"I killed millions of Jews but spared a few -"

Hitler: I killed millions of Jews/Israelis..... but i spared a few to show you why i killed them

[More commonly on the Internet,

 I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them alive to let you know why I killed them ]

Hitler never spoke those words, of course; he didn't mean to let any Jews remain alive, save perhaps one of his cooks as an expression of personal power. It's just something invented by an antisemite in support of jew-hatred.

And it always seems to pop up when Jews like me assert deeds in context as good or evil, right and wrong, and their perpetrators as criminals, men who would much prefer to be hailed as heroes instead. Why are Jews like me so annoying, even when we are right? What makes so many of you here want to reject agreeing with me 100%?

A good example is the British response to the 1920 Amritsar massacre. In this incident British troops opened fire, without provocation, on a peaceful crowd of Indian protesters (no use in asking who was what religion, since Indians didn't yet think that way.) The commanding general was retired and hailed as a hero by many Brits, especially those in the political opposition.

When the matter came before Parliament the government's first speaker was a Jewish Briton who angrily denounced the massacre in absolute terms. This brought a huge storm of anti-semitic resentment from many in Parliament: they were on the edge of endorsing the massacre out of Jew-hatred - these were the days when the Brits were convinced Bolshevist Communism was a Jewish plot that threatened England, too.

The next speaker from the government side was Winston Churchill. He spoke quite differently, describing the incident factually and calmly. He then argued that the general's actions were unworthy of British tradition: "Frightfulness" - his term for cowing a populace by unjustly and randomly terrorizing them - not being part of the British armory - so did the MPs want to make it one now? At this there was general agreement and after a bit more discussion the massacre was condemned. [Reference: The Last Lion, vol. I, ~p.600.]

So you see, the first speaker wasn't wrong when he asserted that what happened was an absolute crime; it's that the other Brits were afraid that his self-condemnation constituted an assault on the British nation. When Churchill soothed those fears they calmed down and turned 180 degrees. Yet would Churchill have succeeded in doing so if the massacre hadn't been labeled as a crime by the first speaker?

My grandparents, aunts, and uncles never engaged in the sort of political or anti-national behavior that Hitler decried. They were sent to the concentration camps and gas chambers anyway. Do you [Pakistanis] really want to follow in his footsteps and add genocide and accessory to murder to the legacy you leave to your kids? It's all about the values you choose. link

What is Israel trying to do?

 Originally Posted by bilalhaider 

Solomon, can you tell me what this Israeli regime is trying to do, if it is not going back to the 1967 borders; & is in turn, expanding its settlements? Are they not trying to wipe Palestine off the map, and have the whole area occupied as Israeli territory?

Legally, there are no "1967 borders". There were armistice lines established in 1947 and 1967 without regard to final status. Egypt never annexed Gaza and Jordan's annexation of the West Bank was not recognized - that is, Egypt's and Jordan's occupations from 1947-67 were illegal. 

Legally the areas occupied of Mandate Palestine by the Arab armies were supposed to remain open for Jewish settlement. (In practice, the Egyptians and Syrians and Palestinian Arabs sought to murder Jews in Mandate areas, whereas the Jordanians' Arab Legion evicted them.) 

The condition of Jewish settlement stated in the Mandate was that Jews respect Arabs civil and property rights. This the Jews have done: Jews settled in "state" lands or purchased lands from Arabs; attempts by Israeli extremists to seize privately held Arab land are voided by Israel's courts and the settlers evicted. (Per international law, this doesn't apply to military outposts.) 

Arabs were also supposed to respect the civil and property rights of Jews throughout the former Ottoman areas. This Arabs have, collectively, not done. You don't need to trust me at all on this but look at the demographics: Israel remains 20%+ Arab whereas the number of Jews in surrounding Arab countries range from zero to a few dozen. As the Egyptians have figured out, the Jews have both a legal and moral claim to their modern-day dispossession; the Egyptians just don't want to deal with it: link

The proposal for a "two-state solution" (actually three, since Jordan was chopped off the Mandate earlier to be what Churchill described as a "police station" for the Iraq-Haifa pipeline) was approved in the General Assembly but rejected by the Arabs. This G.A. resolution (UNGA 181) has no legal status. 

