Jewish food, according to “American Jews in 2020,” released today by the Pew Research Center. More than 75% of survey respondents said that remembering the Holocaust was essential to their Jewish identities, the same as in Pew’s 2013 survey of American Jews. A more universal value — leading a moral and ethical life — came next in the rankings (72%) … “In that sense, remembering the Holocaust has become the new theology.” The emergence over the decades of Holocaust education programs and memorials … have created a culture of Holocaust memorial in the United States …
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Advocacy Groups Urge Facebook to Explain, Cease Censorship of Israel Critics
B. Wilkins – Common Dreams
Citing the need for “urgent action” by Facebook to explain and stop “blatant censorship of Palestinian political content” on the world’s largest social media site, 47 advocacy groups on Wednesday sent a letter to company chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg urging her to take a series of “crucial steps” to “repair mistrust” in the platform … The letter continues: “Facebook executives’ decision at this moment to directly collaborate with Israeli Defense and Justice Minister Gantz on content moderation, without appropriate parity of government engagement until prompted by civil society, is beyond outrageous.”
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'A Gift To Posterity': Four Men Who Risked The Wrath Of Stalin To Photograph The Holodomor
D. Dzhulay, C. O’Connor - RFE / RL
If the Bolsheviks had got their way, the story of the Holodomor might never have been told. Intent on ruthlessly presenting an idealized portrait of the Soviet Union at home and abroad, the USSR’s bureaucracy did its utmost to stifle news of the devastating man-made famine orchestrated by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that killed some four million Ukrainians in 1932-33. Communist authorities forced peasants in Ukraine to join collective farms by requisitioning their grain and other food products … Nonetheless, a handful of photographers managed to defy the Soviet authorities by capturing the horrors of the Holodomor on film … Now, these once-forbidden photos can be viewed online by anyone …
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Stalin is Century’s Bloodiest Figure
Eric Margolis
… The precise number of Ukrainians murdered by Stalin’s custom-made famine and Cheka firing squads remains unknown to this day. The KGB’s archives and recent work by Russian historians show at least seven million died … Six million other farmers across the Soviet Union were starved or shot during collectivization … Kaganovitch and many senior OGPU officers (later, NKVD) were Jewish. The predominance of Jews among Bolshevik leaders and the frightful crimes and cruelty inflicted by Stalin’s Checka on Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland led the victims of Red Terror to blame the Jewish people for both communism and their suffering … Modern leftists do not care to be reminded their ideological and historical roots are entwined with this century’s greatest crime …
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The Problem Is Systemic Anti-Whiteness, Not Marxism
Ilana Mercer
Institutionalized, systemic anti-whiteness, yoked to white hot, hatred of whites: That is the creed that is fast becoming entrenched across state and civil society in the U.S … In practice, whites are being singled out for a punishing, institutionalized program of reeducation, subjugation and continued intimidation … For fear of being dubbed racists, media conservatives simply look the other way, refusing to acknowledge the unadulterated, anti-white hue of American society … Ultimately, if quibbling about communism and identity politics becomes an obstacle to facing the reality of systemic anti-whiteness – then these theoretical crutches are an affront to reality and, by default, a grave error.
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Jerusalem is Ready to Explode - The World Can’t Say It Wasn’t Warned
David Hearst - Middle East Eye
… “We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict,” [Jared] Kushner wrote triumphantly. No US figure has written anything so arrogant and been so wrong since President George W Bush landed on an aircraft carrier after the invasion of Iraq sporting the fateful banner: “Mission Accomplished.” … Israel has long since established itself as the only state between the river and the sea, one increasingly incapable of tolerating any other political identity alongside it. This is their solution to the conflict, where the Jewish minority rules over an Arab majority. To be Palestinian is to receive one blow after another … Day by day, the state of Israel, not merely its settlers, or the far right, has become more extreme in enforcing its sovereignty over the people whose lands it has seized.
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Churchill’s Secret Plan to Start World War Three: New Book Charts PM's Bid to Launch Surprise Attack on Stalin
Daily Mail (Britain)
With the defeat of Nazi Germany more or less certain in February 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill praised his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin as a ‘friend whom we can trust’ … But when Soviet troops captured Berlin in May 1945 and Stalin showed no willingness to relinquish his control of Central and Eastern European countries, Churchill ordered the creation of a plan that would have plunged the world into another devastating conflict. The astonishing blueprint – officially named Operation Unthinkable – outlined how British and American forces would embark on a ground, air and naval offensive against their ally the Soviet Union … Operation Unthinkable is outlined in historian Giles Milton’s new book Checkmate in Berlin, which is being published on Thursday …
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Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s Plan to Invade the Soviet Union
J. Walker - The History Press
… 1945 was the year when Europe was the crucible for a Third World War. So concerned was the Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that in the spring of that year he ordered his Chiefs of Staff to prepare a plan, ‘Operation Unthinkable,’ to attack the Soviet empire. The top-secret plan was so sensitive that only Churchill’s immediate circle of military advisors were privy to the blueprint … The plan called for a massive Allied assault on 1 July 1945 by British, American, Polish and German – yes German – forces against the Red Army … Eventually in June 1945 Churchill’s military advisors cautioned him against implementing the plan … Churchill’s political days were numbered. In July 1945 a General Election removed him from office, and the plan for ‘Operation Unthinkable’ was put away in the bottom drawer.
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Sweden Goes From Being One of the Safest Countries in Europe to the Second Most Dangerous
Summit News
A new investigation finds that Sweden has gone from being one of the safest European countries 20 years ago in terms of gun crime to the second most dangerous. The study, published by the country’s National Council on Crime Prevention (Brå), reveals that Sweden is the only country on the continent where shootings have increased substantially since the start of the century. “Most of the fatal shootings in Sweden (around 80 percent) had a link to organised crime, according to the study, a proportion which had risen from 30 to 50 percent in the early 2000s … After having been ranked 18th out of 22 countries for gun crime from 2000 to 2003, Sweden now ranks in second place, behind only Croatia. Authorities appear to be baffled at the cause of the increase …
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Kissinger at 98: ‘If It Were Not for the Accident of My Birth, I Would Be Antisemitic.’
B. Ivry - Forward
How readers may choose to commemorate the birthday of Henry Kissinger, who turns 98 on May 27, may well depend on their previous readings about the former Secretary of State and National Security adviser … Kissinger opposed the idea of a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, because such an institution next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., might create “too high a profile” for American Jews and “reignite antisemitism.” … Kissinger grumbled, “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be antisemitic.” He added: “Any people who has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.” … In another transcribed telephone conversation from November 1973, Kissinger declared: “I’m going to be the first Jew accused of antisemitism.”
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Secret 1969 White House Memo on 'Dangers' of Israel Nuclear Weapons
Nixon Presidential Library and Museum - pdf document
In this secret internal memo of July 19, 1969, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explains to President Richard Nixon the “dangers” of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Kissinger notes that Israel had broken its pledge to the US not to “introduce” nuclear weapons in the region. He also notes that if the US tries to force Israel to live up to its commitment by withholding delivery of US warplanes, “enormous political pressure will be mounted on us.” This memo, declassified in 2007 after being “sanitized,” lays out US policy regarding the Zionist state’s nuclear arsenal: “While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.”
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Are Educated People More Anti-Semitic?
J. P. Greene, A. Cheng, I. Kingsbury – Tablet
A foundational principle of the fight against hate in America is the belief that intolerance in general, and anti-Semitism in particular, are functions of ignorance that can be solved with education … Profiles of anti-Semites tend to feature rural whites or urban minorities from low-educational backgrounds … We discovered that more-highly educated people in the United States tend to have greater antipathy toward Jews than less-educated people do … In fact, we found that more highly educated people were more likely to apply principles more harshly to Jewish examples … Contrary to previous claims, education appears to provide no protection against anti-Semitism, and may in fact serve to license it — in part by providing people with more sophisticated and socially acceptable ways to couch it.
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'I Did Have Some Trouble Reporting the Truth': For Years, Skewed Presentation of the Israel-Palestine Conflict
A. Ismail - Slate
… This experience was a familiar one to many journalists who started talking with one another on private WhatsApp chat groups and Slack channels as the latest violence broke out in Gaza and Israel. The chats are made up of dozens of journalists across a range of media organizations who are sharing stories of seeing their work doubted and altered. They’re sharing tips on how to have difficult conversations with editors who are reluctant to publish articles that focus on Palestinian voices. And they’re also talking about some positive shifts they are seeing in the coverage. But even with those shifts, almost no one I spoke to would allow their name to be used, a sign that the fear of reprisal remains strong.
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Israel-Gaza: The Democrats’ 'Tectonic' Shift on the Conflict
A. Zurcher – BBC News
The latest clashes between Israel and the Palestinians has revealed exactly how much the political centre of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved on the conflict in recent years. “The shift is dramatic; it’s tectonic,” says pollster John Zogby, who has tracked US views on the Middle East for decades. In particular, younger generations are considerably more sympathetic to the Palestinians – and that age gap has been on full display with the Democratic Party. While President Joe Biden has expressed a more traditional view, repeatedly emphasising that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas rocket attacks, he’s finding himself out of step in a party that is now at least as concerned with the conditions on the ground for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank – and Israeli policies viewed as contributing to their plight.
