Stick A Fork In It: From The Ten Plagues Of Egypt To The Summer Rains Over Gaza And Massive Bombings Of Lebanon
Because it needs to be said, before they drag us into another of their World Wars.. an excellent article by author Jostein Gaarder via The Truth Shall Set You Free, translated by Sirocco. Some interesting comments following it at the source, including a link to these maps of israel. For amusement, a response from the Simon Weisenthal center follows, needless to say it starts with the typical childish insults, memorializes a death of his career, and goes downhill from there.
God's chosen people
Jostein Gaarder, Aftenposten 05.08.06
From the Norwegian by Sirocco
There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.
We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.
Limits to tolerance
There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call child murderers 'child murderers' and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!
Unscrupulous art of war
We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.
We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.
Without defense, without skin
May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.
We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.
They celebrate their triumphs
We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as "fitting punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.
For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.
The retribution of blood vengeance
We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
He said: "Do to others as you would have them do to you." We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: "Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose."
Compassion and forgiveness
We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David, but that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.
Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.
Israel does not listen
For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. For we are human first of all � then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: "And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?" We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.
We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God's assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.
The USA or the world?
Or as the highest protector of the state of Israel puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: "Why does the President always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why not, 'God bless the world'?"
Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: "Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?" It was he that wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God's chosen people. He personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.
Calm and mercy
We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say: May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.
Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Let not one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.
Paris, 8 August 2006
CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL - SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - CENTRO SIMON WIESENTHAL
64, avenue Marceau - 75008 Paris - Tel. +33 (0) 1 47 23 76 37 - Fax: +33 (0) 1 47 20 84 01
E-mail: csweurope@compuserve.com Website: http://www.wiesenthal-europe.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wiesenthal Centre's Open Letter to the People of Norway in the Oslo Daily, Aftenposten
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, addressed an "Open Letter to Norway" in response to the 5 August op ed in the Oslo daily, Aftenposten, by the author, Jostein Gaarder, entitled "God's Chosen People."
An English translation of Gaarder's article follows Samuels' letter .
AN OPEN LETTER TO NORWAY FROM THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE
Jostein Gaarder, the author of the literary chef d'oeuvre, "Sophie's World," has become seriously ill, either with malice or, perhaps, Alzheimer's, or both.
Translated into 53 languages and with 26 million copies sold, so many of his readers will mourn Gaarder's current loss of vision, coherence and, above all, his recruitment to the forces of darkness.
His 5 August article in your newspaper has exposed his shallow Biblical knowledge and the Judeophobic paranoia that haunts his nightmares. We call on the Norwegian people to decry his message.
Obsessed with the Jews as "God's Chosen People," Gaarder regurgitates this concept's classic antisemitic definition as "arrogant and domineering."
I recall from my childhood the ditty: "How odd of God to choose the Jews" and the refrain, "It's no so odd the Jews chose God." This self-assertiveness is indeed disturbing to tyrants - as a voice for freedom, diversity and conscience - the Jew, as witness, has been a "light unto the nations" throughout the ages. Not by claiming an absolute truth, but as a significant or early warning system for, what begins with the Jews is often a barometer for the human condition.
When others see not the light, as in 1933 with Hitlerism, or currently with fanatical Jihadist terrorism, the scourge will bring us all to the abyss.
The antisemite believes that salvation will come by effacing that Jewish light. For Gaarder, the "Good Samaritan" is not a "Pharisee" (codeword for Jew), but a "Palestinian", just as, for orthers, Hizbollah terrorism is posited as integral to the Lebanese political spectrum.
Gaarder goes where no contemporary antisemite has gone before: "Without defence, without skin ... If the entire Israeli nation should fall and part of the population must flee to another Diaspora, then we say: may their surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is an eternal crime to lay hand on refugees and a Stateless people. Peace and free passage for the evacuating, civilian population no longer protected by a State. Shoot not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now -- like snails without shells! ... Give the Israeli refugees shelter; give them milk and honey!"
Gaarger yearns to extinguish the light of Jewish sovereignty and for the eternal wandering Jew to live once again at European sufferance - this time given "milk and honey" on the death march.