What is Israel up to now? Well, under UNSCR 446 the U.N. pretty much declared it was up to Israel to defend Jews' rights as a matter of "world peace" (in context, caving in to prevent terror attacks in Western countries). Israel need not declare sovereignty over ALL of Mandate Palestine. It can, however, prevent Arabs from encroaching on Jews' rights: state lands that should remain open to Jewish settlement, not Arab expansion, and the enforcement of Jews property deeds that were voided or ignored by Arabs. 

Israel has very much wanted a Palestinian state for twenty years. Exact and complicated terms are in the Oslo Accords. As an "interim" measure some areas fell to Arab administration immediately. Others did not - and that in the meantime Israel did not surrender Jews' right to settle in such areas. On the other hand, Arafat and his successors have since made it clear that their goal is to replace Israel with Palestine not live in peace alongside it.

The civil rights of Arabs in the context of Mandate Palestine were those granted subjects by the Ottoman rulers. Civil and property rights became forfeit when a populace turned to civil revolt. 

For reference, I recall the Ottomans two ways the Ottomans would respond to revolt: eviction of the populace and forfeiture of their property (even if that included mass deaths as happened to the Armenians) or decimation (going into a village and hanging at least one male or even one in ten, regardless of whether he was guilty of a crime or not.)

Nobody knew this better than Ben-Gurion, who trained as an Ottoman lawyer. I imagine that's why, when the Arab leaders of Ramle and Lydda told the Jews in 1948 that they were determined to remain in a state of revolt, he decided these populations were to be evicted (which didn't necessarily mean they were evicted from Israel, as some may have become IDP's and re-settled elsewhere.) 

So the proper question doesn't have much to do with Israel but what rights should remain to Palestine's Arabs? Those reconciled to Israeli rule remain in Israel. But those who vowed to reject the Jewish presence in Palestine and their descendants, hostile or not? What obligation is Israel supposed to have to them?

I think it's worth noting that the entire idea that Jews are somehow responsible for Arab displacement was rooted in Jews' charity: the Jews bought land in Palestine from absentee Arab landowners and made efforts, as a courtesy, to find their Arab tenant farmers new situations elsewhere. That courtesy soon became construed as a "right" and from there the conviction that no Jew may displace an Arab - even if the Jew is the legal owner of the property - without Arabs' say-so.

Nowadays the "Palestinian" attitude that Jews should be evicted from areas even if they are the legal owners, and the more extreme Hezbollah stance that Jews should be murdered wherever they may be on Earth: link. 

My theory is that the hardening happens because (as happened in the American South after 1830) once arguing in favor of the Jews (or abolition in the South) became forbidden by law, the only remaining way for challengers to contend for power against the existing elite was to take a more militant position. After a few stages of this the results in both cases were war, either against foreign opponents or domestic ones.

And all it took was for the right of free speech to be suppressed on one particular subject.

Respose to Oren Ben-Dor

Poor Oren.  You can't be a prof in Britain nowadays without being anti-Israel - it isn't really allowed.  

" Israel has persistently denied them their internationally recognized legal right to return."  link

Such careful language implies the professor is perfectly aware that while the right may be "recognized" that is a matter of politics, not fact.  By the terms of the Treaty of Sevres and its successor the Mandate of Palestine, "close settlement" of Palestine by Jews was to be encouraged but nevertheless both Jews and Arabs were supposed to respect the civil and property rights of minorities in the lands that came under their political domination, as they were under the Ottomans. This obligation the Israelis kept - Israel is over 20% Arab - but the Arabs did not fulfill it either in their own lands or in Palestine - the Jews were tossed or made to flee, save for a few in Tunisia and Morocco, and entire Arab villages in Palestine participated in attacking Jewish settlements, or fled expecting Arab armies to win the victory for them.  

When these Arabs in the Mandate committed or supported collective violence against Jews they forfeited their civil and property rights under the laws and practice of the Ottomans.  Neither they nor their descendants have any legal rights to return.  If it wasn't for the politics of the vastly larger number of Arabs focusing their anger on the peace-seeking Jews of Israel and the frightened fashionistas of the West seeking to accommodate them the legal case would have dominated the discussion long ago.

