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Mark Steyn: Israel and Ukraine, each fighting against the forces of terror and chaos
National Post [Ca] ^ | July 23, 2014 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 07/24/2014 3:23:09 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows

The two big international headlines of the moment are the downing of the Malaysian jet over Ukraine and Israel’s incursion into Gaza. On the face of it, these two stories don’t have much in common, but they are in fact part of the same story. To know Israel it helps to know Ukraine, and to know Ukraine it helps to know Israel.

This weekend will mark the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets re-took the city of Lviv (or Lvov, or Lemberg, according to taste) in western Ukraine, and ended a three-year German occupation. Before the Germans arrived, there were well over 100,000 Jews in the city and just shy of 50 synagogues. On July 26th 1944, when the Soviets returned, there were a couple of hundred Jews left.

Lviv had been, variously, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Habsburg, Soviet — but always, across the centuries, Jewish. All gone.

(Excerpt) Read more at fullcomment.nationalpost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Israel; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: marksteyn
Canada's greatest son opines.
1 posted on 07/24/2014 3:23:09 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows
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To: JLS

Ping!


2 posted on 07/24/2014 3:23:23 PM PDT by Slings and Arrows (You can't have Ingsoc without an Emmanuel Goldstein.)
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To: Slings and Arrows
I was lucky enough to hear Steyn speak at a synagogue near Boston about a year ago.As good as he is in print and when filling in for Rush the guy's absolutely amazing when he's “unplugged”.Anyone who ever has the chance to hear him in person...do it!
3 posted on 07/24/2014 4:00:06 PM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Rat Party Policy:Lie,Deny,Refuse To Comply)
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To: dennisw; Cachelot; Nix 2; veronica; Catspaw; knighthawk; Alouette; Optimist; weikel; Lent; GregB; ..
Middle East and terrorism, occasional political and Jewish issues Ping List. High Volume If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.

..................

4 posted on 07/24/2014 5:20:51 PM PDT by SJackson (government tampers with a freedom so fundamental, one shudders to think what lies ahead. Card Dolan)
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To: Slings and Arrows

My mother’s mother (my grandmother) lost her whole family who remained in Lemberg after she and her younger brother came to the US in the early 1900’s. The were either shot in Lemberg by the Nazis, shipped to Belzec Concentration Camp and killed there, or shipped to Auschwitz where they would have been killed.

The Russians are the “new Nazis” and are actually using Russian fascists/neo-Nazis as shock troops in the Crimea area (stories about their bodies being sent back to Russia appeared in the foreign press).

Putin is Hitler in a business suit. Remember, the KGB didn’t like to take prisoners or keep them alive very long (millions died either in Lubyanka Prison in Moscow or in the Gulag camps from Archangel/Vorkuta in northern USSR or in the string of camps along the Potma to Lake Baikal Siberian Railroad lines (Read Avram Shifrin’s story in the three volume Senate Internal Security Subcommittee/Sen. Judiciary Committee hearings entitled “Slave Labor Camps in the USSR”, 1972/1973, for details.


5 posted on 07/24/2014 5:50:02 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: Slings and Arrows

bfl


6 posted on 07/24/2014 6:47:34 PM PDT by Noob1999 (Loose Lips, Sink Ships)
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Comment #7 Removed by Moderator

To: MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
You conveniently forget to mention that Ukraine was also part of USSR. Ukrainians who were communists were also responsible for Soviet crimes.

Many Ukrainians were responsible for Nazi crimes, serving in Waffen SS, extermination camp guards or mobs who murdered their fellow citizens of Jewish faith.

Your grandmother was guarded by Ukrainian Nazis in in Belzec.

The drivel you wrote insults her memory and the memory of all others who perished in Belzec.

You should be ashamed.

8 posted on 07/24/2014 10:03:54 PM PDT by DTA
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To: DTA
Correction: Your grandmother's family was guarded by Ukrainian Nazis in Belzec.

For those lazy to click on embarrassing truth:

"SS Colonel General Christian Wirth, a former police officer who had played a leading role in implementing the T4 euthanasia program', was appointed the first camp commander. He commanded 20-30 SS men, plus a guard company of 90-120 Ukrainians who were trained at the Trawniki camp.

Belzec extermination camp was quite small, with a circumference of +- 1,220 yards. It was divided into two sections, each one surrounded by a barbed wire fence. There were watch towers all around the main perimeter. The first camp was split into two parts. The smaller area contained the administration buildings and the Ukrainians barracks. "

They were Nazis then, they are the Nazis now.

9 posted on 07/24/2014 10:09:54 PM PDT by DTA
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To: DTA
There were Nazis and local collaborators in every country in nazi-occupied Europe. Doesn't excuse neo-Soviet kleptocrat Putin one little bit.

Hopefully Vladimir will end his days swinging by his heels like Mussolini. (Though that would upset his cabin boys at FR).

10 posted on 07/24/2014 10:22:13 PM PDT by Dagnabitt (Amnesty is Treason. Its agents are Traitors.)
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To: Slings and Arrows
"Greatest son" made blunder on this issue, big time.

Odessa 1941

Odessa 2014

Same ideology, same perps.

Comparing Israel and Ukraine in order to provide support for Nazis in power in Kiev is the insult to the memory of all Jews murdered by the Ukrainian Nazis in WWII.

