Also, forget the shekels. I'd prefer my payments in krugerrands.
Posted on 12/29/2001 12:08:08 AM PST by H.R. Gross
December 28, 2001
As Israel prepares to expel its Arab helots from Palestine, its "amen corner" worldwide is also on the march, excoriating anyone who looks cross-eyed at Ariel Sharon as an "anti-Semite." The latest front in this campaign is England, where Barbara Amiel, wife of media magnate Conrad Black, went on a rampage in the Telegraph, claiming that, at a recent dinner party, the French ambassador referred to Israel as "that sh*tty little country," and wondered why the world had to be dragged to the edge of World War III on account of it. On the basis of evidence gleaned at ritzy cocktail parties, says Ms. Amiel, the world is experiencing a revival of anti-Semitism, which is now "respectable" again.
Oh, please! Does she really expect us to believe that Osama's infamous videos denouncing the "Jews and Crusaders" are the "in" thing with the hip cognoscenti? Lay off the crack pipe, lady, and get real: anti-Semitism is less respectable than pedophilia. After all, hordes of people aren't buying The Protocols of the Elder of Zion the way they're snatching up those Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, now are they? Amiel's essay is just one breathtaking inversion of reality after another. Getta load-a this:
"For the past 25 years, I've watched sad-faced Israeli activists trudge around Western capitals with heavy hearts beating under ill-fitting suits. They carry folders of transcripts and videotapes to document the misrepresentations in the press and the moral hypocrisy of the world towards Israel. They want to win the war of ideas on its merits. Their attention to detail in translating the hate literature of the Middle East and the hate-filled speeches of its leaders is commendable."
One can only wonder what "Western capitals" she means: surely not Washington, D.C. Everyone acknowledges that the Israel lobby is among the most powerful in the Imperial City. How else have they managed to get their hands on a grand total of $90 billion-plus in American military and economic aid since Israel's inception?
Aside from US exporters, Israel is the single largest beneficiary of our "foreign aid" program: US tax dollars paid for a booby-trap bomb planted near an Arab elementary school, which blasted a group of Palestinian children – children! – to bits. American tax dollars also pay for Israeli "settlements" inhabited by violent, fanatical fundamentalists intent on provoking war no matter what. This image of sad bedraggled little underdogs making their rounds, desperately fighting an uphill battle against overwhelming odds, is nothing but a bad joke – either that, or it is meant to be ironic.
If the Israeli lobby is so powerless, then why this American largesse? We not only arm Israel, but we also prop up their sh*tty little socialist economy with constant infusions of cash. Whatever those Israeli "activists" are carrying around in their folders, whatever is on those videotapes, it must be some pretty powerful stuff. Given the Fox News revelations about the extent of Israeli spying in the US, I don't even want to hazard a guess as to what's in them.
They want to "win the war of ideas on its merits"? Tell that to Jean Ryan, former managing editor of the Oneida (NY) Daily Dispatch, and city editor Dale Seth (a 15-year veteran of the paper), who were both fired when a delegation of Israel Firsters approached the editor and then the owner demanding the paper retract an allegedly "anti-Semitic" post-9/11 editorial written by Seth. Seth's crime was to recall the terrorist origins of the Jewish state – as if no one had ever heard of the Irgun and the Stern Gang, both of which waged war on the Arab civilian population – and without which the state of Israel would never have come into existence. He also made the true but politically incorrect observation that the whole region is rife with religious fanaticism, and Israel is no exception to the rule:
"The United States, through its close association with Israel since its inception, has now been dragged kicking and screaming right into the middle of that centuries-old Middle Eastern conflict. From that position, it would behoove that party in the middle to consider the hearts of the warring parties. Neither can be simply beat into submission."
A local attorney, Randy Schaal, demanded a meeting with Ryan to protest the editorial: Ryan refused to meet with him, pointing out that that if the staff met with everyone who disagreed with an editorial, they would never get a paper out. She told him to write a letter to the editor, which he did. But Schaal also contacted local politicians, as well as the Anti-Defamation League, and it wasn't long before pressure was brought to bear on the paper's management, which then ordered its editors to come up with a "clarification." This was published alongside Schaal's letter, a letter from Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), and a missive from the mayor of Oneida. Still, Schaal and his fellow Ameners weren't satisfied. They went to the President of the Journal Register Co., and demanded a retraction and an apology: it was unconditional surrender, or nothing.