Husain Haqqani: Divorce, Osama bin Laden, and an Assassination Plot

In light of the assertion by Pakistan's former Ambassador to the U.S. that the U.S. and Pakistan seek to divorce themselves from each other and that "somebody knew" about Osama bin Laden's presence in Pakistan, this passage comes to mind:

...The ISI was by then convinced it needed to get rid of Bhutto.  Having promised to stay out of Afghan politics, she had lectured Hamid Gul on the need to stop the war and start a permanent peace process, arguing for  afixed border to be negotiated and for the mujahideen to hand back their ISI-supplied weapons.  It was too much for Gul, who in the spring of 1989 began plotting to take Bhutto's life.  He approached a mujahideen fighter and financier based in Peshawar, the gateway to the Khyber Pass.  As yet unknown to the West or South Asia, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi dissident, whose family had made their fortune in construction, had many prosperous and powerful political connections.   He was bored, looking for a new purpose.  Gul, who had got to know him via the ISI bureau in Pashawar, had a job in mind.

Husain Haqqani was let into the plan.  "Hamid Gul took Osama to see Nawaz Sharif.  I was there when he did it.  He wanted to put the two of them together so that they could mount a coup and overthrow Benazir."  The meeting took place at the Jamaat-e-Islami office in Mansehra, Northwest Frontier Province.  Two further meetings took place in Jamaat-e-Islami offices in Peshawar and Lahore.  "Gul wanted Osama to pay for the overthrow, preferably with Benazir finished off."  There was a huge war chest assembled, with Osama bin Laden rasing $10 million, againsst which he set one precondtion.  Nawaz Sharif, who would take over as prime minister, was to transform Pakistan into a strict Islamic state, administered solely by sharia law, an austere theocracy of the type that would shortly rise under the Taliban in Afghanistan.  "Sharif agreed," Haqqani said.  "The money was already in Pakistan."

- excerpted from Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark, Walker & Company, 2007, pp. 193-194.

Husain Haqqani was, of course, appointed Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. a few months after this book was published.  Thus Pakistan's civilian leadership implicitly endorsed the above account and considers it 100% true and accurate.  If people wonder how it came to pass that the U.S. has so little trust and faith in Pakistan's military, this passage is sufficient explanation - but not the only reason, of course.

Update, 10:55pm:  Husain Haqqani claims the authors later acknowledged they erred in suggesting H.H. was an eyewitness or was present.  I am attempting to verify this.

Curiosity just landed

Watching CNN.  The scene in the control room was wild.  Especially the hugging.  Men hugging women, women hugging women, men hugging men.   And as the pictures come through the scene grows wilder.  An amazing accomplishment, decades in the planning.

First pic from surface: rear wheel w/Mars horizon.  The camera still has the dust cover on - good thing too, it seems.  Dust cover should be ejected in a few hours.

Will Durant: Palestine, 1930

Would you see with your own eyes the transformation wrought throughout Palestine by the enterprise of these [Jewish] immigrants? Enter at stormy Haifa, and ride by the modern railway from the port to the capital. Look out at Benjamina, at Richon, at Kudeirah, at Peta-Tikva, and see the once arid fields flourishing; note the great orange-groves in the hinterland of Jaffa; and at Tel-Aviv observe a new Jewish city risen in a decade out of the sand. Alongside the individual Arab peasant tillling the earth primitively with camel and plough rise the Jewish co-operative farms, uniting to finance new methods, new machinery, agricultural experiment stations, and agricultural schools...Of the arable land ninety-three percent is owned by Arabs, who will not sell to Jews, or will sell only at twice or thrice the price asked of good Mohammedans. How can an Arab love a Jew when the Jewish farmer, though city-bred, given to letters, and completely unfitted for the rural life, produces four to five times as much per acre as the Arab coaxes from his soil? How can the Arab look with content on the groves that have made a Jaffa orange the noblest work of God? 


 Add to this the hospitals and dispensaries, the schools and the university which the immigrants have brought to Palestine with unforgivable initiative. The Jews are too brilliant to remain content with farming; their active minds demand commerce, industry and urban variety as a vital need...they organized labor, and won shorter hours and higher wages for Jewish and Arab workers alike...They found a country without reliable water to drink, with typhoid, dysentery, malaria, and eye-diseases rampant; they drained the swamps, cleared and extended the water-supply, brought malaria and trachoma under control, established public sanitation, and opened these services to all They built and operated their own schools, and at the same time paid heavy taxes for the maintenance of the public shcools in which Britain is educating the Arabs... 