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Antisemitic Twitter Is Trending As Violence Against Jews Escalates
Jewish Journal (California)
… Now modern versions of old antisemitic conspiracy theories are being circulated online while violent anti-Jewish demonstrations escalate in Europe and North America. Antisemitic tweets talk of “the distorted Jewish books (Old Testament books)” and the idea that “Zionist Israelites” kill indiscriminately because “the blood of the Jews in their veins.” Both tweets have been reported, but neither has been taken down. Adeel Raja, a CNN contributor, tweeted “The world today needs a Hitler.” He will no longer be working for CNN, and that anti-Jewish tweet was deleted, as were other antisemitic tweets, but his account was not terminated. A tweet purportedly quoting Hitler has been deleted for violating Twitter’s rules. The account, however, which has over 1.2 million followers, was not suspended.
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How the US Contributes to the Killing of Palestinians
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas Davies – The Progressive
… The tragic relevance of this crisis for people in the United States is that, behind the fog of war and propaganda, this country bears an overwhelming share of responsibility for the carnage taking place in Palestine … Diplomatically, the United States has exercised its veto in the U.N. Security Council 82 times since the Council’s founding; 44 of those vetoes have been to shield Israel from accountability for war crimes or human rights violations. In every case, the United States has been the lone vote against the resolution, although a few other countries have occasionally abstained. It is only the United States’ privileged position as a veto-wielding Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council … that gives it this unique power to stymie international efforts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its actions under international law.
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… What is particularly disturbing about the U.S. government response to what is taking place in Gaza is the lack of any actual American interest that is served by allowing Israelis to kill Palestinians. Quite the contrary, as Washington will be rightly blamed by nearly everyone for enabling Israeli behavior. Equally disturbing is the tissue of lies and deliberate misstatements used to obscure the reality and justify the positions that are being taken. Is there any wonder why so many Americans no longer feel that they can either trust or believe what is coming out of the mouths of Washington politicians and its associated mainstream media?
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Army recruitment videos, from China, Russia and the US. Each is meant to encourage young viewers to join their country’s military. Each reflects the country’s prevailing outlook and values. The videos of China and Russia stress discipline, self-sacrifice, hierarchy and dedication — traits that throughout history have been crucial for any effective fighting force. The US video reflects the self-absorbed “woke” ideology that has become so important in today’s America. Viewers’ comments overwhelmingly express contempt for the US Army video, or dismay with what it says about American society.
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A federal judge said that a Georgia law banning the state from doing business with anyone promoting a boycott of Israel violates the First Amendment. In a ruling issued Friday, District Court Judge Mark Cohen rejected state officials’ efforts to dismiss a lawsuit from Abby Martin, a progressive journalist and documentary filmmaker, challenging the law. Cohen said in a 29-page decision that the law “prohibits inherently expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment, burdens Martin’s right to free speech, and is not narrowly tailored to further a substantial state interest.” … The lawsuit is still in its early stages and Cohen has not yet ruled whether the state law should be struck down.
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Secrets by the Thousands: The Great US Theft of German Technology
C. Lester Walker -- Harper’s (1946)
… Tens of thousands of tons of material are involved. It is estimated that over a million separate items must be handled, and that they are, very likely, practically all the scientific, industrial and military secrets of Nazi Germany. One Washington official has called it “the greatest single source of this type of material in the world, the first orderly exploitation of an entire country’s brain-power.” … This one war secret alone, many American steel men believe, will revolutionize dozens of our metal fabrication industries. In textiles the war secrets collection has produced so many revelations that American textile men are a little dizzy … Army Air Force experts declare publicly that in rocket power and guided missiles the Nazis were ahead of us by at least ten years.
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'Dangerous and Drastic Surge' in Anti-Semitism in US Linked to Gaza Conflict, Says Zionist ADL
The Times of Israel / JTA
There has been a “dangerous and drastic surge” in antisemitism in the US, and around the world, in recent days linked to the fighting between Israel and terror groups in the Gaza Strip, the Anti-Defamation League said. In preliminary data revealed late Thursday, just before a ceasefire went into effect, the watchdog group said it had tracked an increase in online and real-world incidents of antisemitism in the United States … “It’s happening around the world — from London to Los Angeles, from France to Florida, in big cities like New York and in small towns, and across every social media platform.” The ADL said it has documented antisemitism on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram, with messages including explicit praise for Hitler, promoting tropes about Jewish control and demonizing all Jews.
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BBC Investigating Journalist Who Tweeted 'Hitler Was Right'
Jewish News / The Times of Israel
The BBC has confirmed it is investigating one of its journalists who wrote: “Hitler was right.” Palestinian affairs specialist Tala Halawa has covered the recent conflict in Gaza. But in 2014 she tweeted that “Israel is more Nazi than Hitler” and wrote that the Israeli Defence Force should “go to hell”. Her post, written prior to Halawa joining the BBC in 2017, was uploaded online by the Honest Reporting Twitter media monitoring group. The group posted: “Halawa directly influences and creates content watched by many millions around the world. In what world can someone like this work for a professional news outlet?” Halawa works as a digital journalist for BBC Monitoring, who produce material for BBC World Service amongst others.
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Washington is Complicit in Israel’s Crimes
Paul Findley
… Who is responsible for this tragic treatment of Palestinians? If you ponder that question, bear in mind that Israel could not possibly commit this criminal behavior without automatic, unqualified, U.S. government support year after year. Pro-Israel lobby pressure controls all major news media. Congress behaves like a committee of the Israeli parliament. No president since Dwight Eisenhower has had the courage to stand up to Israeli wrongdoing. Those who know the truth are afraid to speak out for fear of paying a heavy price – maybe loss of employment. All citizens of the United States must face the truth: Our government is complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity.
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Why Human Rights Watch Designating Israel’s Crimes as Apartheid is a Very Big Deal
P. Bennis - Common Dreams
Human Rights Watch is the best-known and arguably the most influential among Washington elites of any of the many human rights organizations in the United States. So when HRW issues an unsparing, 200-plus page legal and factual report concluding that Israeli government authorities are guilty of the crime of apartheid, it is a very big deal … The take-away is this: Human Rights Watch now acknowledges that Israel’s policies are designed to maintain Jewish domination over Palestinians across all the territory it controls, from the river to the sea. And Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid … Ultimately there is only one answer to that resistance, equal rights. These truths are becoming clearer to all outside observers …
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Netanyahu Warns Biden Not to Get Involved
Philip Giraldi
… Any American politician who seeks to object to the “most favored nation” status of Israel is likely to get unelected the next time he or she has to run for office. The list of the fallen includes Senators Chuck Percy and William Fulbright as well as congressmen Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney and James Traficant. The key to defeating incumbents in electoral office was and is money and the power and access that it buys. Israel and its supporting cast of 600 pro-Zionist Jewish organizations have billions of dollars to play with, and they also include in their ranks co-religionists and other bought sympathizers who control the editorial and news content of America’s printed, television and radio media.
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Machinations of the Anti-Defamation League
Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey, Jr. - Institute for Historical Review
… I was in politics for fifteen years, and I think you should start with the assumption: never trust a politician … When people finally learn the truth, they turn against those who have been lying to them. And I think that if the movement of which you people are the cutting edge can retain dispassion in the face of outrages, setbacks and humiliations, the truth can ultimately prevail. You are doing something worse than criticizing the government of the United States; you’re threatening the security of the state of Israel. And the Jewish community is dedicated to preserve that state, and to destroy those who speak against it. Good luck!
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Why Did a Nazi Leader Crash-Land in Scotland?
BBC Scotland News
One of the most bizarre episodes of World War Two unfolded on a farm to the south of Glasgow on 10 May 1941 … Why had a prominent Nazi flown for almost 1,000 miles on a solo mission over enemy territory in the middle of a war before coming down in a field in central Scotland? … The historian says declassified documents point to Hess being misinformed about the level of support for a peace deal and embarking on a desperate flight of fancy … As their talks progressed, Dr Dicks was struck by Hess and Hitler’s admiration of the British, despite Germany having the upper hand in the war at that time. Dr Dicks thought an affection for the British may have been why Hess chose to make his solo flight to Scotland. Hitler said he had no knowledge of what Hess was trying to do and the Nazi Party soon declared him insane.
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The Legacy of Rudolf Hess
Mark Weber
…. He spent 46 years — half his life — behind bars, a victim of a cruel victor’s justice. More than any other man, Rudolf Hess symbolizes the vindictiveness and hypocrisy of the Nuremberg Tribunal … Known as the “conscience of the party,” he often used what power and influence he had to intervene on behalf of victims of persecution by extremists in the National Socialist party. In his detailed study, Justice at Nuremberg, which is generally very critical of the German defendants, historian Robert E. Conot called Hess a “decent and honest” man and “a pacifist at heart.” … Rudolf Hess was a prisoner of peace and a victim of a vindictive age.
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… It is high time that now, at last, a real understanding should be reached among the nations. This must be an understanding based on mutual respect for one another, because only such an understanding can endure … Again and again Adolf Hitler has asserted that Germany demands equality of rights in all spheres, including that of armament. Once such an understanding as I have been speaking of is arrived at between Germany and her neighbors, Germany can easily be content with the minimum amount of armament necessary for her own internal security and the guaranteeing of peace.