Norway surely seeks not complicity in this "Gotterdamerung" revival.
Gaarder claims that "Israelis ... cheered the plagues of the Lord as 'fitting punishment' for the people of Egypt." He knows nothing of Jewish liturgy. Daily our prayers recall in sorrow the Red Sea drowning of Pharaoh's horde, which was in pursuit of the Israelite refugees, bent on slaying them.
We also mourn the Lebanese victims of Hizbollah, brutally exploited as their human shields, and we deplore a war that was foisted upon Israel by Iranian design.
Gaarder concludes: "Let not one Israeli child pay with his life," in the same column wherein he sets the scene for the extermination of all Israeli children.
We will not oblige Gaarder and those he seeks to appease. Jewish sovereignty has returned to history. The wandering Jew is a figment of history, as Gaarder and his ilk are now history.
We await the word of honest Norwegians who will vociferously condemn Gaarder because they realize that the fate of the Jews is an alarm bell for humanity.
Most respectfully,
Dr. Shimon Samuels
Director for International Relations
For further information, please contact Dr. Samuels at +33 6 09 77 01 58.
Visit our new web site at http://www.wiesenthal-europe.com.
The 1948 War: A Cover up for Ethnic Cleansing
Nizar Sakhnini, 16 November 2005
Ethnic cleansing was part and parcel of the Zionist project in Palestine.�� Plans and preparations for war aiming at implementing the Zionist goal began long before UN resolution # 181 of 29 November 1947.
In 1920 the Haganah was formed as an illegal military organization.� In 1931, a group of Haganah members seceded from the organization, headed by Avraham Tehomi, and became to be known as Irgun Tzeva'i le'umi or its acronym, Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi, IZL).
A group led by Abraham Stern, seceded from Etzel in 1940 and began to operate separately under the name ‘Etzel in Israel’.� After the execution of Stern by the British in February 1942, the new leaders of the group (including Yitzhak Shamir) reorganized under the name Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Jewish Freedom Fighters) and its acronym, Lehi (1).
A number of military operational plans were prepared by the Haganah.� Plan A was prepared in 1945 and Plan B was prepared in May 1947.� Plan C was prepared in November 1947.� Plan D (Plan Dalet) replacing all previous plans, was prepared in March 1948 (2).
In preparation for war and to acquire the weapons and equipment needed for the battle Ben-Gurion arrived in New York on 1 July 1945 and held a secret meeting with 18 Jewish American millionaires at the home of Rudolph Sonnenborn who was among those who attended the meeting.� Ben-Gurion explained his plans to acquire millions of dollars in arms to defend the contemplated “Jewish State”.� Those attending the meeting undertook to do everything within their power for the project, which marked the beginning of the Sonnenborn Institute.� As a cover, Sonnenborn engaged in shipping equipment and medicines for hospitals, but secretly he collected the first million dollars to purchase arms.� Later he would go on to collect further millions to buy arms and many ships to serve illegal immigration.�
On 30 Sept. 1947, Ben-Gurion sent his assistant, Munia Mardo, to Europe to seek out sources of arms supplies.� Three days later, he decided to purchase airplanes and recruit military experts from abroad.� On Oct. 6, Ben-Gurion summoned the head of Ta’as, the local arms and munitions works, and told him to order all the raw materials he required immediately.� Ehud Avriel was instructed to fly to Europe to facilitate the acquisition of arms.� In Paris, Avriel met a contact of the Czech government who invited him to fly to Prague where the first purchase agreement with Czechoslovakia was signed.� Following the Communist takeover in February 1948, the flow of arms to Palestine was stepped up to include planes (3).
When UN Resolution # 181 was issued, the Arab High Commission called for a three-day strike in protest.
The Irgun used Arab rioting in early December to launch a murderous terrorist campaign that claimed the lives of many Arab civilians in numerous towns and villages.� Irgun leader Menachem Begin later explained, “My greatest worry in those months was that the Arabs might accept the UN plan.� Then we would have had the ultimate tragedy, a Jewish State so small that it could not absorb all the Jews of the world.”� Irgun terrorism would make sure that no agreement would be possible (4).