After a series of meetings with various self-appointed representatives of the Jewish community, the owners of the Daily Dispatch caved and published a groveling mea culpa: "We understand many felt [the editorial] expressed anti-Semitic sentiments," it said. "We will not further offend our readers by attempting in any way to justify what was written; we can only assure readers that The Dispatch is not anti-Semitic and that we acknowledge the editorial should not have been published."
So much for the Israeli lobby winning the war of ideas on the "merits" of their case. Clearly, another strategy is at work here: not debating their opponents but silencing them.
The rest of Amiel's essay is really a kind of paean to the efficacy of brute force. While those poor bedraggled Israeli "activists" may have been fighting an uphill battle, according to Amiel, in the post-9/11 era the tide seems to be turning, and she can hardly keep herself from gloating that now the Arabs are really going to get it:
"Powerful as the truth may be, it needs a nudge from 16,000lb daisy cutter bombs once in a while. The Arab/Muslim world's intransigence comes into sharper focus when we see the Americans liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban in six weeks and a cornered Arafat unable to go to the bathroom without the risk of being blown into the next world."
Here is the kind of Zionist who clearly enjoys the brutality and indignity of the Israeli occupation. Such people now feel free to publicly exhibit and even flaunt their perversity, which seems like something straight out of Kraft-Ebbing. What else can one call Amiel's odd interest in controlling Arafat's bowel movements other than a sh*tty little perversion?
"Nothing succeeds like powerful bombs," exults this war goddess, "as bin Laden explained in his latest video release. 'When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse,' he said." How natural for her to approvingly cite bin Laden on the terroristic imperative: but then that is what tribal warfare is all about, no matter which side one fights on.
Yes, it is force, not reason or negotiation, that is decisive, avers Ms. Amiel, who gleefully predicts that "All those people badmouthing the Jews and Israel will quieten down." Or else be quieted down, involuntarily, like Jean Ryan, Dale Seth, and now perhaps Carl Cameron, of Fox News. "You are looking," Amiel continues, "at the tail end of the train but the engine has already turned a corner and is going in the opposite direction" – and anyone who shows up at one of those ritzy parties she's always attending had better get on board, or else.
No one would think to label denunciations of, say, Robert Mugabe, as the equivalent of anti-black racism: but we are expected to just accept that virtually all criticism of Israel and Ariel Sharon is due to "anti-Semitism." Amiel's blatantly dishonest and self-serving jihad is naturally bound to cause resentment among all thinking people – an emotion that could, easily, turn into genuine anti-Semitism. But that, I believe, is the point: anti-Semitism serves the interests of the most extreme wing of the Zionist movement, and always has.
Founded as it is on the permanence of Jewish victimology, and the idea that anti-Semitism is inevitable, Zionism thrives when Jewish persecution grows. It is a natural tendency of Zionist propaganda to exaggerate hostility to Jews. The founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, was confirmed in his opinion that it was "futile" to combat anti-Semitism when the infamous Dreyfuss case was at the center of a storm of controversy. Today, however, with the rapid decline and marginalization of anti-Semitism everywhere but in the Middle East, the pressing need for a Jewish state requires more justification.
Anti-Semitism in the West, as "hate crime" statistics and other research has shown in recent years, is practically nonexistent. This good news was hailed by Jewish organizations in the US when it was first announced, but the extreme Zionists were no doubt made uneasy. For if anti-Jewish prejudice is distinctly beyond the pale, at least in the civilized world, i.e., the West, then what do we need a Jewish state for? This is a question many Jews, when faced with an appeal to emigrate to Israel, must ask themselves, and, at least up until Ms. Amiel's outburst, the Zionists have had no good answer. Now they appear to have solved the problem by simply redefining "anti-Semitism" to mean any criticism of Israel's expansionist policies and its current radical right-wing government.
Anti-Semitism used to mean legal and cultural proscriptions directed against Jews. In medieval Europe, Jews were forced into ghettos, in Nazi Germany they were branded with the yellow star and exterminated, and, in America and Europe, it used to be that some establishments, both high and low, would not do business with Jews. Certain hotels and men's clubs would not admit them, and anti-Semitism was especially rife in the universities where an unofficial Jewish quota kept their numbers and influence limited. This is real anti-Semitism, and, today, it is not only illegal but socially and politically unacceptable: anyone deemed an anti-Semite in this, the original sense, is in effect a pariah, and rightly so.
Also, forget the shekels. I'd prefer my payments in krugerrands.
Violence escalated with a series of PLO attacks and Israeli reprisals. Finally, the United States helped broker a ceasefire agreement in July 1981. The PLO repeatedly violated the cease-fire over the ensuing 11 months. Israel charged that the PLO staged 270 terrorist actions in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders. Twentynine Israelis died and more than 300 were injured in the attacks.
