A PALESTINIAN ACTIVIST CRITICIZES HOFFMAN'S ESSAY ON CIVIL WAR WAR & CRYPTOCRACY IN PALESTINE
The Palestinian activist Maisoon ("My Truth") recently wrote to critique this writer's essay, "Civil War in Palestine: Playing into the Hands of the Cryptocracy" available at:
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2007/06/civil-war-in-palestine-playing-into.html
I reply to his main points below, after which follows the complete text of his letter.
On Jun 24, 2007, at 18:17, My truth wrote:
It is very disingenuous of you to imply that Palestinians only seek violence to achieve their aim, implying that you Western Christians are as white as snow and always achieved your aims via 'peaceful non violent means
HOFFMAN REPLIES:
You overstate your case and harm it with your anger and wild accusations. I have never implied any such thing about western civilization, as you must know as a regular reader of my columns. In my essay on Palestine I cited 600,000 deaths in America's own civil war ("War Between the States"). My position is that al-Qaeda and the other western intelligence fronts operating as "Islamic resistance" learned to attack civilian populations based on the western example at Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki--an attempted genocide whose rationale is still celebrated today by the UN, the European Union, Canada, Australia and the US.
On Jun 24, 2007, at 18:17, My truth wrote:
and you are VERY wrong in implying that American Jews are ALL peace loving, law abiding, civilised, educated Beings,
HOFFMAN REPLIES:
Again, your anger is talking here since I never implied this. What I observe concerns what the mass of Americans see: mostly peaceable Judiacs pursuing professions in the United States while Arabs are awash in bombings, rocketing and attacks on their own holy places and now, in Gaza, Hamas uses Israeli army tactics in attacking hospitals, shooting patients and physicians and killing Palestinian civilians. You are so consumed with your righteous anger that you don't pause long enough to observe nuances and calculate their effect.
The mindset of the Palestinian resistance is apocalyptic violence that has brought the Palestinian masses nothing but catastrophe. You will never be free until you take responsibility for your plight. The professional victim blames everything on the oppressor and stays forever a victim. Get yourself out of victim mode by taking responsibility for the terrible condition of the people in Palestine. The Israelis, perpetrators of mass murder on a scale no Palestinian has ever employed, are without doubt the main culprits, and the scope of their war crimes must not be whitewashed or minimized. The Zionists have perpetrated nothing less than a holocaust against the Palestinians. But Palestinian wild men with their epidemic of violence against civilians share at least some of the responsibility. Before you erupt into another volcanic paroxysm of rage, hear me out: the Israeli government like the US government, loves violence and terrorism and thrives on it.
The Kabbalistic dialectic is based on the thesis of Israeli racial-religious supremacy and mass murder; it requires an antithesis of Palestinian violence against civilians; in order to create the synthesis that results in Israeli immunity, hegemony and victory time and again. Can you learn from this, or does your hatred and anger forever bond you to the components of the Kabbalistic mind-control machine, as a mere puppet in their stagecraft?
On Jun 24, 2007, at 18:17, My truth wrote:
Why don't you discuss how these very same law abiding Jews dominate every aspect of life from education, mind controlling our children with their usual Jewish propaganda and indoctrination, to controlling your military, occupying your Government, blackmailing, buying and bribing most if not all your Senators/Congressmen,Judiciary, infiltrating FBI and CIA Departments that they now control, feeding fabricated intelligence to your dumb blind and ignorant sheeple
HOFFMAN REPLIES:
Where have you been? I have been exposing these Zionist activities for 25 years. I am the co-author of a book entitled "The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians." None of the facts you cite--and they are indeed facts-- modifies in any way the stupid, self-destructive anger and violence of the Palestinian leadership who insanely keep doing the same things--bombings and shootings--and expecting a different result. You cannot justify your poor strategy by citing the wickedness of your enemy. You can't keep running a suicidal operation and justify it on the basis of righteous anger. Anger is almost always the sign of a weak and foolish person.
As I asked in my essay, where are the Palestinians who understand Israeli chess and Kabbalistic ruses and ploys?. You keep falling for them and whatever disaster you bring down on the heads of your people you justify with a rant against "evil-racist-Talmudic-propagandizing-murderous-Israelis." Ranting and raving, even when the substance of the rant is factual, does nothing to correct Palestinian strategy.
The Palestinians, formerly a wise, practical and sophisticated people, have been processed by their Kabbalist opponents, into adopting the completely alien Masada-complex of the Judaics themselves. If you could take a break from your anger and self-righteousness you might see this, and then begin to change and improve the lives of your people with clever and wise commitments to strictly non-violent protest. As a friend I tell you, violence will get the Palestinians nothing but more defeat and more disaster! Is that what you crave? If not, then change!
***
Here is the complete letter to Hoffman from Palestinian activist "Maisoon" (hope4m@btinternet.com)
You know Mike I have followed your work for quite a few years and amazed at your knowledge of the scriptures etc but having read this piece and as a Palestinian, frankly I find the article somewhat ignorant and offensive to Palestinians.
Our cause is greater than that ever encountered by the French Resistance or any other European Resistance movement.
Our Resistance to Jewish Occupation has lasted much much longer and is not only a territorial occupation but also a religious assault on Islam and its people throughout not only the Middle East but also throughout Europe/West where there is a frightening rise of Islam bashing, demeaning and demonising all things Muslim and Arab.
contrary to what you stated Palestinians did resort to other means to gain their freedoms etc, tried the diplomatic peaceful route and it got them absolutely nowhere with the Jews gaining more and more of their country, forcing Palestinians to make yet even more concessions and compromises, losing what once was 100% of their nation, now down to a shocking and meagre figure of 2%!! They, namely Hamas, took the democratic route, under the auspices and witness of respected Western observers and the elections were 'clean' which is more than one can say about your own country's Bush dictatorship and election fraud. Hamas won fairly and squarely, gaining a majority vote but what did they get, vilification, verbal attacks, cruel sanctions and the freezing of their money/taxes!! and why, because Hamas, unlike the CIA asset Dahlan and the other USSraeli puppet President, Abbas, refuses to sell its soul to the Devil and its disciples, not willing to compromise on its moral principles and national love and patriotism for Palestine!!
Mr Campbell is correct in his analysis that there is no Civil war but is rightly stated a it's a Jewish war of extermination of Palestinians, authorized by American Zionists, conducted by Israeli Jews.".
The people of Palestine voted for Hamas as the P.A under Abbas and Dhalan were seen as traitors to the Palestinian Nation, full of nepotism, double dealings with Israelis, bulging their private bank balances at the tragic expense of their own brothers and sisters under occupation.