The British could have stepped in and avoided the catastrophe; they simply preferred to turn their backs to what was going on.� On 13 December 1947, Sir Alan Cunningham, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, admitted that “The initial Arab outbreaks were spontaneous and unorganized and were more demonstrations of displeasure at the UN decision than determined attacks on Jews.� The weapons initially employed were sticks and stones and had it not been for Jewish resource to firearms, it is not impossible that the excitement would have subsided and little loss of life been caused.� This is more probable since there is reliable evidence that the AHC as a whole and the Mufti in particular although pleased at the strong response to the strike call were not in favor of serious outbreaks” (5).
On 19 March 1948, Warren Austen, the American Ambassador to the UN, requested a special session of the General Assembly to work out a plan for trusteeship to replace partition temporarily in Palestine.� Austin sought recognition in the Security Council to declare that so far as the U.S. was concerned, partition was no longer a viable option, and therefore his government favored international trusteeship over Palestine. Two days later, Truman met Weizmann and assured him of America’s reliability in support of partition.� But the State Department knew nothing of that meeting, and Truman knew nothing of the messages passing from the State Department to the UN delegation in New York. (6).
To frustrate the possibility of implementing the American trusteeship proposal and to press on with their pre-meditated and long-awaited ethnic cleansing plans, the Haganah launched “Operation Nachshon” on 3 April 1948 marking the starting point of Plan Dalet.� While Operation Nachson was going on, a brutal massacre was committed in Deir Yassin on 9 April killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
On the night of 16-17 April, units of the Golani Brigade and the Palmach’s 3rd Battalion attacked the Old City of Tiberias.� The Arab inhabitants appealed to the British to lift the Haganah siege on the Old City and to extend their protection to the Arab areas.� The British told the Arabs that they intend to evacuate the city within a few days and could offer no protection to the Arabs beyond 22 April.� The Arabs decided to evacuate the city.� Busses and trucks were brought and the Arabs left their city under British escort (7).
On Sunday, 18 April 1948, Major General Hugh C. Stockwell, British Commander in Haifa, summoned to his headquarters Harry Beilin, the Jewish Agency liaison officer with the British army in the city.� Stockwell informed Beilin that he intended to withdraw his forces from the borders and no-man’s-land between the Arab and Jewish quarters in Haifa and that the withdrawal would be completed by 20 April.
The noninterference of the British Army in the fighting in Tiberias and its evacuation of the city’s Arab population as well as the green light given by Stockwell to Beilin encouraged the Haganah into action.� Operation Misparayim (Scissors), which had been prepared for a massive attack against the Arab quarters of Haifa, was revised to produce a repetition of the Tiberias outcome.� The revised operation was renamed Bi’ur Hametz (Cleaning the Leaven).� British withdrawal, from the borders and no-man’s-land in Haifa, was completed by sunset on Tuesday, 20 April.� At 10:30 A.M. on Wednesday, 21 April, the Haganah launched its offensive (8).
The assault on Jaffa started on 25 April 1948 by an offensive launched by Irgun (IZL).� The Haganah entered Jaffa on 10 May 1948 and the city was finally occupied on 13 May.
On 13 May 1948, the Iraqi general Sir Ismail Safwat, chairman of the Arab league’s military committee, who had been appointed to lead the Arab armies in Palestine, resigned because there was no agreement on a precise plan for the war.� Entry of the Arab armies on 15 May 1948 was a hoax.� It changed nothing; the Arab states were more concerned with frustrating Abdullah’s ambitions rather than fighting “Israel” (9).
There was a tacit agreement between the Zionist leadership and Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. �According to this agreement, Palestine would be divided between the Zionists and Abdullah who would take that part of Palestine allotted to the Arabs west of the Jordan Valley. �Britain was aware of the tacit agreement and encouraged Abdullah’s ambitions (10).
On 28 May 1948, Yosef Weitz met with Moshe Shertok (Sharrett), the newly appointed Foreign Minister of Israel.� Weitz recommended that action be taken to prevent the return of Arabs leaving the country.� To this goal, Weitz suggested that it is it necessary to empower some one to deal with the situation according to an approved plan and proposed that the Cabinet appoint himself, Elias Sasson, and Ezra Danin, “to hammer out a plan of action designed [to achieve] the goal of transfer”.� Shertok preferred that he should first consult with Ben-Gurion on the matter.� Weitz, Danin, and Sasson did not wait for an official approval and met on 30 May to outline the “Transfer” committee’s prospective work (11).
