Posted on 10/20/2002 1:46:17 AM PDT by MadIvan
An article by a first-year student criticising what he regards as the anti-semitism tolerated at the United Nations appeared in last week’s Yale Daily News, the paper for the elite American university. If the article was typical fare the response to it was not. The author had touched a nerve and a torrent of anger was unleashed.
“I recently attended a forum focusing on the Israeli/Palestinian issue,” wrote one respondent. “Both sides made valid points but there was a heated exchange when the pro-Israel side initiated the ‘anti-semite’ slur. I am sick and tired of Jewish people always smearing those that merely disagree with their views as ‘evil’.
“I never thought I’d say this but a lot of what the so-called ‘white supremacists’ are saying (is) proving more accurate than I feel comfortable admitting.”
Then there was the recent Not In Our Name rally in Central Park, demonstrating against a potential war against Iraq. Around the edges of the rally copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the classic forged document of 19th-century anti-semitism, were being sold. According to the New York Sun, this peddling of anti-semitic tripe was not entirely accidental.
One protester said: “There are interest groups that want Israel to dominate Palestine. If Bush goes with them and is too critical, he might lose their support . . . the international financiers have their hooks in everything.” Ah, those international financiers. Remember them? America’s anti-war movement, still puny and struggling, is showing signs of being hijacked by one of the oldest and darkest prejudices there is. Perhaps it was inevitable. The conflict against Islamo-fascism obviously circles back to the question of Israel. Fanatical anti-semitism, as bad or even worse than Hitler’s, is now a cultural norm across much of the Middle East. It’s the acrid glue that unites Saddam, Arafat, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iran and the Saudis.
And if you campaign against a war against that axis, you’re bound to attract people who share these prejudices. That’s not to say the large majority of anti-war campaigners are anti-semitic. But this strain of anti-semitism is worrying and dangerous.
Earlier this year there were calls for America’s universities to withdraw any investments in Israel. A petition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard attracted hundreds of signatures, prompting Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, to say that “serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent”. He said views that were once the preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists were now supported in “progressive intellectual communities”.
Summers’s argument was simple: why has Israel alone been singled out as worthy of divestment? Critics cite its continued occupation of the West Bank. There’s no question that Israel’s policies there are ripe for criticism and that to equate such criticism with anti-semitism is absurd. Similarly, it’s perfectly possible to argue against Israel’s domestic policies without any hint of anti-semitism. But to argue that Israel is more deserving of sanction than any other regime right now is surely bizarre.
Israel is a multiracial democracy. Arab citizens of Israel proper can vote and freely enter society; there is freedom of religion and a free press. An openly gay man just won election to the Knesset. Compared with China, a ruthless dictatorship brutally occupying Tibet, Israel is a model of democratic governance. And unlike China’s occupation of Tibet, Israel’s annexation was a defensive action against an Arab military attack.
Compare Israel to any other Middle Eastern country — Syria’s satrapy in Lebanon, Mubarak’s police state, Iraq’s barbaric autocracy or Iran’s theocracy — and it’s a beacon of light. To single it out for attack is so self-evidently bizarre that it prompts an obvious question: what are these anti-Israel fanatics really obsessed about?
The answer, I think, lies in the nature of part of today’s left. It is fuelled above all by resentment of the success western countries, and their citizens, have achieved through freedom and hard work. Just look at Israel’s amazing achievements in comparison with its neighbours: a vibrant civil society, economic growth, technological skills, an agricultural miracle.
It is no surprise that the resentful left despises it. So, for obvious reasons, do Israel’s neighbours. The Arab states could have made peace decades ago and enriched themselves through trade and interaction. Instead, rather than emulate the Jewish state, they spent decades trying to destroy it. When they didn’t succeed, Arab dictators resorted to the easy distractions of envy, hatred and obsession.
Al-Qaeda is the most dangerous manifestation of this response; Hezbollah comes a close second. But milder versions are everywhere. And what do people who want to avoid examining their own failures do? They look for scapegoats. Jews are the perennial scapegoat.