How dare you criticise Palestinian justifiable USE of retaliation against Occupation?? Europe NEVER sat back and allowed Nazi Germany to ride rough shot over their nations and take permanent occupation and control- 'patriotic Europeans fought hard and long, using 'VIOLENCE" to achieve their goal, namely freeing their countries form German domination!! At least the Allies and their Resistance soldiers had well constructed Armies to work with them- Palestinians HAVE NO ONE and NO Army, betrayed by their sell out traitor Arab ZIONIST Puppet Leaders who have never lifted a finger to help them regain control of the third largest important Muslim centre!!
American Society, like the rest of White Western Europe is inherently a RACIST Society that has NEVER understood or respected those Societies that are 'different' to their culture etc.. Although they are Jews, European Israeli Jews share the SAME WESTERN CULTURE as Americans/Europeans unlike Islamic Arabs/Muslims whose culture is very different despite the fact that Islam, unlike Judaism, REVERES JESUS CHRIST and the other of God's various Prophets.
It is very disingenuous of you to imply that Palestinians only seek violence to achieve their aim, implying that you Western Christians are as white as snow and always achieved your aims via 'peaceful non violent means which I know for a fact YOU KNOW is utterly FALSE as Christianity, like the JEWS, has a very VIOLENT history. using brutal force that surpasses anything Palestinians have been forced to use to free their nation and people from Israeli bondage and barbarity!
and you are VERY wrong in implying that American Jews are ALL peace loving, law abiding, civilised, educated Beings, contributing so much to American Society and all that garbage!!
Why don't you discuss the Pornographic Industry and the seedy Gay Movement RUN, controlled and encouraged By these very same American Jews who are also deeply involved in money laundering, Drug trafficking, ArmsTrafficking, Human Trafficking, Election Rigging, Corporate Fraud, Secret Private Armies (like those Israeli inspired Blackwater Mercenary Armies).
Why don't you discuss how these very same law abiding Jews dominate every aspect of life from education, mind controlling our children with their usual Jewish propaganda and indoctrination, to controlling your military, occupying your Government, blackmailing, buying and bribing most if not all your Senators/Congressmen,Judiciary, infiltrating FBI and CIA Departments that they now control,feeding fabricated intelligence to your dumb blind and ignorant sheeple public, which as a consequence has cost the innocent lives of millions of people in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, not to mention the expendable Gentile American soldiers, sent to slaughter for the Judaic Kabbala Cult and their NWO ideology.
You in one breath attack what the Judaics are doing but then have the nerve to imply that Palestinians have no RIGHT or RECOURSE to retaliate or respond to the talmudic holocaust of their people, their loved ones who are dying minute by minute, day in, day out, while the sanctimonious Christian 'peace loving West sits back and watches the bloody Genocide, torture, humiliation, degradation, poverty, incarceration, enslavement, bull dozing, precision bombing with American made and tax payers Weapons of MASSIVE DESTRUCTION given free to the Israeli Jews. A recent report stated that practically every single Palestinian, especially in Gaza, has lost one or more loved ones, murdered by the so called only democratic nation in the Middle East where ironically ALL the ARAB LEADERS were SPECIALLY SELECTED and PLANTED by the Western Colonialists to do their very bidding, encouraging them to keep their citizens down trodden and controlled!!
It is the WEST that GAVE US our Corrupt Leaders who are ruling OUR Nations FOR THE KABBALA ZIONIST WEST.
It is the WEST that CREATED ISRAEL in 1948!!
It is the WEST and its ignorant people that FUND and give moral 'religious' biblical support to the PHONEY JEWISH State of Israel
It is ISRAEL, not the USA, that owns and CONTROLS THE USA as was so vividly and brazenly stated by the Butcher of Beirut, Sharon.
It is ISRAEL that gives the mind controlled West its orders and propaganda Tools and its marching orders!!
It is ISRAEL that is a NUCLEAR STATE
It is ISRAEL that possesses and has used WMDS and MINI NUKES and other diabolical Chemical and Biological Weapons on Arabs - Palestine, Iraq,Lebanon, Syria, Egypt!!
It is ISRAEL that has its NUCLEAR WARHEADS TARGETED at every single European Capital City, according to a Military Strategy Israeli professor
It is ISRAEL, not Palestine that has an ARMY both funded and armed thanks to American/European Zionist Jewry
It is ISRAEL , NOT Palestinians carrying out a MASS HOLOCAUST of Palestinians
it is ISRAEL that violates International Law, the Geneva Convention and
It is ISRAEL that has NEVER complied with ANY UNITED NATIONS RESOLUTIONS, which total well over 70 to date!!
It is ISRAEL that committed the first TERRORIST attack an assassinates European officials
It is ISRAEL that carried out 9/11, 7/7 London Bombing, Madrid Bombing,, USS Liberty, the 1967 Arab Israeli war and all the other Arab Israeli Conflicts
It is ISRAEL COVERTLY involved in Iraq, training and Funding the troublesome Kurds, the Rebels in Darfur and Somalia which Israel incites
It is ISRAEL tha is the Apartheid Racist State, an Apartheid and Racism far worse than anything Black africa endured, according to Desmond Tutu!!
It is ISRAEL carrying out secret Eugenics projects, creating biological weapons that they hope will target "Arab genes'
It is Palestine that is suffering
Palestinians have no army, no military etc.... their country/infrastructure severely divided, many of their democratically Elected officials imprisoned and regularly humiliated and tortured.
It is Palestinian Christians and Muslims being ethnically cleansed, slowly holocausted, not the Israelis!!
It is Palestine that is dying every minute.
It is Palestinian children being used as target practice by bored and drug induced and indoctrinated mind controlled racist IDF soldiers
and yet here you are attacking Palestinians for their RIGHT to seek armed struggle, as pathetic as it is, against the Devil's Demons
and Hamas are the only group we have left who are unwilling to SELL their Peoples' SOULS to Satan and his Disciples!
It is Palestinians who are living in one huge GULAG Concentration Camp, surrounded by a formidable American funded IDF Military, unable to move freely from street to street, village to village, country to country, with no access to their schools, their universities, hospitals, civic centres, their roads, their water, their land, their employment, their livelihoods, evenf rom their own relatives, divided by a monstrous 18m STONE WALL to SEGREGATE the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
I for one as a Palestinian already know that we do not HAVE any Arab Allies within our corrupt and bought Government Leaders and our struggle is going to be tragically difficult and heart breaking. I for one will support Hamas as long as it continues to honour the principles and RIGHTS of the Palestinian People.