The new committee held a meeting on 4 June 1948 and decided that the return of the Arabs must be prevented.� Weitz stated that money was needed, and allocated I� 5,000 in order to begin destruction of the abandoned Arab villages so that the refugees would have nowhere to return to (12).
Weitz met with Ben-Gurion on 5 June 1948 and submitted to him a memorandum entitled “Retroactive Transfer, A Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Question in the State of Israel”.� The memorandum was signed by Weitz, Danin, and Sasson and outlined its proposals for “action”.� The next day, 6 June, Weitz sent Ben-Gurion a detailed list of the abandoned villages and towns, with the appropriate population figures.� The list was attached to a covering note in which Weitz stated that he had given an order to begin the required operations in different parts of the Galilee, in the Beit Shean Valley, in the Hills of Ephraim and in the Hefer Valley (13).
On 10 June 1948, Yosef Weitz sent two settlement officials, Asher Bobritzky and Moshe Berger, to tour the coastal plain “to determine in which villages we will be able to settle our people, and which should be destroyed”.� That same day the JNF directorate allocated I� 10,000 to Weitz to carry out the work of destruction. In his diary, Weitz noted that “it became clear that there is agreement among us on the question of the abandoned villages: Destruction, renovation and settlement [by Jews]…”� He added that there was a consensus everywhere that the Arabs must be prevented from returning and at the same time the “vacuum” must be filled with new Jewish settlements (14).
On 11 June 1948, a four weeks’ truce came into effect.� UN observers came to Palestine as part of a team headed by the mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, who was appointed as a mediator to resolve the conflict in Palestine.� The truce declared on 11 June came to an end on July 8 and the fighting was resumed for 10 days (9-18 July).
Operation Dekel (Operation Palm Tree) was launched in the North on 9 July to conquer parts of Western Galilee and the Lower Galilee.
In the center of the country, Operation Dani (Mivtza Dani) was launched on 10 July to open and secure the vital Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road and to conquer Lydda and Ramle including the Lydda Airport (15).
The town of Nazareth fell into Israeli hands on 16 July 1948.� The Israeli behavior in Nazareth was different from their behavior in the other Arab towns and villages.� They realized that expulsion of Christian Arabs in one of the holiest Christian locations would produce unfavorable headlines all over the world.� Accordingly, the people of the town were allowed to remain. �Chaim Laskov, the Israeli commander, stated, “We had specific instructions not to harm anything, which meant that we had to take Nazareth by stratagem”.� Ben-Gurion ordered that when the town was taken the army should avoid “any possibility of looting and desecration of churches and monasteries.” �Nazareth “was the exception that proved the rule” (16).
The second truce came into effect as of 19 July 1948.� The truce, however, did not stop the IDF from continuing with its operations to occupy more lands, destroy more villages and push more Arabs into exodus.
Operation Ten Plagues (later renamed Operation Yoav) was launched on 15 October against the Egyptians in the South.� Mass murder took place in many towns during this operation.� One of the worst massacres took place at Dawayma in which about 300 Arab civilians were slaughtered.
Isdud (Ashdod) was attacked on 28 October.� Some 300 of its inhabitants who did not flee the town greeted the IDF with white flags.� They were almost immediately expelled southwards (17).
Operation Hiram was launched on 29 October to occupy the remaining parts of upper Galilee and expel their inhabitants.� Within this operation, a massacre was committed in the village of Safsaf killing 70 civilians in cold blood and another massacre was committed in Eilabun.
The Israeli Cabinet approved the appointment of the Transfer Committee on 29 October,.� Their recommendations were submitted to the Cabinet proposing, among other things, that the number of Arabs allowed to stay in the country should not exceed 15% of the population in the mixed cities (18).