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Just Whose Coast is the US Coast Guard Guarding?
Ted Galen Carpenter
Most Americans likely assume that the mission of the U.S. Coast Guard is to protect the coasts of the United State from maritime threats. Increasingly, though, that is no longer true, as Coast Guard vessels and personnel now routinely operate thousands of miles from the US homeland … Late last month, a Coast Guard cutter, the USCGC Hamilton entered the Black Sea as part of the US Navy’s show of strength against Russia … The Coast Guard is even more active in the western Pacific … Even though the service is officially part of the Department of Homeland Security, it increasingly operates as an adjunct of the Navy in projecting US power around the world. It is an Orwellian euphemism to portray it as an agency dedicated to coastal defense when it routinely performs such offensive functions thousands of miles from home.
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A History of the US Blocking UN Resolutions Against Israel
C. Newton - Al Jazeera
The United States has vetoed dozens of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1972, according to UN data. With the latest escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians now in its tenth day, the US has stuck to that playbook. On Monday, Washington blocked a joint statement calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas – the US’s third such veto reportedly within a week. The US’s unequivocal support of Israel has seen it thwart resolutions condemning violence against protesters, illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank built since 1967 … Here is a list of some of the major vetoes cast by the US over the years …
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Biden Approves $735 Million Weapons Sale to Israel
Dave DeCamp – Antiwar.com
A report from The Washington Post revealed that the Biden administration approved a $735 million arms sale to Israel. Congress was officially notified of the sale on May 5th, less than one week before Israel began its latest bombing campaign in Gaza, which, so far, has taken the lives of over 200 Palestinians, including over 60 children. A congressional aide told The Hill that the bulk of the $735 million deal is for Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions, which can convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions … There’s no chance Congress would move to block the sale, but some House Democrats are raising questions about leveraging such sales.
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In an article about its “worst errors of judgment” from its 200-year history, a Guardian writer implied that the storied British paper’s editorial support of the Balfour Declaration of 1917 — the then-British foreign minister’s approval of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine — was a mistake. “The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour declaration,” editorial writer Randeep Ramesh wrote in the article published Friday. “Whatever else can be said, Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted,” he added, arguing that the Guardian’s editor at the time, Charles Prestwich Scott, was ignorant about Palestinian rights.
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No, US Policing Doesn’t Trace its Roots to Heinous Slave Patrols
H. E. Myers - New York Post
There’s a storyline in vogue among those who would defund the cops that claims that modern policing grew out of the vile squads that hunted runaway slaves. “From slave patrols to traffic stops. We can’t reform this,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) recently admonished. It’s a slur, and a dangerous one: Modern police didn’t get their start as slave patrols, and saying so is just one more way activists stir up anger against law enforcement … Most of the 18,000 US police agencies were founded after abolition, and many were explicitly modeled on modern concepts of policing invented by the British … Politicians should be looking for ways to lower crime while improving the relationship between police and the community. Peddling historical lies isn’t the answer.
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In a twist worthy of Mark Twain himself, a St. John’s University professor has been fired for reading a passage containing the N-word from Twain’s anti-slavery novel “Pudd’nhead Wilson” in her “Literature of Satire” class. Hannah Berliner Fischthal, an adjunct instructor at the Catholic college in Queens for 20 years, uttered the N-word once during a remote class Feb. 10 — after she first explained to students the context of the word and said she hoped it would not offend anyone. … Fischthal was fired on April 29 following a school investigation. “I never thought that would happen to me,” said Fischthal, who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors … But Fischthal’s apologies and her efforts to address the issue ultimately did not help.
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Statue by 'Nazi' Artist No Longer on Display at College in California
Jewish News of N. Calif.
A statue at St. Mary’s College in Moraga [California ] that was temporarily removed in February after student concerns surrounding the artist’s Nazi-era past will no longer be on public display. In February, after removing the statue in response to a student petition, the college promised to hold a community-wide forum to discuss the future of the artwork … The statue, titled “Falcon Boy,” was made by German-born Fritz von Graevenitz in 1953. The artist, who was widely celebrated among Nazi officials, created a 20-foot-wide bronze eagle and swastika statue, as well as busts of Hitler. The “Falcon Boy” statue does not have any Nazi iconography; it depicts von Graevenitz’s late brother, who died in 1918.
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The United States on Tuesday sharply criticized Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for what it called “anti-Semitic” remarks amid his denunciations of Israel’s strikes in Gaza. “The United States strongly condemns President Erdogan’s recent anti-Semitic comments regarding the Jewish people and finds them reprehensible,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement … He has accused Israel of “terrorism” against the Palestinians and recently said, “It is in their nature.” “They are murderers, to the point that they kill children who are five or six years old. They only are satisfied by sucking their blood,” he said. Erdogan also lashed out at US President Joe Biden for his diplomatic support to Israel, saying the US leader has “bloody hands.”
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Israel Accuses China State TV of 'Blatant Anti-Semitism'
Associated Press
Israel’s embassy in China is protesting what it describes as “blatant anti-Semitism” on a program run by the overseas channel of state broadcaster CCTV discussing the ongoing violence in Gaza and elsewhere … On the Tuesday CGTN broadcast, host Zheng Junfeng questioned whether U.S. support for Israel was truly based on shared democratic values, saying “some people believe that U.S. pro-Israeli policy is traceable to the influence of wealthy Jews in the U.S. and the Jewish lobby on U.S. foreign policy makers.” “Jews dominate finance and internet sectors,” Zheng says, speaking in English. “So, do they have the powerful lobbies some say? Possible.” Zheng then accused the U.S. — China’s top geopolitical rival — of using Israel as a “beachhead” in the Middle East and a as proxy in its campaign to defeat pan-Arabism.
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Winners, and Losers, in Gaza War
Patrick J. Buchanan
“Israel is Winning Battles, Hamas is Winning the War.” So ran the headline in the Jerusalem Post atop an analysis of the Gaza war, which began, “The IDF is registering great achievements in Operation Guardian of the Walls, but meanwhile the house appears to be collapsing from within.” Hard to disagree … While Israeli attacks are killing Hamas commanders and destroying the sites from which Hamas has fired 3,000 rockets, Israel is suffering serious and intangible losses … In U.S. and European cities like Berlin, London, Paris and Madrid, protesters numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands are marching in solidarity with the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel as a racist and “apartheid” regime … A military truce may be at hand, but that is all it will be — a truce before the next round of fighting.
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Israel, the Big Lie
Chris Hedges
Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie … I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief … The United States is not an honest broker for peace but has funded, enabled and defended Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people … Israel’s educational system, starting in primary school, uses the Holocaust to portray Jews as eternal victims. This victimhood is an indoctrination machine used to justify racism, Islamophobia, religious chauvinism and the deification of the Israeli military.
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For the Third Time, US Blocks UN Security Council Statement Urging Gaza Ceasefire
D. DeCamp – Antiwar.com
For the third time within one week, the US blocked a statement at the UN Security Council condemning Israeli violence against Palestinians and urging a ceasefire in Gaza. Israeli bombs have killed over 200 people since last Monday, including over 60 children. The latest statement blocked by the US was introduced by Norway, Tunisia, and China after an emergency Security Council meeting on Sunday … Despite the US’s unwillingness to pressure Israel, other countries still want to push for a ceasefire at the UN. The UN General Assembly is set to discuss the Gaza onslaught on Thursday morning. Israel shows no sign of seeking a de-escalation and continues to pound Gaza with airstrikes. On Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that the US is not pressuring its ally to seek a ceasefire.
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Biden Can’t Avoid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Patrick Cockburn - CounterPunch
Joe Biden is trying to keep his distance from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which means continuing with a US policy that is unrelentingly favourable to Israel. This is not likely to change as Biden reasserts “Israel’s right to defend itself” without making even a symbolic bow to the Palestinians’ equal right to safety and security. Biden would clearly like the present situation to just go away. This is the last issue his administration wants to spend time thinking about, knowing that its greatest efforts are likely to produce nothing but political self-harm. But the old status quo in relations between Israelis and Palestinians has become unstable and may be unsalvageable … The White House was genuinely surprised by the sudden eruption of the crisis this week and does not know what to do.
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‘Not $1’: US Lawmaker Rep. McCollum Urges End to Complicity in Israeli Abuses
J. Kestler-D’Amours - Al Jazeera
Over the past several years, US Congresswoman Betty McCollum has tried to spur a debate in the United States about the billions of dollars that Washington sends to Israel each year. The Democrat from Minnesota wants to know more about just where the money is going, while ensuring that Israel is not using US military assistance to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians … “By refusing to place clear restrictions on US military aid to Israel, Congress is effectively giving Israel the green light to abuse the human rights of Palestinian children, demolish Palestinian homes, and to annex Palestinian land.”
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Apartheid Is On Display
Daniel Larison - Antiwar.com
… The extraordinary military and diplomatic support that the U.S. provides to Israel makes our government complicit in Israel’s ongoing illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and in the ongoing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians … The US has an obligation to hold its clients to the same standard that it applies to other states at the very least. Because US political and military support has been instrumental in strengthening the government engaged in this systematic oppression and abuse, we have an added responsibility to help correct the injustices that our policy has helped to entrench. The time has come to tear up the blank check Washington gives Israel and then to hold their government accountable for its crimes.