I will continue to support these people who fight to rid our nation of Traitors within, shameful to our people, and rid our nation of our Oppressors and Colonial racist Occupiers, be they American, British, French German, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Spanish European Zionist 'Jewish' Judeo Converts!
and the only realistic CLASH of CIVILISATIONS will one day be that of the Moral GENTILE WORLD against Colonialist War mongering Avaricious ambitiousTalmudic Kabbala Judeo Christian/Illuminati Zionist Frremasons/Skull and Bones/Knights Templar Cults etc.... It is true Christianity and Islam versus the usurped Talmudic Zionist Jewry recognise the Evil where it truly is and recognise the RIGHT of Palestinians/Muslims fighting this Evil and Oppression that violently and mercilessly enslaves their body mind and soul!!
you also imply that Islam is somehow taking over Europe. Ask yourself this, why are so many Europeans converting through their own voluntary decisions, to Islam?? What is it that is making them take such a dramatic change in their beliefs?? What has Jewish influence done to harm Christianity so much in European West?? Christianity started in the ARAB CANAANITE Middle EAST, NOT in EUROPE!!! The First Christian converts were in fact CANAANITES/ASSYRIANS, not Romans, not British, French, Germans, Dutch or Americans etc...
Islam is spreading as it is the only faith left that truly believes and defends God, His Message to Mankind through the teachings of all the revered Prophets God sent to the Human Family. it is the only faith left that refuses to contaminate or demean the value of its religion and strong belief in the one and only God and Creator of our Diverse Universe and incorporates the moral and ethicalo principles of all the other true faiths that preceded it via God's Messengers!!
I too grow anxious for Palestine but not for the wrong reasons you state but because I am filled with dread that the world Community in all its double standards, hypocrisy, ineptitude, weakness, blindness and ignorance, will sit back and allow World Jewry via Israel to terminate the Palestinians and their Nation, shedding their blood, sacrificing them to the Jewish Talmudic holocaust dogma to revive their mythical Temple and its Pagan UNGodly Worship
I stand by Palestine, Mike, and all the means its people have to fight their Evil Oppressors and Jailors. Evil will never prevail and we Palestinians will make sure it does not dwell in OUR HOLY HOMELAND.
--Maisoon
hope4m@btinternet.com
Monday, June 25, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Civil War in Palestine: Playing into the hands of the Cryptocracy
by Michael A. Hoffman II
For several years now this writer has felt a growing anxiety over the Palestinian penchant for violent resistance to Israeli occupation.
The Israelis brutalize and murder the Palestinians and the Palestinians reply with gunfire, bombs and homemade rockets. True, according to the West's own ethos concerning resistance to occupation on the part of the French and the partisans during World War II, such resistance is justified. By the standard of the anti-colonial struggle that gave rise to many of the Third World's new nations during the 20th century, any subjugated people have the right to resort to arms to gain their freedom and their land.
But all of those theories and models fail when applied to Palestine. The French resistance was backed by the UK, the US and the USSR. The partisans of Eastern Europe were mostly Soviet-backed irregulars. Anti-colonial fighters in South Africa and Rhodesia ("Zimbabwe") were lionized and aided financially and militarily by western powers. Zimbabwe's armed resistance was later blessed by none other than Pope John Paul II. Robert Mugabe was hailed as an ideal leader by the same pope. In South Africa, the Lithuanian-Judaic Communist Joe Slovo led the ANC bombing campaign against South Africa's soldiers and civilians. None of Slovo's atrocities lessened western support for the anti-apartheid guerillas, who eventually triumphed as the result of a nearly air-tight worldwide economic boycott of the South African government.
None of this applies to Palestine. The Palestinians have plenty of sympathy from their Arab brothers, but little else. Fouad Ajami writes, "For their part, the Arab states have only compounded the Palestinian misery. The Arab cavalry was always on the way, the Arab treasure was always a day away, and there was thus no need for the Palestinians to pay tribute to necessity... For decades, Arab society granted the Palestinians everything and nothing at the same time. The Arab states built worlds of their own, had their own priorities, dreaded and loathed the Palestinians as outsiders and agitators, but left them to the illusion that Palestine was an all-consuming Arab concern. Now the Palestinians should know better. The center of Arab politics has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, a great political windfall has come to the lands of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, vast new wealth due to the recent rises in oil prices, while misery overwhelms the Palestinians. No Arabs wait for Palestine anymore; they have left the Palestinians to the ruin of their own history." (NY Times, June 19). Ajami has been terribly wrong in some of his past commentaries; that should not blind us to the truths he has written here.
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia long ago cut a clandestine deal with the Israelis to cooperate with Zionist colonialism while trying to modify and soften the worst aspects of it. They are like beggars asking for crumbs from the Israeli table, a sight all the more disgusting and dishonorable in that the Saudis control the greatest material prize in modern history, the black gold that is oil, but they are too incompetent and sybaritic to do anything meaningful with it, such as buying U.S. newspapers and television stations through Arab-American proxies.
Palestinians die like flies from malnutrition, inadequate health care, Israeli bombs and bullets, and now the bullets of their own men; and the Gulf state sheikdoms revel in luxury as never before. It is difficult to expect much from such people, such as for example, the ability to overcome Israeli suzerainty in our lifetime. Patently, they have accommodated themselves to it - when they are not being out-fought and checkmated by a Kabbalistic genius with no counterpart in Arabia.
Palestinian populists and patriots forever turn to their old reliable standby: guns and rockets. The supremacist Israelis respond however they like -- massacres, war crimes, invasions, assassination. A handful of human rights groups pay attention, protest and document it. Some British academics announce a boycott of Israeli academics and are almost shouted off the map of the UK. The European Union is now openly cooperating with Israeli colonialism, as is the new head of the United Nations.
But the Palestinians keep shooting, not only losing friends and moral capital but giving the Israelis the excuse they need to build higher apartheid walls, more checkpoints and settlements.
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The Palestinians keep shooting and bombing Israeli soldiers and civilians, and now even each other and their own women and children, and nothing changes. It only gets worse.
"Raji Sourani, 53, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights...characterized the factional fighting that swept Gaza as 'sad, bad, bloody, and extremely bitter.' His organization placed the final death toll at 146 Palestinians, 36 of them civilians, including five children and eight women....Sourani said three fighters were shot dead at point-blank range while recovering from wounds in Gaza's hospitals. Many other summary executions happened in the streets, he said, implicating both Hamas and Fatah gunmen....Hobbling into the office on crutches, Ismail Sadr, a 28-year-old emergency room doctor, recounted how he was shot in the foot by a Hamas gunman who had moved with about a dozen others into an operating room in the northern city of Beit Hanoun in search of a wounded Fatah fighter. 'Later, we found this other patient dead in his bed from bullet wounds he didn't arrive with,' Sadr said...he could not get medical treatment for himself for several hours while Hamas gunmen surrounded Shifa Hospital." (Washington Post, June 20).