On 16 November 1948, the Security Council adopted resolution # 62 calling for an armistice in all sectors of Palestine.� Accordingly, armistice agreements were concluded between Israel and Egypt on 24 February; Israel and Lebanon on 25 March; Israel and Jordan on 3 April; and Israel and Syria on 20 July 1949.
God's chosen people
Jostein Gaarder, Aftenposten 05.08.06
From the Norwegian by Sirocco
There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.
We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.
Limits to tolerance
There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call child murderers 'child murderers' and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!
Unscrupulous art of war
We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.
We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.
Without defense, without skin
May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.
We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.
They celebrate their triumphs
We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as "fitting punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.
For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.
The retribution of blood vengeance
We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
He said: "Do to others as you would have them do to you." We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: "Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose."
Compassion and forgiveness
We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David, but that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.
Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.
Israel does not listen
For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. For we are human first of all � then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: "And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?" We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.
We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God's assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.
The USA or the world?
Or as the highest protector of the state of Israel puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: "Why does the President always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why not, 'God bless the world'?"
Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: "Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?" It was he that wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God's chosen people. He personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.
Calm and mercy
We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say: May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.
Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Let not one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.
Paris, 8 August 2006
CENTRE SIMON WIESENTHAL - SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE - CENTRO SIMON WIESENTHAL
64, avenue Marceau - 75008 Paris - Tel. +33 (0) 1 47 23 76 37 - Fax: +33 (0) 1 47 20 84 01
E-mail: csweurope@compuserve.com Website: http://www.wiesenthal-europe.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wiesenthal Centre's Open Letter to the People of Norway in the Oslo Daily, Aftenposten
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, addressed an "Open Letter to Norway" in response to the 5 August op ed in the Oslo daily, Aftenposten, by the author, Jostein Gaarder, entitled "God's Chosen People."
An English translation of Gaarder's article follows Samuels' letter .
AN OPEN LETTER TO NORWAY FROM THE SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE
Jostein Gaarder, the author of the literary chef d'oeuvre, "Sophie's World," has become seriously ill, either with malice or, perhaps, Alzheimer's, or both.
Translated into 53 languages and with 26 million copies sold, so many of his readers will mourn Gaarder's current loss of vision, coherence and, above all, his recruitment to the forces of darkness.
His 5 August article in your newspaper has exposed his shallow Biblical knowledge and the Judeophobic paranoia that haunts his nightmares. We call on the Norwegian people to decry his message.
Obsessed with the Jews as "God's Chosen People," Gaarder regurgitates this concept's classic antisemitic definition as "arrogant and domineering."
I recall from my childhood the ditty: "How odd of God to choose the Jews" and the refrain, "It's no so odd the Jews chose God." This self-assertiveness is indeed disturbing to tyrants - as a voice for freedom, diversity and conscience - the Jew, as witness, has been a "light unto the nations" throughout the ages. Not by claiming an absolute truth, but as a significant or early warning system for, what begins with the Jews is often a barometer for the human condition.
When others see not the light, as in 1933 with Hitlerism, or currently with fanatical Jihadist terrorism, the scourge will bring us all to the abyss.
The antisemite believes that salvation will come by effacing that Jewish light. For Gaarder, the "Good Samaritan" is not a "Pharisee" (codeword for Jew), but a "Palestinian", just as, for orthers, Hizbollah terrorism is posited as integral to the Lebanese political spectrum.
Gaarder goes where no contemporary antisemite has gone before: "Without defence, without skin ... If the entire Israeli nation should fall and part of the population must flee to another Diaspora, then we say: may their surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is an eternal crime to lay hand on refugees and a Stateless people. Peace and free passage for the evacuating, civilian population no longer protected by a State. Shoot not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now -- like snails without shells! ... Give the Israeli refugees shelter; give them milk and honey!"
Gaarger yearns to extinguish the light of Jewish sovereignty and for the eternal wandering Jew to live once again at European sufferance - this time given "milk and honey" on the death march.
Norway surely seeks not complicity in this "Gotterdamerung" revival.
Gaarder claims that "Israelis ... cheered the plagues of the Lord as 'fitting punishment' for the people of Egypt." He knows nothing of Jewish liturgy. Daily our prayers recall in sorrow the Red Sea drowning of Pharaoh's horde, which was in pursuit of the Israelite refugees, bent on slaying them.