This attitude isn’t restricted to the Middle East. In the West the left has seized on Israel as another emblem of what they hate. They’re happy to see Saddam re-elected with 100% of a terrified vote, happy to see him develop nerve gas and nuclear weapons to use against his own population and others. But over Israel’s occasional crimes in self-defence? They march in the streets.
Ask the average leftist what he is for, and you will not get a particularly eloquent response. Ask what he is against and the floodgates open. Similarly, ask the average anti-war activist what she thinks we should do about Iraq and the stammering begins. Do we leave Saddam alone? Send Jimmy Carter to sign the kind of deal he made with North Korea eight years ago?
Will pressurising Israel remove the nerve gas and potential nukes Saddam has? Will ceding the West Bank to people who cheered on September 11 help defang Al-Qaeda? They don’t say and don’t know. But they do know what they are against: American power, Israeli human rights abuses, British neo-imperialism, the “racist” war on Afghanistan and so on. Get them started on their hatreds, and the words pour out. No wonder they are selling the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Central Park.
Such negativism matters. When a movement is based on resentment, when your political style is as bitter as it is angry and your rhetoric focuses not on those murdering party-goers in Bali or workers in Manhattan but on the democratic powers trying to protect them, your fate is cast. A politics of resentment is a poisonous creature that slowly embitters itself. You should not be surprised if the most poisonous form of resentment that the world has ever known springs up, unbidden, in your midst.
The answer is also self-evident: anti-Israel fanatics are anti-Semites.
Ping - good read.
Yup. Post something about the USS Cole you won't get 20 hits. Post something about the Liberty you'll get 200. The Liberty event has long been adopted by the enemies of Israel and anti-semites, as even a Liberty survivor acknowleged in a press release, which I'll get my hands on and post later.
(I don't know all the details, but, basically....towards the end of the war, American soldiers (hundreds or thousands) were killed by American fire when Japanese ships were bombed, and nobody talks about them too much. There was a thread or a mention on a thread some time ago.)
I could have a field day on this point. You're right on the money, and this same point applies to many other topics discussed on these boards.
Every time when Leftie, Musli, Euro-trash or any other variety of anti-Semitism comes to attention, the "Liberty"-fanatics hasten to anti-Israel fanatics' help...
It must be frustrating........Why do you bother?
As an insider, could you suggest what Israel's interest in deliberately attacking a US battleship would be?
Yeah, like Jordan.
How clueless these people are. One of the most blatantly obvious facts of middle eastern politics in the last decade has been the Israeli electorate's fervent desire to end their governance of the disputed Palestinian territories. The arabs just won't let 'em do it (not if it means peace, security, indeed continued existence, for Israel). Yet these alledged "peace" activists are overwhelmingly PRO-WAR when it comes to the Palestinian intifada, and ignore or actively excuse the arab instrasigence which undercut the best opportunity in the last fifty years for a just and peaceful resolution of the Palestine dispute.
The simple fact is the "peace" movement in the West is pro-war, provided only that aggression is conducted by thuggish anti-Western autocrats, or by brutal and violent insurgencies attempting to topple civil or modernizing governments. No, not all "peaceniks" hold such views, but such views are almost univerisally tolerated in the "peace" movement. They aren't even a source of controversy. Nearly ever major rally includes hard-left, pro-thug groups like Ramsey Clark's International Action Center (a creature of the Stalinist World Workers Party) among its official sponsers. I've never even heard of an effort to exclude such odious orgs and elements. Until I do the "peace" movement warrants zero credibility in my book.
They were called, "Japanese Hell Sips."
For the moment, I just found this on google.com.
Click on this link for more info
The Hell Ships
Japan, Formosa, Manchuria, Korea . . . eventual destinations for the nightmarish voyages aboard "Hell Ships." As the allies drew closer, the Japanese began moving POWs out of the Philippines by sea. A thousand and more prisoners were crammed into cargo holds — spaces only big enough for a quarter that number — oftentimes with only enough room to sit for a journey that would last weeks. Never enough buckets for their waste, and with hundreds of dysentery cases, the healthy succumbed. Deprived of air and water and exposed to intoxicating heat, men suffocated or went mad. While Japanese weapons transports bore Red Cross markings, ships carrying prisoners of war went unmarked and were targeted by American submarines.