Meanwhile, a force of some 15-18,000 PLO members was encamped in scores of locations in Lebanon. About 5,000-6,000 were foreign mercenaries, coming from such countries as Libya, Iraq, India, Sri Lanka, Chad and Mozambique. Israel later discovered enough light arms and other weapons in Lebanon to equip five brigades. The PLO arsenal included mortars, Katyusha rockets and an extensive antiaircraft network. The PLO also brought hundreds of T34 tanks into the area. Syria, which permitted Lebanon to become a haven for the PLO and other terrorist groups, brought surface-to-air missiles into that country, creating yet another danger for Israel.
Israeli strikes and commando raids were unable to stem the growth of this PLO army. The situation in the Galilee became intolerable as the frequency of attacks forced thousands of residents to flee their homes or to spend large amounts of time in bomb shelters. Israel was not prepared to wait for more deadly attacks to be launched against its civilian population before acting against the terrorists.
The final provocation occurred in June 1982 when a Palestinian terrorist group led by Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate Israel's Ambassador to Great Britain, Shlomo Argov. The IDF subsequently attacked Lebanon again on June 4-5, 1982. The PLO responded with a massive artillery and mortar attack on the Israeli population of the Galilee. On June 6, the IDF moved into Lebanon to drive out the terrorists in "Operation Peace for Galilee."
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger defended the Israeli operation: "No sovereign state can tolerate indefinitely the buildup along its borders of a military force dedicated to its destruction and implementing its objectives by periodic shellings and raids" (Washington Post, June 16, 1982).
"On Lebanon, it is clear that we and Israel both seek an end to the violence there, and a sovereign, independent Lebanon," President Reagan said June 21, 1982. "We agree that Israel must not be subjected to violence from the north."
The initial success of the Israeli operation led officials to broaden the objective to expel the PLO from Lebanon and induce the country's leaders to sign a peace treaty. In 1983, Lebanon's President, Amin Gemayel, signed a peace treaty with Israel. A year later, Syria forced Gemayel to renege on the agreement. The war then became drawn out as the IDF captured Beirut and surrounded Yasser Arafat and his guerrillas.
PLO Tyranny in Lebanon
For Arab residents of south Lebanon, PLO rule was a nightmare. After the PLO was expelled from Jordan by King Hussein in 1970, many of its cadres went to Lebanon. The PLO seized whole areas of the country, where it brutalized the population and usurped Lebanese government authority.
On October 14, 1976, Lebanese Ambassador Edward Ghorra told the UN General Assembly the PLO was bringing ruin upon his country: "Palestinian elements belonging to various...organizations resorted to kidnaping Lebanese-and sometimes foreigners-holding them prisoner, questioning them, torturing them and sometimes killing them" (New York Times, October 15, 1976).
Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, not known for being sympathetic toward Israel, declared after touring south Lebanon and Beirut that the facts "tend to support Israel's claim that the PLO has become permeated by thugs and adventurers" (Washington Post, June 25, 1982). Countless Lebanese told harrowing tales of rape, mutilation and murders committed by PLO forces.
New York Times correspondent David Shipler visited Damour, a Christian village near Beirut, which had been occupied by the PLO since 1976, when Palestinians and Lebanese leftists sacked the city and massacred hundreds of its inhabitants. The PLO, Shipler wrote, had turned the town into a military base, "using its churches as strongholds and armories" (New York Times, June 21, 1982).
When the IDF drove the PLO out of Damour in June 1982, Prime Minister Menachem Begin announced that the town's Christian residents could come home and rebuild. Returning villagers found their former homes littered with spray-painted Palestinian nationalist slogans, Fatah literature and posters of Yasir Arafat. They told Shipler how happy they were that Israel had liberated them.
The PLO's Reluctant Retreat
When the IDF captured Beirut, the civilian population was forced to suffer because of the PLO's refusal to surrender. By mid-June, Israeli troops had surrounded 6,000-9,000 terrorists who had taken up positions amid the civilian population of West Beirut. To prevent civilian casualties, Israel agreed to a cease-fire to enable an American diplomat, Ambassador Philip Habib, to mediate a peaceful PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. As a gesture of flexibility, Israel agreed to permit PLO forces to leave Beirut with their personal weapons. But the PLO continued to make new demands.