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Biden’s U.N. Honeymoon is Over
Politico
President Joe Biden’s election was greeted with waves of relief among United Nations diplomats, but a series of tense discussions over the rampant violence in Israel and Palestine this week signals the honeymoon is over … The trajectory of the discussions left many New York-based U.N. diplomats wondering how much has changed in American policy since the end of the Trump administration. The U.S. is Israel’s strongest ally at the U.N., repeatedly siding with Israel across multiple administrations, despite overwhelming opposition at the global body to how Israel manages its Palestinian occupied territories.
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No Evidence to Support Claim of Prominent Critic of Confederate Statues That He is Descendent of General Robert E. Lee
The Washington Post
The Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, known as Rob, has, since 2016, parlayed his ancestry on behalf of what many may regard as a noble cause — removing Confederate statues and memorials … Meanwhile, Rob Lee has made numerous public appearances … But there is no evidence that Rob Lee, who was born in North Carolina, is related to Robert E. Lee, according to The Fact Checker’s review of historical and genealogical records … On his website, Rob Lee describes himself as “a descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.” … He did not respond to repeated requests for comment — via email, text message and Twitter — but his own writings are vague on the connection … He has no apparent relationship to the Lees of Virginia, who first arrived on the shores of the Americas in 1639.
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The University of California won’t consider SAT and ACT scores that are submitted with admission and scholarship applications under a settlement of a student lawsuit that was announced Friday. The ten-campus system, which has more than 280,000 students statewide, decided not to continue fighting a judge’s injunction issued last fall that barred it from considering the scores for admission even when they were submitted voluntarily, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Activists have long argued that standardized tests put minority and low-income students at a disadvantage.
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A U.S. military band surprised a Holocaust survivor this week [April 2020] by playing the Israeli national anthem to him via Zoom to mark the 75th anniversary of his liberation by American forces from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. Abba Naor, 92, was the youngest survivor of Dachau concentration camp outside Munich. He was liberated aged 17 after spending four years in the camp … United States service members played the Israeli national anthem alongside members of the Israeli Defense Forces. On April 29, 1945 the U.S. armed forces liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau and 75 years later Israel is also celebrating Wednesday its 72nd Independence Day. World leaders gathered in Jerusalem in January to take part in a diplomatic meeting to commemorate the Holocaust and battle anti-Semitism …
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… While 2020 most assuredly will be remembered for the global coronavirus pandemic, it also will go down as a year marked by resurgent criminal violence that may end up spelling serious trouble for American cities … Washington, D.C. closed 2020 with homicides up for the third year — this time by almost 20 percent, or 32 more deaths; Killings in Philadelphia, where year-end homicides have risen every year since 2016, were just one body shy of 500, a 40 percent increase … The 66 cities that responded to the Major City Chiefs Association’s year-end violent crime survey collectively saw 1,990 more murders in 2020 than in 2019 …
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It’s Not American 'Aid' to Israel. It’s Tribute
John Whitbeck - CounterPunch
In the wake of the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israeli apartheid and persecution and the ongoing Israeli brutalities in Jerusalem, a slowly growing handful of brave American politicians is daring to defy President Biden’s publicly proclaimed assertion that it would be “absolutely outrageous” to ever condition American “aid” to Israel on any Israeli behavior, and to assert that such “aid” should indeed be conditioned, at least to some degree, on Israeli violations of human rights, international law and America’s own laws … The guaranteed payments which U.S. governments negotiate with Israeli governments and commit to pay to Israel are not negotiated and paid because Israel needs the money. They are negotiated and paid as public manifestations of American submission and subservience.
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True Himmler
David Irving. Book available from IHR
In this eagerly awaited new work, a best-selling English historian takes a close look at the life and career of Heinrich Himmler, one of the most important figures of Third Reich Germany and of World War II — from his childhood and early years to the outbreak of war in September 1939. With 64 pages of photos, many in color, copious source endnotes, detailed index, and color dust jacket. A historian known for his often startling and controversial work, David Irving once again makes skillful use of records he has accessed through great effort over many years. True Himmler is packed with fascinating facts and insights on Third Reich Germany’s six years of peace. It begins with a chapter on Himmler’s death in May 1945 at the age of 44 while a prisoner in British custody. Irving presents evidence that casts doubt on the official “suicide” story.
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David Irving’s new biography of Heinrich Himmler, titled True Himmler, has just been published. In this interview, recorded in Warsaw when he was still researching the work, the British historian talks about Himmler’s character, personality and historical role. During the 1930s he built up the formidable SS organization in Germany, and during World War II he headed and supervised the vast Waffen SS pan-European military force. Irving also talks about Himmler’s key role in planning and executing what has come to known as the Holocaust. Runtime: 7:40 mins.
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Israeli Airstrike in Gaza Destroys Building With AP Bureau and Other Media Outlets
CBS / Associated Press
An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets, hours after another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least ten Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children. The strike on the high-rise Saturday came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust.
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Jewish-Arab Violence Rolls Through Israel’s Cities
The Times of Israel
Israel on Wednesday experienced its worst night of internal Jewish-Arab chaos for many years, amid the ongoing armed conflict with Gaza, as scenes of unrest, rioting, hate rallies and growing social chaos spread throughout numerous cities, some of which were once seen as symbols of coexistence. Violent confrontations erupted in Lod, Acre, Jerusalem, Haifa, Bat Yam, Tiberias and many other locations … More than 400 people were arrested. Perhaps the most shocking scene of the night, and one that elicited expressions of disbelief and horror from Israeli leaders, was footage of hundreds of Jewish extremists in Bat Yam vandalizing Arab property and then assaulting an Arab driver in his car, dragging him out of the vehicle and beating him savagely. Jewish mobs were seen roaming the streets of Tiberias and Haifa looking for Arabs to assault.
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… The U.S. federal budget deficit widened to a record $1.9 trillion in the first seven months of the fiscal year, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. This is up from a $1.5 trillion deficit over the same period last year … Big picture: The U.S. budget deficit this year is expected to exceed last year’s record $3 trillion deficit. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an independent think tank, said it expects the deficit this year to total $3.4 trillion. Over the next ten years, the group projects a deficit of $16.6 trillion. At the same time, the national debt is seen growing to $37.4 trillion from $28 trillion currently. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last month the federal budget deficit is on an unsustainable path.
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US Birthrate Falls to New Low Point
Associated Press
The U.S. birthrate fell four percent last year, the largest single-year decrease in nearly 50 years, according to a government report being released Wednesday. The rate dropped for moms of every major race and ethnicity, and in nearly every age group, falling to the lowest point since federal health officials started tracking it more than a century ago … The U.S. birth rate dropped to about 56 births per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, the lowest rate on record. The rate is half of what it was in the early 1960s … Birth rates fell 8% for Asian American women; 3% for Hispanic women; 4% for Black and white women; and 6% for moms who were American Indians or Alaska Natives.
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Shocking video captured a crowd of ultra-nationalist Israelis pulling an Arab driver from a car and beating him until he lay motionless on the ground – as Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin said the country was being gripped by a civil war … The footage from Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv — which aired live on Israeli TV on Wednesday night — shows the mob attacking the man amid a night of unrest … The unidentified man “is seriously injured but stable,” Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital said in a statement … Jewish protesters in other parts of the country, including the northern cities of Tiberias and Acre, marched in the streets chanting “Death to Arabs” and vandalizing Arab-owned businesses.
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A video of a crowd of extremist Jewish Israelis beating a man presumed to be an Arab in a Tel Aviv suburb on Wednesday night was broadcast live on Israeli TV as the country erupted in violence between Arabs and Jews. The incident in the coastal city of Bat Yam, caught by a camera operator for Israeli Channel 11, comes amid the deadly rocket fire between Israel and Hamas, the terror group that controls Gaza. The footage shows the Jewish Israelis surrounding the man and beating him. Later he is seen lying on the ground wearing a motorcycle helmet being kicked and hit before the camera pans away.
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Far-Right Israeli Groups Plan Further Violence Against Palestinians After Night of Lynchings
Middle East Eye
Far-right Israeli groups are planning to mount further attacks against Palestinians in Israel on Thursday night, according to group chat messages seen by MEE, after a night of mob attacks, crackdowns by Israeli security forces and deaths across Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza on Wednesday. “Bring everything, knives, gasoline,” read one message in a group chat named “The Underground Unit” – seemingly on Signal – with several hundred members. “Don’t be scared, we are the chosen ones.” … In another message, which appeared to be posted to WhatsApp, on a group called Israel People Alive Haifa, a forwarded message gave the location of a Palestinian march in Tel Aviv. “Any Arab you see – you stab,” it read.
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Veena Malik, an actress who has starred in over a dozen Pakistani and Bollywood films and shows, tweeted a series of incendiary remarks about the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, including a [fake] quote by Adolf Hitler about killing Jews. “I would have killed all the Jews of the world … but I kept some to show the world why I killed them,” Malik tweeted Tuesday. She also tweeted “#IronDome is doomed” with a laughing emoji, referencing Israel’s missile defense system, which has been overwhelmed by rockets fired from Hamas in the Gaza Strip. By Wednesday afternoon, all of the tweets were gone from her account … Malik, 37, a former comedian and sex symbol, has won honors from Pakistani awards shows for her acting performances over the past two decades.