On 7 September 1944, American torpedoes found their target in the Shinyo Maru. As the prisoners fought their way off the sinking ship, they were fired on coming out of the holds or in the water. Of the 750 Americans who began the voyage, only 82 made it to shore.
On 24 October 1944, the Arisan Maru, with 1,800 American prisoners aboard, was torpedoed during a typhoon. That night over 100 New Mexicans were lost, including brothers Dwayne and Eugene Davis of Carlsbad.
Before heading to sea on 14 December 1944, men were already dying in the holds of the Oryoku Maru. Transporting Japanese soldiers, civilians, and 1,619 prisoners of war out of Manila, the ship suffered repeated attacks from American fighters who had no idea she was carrying POWs that day. That night, the soldiers and civilians were put ashore leaving behind the prisoners and their guards. Returning to finish the Oryoku on 15 December, fighters from USS Hornet loosened bombs that killed approximately 300 prisoners of war. The survivors were rounded up and held in an open enclosure for five days with almost no food until they were transported in two groups to San Fernando by truck. Several of the weaker prisoners were "selected" for execution. On Christmas Day, the survivors were loaded onto the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru. The ships arrived in Takao (Formosa) on New Year's Eve, and remained in port for the next six days with the prisoners still aboard who received no food and little to no water. The men from the Brazil Maru were then transferred to the Enoura Maru. On 9 January 1945, 300 prisoners died when the Enoura Maru was bombed. Of those killed, approximately 200 prisoners in the forward hold were killed instantly. On 11 January, the remaining 1,000 POWs were loaded onto the Brazil Maru which did not head to sea until 14 January. The Brazil made port in Moji (Japan) on 29 January with only 500 of the original 1,619 prisoners of war who began the long ordeal onboard the Oryoku Maru a month and a half earlier. Within weeks, one hundred more men would perish including several New Mexicans. Only nineteen of the forty-three New Mexicans who had originally embarked on the Oryoku Maru survived.
16 Aug 1945: Bataan Relief Organization's "Bulletin" demands editorially, Senate investigation into sinking of Japanese ships carrying American prisoners of war. [Story]
Already having survived unimagineable horrors in Japanese prisoner of war camps, some the Bataan Death March, and up to a month and more aboard a Hell Ship, prisoners arrived in the north with little clothing, and in November and December, many fell ill with pneumonia due to exposure. Those that survived were put to work to support the Japanese war effort as slave laborers where each act of sabotage was a small victory. They were Americans afterall, their "heads bloody, but unbowed!"
Partial Listing of Ships:
Arisan Maru
Brazil Maru
Canadian Inventor
Coral Maru
Enoura Maru
Haro Maru
Junyo Maru
Kachidoki Maru
Lima Maru
Lisbon Maru
Matti Maru
Melbourne Maru
Montevideo Maru
Nagato Maru
Nichi Maru
Nigatee Maru
Nissyo Maru
Noto Maru
Oryoko Maru
Rakuyo Maru
Sankyo Maru
Shinyo Maru
Taga Maru
Taikoku Maru
Tottori Maru
Umeda Maru
Yashu Maru
SS President Harrison
Because the truth has been posted on this board a million times by people who are quite well aquainted with the incident. Bamford only told the part of the truth that would get his book exactly the kind of attention Jew baiters and haters would swallow hook line and sinker.
It was an NSA screw up. Most rational thinking and logical people already know that. So it's those kinds of stupid posts that are thrown in to stop discussion on whatever subject happens to be being discussed. Pathetic responses when there's nothing else you can say...and a rather tired way of changing the subject...but if it really makes you feel better, go for it.
Matthews blamed the US for not doing more to calm the people of the Middle-East. By this he meant that we shouldn't always be pro-Israel and we shouldn't be pro the leadsership of the Middle-East Countries. We should rather help topple their Governments in order to support the average citizen. To me he just wants us to help support the Terrorists who would then be in charge in the Middle-East. He made his points very heatedly to show his depth of feeling on this issue.
I really think that is what he wants and he cannot see that this would just make the Terrorists stronger as they try to make Islam the one true World Religion and Islamic law the World's Judicial System.
So much for you Mr. Chris Matthews.
They were called, "Japanese Hell Ships."
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