The PLO also adopted a strategy of controlled violations of the ceasefire, with the purpose of inflicting casualties on Israel and provoking Israeli retaliation sufficient to get the IDF blamed for disrupting the negotiations and harming civilians. For more than a month, the PLO tried to extract a political victory from its military defeat. Arafat declared his willingness "in principle" to leave Beirut, then refused to go to any other country. Arafat also tried to push the U.S. to recognize the PLO. Throughout the siege, the PLO hid behind innocent civilians, accurately calculating that if Israel were to attack, it would be internationally condemned.
"The Israelis bombed buildings, innocent looking on the outside, where their intelligence told them that PLO offices were hidden," wrote Middle East analyst Joshua Muravchik ("Misreporting Lebanon," Policy Review, Winter 1983). "Their intelligence also told them of the huge network of underground PLO storage facilities for arms and munitions that was later uncovered by the Lebanese Army. No doubt the Israelis dropped some bombs hoping to penetrate those facilities and detonate the dumps. The PLO had both artillery and antiaircraft [equipment] truck mounted. These would fire at the Israelis and then move." The Israelis would fire back and sometimes miss, inadvertently hitting civilian targets.
In numerous instances, the media mistakenly reported that Israel was hitting civilian targets in areas where no military ones were nearby. On one night in July, Israeli shells hit seven embassies in Beirut. NBC aired a report that appeared to lend credence to PLO claims it had no military positions in the area. Israel, Muravchik noted, "soon released reconnaissance photos showing the embassy area honeycombed with tanks, mortars, heavy machine guns and antiaircraft positions."
The Lebanon war provoked intense debate within Israel. For the first time in Israel's history, a consensus for war did not exist (though it did at the outset). Prime Minister Menachem Begin resigned as demands for an end to the fighting grew louder. The national coalition government that took office in 1984 decided to withdraw from Lebanon, leaving behind a token force to help the South Lebanese Army (which Israel had long supported) patrol a security zone near Israel's border.
Though the IDF succeeded in driving the PLO out of Lebanon, it did not end the terrorist threats from that country. The war was also costly, 1,216 soldiers died between June 5, 1982, and May 31, 1985.
Ongoing Violence
Jerusalem repeatedly stressed that Israel did not covet a single inch of Lebanese territory. Israel's 1985 withdrawal from Lebanon confirmed that. The small 1,000man Israeli force, deployed in a strip of territory extending eight miles into south Lebanon, protects towns and villages in northern Israel from attack. Israel also repeatedly said it would completely withdraw from Lebanon in return for a stable security situation on its northern border.
Most of the terrorist groups that threaten Israel have not been disarmed. For example, several thousand terrorists currently in Lebanon are members of Hezbollah. The group receives financial support and arms from Iran, usually via Damascus. Hezbollah-which had initially confined itself to launching Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel and ambushing Israeli troops in the security zone-has in recent years stepped up its attacks on Israeli civilians.
In April 1995, the IDF mounted "Operation Grapes of Wrath" to halt Hezbollah's bombardment of Israel's northern frontier. During the operation, Israeli artillery mistakenly hit a UN base in Kafr Kana, killing nearly 100 civilians. Afterward, a Joint Monitoring Machinery, including American, French, Syrian and Lebanese representatives, was created to prohibit unprovoked attacks on civilian populations and the use of civilians as shields for terrorist activities.
The Syrian-backed Lebanese Army has yet to take action against Hezbollah, or other terrorist organizations, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) or Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which have bases in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Syria, in fact, declared its unqualified support for stepped-up violence in the area. Consequently, attacks against Israeli troops in the Security Zone and civilians in northern Israel continued.
Israel Withdraws
Israel pulled all its troops out of southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000, ending a 22-year military presence there. All Israel Defense Force and South Lebanon Army outposts were evacuated. The Israeli withdrawal was conducted in coordination with the UN, and constituted an Israeli fulfillment of its obligations under Security Council Resolution 425 (1978).
As I am an "AMERICAN FIRSTER" I want my salary paid in American Eagles.
God please.
If we were one and the same, we wouldn't need the decoder rings, would we?
I'm just yucking it up a bit over Wiley's accusations. Is it not possible for me to have the opinions that I do all by my lonesome?
I mean think about it, I've called no one here an anti-semite, but I'm being accused of being a "Secret Jew?" Just because I'm more pro-Israel than some others here on this thread?
Have I called anyone a "Secret Moslem?"
As I said to Wiley, take a look at the posts between me and wooly_mammot on this thread. He's on your side, and we get along.
Did you know that the Documentary Lady is on my ping list? We get along well, though we bump heads on threads like this one sometimes.
Really, bribri, I've got no beef with you.
Well, he is on your side.
On the other hand, he single-handedly cracked our conspiracy wide open.
I hope so.
And the gambling? ;-)
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