 But because of these very achievements, the racial problem - if we may loosely speak of a racial problem between peoples who are all of one race, Semitic brothers in origin and blood - had become more dangerous than before. The growth and success of the Jews inflamed the Arabs with a jealous rage...They resolved to put the matter to the ordeal of blood. 


 On August 14, 1929, 10,000 Jews arrived in Jerusalem to gather at the Wailing Wall the next day and mourn together the destruction of the Temple. Arab leaders spread throughout Palestine the word that Jews had killed Arabs in Jerusalem...so the Arabs swept down upon the Jews at the Wailing Wall, and slew scores of praying women and men...inflamed Arabs slaughtered helpless students in the Hebrew seminary at Hebron and throughout Palestine armed Muslims fell upon unarmed Jews, until there was a total of several hundred Jewish wounded and dead. For four weeks terror ruled.... Who was to blame? They were all to blame, Arabs and British and Jews alike; it would be well if they could accept the guilt together... ...The Effendis who rule the Arab peasant and mulct him religiously would not want him empowered by votes, or instructed by universal education, to demand democracy -

 - Adventures in Genius, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster Inc., New York, 1931, pp. 328-332.

Meet Kasim Hafiz, part II

British ‘Muslim Zionist’ tackles anti-Israel bias, blames ignorance Monday, 04 June 2012

Kasim Hafeez, born to a family of Pakistani origin, calls himself “a proud Muslim Zionist.” (File photo)

A Muslim Briton has criticized the British community he grew up in, accusing it of “calling for the destruction of all Jews,” which led him to believe that Israel is a “terror state,” an Israeli news site reported on Sunday.

 Kasim Hafeez, born to a family of Pakistani origin, now calls himself “a proud Muslim Zionist,” and has embarked on a trip to Israel in an effort to tackle what he deems to be misrepresentations about the Jewish state.

 The Briton met with the Israeli press and the country’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, on Sunday. In the meeting, Hafeez said that “much of the hatred and intolerance of Israel stems from ignorance,” the Israel-based Ynet news reported.

 “I’ve always said that (the problem) with Israeli advocacy (is that) we’re not getting the truth out there,” he said. “(…) People don’t know the facts. I would say to anybody, come to Israel. See the rights that Muslims have,” he added.

 Hafeez recalled his father praising Adolf Hitler, lamenting only the Nazi tyrant’s failure to kill even more Jews during World War II. “It’s so key that we get the facts out there,” he said. “We’re sitting here in the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, where there are no restrictions on what people can believe. People can vote for their leaders. People of all colors, all races, all backgrounds co-exist here, and people just don’t know,” Hafeez said.

 “It’s a beautiful thing, Israel is truly a nation of all its citizens,” he added. In the meeting, the Briton also relayed what he deems to be the truth about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

 “A Palestinian state never existed,” Hafeez said. “It’s a fact and people don’t know it.”

 He particularly criticized media bias in the United Kingdom, saying that Israel can “do no right in the UK press.”

 “Israel is always wrong and everything has a very negative slant. “It has become very black and white, where the Palestinians are right, and Israel is wrong… It is helping to poison people towards Israel because they are not being told the truth of the conflict. I think there is a case where if you tell a lie enough times, people accept it as being true,” he said.

 Similarly on Sunday, a French imam spoke out and denounced “a hatred of Jews,” in an interview with Haaretz.

 Hassen Chalghoumi, 40, a well-known Muslim leader in France and a prominent voice calling for intra-religious dialogue, has been dubbed the “Imam of the Jews” by several international media outlets.

 In 2006, Chalghoumi publicly acknowledged the horrors of the Holocaust and reached out to Jews in France − things that were unheard of for a Muslim cleric at the time, Der Spiegel reported.

 But according to the report in 2010, Chalghoumi’s “enemies would” gather in front of the mosque every Friday, where on one occasion they staged a rally where they raged against Chalghoumi and Zionism. (Written by Eman El-Shenawi)

part 1