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Fraudulent quotations attributed to Hitler and other Third Reich leaders have been widely circulated for years. Such quotes are often used by polemicists — of both the left and the right — to discredit their ideological adversaries by showing that Nazis held similar views. This tactic works because people have been educated to believe that anything Hitler and other Nazi leaders thought or said was malevolent, wrong-headed or evil, and that no reasonable or ethical person could hold similar views. Here’s a look at a few of the many remarks falsely attributed to Hitler and other top Nazis.
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After blocking two statements at the UN Security Council on the ongoing Israeli violence against Palestinians, the US objected to a planned meeting on the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza that was to be held publicly on Friday. The US suggested that the meeting should be held next Tuesday, but after a compromise, the Security Council agreed to discuss the matter on Sunday … The Israelis show no sign of seeking a de-escalation. On Wednesday night, Israel rejected a truce offer from Hamas, and chose to intensify airstrikes indefinitely. Bombs pounded Gaza throughout Thursday. Over 100 Palestinians have been killed so far, including dozens of children.
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… A growing number believe the nation’s divide over a variety of critical issues will widen in the coming years. Public Agenda and USA Today … asked people what they think will help move the country beyond destructive partisan divisiveness, which virtually all Americans agree is a huge problem … Seventy-one percent said Americans have more in common than is reflected by political leaders or in the media, but 44 percent said the country’s ability to deal with major disagreements over the next decade will worsen. That’s up by 5 percentage points compared with the 2019 version of the survey … Overall the poll shows a deep pessimism at the country’s ability to handle issues – from the health risks and economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic to improvising tensions between police and people of color.
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For many years anyone going into the occupied territories came out saying they’d seen apartheid – separate roads for Jews and Palestinians, crippling checkpoints for Palestinians, township areas to which Palestinians were confined and moved … Now Human Rights Watch has joined the chorus with a bombshell 213-page deeply-documented report alleging the crimes of “apartheid and persecution” … For years, Human Rights Watch bent over backwards to give Israel the benefit of the doubt … But stark political events in the last few years, the disavowal of a Palestinian state by Israeli leaders, and the passage of the racist Nation State law in 2018, cast the die … “What’s changed in the last four or five years…. Israeli officials now openly proclaim their intent to rule over the West Bank in perpetuity and treat Palestinians there as subjects.”
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A group of serving French soldiers has published an open letter warning President Emmanuel Macron that the survival of France is at stake after his “concessions” to Islamism, weeks after a similar message from elements in the military rocked the political elite. The letter, posted on the website of the rightwing Valeurs Actuelles magazine late Sunday, echoes the one published by the same publication last month. It too warned that a civil conflict was brewing … “We are not talking about extending your mandates or conquering others. We are talking about the survival of our country, the survival of your country,” said the letter, which was addressed to Macron and his cabinet. The authors described themselves as active-duty soldiers from the younger generation of the military, a so-called “generation of fire” that had seen active service.
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A new open letter has been published in France warning of the threat of civil war and claiming to have more than 130,000 signatures from the public. The message, published in a right-wing magazine, accuses the French government of granting “concessions” to Islamism. “It is about the survival of our country,” said the text, said to be issued anonymously by soldiers and appealing for public support. The French government condemned it, as well as a similar letter last month … “If a civil war breaks out, the army will maintain order on its own soil,” the letter went on to say. “No one can want such a terrible situation – our elders no more than us – but yes, civil war is brewing in France, and you know it perfectly well.”
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Of the men named by the Allied powers as defendants in the Nuremberg “International Military Tribunal,” the selection of Julius Streicher was one of the most difficult to justify. He had played no role whatsoever in planning or carrying out wartime policies of the Hitler regime. He was added to the list of “Major War Criminals” because of his international reputation as a vicious anti-Jewish writer, publicist and speaker, above all as publisher of the stridently anti-Semitic weekly, Der Stürmer (“The Stormer”). Citing articles that appeared in his paper, the Tribunal sentenced him to death for “Crimes Against Humanity.” During this time of heated debate about the role of “hate speech” in society, and “cancel culture” suppression of offensive writings and images, Streicher’s life and death have new relevance.
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Movie Review: Sacrificing Liberty
Brian R. Wright
One is at a loss for superlatives in reviewing this stellar work … The Liberty was the American state-of-the-art communications ship in the middle of the so-called Six-Day War that Israel strafed and torpedoed in International Waters. The day, June 8, 1967, when Israel effectively declared war on the United States … should have lived in infamy … [Director] Skow dives into LBJ and his Jewish-Zionist entourage with no holds barred … The media was already primed for coverup and for disseminating the official story … I, myself, being familiar with a great deal of the Liberty exposés to this point, had not appreciated the extent to which President Johnson and his administration of Zionist-Jewish toadies and Israeli spies were the prime movers of this bizarre treasonous act on behalf of a foreign enemy …
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Trailer of a new four-part documentary on the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, an American Navy spy ship, while it was in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean during the “Six Day” Israel-Arab war. The sustained air and sea attack killed 34 crew members, and wounded 174. The official US-Israel coverup began immediately, and has continued to the present. In this dramatic and detailed four-episode series, which strives to set the record straight, the aging survivors tell their story. Director: Matthew Skow. Produced by TruHistory. Runtime: 4:25 mins.
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Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty: An Overview
The Council for the National Interest
On June 8, 1967, 34 American servicemen were killed and 174 were wounded during an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty. According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, “Those men were then betrayed and left to die by our own government.” The survivors are still awaiting justice … Israel claimed the attack was “a case of mistaken identity”; that they didn’t know it was an American ship … The Navy’s chief attorney to the original 1967 military Court of Inquiry has issued a statement that orders to cover-up the incident were issued by President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
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Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty
Joan Mellen - Book Available from IHR
In this startling work, an eminent author presents evidence of collusion between US and Israeli intelligence in the murderous 1967 attack against the USS Liberty, a US naval surveillance vessel, and in maintaining a cover-up that has endured for more than 50 years. So intense and sustained was the attack – it lasted for nearly an hour and a half – and so specific was the aiming for the antennae and satellite dish on deck, that it was scarcely credible that Israel’s aggression was not deliberate. Based on interviews with more than 40 survivors, knowledgeable political insiders, and Soviet archives of the period, investigative writer Joan Mellen presents disturbing evidence of complicity between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack, and in maintaining the decades-old cover-up.
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The Unraveling of the American Empire
Chris Hedges
America’s defeat in Afghanistan is one in a string of catastrophic military blunders that herald the death of the American empire … Imperial ineptitude is matched by domestic ineptitude … The two-decade-long wars in the Middle East, the greatest strategic blunder in American history, have only left in their wake one failed state after another. Yet, no one in the ruling class is held accountable … The façade of empire is able to mask the rot within its foundations, often for decades, until, as we saw with the Soviet Union, the empire appears to suddenly disintegrate. The loss of the dollar as the global reserve currency will probably mark the final chapter of the American empire.
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… The real purpose of this gambit from the point of view of those waging information wars is to impose a convenient silence over wrongdoings by our side while focusing exclusively on theirs … Simple-minded as these PR tactics might be, but they have been repeatedly shown to be highly effective. One reason why they work is that people would like to imagine that conflicts are struggles between white hats and black hats, angels and demons. Another reason is that this delusion is fostered enthusiastically by parts of the media, who generally goes along with a government-inspired news agenda.
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California’s Department of Education is working on a new framework for K-12 mathematics that discourages gifted students from enrolling in accelerated classes that study advanced concepts like calculus … Its overriding concern is inequity. The department is worried that too many students are sorted into different math tracks based on their natural abilities … “All students deserve powerful mathematics; we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” reads a bulletpoint in chapter one of the framework. “The belief that ‘I treat everyone the same’ is insufficient: Active efforts in mathematics teaching are required in order to counter the cultural forces that have led to and continue to perpetuate current inequities.”
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Mark Weber joins host Fróði Midjord to talk about “Breaker Morant,” an Australian film that dramatizes an episode of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Australians who had been serving with British forces against guerilla fighters in southern Africa are brought before a British military court on charges of murdering enemy prisoners and an unarmed civilian. This 1980 film alternates between the taut drama in the courtroom and flashbacks that bring the story together, with a moving conclusion as the court’s sentence is carried out. The film raises crucial questions about “justice” in wartime, of “legal” behavior by soldiers in combat, and of the ethics of war itself. Weber also talks about how British imperialists and businessmen, together with Jewish financiers and “gold bugs,” engineered the conflict. Runtime: 71 mins.
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Trailer of “Breaker Morant,” a 1980 Australian film that dramatizes an episode of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. Australians who had been serving with British forces against guerilla fighters in southern Africa are brought before a British military court on charges of murdering enemy prisoners and an unarmed civilian. After rejecting the defendants’ plea that they had acted on the basis of verbal orders to shoot enemy prisoners, the court sentences two officers to death. This film alternates between the taut drama in the courtroom and flashbacks that bring the story together, with a moving conclusion as the court’s grim sentence is carried out. Particularly outstanding are the performances of Edward Woodward (as Harry “Breaker” Morant), and Jack Thompson (as the defense lawyer). Runtime: 2:57 mins.