These are the tactics for which we have condemned the Israelis who have proved to be efficient teachers of the Palestinians, who have deteriorated psychologically after decades of occupation, malnutrition, severe overcrowding and Israeli mass murder.
In the Arab honor code and the Arab concept of manhood, violent retribution for attacks and insults is mandatory. The fact is, until they employ Quaker, Mennonite and Peter Maurin's Catholic Worker tactics against the Israelis, they are going to continue to lose their land, their quality of life and their humanity. If the reader scoffs, "That's pacifism," consider this: in the Kabbalistic chess game, Palestinian non-violence is the only thing the Judaic conspirators fear.
Other than distant Venezuela, the only significant Palestinian ally is Iran, and the dirty little Arab secret of anti-Iranian racism threatens to sabotage even that alliance. Iranians are privately derided as "Persians" and there are plenty of Arab conspiracy theories about Iranians serving as American proxies. I kid you not. It seems they prefer the fat oil merchants of their own race who function as the trained seals of Kabbalistic Zionism.
It's not difficult to forecast the future of Palestine. The Palestinians will continue to imagine they have Arab allies and some kind of "power," even as they periodically plead for assistance from the "international community" by which they mean the UN and the European Union. As the pro-Zionist Western media minimizes coverage of Israeli war crimes and maximizes coverage of Palestinian violence, the face of the Palestinians will become indistinguishable from the face of al-Qaeda in the western mind. This has already happened.
As they are made to bear ever more humiliation and oppression not only from Israelis but also from their own factions, the Palestinians will become ever more brutalized and radicalized, and the appeal of Salafist Islamic fundamentalism, (itself a creature of the western intelligence agencies whose Shin Bet had a hand in the rise of Hamas and who have a CIA asset in Fatah's Mohammed Dahlan), will grow exponentially.
The Palestinians, like the Arabs generally, from the "street" to the palaces, are following the Kabbalistic script to the letter. In the crucible of alchemical transformation, the once mostly secular, urbane and peace-loving Palestinians are becoming hateful religious fanatics to rival the hate-filled fanatic-rabbis of the Israeli settlements.
In that same crucible, the Muslims who, for a thousand years observed a code of non-violence toward civilians that shamed the West and made Saladin a figure of admiration throughout the world, have descended to the level of Ishmael, a wild man whose hand is against every man's and every man's against his.
Islam will have real power in Europe in fifteen or twenty years because that continent full of self-exterminating hedonists is going to contracept itself out of existence and Pope Benedict XVI, who privately shields and harbors child molester-facilitators like Bernard Law, Roger Mahoney and William S. Skylstad, does not have much credibility preaching "family values" to Europe's boys-and-girls-gone-wild. The Muslims will gain on Europe demographically and conquer by that means.
In the U.S. it's a different story however, with resurgent Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic traditionalists having large families. The Arabs and Muslims are losing support every day in the U.S., even among anti-Zionist Christians who are appalled by what's been transpiring in Iraq and now Gaza. Imagine what would have happened to the moral capital of the the black people of the American South during segregation, had they responded to Bull Connor's dogs and fire hoses with machine guns and rockets? Jim Crow would still be ruling the South.
Americans of all shades of opinion are becoming disgusted and turned off by the unbridled carnage Arabs are willing to visit on their brethren and each other's holy places and while that's hypocritical, considering that 600,000 Americans slaughtered each other in a War Between the States that to this day is celebrated as Mr. Lincoln's finest hour, our own hypocrisy cannot overcome the fact that the Arab character is increasingly viewed, even by those Americans with no sympathy for Zionism, as deeply tainted by violence.
Americans value law and order and the prospect of sharing our country with people who will bomb their own mosques in Iraq and slay their own children in Gaza is not an appealing prospect. Meanwhile the Judaics we know in our towns and cities play violin in the local orchestra, teach literature in the local schools, serve as our doctors and dentists in hospitals and clinics and are seldom involved in assaults or street crime. In other words, however false the stereotype, the image of Judaic = peace and order, Arab = bloodlust and anarchy, is gaining throughout the West and the fault is not solely that of the biased Zionist media.
The civil war in Iraq and the spectacle of Hamas running amok in Gaza, have been an Arab/Muslim public relations disaster. Consider this recent headline: "Israel Lets Food and Medicine Enter Gaza to Avert Crisis." The vile neo-Nazi Israeli regime is being made to look good by suicidal Arabs whose chief ambition seems to be the same as that of the settler rabbis: to light a fuse of war that will never stop burning. This fits the neo-con Bush/Cheney "clash of civilizations" scenario like a glove.
Is there an Arab Gandhi or Dorothy Day on the horizon? If not, then God help us all.
Copyright ©2007 RevisionistHistory.org
HOFFMAN will be speaking about Judaism and Kabbalism in San Jose, California on July 5. Details are here:
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2007/06/hoffman-speaking-about-judaism-in.html
***
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***
For several years now this writer has felt a growing anxiety over the Palestinian penchant for violent resistance to Israeli occupation.
The Israelis brutalize and murder the Palestinians and the Palestinians reply with gunfire, bombs and homemade rockets. True, according to the West's own ethos concerning resistance to occupation on the part of the French and the partisans during World War II, such resistance is justified. By the standard of the anti-colonial struggle that gave rise to many of the Third World's new nations during the 20th century, any subjugated people have the right to resort to arms to gain their freedom and their land.
But all of those theories and models fail when applied to Palestine. The French resistance was backed by the UK, the US and the USSR. The partisans of Eastern Europe were mostly Soviet-backed irregulars. Anti-colonial fighters in South Africa and Rhodesia ("Zimbabwe") were lionized and aided financially and militarily by western powers. Zimbabwe's armed resistance was later blessed by none other than Pope John Paul II. Robert Mugabe was hailed as an ideal leader by the same pope. In South Africa, the Lithuanian-Judaic Communist Joe Slovo led the ANC bombing campaign against South Africa's soldiers and civilians. None of Slovo's atrocities lessened western support for the anti-apartheid guerillas, who eventually triumphed as the result of a nearly air-tight worldwide economic boycott of the South African government.