We also mourn the Lebanese victims of Hizbollah, brutally exploited as their human shields, and we deplore a war that was foisted upon Israel by Iranian design.
Gaarder concludes: "Let not one Israeli child pay with his life," in the same column wherein he sets the scene for the extermination of all Israeli children.
We will not oblige Gaarder and those he seeks to appease. Jewish sovereignty has returned to history. The wandering Jew is a figment of history, as Gaarder and his ilk are now history.
We await the word of honest Norwegians who will vociferously condemn Gaarder because they realize that the fate of the Jews is an alarm bell for humanity.
Most respectfully,
Dr. Shimon Samuels
Director for International Relations
For further information, please contact Dr. Samuels at +33 6 09 77 01 58.
Visit our new web site at http://www.wiesenthal-europe.com.
The 1948 War: A Cover up for Ethnic Cleansing
Nizar Sakhnini, 16 November 2005
Ethnic cleansing was part and parcel of the Zionist project in Palestine.�� Plans and preparations for war aiming at implementing the Zionist goal began long before UN resolution # 181 of 29 November 1947.
In 1920 the Haganah was formed as an illegal military organization.� In 1931, a group of Haganah members seceded from the organization, headed by Avraham Tehomi, and became to be known as Irgun Tzeva'i le'umi or its acronym, Etzel (Irgun Zvai Leumi, IZL).
A group led by Abraham Stern, seceded from Etzel in 1940 and began to operate separately under the name ‘Etzel in Israel’.� After the execution of Stern by the British in February 1942, the new leaders of the group (including Yitzhak Shamir) reorganized under the name Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Jewish Freedom Fighters) and its acronym, Lehi (1).
A number of military operational plans were prepared by the Haganah.� Plan A was prepared in 1945 and Plan B was prepared in May 1947.� Plan C was prepared in November 1947.� Plan D (Plan Dalet) replacing all previous plans, was prepared in March 1948 (2).
In preparation for war and to acquire the weapons and equipment needed for the battle Ben-Gurion arrived in New York on 1 July 1945 and held a secret meeting with 18 Jewish American millionaires at the home of Rudolph Sonnenborn who was among those who attended the meeting.� Ben-Gurion explained his plans to acquire millions of dollars in arms to defend the contemplated “Jewish State”.� Those attending the meeting undertook to do everything within their power for the project, which marked the beginning of the Sonnenborn Institute.� As a cover, Sonnenborn engaged in shipping equipment and medicines for hospitals, but secretly he collected the first million dollars to purchase arms.� Later he would go on to collect further millions to buy arms and many ships to serve illegal immigration.�
On 30 Sept. 1947, Ben-Gurion sent his assistant, Munia Mardo, to Europe to seek out sources of arms supplies.� Three days later, he decided to purchase airplanes and recruit military experts from abroad.� On Oct. 6, Ben-Gurion summoned the head of Ta’as, the local arms and munitions works, and told him to order all the raw materials he required immediately.� Ehud Avriel was instructed to fly to Europe to facilitate the acquisition of arms.� In Paris, Avriel met a contact of the Czech government who invited him to fly to Prague where the first purchase agreement with Czechoslovakia was signed.� Following the Communist takeover in February 1948, the flow of arms to Palestine was stepped up to include planes (3).
When UN Resolution # 181 was issued, the Arab High Commission called for a three-day strike in protest.
The Irgun used Arab rioting in early December to launch a murderous terrorist campaign that claimed the lives of many Arab civilians in numerous towns and villages.� Irgun leader Menachem Begin later explained, “My greatest worry in those months was that the Arabs might accept the UN plan.� Then we would have had the ultimate tragedy, a Jewish State so small that it could not absorb all the Jews of the world.”� Irgun terrorism would make sure that no agreement would be possible (4).