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The Boer War Remembered
Mark Weber
The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 was more than the first major military clash of the 20th century. Pitting as it did the might of the globe-girdling British Empire, backed by international finance, against a small pioneering nation of independent-minded farmers, ranchers and merchants in southern Africa who lived by the Bible and the rifle, its legacy continues to resonate today. The Boers’ recourse to irregular warfare, and Britain’s response in herding a hundred thousand women and children into concentration camps foreshadowed the horrors of guerilla warfare and mass detention of innocents that have become emblematic of the 20th century.
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The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI), a branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, was launched in 1971 … In the late 1990s I was asked by a friend of mine, a major in the U.S. Army, to serve as a researcher on a DEOMI booklet about Holocaust revisionism … In 2011, DEOMI launched what it called “Power and Privilege,” an online training seminar that base commanders and their subordinates were required to take. “Power and Privilege” was an unashamed attack on straight white Christian males … Some examples of what the course taught: … You’re a racist if you believe, regarding violent crime, that “people of color attack white people too.” … The course taught that “Hitler’s death camps claimed the lives of over 65 million people.” That’s the entire WWII death toll, now completely attributed to “Hitler’s death camps.”
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Napoleon’s Incendiary Legacy Divides France 200 Years On
L. Williamson - BBC News
… Once Europe’s biggest problem, Napoleon Bonaparte is still posing a dilemma for France, 200 years after his death in exile on the Atlantic island of St Helena. Napoleon was a brilliant military general, who saved the French Revolution and laid the foundations of the modern French state … But is that enough to offset his dictatorship and aggression, and his decision to reinstate slavery after it had been abolished in France? “As with any historical figure, some parts are darker than others,” said deputy mayor Philippe Bécade. “If you take just one element, it’s very easy to condemn anyone. Today we’re in a dictatorship of the politically correct, and I’m among those who want to fight it.”
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US Seen as Bigger Threat to Democracy Than Russia or China, Global Poll Finds
The Guardian (Britain)
The US faces an uphill task presenting itself as the chief guardian of global democracy, according to a new poll that shows the US is seen around the world as more of a threat to democracy than even Russia and China … In perhaps the most startling finding, nearly half (44%) of respondents in the 53 countries surveyed are concerned that the US threatens democracy in their country; fear of Chinese influence is by contrast 38%, and fear of Russian influence is lowest at 28% … Since last year, the perception of US influence as a threat to democracy around the world has increased significantly, from a net opinion of +6 to a net opinion of +14. This increase is particularly high in Germany (+20) and China (+16).
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Biden vs. Biden on 'Is America a Racist Country?'
Patrick J. Buchanan
… Is America’s soul, as Biden and Harris said, so stained by “systemic racism” that this country has treated Black Americans “as less than human” for the 400 years of her existence … Biden is scrambling to keep one foot in every camp in his coalition by appearing to agree, at times, with them all. The problem: While one part of his party believes America is a good and great country deserving of loyalty and love, another believes America is racist in its soul — a land whose character is defined, as it has ever been, by white supremacy, white privilege and white rule of people of color … Can you lead a country about whose history you profess shame? And how long will Americans follow leaders who appear to agree with those who hate what America was and, yes, what America is?
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In this clip from a White House conference, Feb. 17, 2015, Joe Biden — who was then Vice President — talks about how white Americans will soon be a minority of the US population. But, he adds, that’s all to the good: “… An unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop, nonstop. Folks like me who were Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we’ll be an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50 percent of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”
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Why Stalin Tried to Stamp Out Religion in the Soviet Union
Natasha Front - History.com
… Joseph Stalin, as the second leader of the Soviet Union, tried to enforce militant atheism on the republic. The new “socialist man,” Stalin argued, was an atheist one, free of the religious chains that had helped to bind him to class oppression. From 1928 until World War II, when some restrictions were relaxed, the totalitarian dictator shuttered churches, synagogues and mosques, and ordered the killing and imprisonment of thousands of religious leaders in an effort to eliminate even the concept of God. “He saw this as a way of getting rid of a past that was holding people back, and marching towards the future of science and progress,” says the historian Steven Merritt Miner … The “Godless Five-Year Plan,” launched in 1928, gave local cells of the anti-religious organization, League of Militant Atheists, new tools to disestablish religion.
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Remember Stalin as Well as Hitler
Eric Margolis
… Stalin was the biggest murderer of modern history – and maybe in of all mankind’s past. His number of victims was only rivaled by Genghis Khan and, in our era, Mao Zedong … While the world remembers the Jewish Holocaust, it has almost totally forgotten the other Holocausts … No one knows the exact figure of deaths in the Soviet Union. But it far exceeded in numbers and scope Hitler’s killings. Yet these epic Soviet crimes have all but vanished from our collective memories. No one should have a monopoly on suffering. Almost equally disturbing, the US, Canada and Britain have never squarely faced the ugly fact that their close wartime ally, Stalin, was a far worse mass murderer than enemy Adolf Hitler … Ever since, Hitler has been relentlessly demonized while Stalin has faded from our understanding.
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Students in Wisconsin will now be required to study the Holocaust at least twice between fifth and 12th grade. A bill signed Wednesday by Gov. Tony Evers mandates that lessons about the Holocaust and other genocides be included in social studies classes at least once between fifth and eighth grade, and again in high school … The measure, which was passed unanimously by the Legislature, makes Wisconsin the 19th state to require Holocaust education in high school, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum.
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Jerusalem Protests: The Mob ‘Breaking Faces’ Learned From Israel’s Establishment
Jonathan Cook - Middle East Eye
Inside the Israeli parliament and out on the streets of Jerusalem, the forces of unapologetic Jewish supremacism are stirring, as a growing section of Israel’s youth tire of the two-faced Jewish nationalism that has held sway in Israel for decades … Smotrich, Ben Gvir and these street gangs are tired of the half-measures, procrastination and moral posturing by Israeli elites who have hampered efforts to “finish the job”: clearing the native Palestinian population off their lands once and for all … When asked about recent talk from Israeli leaders about annexing the West Bank, two-thirds of Israeli Jews reject the idea that Jews and Palestinians should have equal rights in those circumstances.
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Anti-Semitism Rises Among Hispanic Miami’s Right Wing
J. Levin - Forward
The graffiti messages scrawled around Miami in March, on the eve of Passover and Holocaust Remembrance Day, were shocking: “The Jews are the Problem” “Zionism is Satanism.” Most ominously in this city filled with Cubans and other Latin Americans who fled communist governments, was this one: “Communism is Judaism.” The phrase echoed a trend towards antisemitism in Miami’s right-wing Hispanic political circles that have come to dominate this bellwether city.
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.. If that seems harsh, consider Washington’s record. Over the last half century no country has gone to war as often. Sanctioned as many nations. Destroyed as many countries. Ravaged as many societies. Created, fomented, or fueled as many civil wars … In sum, in recent years no other government has done as much harm while its officials pompously swaggered about the world issuing imperious dictates, praising themselves sanctimoniously, and blaming others for the resulting death, destruction, and chaos … Yet no US officials have been held accountable for their policy malpractice on a massive scale. With the denizens of Washington simultaneously determined to run the world and incapable of doing so competently, it is essential to reorient US foreign policy away from primacy to adequacy.
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Hundreds of Ukrainians attended marches celebrating Nazi SS soldiers, including the first such event in Kyiv. The so-called Embroidery March took place in the capital on April 28, the 78th anniversary of the establishment of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the 1st Galician. It was a force set up under German occupation auspices comprised of ethnic Ukrainian and German volunteers and conscripts. The marchers held banners displaying the unit’s symbol. The Kyiv march by about 300 people was an import from the western city of Lviv, which for several years has hosted such events. A day earlier, hundreds attended a larger Embroidery March there … President Vlodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, condemned the embroidery marches, which had been conducted legally.
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Contemporary film report on a mass rally in Lviv (Lemberg), Ukraine, July 18, 1943, for the newly formed SS Division “Galicia.” Ukrainian-language narration. Runtime: 2:27 mins. Ceremonies begin with an outdoor religious service. Ukrainians greet the German Governor, Otto Wächter, who then addresses the large, joyful crowd. Taking part in the parade are many young men who have volunteered for service in the new military formation, as well as young women in traditional dress. Many carry the symbol of the “Galicia” Division, a yellow stylized lion on a blue background – the Ukrainian national colors.
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The BBC has been accused of bias in its coverage of Israel for decades. Now the public broadcaster is taking flak from British Jews for coverage much closer to home. What’s causing their biggest dispute in years? It’s the broadcast of a debate over whether Jews should be considered an ethnic minority — a panel discussion featuring four non-Jewish panelists and a Jewish commenter as a guest. The March 1 discussion touched raw nerves in the organized community, where many Jews feel marginalized by allegedly hostile media treatment and the rise of anti-Semitism both from the far right and at the heart of the Labour Party.