None of this applies to Palestine. The Palestinians have plenty of sympathy from their Arab brothers, but little else. Fouad Ajami writes, "For their part, the Arab states have only compounded the Palestinian misery. The Arab cavalry was always on the way, the Arab treasure was always a day away, and there was thus no need for the Palestinians to pay tribute to necessity... For decades, Arab society granted the Palestinians everything and nothing at the same time. The Arab states built worlds of their own, had their own priorities, dreaded and loathed the Palestinians as outsiders and agitators, but left them to the illusion that Palestine was an all-consuming Arab concern. Now the Palestinians should know better. The center of Arab politics has shifted from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, a great political windfall has come to the lands of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, vast new wealth due to the recent rises in oil prices, while misery overwhelms the Palestinians. No Arabs wait for Palestine anymore; they have left the Palestinians to the ruin of their own history." (NY Times, June 19). Ajami has been terribly wrong in some of his past commentaries; that should not blind us to the truths he has written here.
Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia long ago cut a clandestine deal with the Israelis to cooperate with Zionist colonialism while trying to modify and soften the worst aspects of it. They are like beggars asking for crumbs from the Israeli table, a sight all the more disgusting and dishonorable in that the Saudis control the greatest material prize in modern history, the black gold that is oil, but they are too incompetent and sybaritic to do anything meaningful with it, such as buying U.S. newspapers and television stations through Arab-American proxies.
Palestinians die like flies from malnutrition, inadequate health care, Israeli bombs and bullets, and now the bullets of their own men; and the Gulf state sheikdoms revel in luxury as never before. It is difficult to expect much from such people, such as for example, the ability to overcome Israeli suzerainty in our lifetime. Patently, they have accommodated themselves to it - when they are not being out-fought and checkmated by a Kabbalistic genius with no counterpart in Arabia.
Palestinian populists and patriots forever turn to their old reliable standby: guns and rockets. The supremacist Israelis respond however they like -- massacres, war crimes, invasions, assassination. A handful of human rights groups pay attention, protest and document it. Some British academics announce a boycott of Israeli academics and are almost shouted off the map of the UK. The European Union is now openly cooperating with Israeli colonialism, as is the new head of the United Nations.
But the Palestinians keep shooting, not only losing friends and moral capital but giving the Israelis the excuse they need to build higher apartheid walls, more checkpoints and settlements.
A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The Palestinians keep shooting and bombing Israeli soldiers and civilians, and now even each other and their own women and children, and nothing changes. It only gets worse.
"Raji Sourani, 53, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights...characterized the factional fighting that swept Gaza as 'sad, bad, bloody, and extremely bitter.' His organization placed the final death toll at 146 Palestinians, 36 of them civilians, including five children and eight women....Sourani said three fighters were shot dead at point-blank range while recovering from wounds in Gaza's hospitals. Many other summary executions happened in the streets, he said, implicating both Hamas and Fatah gunmen....Hobbling into the office on crutches, Ismail Sadr, a 28-year-old emergency room doctor, recounted how he was shot in the foot by a Hamas gunman who had moved with about a dozen others into an operating room in the northern city of Beit Hanoun in search of a wounded Fatah fighter. 'Later, we found this other patient dead in his bed from bullet wounds he didn't arrive with,' Sadr said...he could not get medical treatment for himself for several hours while Hamas gunmen surrounded Shifa Hospital." (Washington Post, June 20).
These are the tactics for which we have condemned the Israelis who have proved to be efficient teachers of the Palestinians, who have deteriorated psychologically after decades of occupation, malnutrition, severe overcrowding and Israeli mass murder.
In the Arab honor code and the Arab concept of manhood, violent retribution for attacks and insults is mandatory. The fact is, until they employ Quaker, Mennonite and Peter Maurin's Catholic Worker tactics against the Israelis, they are going to continue to lose their land, their quality of life and their humanity. If the reader scoffs, "That's pacifism," consider this: in the Kabbalistic chess game, Palestinian non-violence is the only thing the Judaic conspirators fear.
Other than distant Venezuela, the only significant Palestinian ally is Iran, and the dirty little Arab secret of anti-Iranian racism threatens to sabotage even that alliance. Iranians are privately derided as "Persians" and there are plenty of Arab conspiracy theories about Iranians serving as American proxies. I kid you not. It seems they prefer the fat oil merchants of their own race who function as the trained seals of Kabbalistic Zionism.
It's not difficult to forecast the future of Palestine. The Palestinians will continue to imagine they have Arab allies and some kind of "power," even as they periodically plead for assistance from the "international community" by which they mean the UN and the European Union. As the pro-Zionist Western media minimizes coverage of Israeli war crimes and maximizes coverage of Palestinian violence, the face of the Palestinians will become indistinguishable from the face of al-Qaeda in the western mind. This has already happened.
As they are made to bear ever more humiliation and oppression not only from Israelis but also from their own factions, the Palestinians will become ever more brutalized and radicalized, and the appeal of Salafist Islamic fundamentalism, (itself a creature of the western intelligence agencies whose Shin Bet had a hand in the rise of Hamas and who have a CIA asset in Fatah's Mohammed Dahlan), will grow exponentially.
The Palestinians, like the Arabs generally, from the "street" to the palaces, are following the Kabbalistic script to the letter. In the crucible of alchemical transformation, the once mostly secular, urbane and peace-loving Palestinians are becoming hateful religious fanatics to rival the hate-filled fanatic-rabbis of the Israeli settlements.
In that same crucible, the Muslims who, for a thousand years observed a code of non-violence toward civilians that shamed the West and made Saladin a figure of admiration throughout the world, have descended to the level of Ishmael, a wild man whose hand is against every man's and every man's against his.
Islam will have real power in Europe in fifteen or twenty years because that continent full of self-exterminating hedonists is going to contracept itself out of existence and Pope Benedict XVI, who privately shields and harbors child molester-facilitators like Bernard Law, Roger Mahoney and William S. Skylstad, does not have much credibility preaching "family values" to Europe's boys-and-girls-gone-wild. The Muslims will gain on Europe demographically and conquer by that means.
In the U.S. it's a different story however, with resurgent Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic traditionalists having large families. The Arabs and Muslims are losing support every day in the U.S., even among anti-Zionist Christians who are appalled by what's been transpiring in Iraq and now Gaza. Imagine what would have happened to the moral capital of the the black people of the American South during segregation, had they responded to Bull Connor's dogs and fire hoses with machine guns and rockets? Jim Crow would still be ruling the South.
Americans of all shades of opinion are becoming disgusted and turned off by the unbridled carnage Arabs are willing to visit on their brethren and each other's holy places and while that's hypocritical, considering that 600,000 Americans slaughtered each other in a War Between the States that to this day is celebrated as Mr. Lincoln's finest hour, our own hypocrisy cannot overcome the fact that the Arab character is increasingly viewed, even by those Americans with no sympathy for Zionism, as deeply tainted by violence.