The British could have stepped in and avoided the catastrophe; they simply preferred to turn their backs to what was going on.� On 13 December 1947, Sir Alan Cunningham, the British High Commissioner in Palestine, admitted that “The initial Arab outbreaks were spontaneous and unorganized and were more demonstrations of displeasure at the UN decision than determined attacks on Jews.� The weapons initially employed were sticks and stones and had it not been for Jewish resource to firearms, it is not impossible that the excitement would have subsided and little loss of life been caused.� This is more probable since there is reliable evidence that the AHC as a whole and the Mufti in particular although pleased at the strong response to the strike call were not in favor of serious outbreaks” (5).
On 19 March 1948, Warren Austen, the American Ambassador to the UN, requested a special session of the General Assembly to work out a plan for trusteeship to replace partition temporarily in Palestine.� Austin sought recognition in the Security Council to declare that so far as the U.S. was concerned, partition was no longer a viable option, and therefore his government favored international trusteeship over Palestine. Two days later, Truman met Weizmann and assured him of America’s reliability in support of partition.� But the State Department knew nothing of that meeting, and Truman knew nothing of the messages passing from the State Department to the UN delegation in New York. (6).
To frustrate the possibility of implementing the American trusteeship proposal and to press on with their pre-meditated and long-awaited ethnic cleansing plans, the Haganah launched “Operation Nachshon” on 3 April 1948 marking the starting point of Plan Dalet.� While Operation Nachson was going on, a brutal massacre was committed in Deir Yassin on 9 April killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
On the night of 16-17 April, units of the Golani Brigade and the Palmach’s 3rd Battalion attacked the Old City of Tiberias.� The Arab inhabitants appealed to the British to lift the Haganah siege on the Old City and to extend their protection to the Arab areas.� The British told the Arabs that they intend to evacuate the city within a few days and could offer no protection to the Arabs beyond 22 April.� The Arabs decided to evacuate the city.� Busses and trucks were brought and the Arabs left their city under British escort (7).
On Sunday, 18 April 1948, Major General Hugh C. Stockwell, British Commander in Haifa, summoned to his headquarters Harry Beilin, the Jewish Agency liaison officer with the British army in the city.� Stockwell informed Beilin that he intended to withdraw his forces from the borders and no-man’s-land between the Arab and Jewish quarters in Haifa and that the withdrawal would be completed by 20 April.
The noninterference of the British Army in the fighting in Tiberias and its evacuation of the city’s Arab population as well as the green light given by Stockwell to Beilin encouraged the Haganah into action.� Operation Misparayim (Scissors), which had been prepared for a massive attack against the Arab quarters of Haifa, was revised to produce a repetition of the Tiberias outcome.� The revised operation was renamed Bi’ur Hametz (Cleaning the Leaven).� British withdrawal, from the borders and no-man’s-land in Haifa, was completed by sunset on Tuesday, 20 April.� At 10:30 A.M. on Wednesday, 21 April, the Haganah launched its offensive (8).
The assault on Jaffa started on 25 April 1948 by an offensive launched by Irgun (IZL).� The Haganah entered Jaffa on 10 May 1948 and the city was finally occupied on 13 May.
On 13 May 1948, the Iraqi general Sir Ismail Safwat, chairman of the Arab league’s military committee, who had been appointed to lead the Arab armies in Palestine, resigned because there was no agreement on a precise plan for the war.� Entry of the Arab armies on 15 May 1948 was a hoax.� It changed nothing; the Arab states were more concerned with frustrating Abdullah’s ambitions rather than fighting “Israel” (9).
There was a tacit agreement between the Zionist leadership and Emir Abdullah of Transjordan. �According to this agreement, Palestine would be divided between the Zionists and Abdullah who would take that part of Palestine allotted to the Arabs west of the Jordan Valley. �Britain was aware of the tacit agreement and encouraged Abdullah’s ambitions (10).
On 28 May 1948, Yosef Weitz met with Moshe Shertok (Sharrett), the newly appointed Foreign Minister of Israel.� Weitz recommended that action be taken to prevent the return of Arabs leaving the country.� To this goal, Weitz suggested that it is it necessary to empower some one to deal with the situation according to an approved plan and proposed that the Cabinet appoint himself, Elias Sasson, and Ezra Danin, “to hammer out a plan of action designed [to achieve] the goal of transfer”.� Shertok preferred that he should first consult with Ben-Gurion on the matter.� Weitz, Danin, and Sasson did not wait for an official approval and met on 30 May to outline the “Transfer” committee’s prospective work (11).