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For 73 Years, Israel Has Been Unable to Define ‘Who is a Jew’
Haaretz (Israel)
On Tuesday, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled that individuals who convert to Judaism in Israel through the Reform or Conservative movement are entitled to Israeli citizenship through the Law of Return. This was another chapter in the long and convoluted history of a never-ending debate. It relates to a single question that has not been put to rest in the 73 years of Israel’s existence: Who is a Jew? … So who in fact is a Jew? A child of a Jewish mother? Is perhaps having a Jewish father sufficient? Or maybe someone who feels Jewish or claims they are Jewish? Or perhaps only those who observe Jewish religious ritual? … Based on the national-secular test that the High Court established for purposes of the Law of Return, a Jew could be an atheist, but couldn’t be a member of another religion.
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What Does It Mean to Be Genetically Jewish?
Oscar Schwartz – The Guardian (Britain)
… There was something disconcerting about our Jewishness being “confirmed” by a biological test … In February of this year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, reported that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the peak religious authority in the country, had been requesting DNA tests to confirm Jewishness before issuing some marriage licenses … Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian who has written extensively on the politics of Jewish population genetics, worries that if DNA testing is normalized by the Rabbinate, it could be used to confirm citizenship in the future.
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The Ultimate JQ: Religion or Race?
Jim Goad – Taki’s mag
In case you were unfamiliar with the term “The JQ,” it is shorthand for “The Jewish Question, which has been asked in different forms since at least the mid-1700s … To me the most fundamental JQ is “What exactly makes someone Jewish?” It would surprise and likely shock most people to learn that Adolf Hitler and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel agree on a major point regarding this iteration of the Jewish Question — that Jewishness has a genetic basis, and is not merely a religious or cultural preference. … In the perennially misrepresented passage about the “Big Lie” in Mein Kampf, Hitler specified that the lie in question was that Jews were merely members of a religion rather than a genetic tribe: “Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a religious community, whereas in reality they are a race?”
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Defining “Jew” has never been simple. Is he someone who practices Judaism, the Jewish religion, or is he identified by his ancestry? While many Americans assume that Jews are essentially a religious group, Jews themselves take for granted that their community is much more ethnic-national than it is religious. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has served as Israel’s prime minister, frankly regards Jews as members of a racial group. Speaking to a gathering of nearly a thousand Jews in southern California, he said: “If Israel had not come into existence after World War II then I am certain the Jewish race wouldn’t have survived.”
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… CNN has made spreading fear and hate into its business model. Project Veritas, the right-wing outfit that specializes in guerilla exposés centered on secretly-recorded videos, had one of its undercover operatives get CNN technical director Charles Chester to blab on what he thought were dates after connecting on Tinder. In the tapes, Chester casually explains how his network preys on fear to squeeze out higher ratings. CNN President Jeff Zucker regularly called in on a special red phone call, for example, telling his “news” team to play up the Covid death toll whenever the regular news is too dull … And when the pandemic becomes old news, he added, CNN will turn to exploiting climate change for fear-driven ratings. Objectivity is out the window: Chester explains to his “date” that there is “no such thing as unbiased news.”
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Even if “won,” endless wars like our 20 year assault on Afghanistan would not benefit our actual national interest in the slightest. So why do these wars continue endlessly? Because they are so profitable to powerful and well-connected special interests … As Orwell famously said, “the war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” … As Brown University’s Cost of War Project has detailed, the US has wasted $2.26 trillion dollars on a generation of war on Afghanistan. Much of this money has been spent, according to the US government’s own Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, on useless “nation-building” exercises that have built nothing at all. Gold-plated roads to nowhere.
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It’s Aggression When ‘They’ Do It, But Defense When ‘We’ Do Worse
Alan MacLeod - FAIR
… Any state being described as aggressive in foreign or international reporting, therefore, is almost by definition in the wrong. It’s a word that seems easy to apply to the United States, which launched 81 foreign interventions between 1946 and 2000 alone. In the 21st century, the United States has attacked, invaded or occupied the sovereign states of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Despite the US record, Western corporate media overwhelmingly reserve the word “aggression” for official enemy nations — whether or not it’s warranted. In contrast, US behavior is almost never categorized as aggressive, thereby giving readers a misleading picture of the world … Corporate media even present the Taliban’s actions in their own country against Western occupation troops as “aggression.”
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More Than 20 Generals and Hundreds of Officers Warn of Potential Civil War in France
O. Bault – Remix
An “Open Letter to Our Political Rulers” published on April 21 on the website of the conservative weekly Valeurs Actuelles and signed by more than 7,600 retired military personnel, including 26 generals and an admiral, 78 colonels or their navy equivalent, and hundreds of officers from the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and the Gendarmerie, warns the French political class of the risk of a civil war if the government fails to take action … In their letter, the signatory officers state that “France is in peril”, that “several mortal dangers threaten it”, and that they cannot remain indifferent in the face of the current situation. “Our honor today lies in denouncing the disintegration that is affecting our country,” they declared.
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The French government has threatened to punish active soldiers who signed an open letter by 25 retired generals warning President Emmanuel Macron the country is headed for “civil war”. A number of serving defence force members are believed to have signed the letter published last week in the right-wing Valeurs Actuelles magazine, which warned that “laxist” policies would result in chaos requiring “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilizational values”. “The hour is grave, France is in peril,” the retired generals wrote, adding that failure to act against the “suburban hordes” — a reference to residents of the mainly immigrant areas that ring French cities — and other unnamed groups who “scorn our country” will lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands”.
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Most French Support Military Authors of Open Letter, Poll Shows
E. Lacombe - French Daily News
While the Army Chief of Staff, General Lecointre, announced sanctions against the 18 active military personnel who signed an article published by Valeurs Actuelles, a Harris Interactive poll for LCI revealed that a majority of French people support the authors of this open letter … It is in this very tense context that the television channel LCI commissioned a survey on this affair from Harris Interactive. The results are worrying for “the rulers”. Indeed, 58% of the French “support the authors of the open letter”. Worse: 86% believe that in certain cities or neighborhoods the laws of the Republic no longer apply, 73% that French society is disintegrating, and 45% agree with the military that France could soon experience a civil war. … In other words, the tribune of the military brings to light the deep malaise that our country is experiencing …
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Idaho and West Virginia have joined the growing list of states that over the past several years have passed anti-Israel boycott legislation aimed at outlawing businesses that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The bills passed this week bring the number of states with similar laws to 33. Idaho’s Anti-Boycott Against Israel Act states that public entities cannot do business over a total of $100,000 with companies that do not expressly oppose the BDS movement. West Virginia’s bill stipulates the same … Since 2015, anti-BDS laws have gained momentum, but also hit bumps along the way in the form of high-profile critics who argue the legislation hampers free speech.
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An Israeli cabinet minister sharpened his country’s warnings against what it would deem a bad new nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, saying war with Tehran would be sure to follow. As President Joe Biden explores a possible U.S. return to the 2015 deal to contain Iran’s nuclear programme that his predecessor Donald Trump abandoned, Israel has stepped up calls for more sweeping curbs to be imposed on sensitive Iranian technologies and projects … Reiterating Israel’s position that it does not consider itself bound by the diplomacy, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said: “A bad deal will send the region spiralling into war … Iran has no immunity anywhere. Our planes can reach everywhere in the Middle East – and certainly Iran.”
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Israel Committing 'Apartheid' Against Palestinians, HRW says
Middle East Monitor
Israeli authorities are committing apartheid and persecution against Palestinians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in a new report, drawing on years of documentation, case studies, and a review of government planning documents, statements by officials, and other sources. The 213-page report, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, “examines Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It presents the present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government, ruling primarily over the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, populated by two groups of roughly equal size, and methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory,” the rights group said.
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Berlin banned the annual anti-Israel Quds Day march this year, the first time the city has taken a stand against the event since it became a local tradition in 1996 … Jewish and pro-Israel groups have tried for years to have the march banned as a purely antisemitic demonstration. It is illegal in Germany to call for the destruction of Israel. “Participants unscrupulously exploit freedom of expression and assembly to spread their hatred,” Josef Schuster, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the Judische Allgemeine newspaper … According to the Judische Allegemeine Zeitung, several Palestinian groups were among the 2,000 people who had registered to attend the event scheduled for May 8.
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China’s Real Threat Is to America’s Ruling Ideology
Richard Hanania – Palladium
… China is not simply passing the U.S. in overall GDP. Other measures one might use to measure the health of society also indicate that leaders in Beijing have been doing a better job than those in Washington in recent years … China’s murder rate is a fraction of that of the U.S … China has not been to war since 1979, while the U.S. has been at war almost every year since that date … Ultimately, the danger for American elites is not that the U.S. may become less able to accomplish geopolitical objectives. Rather, it is that more Americans might begin to question the logic of U.S. global hegemony. Perhaps not every state is destined to become a liberal democracy, and nations with very different political systems can coexist peacefully, as many countries in East Asia do.
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Study History, Young Man!
Guillaume Durocher
… The point is: How did we get here? What can we learn from past experience? What have we inherited so we don’t start from scratch? I advise every thoughtful young person to discover the pleasures of browsing a good historical atlas to understand how his society, his moment of time, fits in the big picture of the wider human journey. This can inspire right action. Again Cicero: “For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” … The most serious and consequential modern leaders were also men of historical culture: the American Founding Fathers, Bonaparte, Hitler, De Gaulle, Gandhi … All were great and voracious bibliophiles with wide-ranging interests, in particular historical. And why do great men study history? Because they seek to put their life’s work in the perspective of the ages, of all past human accomplishment. That is the challenge they put before themselves.