Americans value law and order and the prospect of sharing our country with people who will bomb their own mosques in Iraq and slay their own children in Gaza is not an appealing prospect. Meanwhile the Judaics we know in our towns and cities play violin in the local orchestra, teach literature in the local schools, serve as our doctors and dentists in hospitals and clinics and are seldom involved in assaults or street crime. In other words, however false the stereotype, the image of Judaic = peace and order, Arab = bloodlust and anarchy, is gaining throughout the West and the fault is not solely that of the biased Zionist media.
The civil war in Iraq and the spectacle of Hamas running amok in Gaza, have been an Arab/Muslim public relations disaster. Consider this recent headline: "Israel Lets Food and Medicine Enter Gaza to Avert Crisis." The vile neo-Nazi Israeli regime is being made to look good by suicidal Arabs whose chief ambition seems to be the same as that of the settler rabbis: to light a fuse of war that will never stop burning. This fits the neo-con Bush/Cheney "clash of civilizations" scenario like a glove.
Is there an Arab Gandhi or Dorothy Day on the horizon? If not, then God help us all.
Copyright ©2007 RevisionistHistory.org
HOFFMAN will be speaking about Judaism and Kabbalism in San Jose, California on July 5. Details are here:
http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2007/06/hoffman-speaking-about-judaism-in.html
***
To have Mr. Hoffman's essays and columns e-mailed to you free-of-charge or obligation, send an e-mail to: HoffmanWire-subscribe@topica.com When you receive Topica's e-mail in response to your subscription request, simply click on your reply button; that's all there is to it. You need not visit Topica's website in order to subscribe. You may easily unsubscribe, hassle-free, at any time.
***
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Hoffman Speaking about Judaism in California July 5
Michael A. Hoffman II, author of "Judaism's Strange Gods," will be speaking on Judaism at the "Good Information Advocates" Conference in San Jose, California.
The location is the Ramada Limited, 455 South Second Street, San Jose 95113.
The date is July 5. Michael will be present at the conference for the late afternoon and evening of July 4 and most of July 5. This is a great opportunity to spend some quality time meeting and discussing issues and strategy with Michael prior to his speech.
He is giving the keynote address at 7:30 pm on Thursday, July 5.
This is also an opportunity to meet and hear the legendary Ingrid Rimland Zundel, who will also be speaking on Thursday.
For more information and the schedule of events visit online:
http://www.goodinformation.org/
Or telephone: Good Information Advocates
(559) 298-5900. Ask for "Good Information"
Fax: (559) 322-2425
E-mail: info@goodinformation.org
See you there!
***
The location is the Ramada Limited, 455 South Second Street, San Jose 95113.
The date is July 5. Michael will be present at the conference for the late afternoon and evening of July 4 and most of July 5. This is a great opportunity to spend some quality time meeting and discussing issues and strategy with Michael prior to his speech.
He is giving the keynote address at 7:30 pm on Thursday, July 5.
This is also an opportunity to meet and hear the legendary Ingrid Rimland Zundel, who will also be speaking on Thursday.
For more information and the schedule of events visit online:
http://www.goodinformation.org/
Or telephone: Good Information Advocates
(559) 298-5900. Ask for "Good Information"
Fax: (559) 322-2425
E-mail: info@goodinformation.org
See you there!
***
Saturday, June 16, 2007
"Ron Paul is Huge on the Web"
An Also-Ran in the GOP Polls, Ron Paul is Huge on the Web
The Washington Post
Saturday June 16, 2007 | Front page A1
On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube."
Then comes "Ron Paul."
The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos," "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful -- even as mainstream political pundits have written him off.
Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.
"To tell you the truth, I hadn't heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them," confessed Paul, 71, who said that he's raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. "I tell you I've never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I'm doing is speaking my mind."
That means saying again and again that the Republican Party, especially when it comes to government spending and foreign policy, is in "shambles."
But while many Democrats have welcomed the young and fresh-faced Obama, who's trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in most public opinion polls, Paul is barely making a dent in the Republican polls.
Republican strategists point out that libertarians, who make up a small but vocal portion of the Republican base, intrinsically gravitate toward the Web's anything-goes, leave-me-alone nature. They also say that his Web presence proves that the Internet can be a great equalizer in the race, giving a much-needed boost to a fringe candidate with little money and only a shadow of the campaign staffs marshaled by Romney, McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
An obstetrician and gynecologist, Paul is known as "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives. No to big government. No to the Internal Revenue Service. No to the federal ban on same-sex marriage.
"I'm for the individual," Paul said. "I'm not for the government."
If he had his way, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education, among other agencies, would not exist. In his view, the USA Patriot Act, which allows the government to search personal data, including private Internet use, is unconstitutional, and trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement are a threat to American independence.
But perhaps what most notably separates Paul from the crowded Republican field, headed by what former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III calls "Rudy McRomney," is his stance on the Iraq war. He's been against it from the very beginning.
After the second Republican presidential debate last month, when Paul implied that American foreign policy has contributed to anti-Americanism in the Middle East -- "They attack us because we're over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," Paul said -- he was attacked by Giuliani, and conservatives such as Saul Anuzis were livid.
Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan GOP, threatened to circulate a petition to bar Paul from future Republican presidential debates. Though the petition never materialized, Anuzis's BlackBerry was flooded with e-mails and his office was inundated with calls for several days. "It was a distraction, no doubt," he said.
The culprits: Paul's growing number of supporters, some of whom posted Anuzis's e-mail address and office phone number on their blogs.
"At first I was skeptical of his increasing online presence, thinking that it's probably just a small cadre of dedicated Ron Paul fans," said Matt Lewis, a blogger and director of operations at Townhall, a popular conservative site. "But if you think about it, the number one issue in the country today is Iraq. If you're a conservative who supports the president's war, you have nine candidates to choose from. But if you're a conservative who believes that going into Iraq was a mistake, Ron Paul is the only game in town."
Added Terry Jeffrey, the syndicated newspaper columnist who ran Patrick J. Buchanan's failed White House bid in 1996: "On domestic issues like spending and taxation and the role of government, Ron Paul is saying exactly what traditional conservatives have historically thought, and he's pointing out that the Bush administration has walked away from these principles. That's a very attractive argument."
Especially to someone such as Brad Porter, who obsessively writes about Paul on his blog, subscribes to Paul's YouTube channel and attended a Ron Paul MeetUp event in Pittsburgh last week. The 28-year-old Carnegie Mellon student donated $50 to Paul's coffers after the first debate, and an additional $50 after the third debate.