The new committee held a meeting on 4 June 1948 and decided that the return of the Arabs must be prevented.� Weitz stated that money was needed, and allocated I� 5,000 in order to begin destruction of the abandoned Arab villages so that the refugees would have nowhere to return to (12).
Weitz met with Ben-Gurion on 5 June 1948 and submitted to him a memorandum entitled “Retroactive Transfer, A Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Question in the State of Israel”.� The memorandum was signed by Weitz, Danin, and Sasson and outlined its proposals for “action”.� The next day, 6 June, Weitz sent Ben-Gurion a detailed list of the abandoned villages and towns, with the appropriate population figures.� The list was attached to a covering note in which Weitz stated that he had given an order to begin the required operations in different parts of the Galilee, in the Beit Shean Valley, in the Hills of Ephraim and in the Hefer Valley (13).
On 10 June 1948, Yosef Weitz sent two settlement officials, Asher Bobritzky and Moshe Berger, to tour the coastal plain “to determine in which villages we will be able to settle our people, and which should be destroyed”.� That same day the JNF directorate allocated I� 10,000 to Weitz to carry out the work of destruction. In his diary, Weitz noted that “it became clear that there is agreement among us on the question of the abandoned villages: Destruction, renovation and settlement [by Jews]…”� He added that there was a consensus everywhere that the Arabs must be prevented from returning and at the same time the “vacuum” must be filled with new Jewish settlements (14).
On 11 June 1948, a four weeks’ truce came into effect.� UN observers came to Palestine as part of a team headed by the mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, who was appointed as a mediator to resolve the conflict in Palestine.� The truce declared on 11 June came to an end on July 8 and the fighting was resumed for 10 days (9-18 July).
Operation Dekel (Operation Palm Tree) was launched in the North on 9 July to conquer parts of Western Galilee and the Lower Galilee.
In the center of the country, Operation Dani (Mivtza Dani) was launched on 10 July to open and secure the vital Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road and to conquer Lydda and Ramle including the Lydda Airport (15).
The town of Nazareth fell into Israeli hands on 16 July 1948.� The Israeli behavior in Nazareth was different from their behavior in the other Arab towns and villages.� They realized that expulsion of Christian Arabs in one of the holiest Christian locations would produce unfavorable headlines all over the world.� Accordingly, the people of the town were allowed to remain. �Chaim Laskov, the Israeli commander, stated, “We had specific instructions not to harm anything, which meant that we had to take Nazareth by stratagem”.� Ben-Gurion ordered that when the town was taken the army should avoid “any possibility of looting and desecration of churches and monasteries.” �Nazareth “was the exception that proved the rule” (16).
The second truce came into effect as of 19 July 1948.� The truce, however, did not stop the IDF from continuing with its operations to occupy more lands, destroy more villages and push more Arabs into exodus.
Operation Ten Plagues (later renamed Operation Yoav) was launched on 15 October against the Egyptians in the South.� Mass murder took place in many towns during this operation.� One of the worst massacres took place at Dawayma in which about 300 Arab civilians were slaughtered.
Isdud (Ashdod) was attacked on 28 October.� Some 300 of its inhabitants who did not flee the town greeted the IDF with white flags.� They were almost immediately expelled southwards (17).
Operation Hiram was launched on 29 October to occupy the remaining parts of upper Galilee and expel their inhabitants.� Within this operation, a massacre was committed in the village of Safsaf killing 70 civilians in cold blood and another massacre was committed in Eilabun.
The Israeli Cabinet approved the appointment of the Transfer Committee on 29 October,.� Their recommendations were submitted to the Cabinet proposing, among other things, that the number of Arabs allowed to stay in the country should not exceed 15% of the population in the mixed cities (18).
On 16 November 1948, the Security Council adopted resolution # 62 calling for an armistice in all sectors of Palestine.� Accordingly, armistice agreements were concluded between Israel and Egypt on 24 February; Israel and Lebanon on 25 March; Israel and Jordan on 3 April; and Israel and Syria on 20 July 1949.
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