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History and Historians
Revilo P. Oliver
… The development of a working philosophy of history is the most urgent, as well as the most difficult, task of Twentieth Century thought … The future will always resemble the past because human nature does not change; men will always be actuated by the same basic desires and motives … The social and political questions of our day are all primarily historical problems. To think about them rationally, we must begin by consulting the record of human experience in the past. And we soon realize that if only we knew enough about history – and understood it – we should have the answers to all our questions.
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Hitler’s Forgotten Library
Timothy W. Ryback -- The Atlantic
… By the late 1930s Hitler had three separate libraries for his ever-expanding collection. At his apartment he removed a wall between two rooms and installed bookshelves. For the Berghof, his Alpine retreat near Berchtesgaden, Hitler built a second-floor study with handmade bookcases; color photographs of the finished space show an elegant setting with Oriental carpets, two globes, and bookcases fitted with glass doors and brass locks … By his own admission, Hitler was not a big fan of novels, though he once ranked Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Don Quixote (he had a special affection for the edition illustrated by Gustave Doré) among the world’s greatest works of literature.
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Iran Isn’t the Only State Making the Middle East a Rough Place (Think Israel)
Paul R. Pillar - The National Interest
… Iran has indeed used some terrorist methods, especially during an earlier part of the four-decade history of the Islamic Republic, most visibly in the form of extraterritorial assassinations of exiled dissidents. But Iran is not where the main action is today in the extraterritorial assassination game … The most active and expert player in the game is Israel … The habitual American fixation on Iran — rooted in history and domestic politics — yields a distorted and seriously incomplete picture of the sources of insecurity and instability in the Middle East.
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America’s Jewish ‘King of the Suburbs’ Kept Blacks Out of Suburbia
M. Lebovic - The Times of Israel
… In New York and Pennsylvania, “Levittown” became synonymous with mass-produced suburbia. Thanks to the post-war GI Bill, veterans could purchase an appliance-filled house for a very small down-payment — unless they were Black.
In all of Levitt’s communities, including New Jersey’s Willingboro, the firm enforced policies designed to keep Blacks from buying houses. Levitt also allowed his upscale Strathmore community, on Long Island, to keep Jews out … Sixty-four years after the battle for integration, the Pennsylvania town of 52,000 is nine-tenths white. According to US Census projections, the country will become “minority white” in 2045, with whites comprising 49.7% of the population.
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The Associated Press has changed its spelling of the word “antisemitism,” now writing it without a hyphen — joining the leading experts of hatred against Jews who have long advocated that usage. The Twitter account of the AP Stylebook — the leading reference for news publications — posted on Friday, “We now write antisemitism (n.), antisemitic (adj.), without a hyphen and with no capitalization.” … The issue has been a subject of debate in the Jewish and scholarly communities. The acclaimed Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt has been campaigning for some time to adopt the non-hyphenated spelling.
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Iranians Disappointed in President Rouhani, New Poll Shows
U.S. Institute of Peace
In February 2021, Iranians largely disapproved of President Hassan Rouhani but were divided over who should succeed him. Iran will hold presidential elections on June 18, 2021. Rouhani was ineligible to run again after serving two consecutive terms in office. But “nearly two-thirds of Iranians say they would prefer a critic of Rouhani to be the next president of Iran,” according to a poll conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and IranPoll.
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The US Postal Service admitted Wednesday to spying on Americans’ social media posts — including ones made by right-wing protest groups, according to a report. USPS Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale confirmed to lawmakers that the agency is running a shadowy operation dubbed the Internet Covert Operations Program, which tracks “inflammatory” posts on Facebook, Parler and other sites … Barksdale told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that the initiative has netted no arrests and will continue despite privacy concerns, which arose after the program was revealed publicly last week … Instead of shutting it down, he said the USPS will simply stop releasing a government bulletin about the operation, which last week led to the surveillance program being exposed …
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Afghanistan: Better Late than Never
Peter Van Buren - The American Conservative
President Biden announced he will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by September 11. That will end 20 years of a war that has killed some 2,300 Americans, an unknown number of Afghans, and cost trillions of dollars to accomplish nothing … How could we have ever known it would turn out this way? Even before it started, the war had to fail. Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, has beaten Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the Mughal Empire, various Persian Empires, the Sikhs, the British, and the mighty Red Army. What betting man would think the U.S. would end up any different? … Yet politicians dared stand up in 2001 to say, “We’ll get it right this time, trust us.” … Lessons learned? None at all. We’ll do it again … We will do this again because failure has no such consequences for the decision makers.
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The Washington National Cathedral has unveiled a stone carving of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel to recognize his legacy as a human rights defender “dedicated to combating indifference and intolerance.” The bust was carved in the DC landmark’s Human Rights Porch alongside Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa, civil rights activist Jonathan Daniels and Eleanor Roosevelt and others … Wiesel, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps and wrote dozens of books … Wiesel played a key role in the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington …
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U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Honors Dept. of Justice With Elie Wiesel Award
U.S. Dept. of Justice
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last night conferred their highest honor, the Elie Wiesel Award, on the U.S. Department of Justice in recognition of the successes of its longtime enforcement program’s efforts to identify, investigate, and prosecute participants in World War II-era Nazi crimes. That program, previously based in the former Office of Special Investigations (OSI), is now part of the mission of OSI’s successor unit, the Criminal Division’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP). The award was accepted by former OSI Director Eli Rosenbaum, under whose leadership most of the unit’s prosecution successes were achieved.
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A Prominent False Witness: Elie Wiesel Incites Hate Against Germans
Robert Faurisson
… Wiesel claims to be full of love for humanity. However, he does not refrain from an appeal to hatred. In his opinion: “Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate — healthy, virile hate — for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead.” … Elie Wiesel passes for one of the most celebrated eyewitnesses to the alleged Holocaust. Yet in his supposedly autobiographical book Night, he makes no mention of gas chambers. He claims instead to have witnessed Jews being burned alive, a story now dismissed by all historians. Wiesel gives credence to the most absurd stories of other “eyewitnesses.” He spreads fantastic tales of 10,000 persons sent to their deaths each day in Buchenwald.
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Germany’s Strange Nostalgia for the Antebellum American South
S. I. Bernstein - The Conversation
Swastikas may be banned in Berlin, but Confederate flags still fly … I see the flag as part of a longer history of German nostalgia for the American antebellum South. Germans’ identification with the region stretches back, paradoxically, to the very book that helped bring an end to that era of slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” … It remains a dim possibility that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had at least some influence. Stowe’s novel was, after all, one of Hitler’s self-proclaimed favorite books … The success of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel “Gone With the Wind” … The sentimental novel went through 16 printings in [Third Reich] Germany, selling nearly 300,000 copies. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels watched the film repeatedly …
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Woodrow Wilson usually ranks high in the pantheon of American presidents. Yet he was a virulent racist and sharply attacked civil liberties, jailing famed socialist leader Eugene Debs for opposing World War I. However, Wilson won over future historians with his precise elocution, articulating high-minded international principles even as he pursued policies that caused another, worse global conflagration just a generation later … Americans who died in World War I deserve a monument. However, the better way to honor them would be tear down statues of the malign fool who sent them into war, Woodrow Wilson. He should be forever removed from the pantheon of “great presidents.”
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Was American Intervention in World War I Justified?
Paul Gottfried
Burton Yale Pines’s work, America’s Greatest Blunder: The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One, is … a comprehensive case for why the U.S. should have stayed out of World War I. Pines also shows (if further proof is needed) that from the outset the American government took sides in the European conflict and flubbed every opportunity to make peace between the warring blocs … Pines demonstrates that conventional accounts of the German danger faced by the U.S. in 1917 have been inaccurate. Germany posed absolutely no “military or security threat” to the U.S., when Wilson dragged the U.S. into war in the spring of 1917 … It was the Central Powers, never the Allies, who from 1916 on were looking to end the war with a negotiated peace and which grabbed at the proposed (insincere) American efforts to mediate.
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There are horrifying images from Jerusalem last [Thursday] night of a mob of racist Jews chanting that the city belongs to them and Arabs should burn … “Hundreds of Jewish supremacists march in Jerusalem’ tonight, chanting ‘death to Arabs’,” reports Noa Landau of Haaretz. Some of the supremacists attacked Palestinian homes. Writer Ben Reiff also calls it a pogrom … Meantime, the lead Israel lobby group AIPAC is crowing about the fact that 331 Congresspeople signed a letter saying that U.S. military aid to Israel must not be restricted. A blank check to human rights atrocities, with 3/ 4 of the Congress signing off, including many progressives.
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“Very Rare Heinrich Himmler Presentation SS Honor Dagger,” said the entry posted Sunday on the website of the Portland auction house O’Gallerie. On Monday, after Jewish groups complained, it became even rarer. The auction house president, Thomas O’Grady, removed the ceremonial dagger purportedly owned by the leader of the SS, The Oregonian reported. He also removed other Nazi memorabilia and told the newspaper he would not auction such items again, although he had in the past without controversy.