"For a poor college student, that's a lot," said Porter, a lifelong Republican. "But I'm not supporting him because I think he could get the nomination. I'm supporting him because I think he can influence the national conversation about what the role of government is, how much power should government have over our lives, how much liberty should we give up for security. These are important issues, and frankly, no one's thinking about them as seriously and sincerely as Ron Paul."
***
The Washington Post
Saturday June 16, 2007 | Front page A1
On Technorati, which offers a real-time glimpse of the blogosphere, the most frequently searched term this week was "YouTube."
Then comes "Ron Paul."
The presence of the obscure Republican congressman from Texas on a list that includes terms such as "Sopranos," "Paris Hilton" and "iPhone" is a sign of the online buzz building around the long-shot Republican presidential hopeful -- even as mainstream political pundits have written him off.
Rep. Ron Paul is more popular on Facebook than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He's got more friends on MySpace than former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. His MeetUp groups, with 11,924 members in 279 cities, are the biggest in the Republican field. And his official YouTube videos, including clips of his three debate appearances, have been viewed nearly 1.1 million times -- more than those of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, except Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
No one's more surprised at this robust Web presence than Paul himself, a self-described "old-school," "pen-and-paper guy" who's serving his 10th congressional term and was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988.
"To tell you the truth, I hadn't heard about this YouTube and all the other Internet sites until supporters started gathering in them," confessed Paul, 71, who said that he's raised about $100,000 after each of the three debates. Not bad considering that his campaign had less than $10,000 when his exploratory committee was formed in mid-February. "I tell you I've never raised money as efficiently as that, in all my years in Congress, and all I'm doing is speaking my mind."
That means saying again and again that the Republican Party, especially when it comes to government spending and foreign policy, is in "shambles."
But while many Democrats have welcomed the young and fresh-faced Obama, who's trailing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in most public opinion polls, Paul is barely making a dent in the Republican polls.
Republican strategists point out that libertarians, who make up a small but vocal portion of the Republican base, intrinsically gravitate toward the Web's anything-goes, leave-me-alone nature. They also say that his Web presence proves that the Internet can be a great equalizer in the race, giving a much-needed boost to a fringe candidate with little money and only a shadow of the campaign staffs marshaled by Romney, McCain and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.
An obstetrician and gynecologist, Paul is known as "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives. No to big government. No to the Internal Revenue Service. No to the federal ban on same-sex marriage.
"I'm for the individual," Paul said. "I'm not for the government."
If he had his way, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Education, among other agencies, would not exist. In his view, the USA Patriot Act, which allows the government to search personal data, including private Internet use, is unconstitutional, and trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement are a threat to American independence.
But perhaps what most notably separates Paul from the crowded Republican field, headed by what former Virginia governor James S. Gilmore III calls "Rudy McRomney," is his stance on the Iraq war. He's been against it from the very beginning.
After the second Republican presidential debate last month, when Paul implied that American foreign policy has contributed to anti-Americanism in the Middle East -- "They attack us because we're over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," Paul said -- he was attacked by Giuliani, and conservatives such as Saul Anuzis were livid.
Anuzis, chairman of the Michigan GOP, threatened to circulate a petition to bar Paul from future Republican presidential debates. Though the petition never materialized, Anuzis's BlackBerry was flooded with e-mails and his office was inundated with calls for several days. "It was a distraction, no doubt," he said.
The culprits: Paul's growing number of supporters, some of whom posted Anuzis's e-mail address and office phone number on their blogs.
"At first I was skeptical of his increasing online presence, thinking that it's probably just a small cadre of dedicated Ron Paul fans," said Matt Lewis, a blogger and director of operations at Townhall, a popular conservative site. "But if you think about it, the number one issue in the country today is Iraq. If you're a conservative who supports the president's war, you have nine candidates to choose from. But if you're a conservative who believes that going into Iraq was a mistake, Ron Paul is the only game in town."
Added Terry Jeffrey, the syndicated newspaper columnist who ran Patrick J. Buchanan's failed White House bid in 1996: "On domestic issues like spending and taxation and the role of government, Ron Paul is saying exactly what traditional conservatives have historically thought, and he's pointing out that the Bush administration has walked away from these principles. That's a very attractive argument."
Especially to someone such as Brad Porter, who obsessively writes about Paul on his blog, subscribes to Paul's YouTube channel and attended a Ron Paul MeetUp event in Pittsburgh last week. The 28-year-old Carnegie Mellon student donated $50 to Paul's coffers after the first debate, and an additional $50 after the third debate.
"For a poor college student, that's a lot," said Porter, a lifelong Republican. "But I'm not supporting him because I think he could get the nomination. I'm supporting him because I think he can influence the national conversation about what the role of government is, how much power should government have over our lives, how much liberty should we give up for security. These are important issues, and frankly, no one's thinking about them as seriously and sincerely as Ron Paul."
***
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
UN failed in Middle East, subservient to U.S., Israel
By Reuters via Haaretz June 14, 2007
A former U.N. Middle East envoy quit his job last month making bitter allegations that U.N. policy in the region had failed because it was subservient to U.S. and Israeli interests, according to a leaked document.
In a confidential end-of-mission report, seen by Reuters, Alvaro de Soto poured scorn on the Quartet negotiating group of the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations, and suggested the world body should pull out of the group established for the purpose of advancing peace in the Middle East.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday the report represented De Soto's personal views and disputed his former envoy's conclusion that the Quartet had become a "side-show".
De Soto, a Peruvian diplomat who formerly worked on El Salvador, Cyprus and the Western Sahara, spent two years on the Middle East before resigning in May, ending a 25-year U.N. career. He was replaced by Briton Michael Williams.
His scathing 53-page farewell, addressed to a handful of top U.N. officials made clear he left because he was frustrated that he was being ignored.
In the document dated May 5th, he railed at restrictions he said were placed on him by U.N. headquarters against talking to the Hamas-led Palestinian government and to Syria.
De Soto condemned economic sanctions imposed by Israel, the United States and the EU on Hamas after it won Palestinian elections last year and said their effective endorsement by the Quartet had had "devastating consequences" for Palestinians.
"The steps taken by the international community with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that will live in peace with its neighbor Israel have had precisely the opposite effect," he wrote.
"Even-handedness has been pummeled into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007."
Speaking to reporters, Ban regretted that De Soto's report had leaked out, but said: "I'd like to make it clear that this is his personal view. I would not agree with his point that the Quartet has been kind of some side-show."