11 posted on 07/24/2014 10:22:13 PM PDT by DTA
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To: Dagnabitt
>>>>>>>There were Nazis and local collaborators in every country in nazi-occupied Europe<<<<<<

This is not true. Poles from occupied Poland did not provide Waffen SS division like Ukrainians did. Poles did not serve as extermination camp guards like Ukrainians.

Czechs did not provide Waffen SS division to Hitler nor served as extermination camp guards.

Nor did Greeks. And so on.

Even those occupied countries providing Waffen SS divisions ( e.g. The Netherlands, France) did not supply guards for extermination camps.

Ukrainians were not merely Nazi collaborators but the willing perpetrators of The Holocaust.

We can have different opinions on current events but it does not give you the right to misrepresent historical facts.

12 posted on 07/24/2014 10:40:29 PM PDT by DTA
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To: DTA

You are right, everyone was clean- in occupied territories. All were heroic. Wonder, if that same mindless mish-mash, will be said about Our Country, in 70 yrs or so?


13 posted on 07/24/2014 10:52:20 PM PDT by RedHeeler
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To: DTA
I guess even by your personal standard for what collaboration means, Putin has carte blanche to attack the likes of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia.

By why stop there - the Norwegian (among others) police hustled their Jews to the docks. Putin should bomb Norway too. And if someone like Mark Steyn compares Norwegian problems with Putin to Israel's problems with Putin-like Palestinians - they would be wrong in your book.

14 posted on 07/24/2014 11:36:53 PM PDT by Dagnabitt (Amnesty is Treason. Its agents are Traitors.)
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To: DTA

Perhaps you should actually read my post before you criticze me. I wrote that my grandmother and her younger brother came to the US int he early 1900’s, while the rest of her immediate and extended family remained behind, only to be killed by the Nazis (and their other nationality henchmen, including members of the Ukrainian SS Divisions).

When my grandmother lived in Lemberg, it was part of the Austro-Hungarian (Hapsburg) empire, not the Soviet Union, which didn’t even exist back then.

Not sure exactly where my relatives died as we have no physical records, so far, as to where they were killed. I listed the three places I know that Lemberg Jews were killed.

I’ve met the puppetheads of the Nazi/German govt in the Ukraine, the Stetskos. Nasty critters but never really prosecuted as war criminals, which they were.

I would love for all Communist and Nazi war criminals to be executed, even if they are 90 years old and living in their beds.

And I might add, that, with the help of the late Simon Weisenthal, I helped expose Nazi war criminals who were in the East German Government, as well as a KGB operative here in the US aimed at discrediting legitimate Nazi-hunters.

What have you done besides sound like an ass?


15 posted on 07/25/2014 4:14:28 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: DTA

DTA: Seems you forgot two groups out of Yugoslavia, the Croatian Fascists, the Utashi, and the Moslem SS Divisions from Montenegro? (courtesty of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), both of whom ran extermination programs both inside and outside the Nazi camps.

There were some Italian SS troops but don’t know much about their activities.

Re Poland, some Poles betrayed Jews to the Nazis, or killed them, themselves, esp. at the end of the war as Polish Jews tried to return to their homes. Friends of mine survived those “aztions”.

However, one of the best Polish friends of the Jews was a late friend of mine, Stefan Korbonski, the head of the Polish Free Army. Despite resistance by other Polish resistance groups, he sent arms into the Warsaw Ghetto so that the Jews could defend themselves. For this he was given the “Righteous Gentile” award by Israel.
Used to have lunch with him. He was Jan Karski’s in-country counterpart.

History is very complicated and I’ve learned long ago that you can’t know everything. Just not enough time to read everything when you are trying to save the world, but I try.


16 posted on 07/25/2014 4:22:39 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
>>>>>DTA: Seems you forgot two groups out of Yugoslavia, the Croatian Fascists, the Utashi, and the Moslem SS Divisions from Montenegro? (courtesty of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem), both of whom ran extermination programs both inside and outside the Nazi camps.<<<<<<

No, I have not forgotten. I spoke of the Nazi OCCUPIED countries. I did not mention German allies who provided Waffen SS divisions, e.g. Hungary. Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Greece briefly fought against Nazi Germany in April 1941 and failed. Greece was occupied, Yugoslavia was dismembered. Slovenia and Banat were annexed to The Third Reich. Part of northern Serbia was occupied by Hungary and the Serbia proper was under direct Wehrmacht military rule (more severe form of occupation).On the territories of Bosnia and Croatia Croatian Nazis (Ustasha) created Independent State of Croatia (NDH)in April 1941 and NDH was an ally of The Third Reich. NDH declared the war on the United States in December of 1941 and send army to fight against USSR. NDH also provided two Waffen SS divisions, Croatian Kama (dagger) and Muslim Handshar (one you mentioned, created with the help of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem).

Albanians from Southern Serbia - Kosovo created Waffen SS Skenderbey. Only them are comparable with Ukrainain Galicia Waffen SS.

There was no Waffen SS from Montenegro. Montenegro was under Italian occupation).

17 posted on 07/25/2014 9:45:51 PM PDT by DTA
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To: TheOldLady; Rummyfan; Howlin; riley1992; Miss Marple; Dane; sinkspur; steve; kattracks; ...

Mark Steyn ping.

Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.

Thanks for the ing Slings and Arrows.


18 posted on 07/28/2014 12:19:38 AM PDT by JLS
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