He said the grouping had been "re-energized" and noted that at its next meeting, in Egypt later this month it would meet Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Jordanian, Qatari, Syrian and Arab League officials.
De Soto sharply criticized the Islamist Hamas movement for advocating Israel's destruction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a foe of Hamas, for weak leadership, and the Palestinian failure to halt militant attacks on Israeli civilians.
But he also charged that Israeli policies seemed "perversely designed to encourage the continued action by Palestinian militants."
De Soto blasted what he called "the tendency that exists among U.S. policy-makers ... to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences."
But much of his criticism was aimed at the United Nations, where, he said, "a premium is put on good relations with the U.S. and improving the U.N.'s relationship with Israel."
"I don't honestly think the U.N. does Israel any favors at all by not speaking frankly to it about its failings regarding the peace process," De Soto said.
He said Ban should "seriously reconsider" continued U.N. membership in the Quartet, which he said had become "pretty much a group of friends of the U.S."
De Soto said he regretted that his advice to U.N. headquarters had gone unheeded. "I concluded that my uphill effort was not going to succeed," he said.
***
A former U.N. Middle East envoy quit his job last month making bitter allegations that U.N. policy in the region had failed because it was subservient to U.S. and Israeli interests, according to a leaked document.
In a confidential end-of-mission report, seen by Reuters, Alvaro de Soto poured scorn on the Quartet negotiating group of the United States, Russia, European Union and United Nations, and suggested the world body should pull out of the group established for the purpose of advancing peace in the Middle East.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday the report represented De Soto's personal views and disputed his former envoy's conclusion that the Quartet had become a "side-show".
De Soto, a Peruvian diplomat who formerly worked on El Salvador, Cyprus and the Western Sahara, spent two years on the Middle East before resigning in May, ending a 25-year U.N. career. He was replaced by Briton Michael Williams.
His scathing 53-page farewell, addressed to a handful of top U.N. officials made clear he left because he was frustrated that he was being ignored.
In the document dated May 5th, he railed at restrictions he said were placed on him by U.N. headquarters against talking to the Hamas-led Palestinian government and to Syria.
De Soto condemned economic sanctions imposed by Israel, the United States and the EU on Hamas after it won Palestinian elections last year and said their effective endorsement by the Quartet had had "devastating consequences" for Palestinians.
"The steps taken by the international community with the presumed purpose of bringing about a Palestinian entity that will live in peace with its neighbor Israel have had precisely the opposite effect," he wrote.
"Even-handedness has been pummeled into submission in an unprecedented way since the beginning of 2007."
Speaking to reporters, Ban regretted that De Soto's report had leaked out, but said: "I'd like to make it clear that this is his personal view. I would not agree with his point that the Quartet has been kind of some side-show."
He said the grouping had been "re-energized" and noted that at its next meeting, in Egypt later this month it would meet Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian, Jordanian, Qatari, Syrian and Arab League officials.
De Soto sharply criticized the Islamist Hamas movement for advocating Israel's destruction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a foe of Hamas, for weak leadership, and the Palestinian failure to halt militant attacks on Israeli civilians.
But he also charged that Israeli policies seemed "perversely designed to encourage the continued action by Palestinian militants."
De Soto blasted what he called "the tendency that exists among U.S. policy-makers ... to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences."
But much of his criticism was aimed at the United Nations, where, he said, "a premium is put on good relations with the U.S. and improving the U.N.'s relationship with Israel."
"I don't honestly think the U.N. does Israel any favors at all by not speaking frankly to it about its failings regarding the peace process," De Soto said.
He said Ban should "seriously reconsider" continued U.N. membership in the Quartet, which he said had become "pretty much a group of friends of the U.S."
De Soto said he regretted that his advice to U.N. headquarters had gone unheeded. "I concluded that my uphill effort was not going to succeed," he said.
***
Monday, June 11, 2007
DePaul University Denies Tenure to Norman Finkelstein
Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider C.M.
President, DePaul University
dholtsch@depaul.edu
Dear President Holtschneider
In your enthusiastic support for DePaul's university's inquisition against the brilliant author and researcher Norman Finkelstein, culminating with the denial of tenure, you have disgraced the legacy of your institution's namesake, St. Vincent DePaul, who fought without fear or favor for the rights of the unpopular and the oppressed.
In your disingenuous statement, you use risible jargon to justify the repression against Dr. Finkelstein, claiming Finkelstein "...divert(s) the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration."
Actually Finkelstein's meticulous research stimulated the "conversation" in ways too dynamic and subtle for the Israeli lobby to handle.
You obviously feared the effect of bucking the Israeli lobby on your university's endowment. In other words, you sold Finkelstein for thirty pieces of silver. May God have mercy on your soul for the grave injustice you have done to a courageously honest and highly independent scholar, whose original research is desperately needed for the enlightenment of humanity; an enlightenment you have denied the students of DePaul University.
Sincerely, Michael A. Hoffman II
DEPAUL DENIES TENURE TO CONTROVERSIAL POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR
By Ashley M. Heher
Associated Press | June 10, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/illinois/chi-ap-il-depaulprofessor,1,5192817.story
CHICAGO -- A political science professor at DePaul University who has accused some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust to get compensation payments has been denied tenure by a close vote after a drawn-out public fight.
Norman Finkelstein, whose work has sparked a long-running feud with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, said he was disappointed by the decision.
"They can deny me tenure, deny me the right to teach," the 53-year-old told the Chicago Sun-Times. "But they will never stop me from saying what I believe."
On his Web site Sunday, Finkelstein posted a letter from university president Dennis Holtschneider explaining why a faculty panel voted 4-3 to deny him tenure at the Catholic university.
The three-page note cites Finkelstein's "deliberately hurtful" scholarship along with his lack of involvement with the school and his tendency for public clashes with other scholars.
"In the opinion of those opposing tenure, your unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration," Holtschneider wrote in a letter dated June 8.
An e-mail message left Sunday for Finkelstein, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., was not returned. A telephone recording said his Brooklyn phone had been temporarily disconnected.
The debate over his tenure raised the ire of many in academic and religious circles, and blogs and petitions that both support and deride him have appeared on the Internet.
Dershowitz, the lawyer famous for representing O.J. Simpson and other high-profile clients, has urged DePaul officials to reject Finkelstein's tenure bid.
"This should not have been a close case," he said in an e-mail Sunday. "Finkelstein's only academic output is ad hominem attacks on ideological enemies. ... The only reason this appeared close was because outsiders from the hard left mounted a political campaign on his behalf."
In a statement issued by the university, Holtschneider noted the heated debate surrounding Finkelstein's tenure.
"Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside interest and public debate concerning this decision," he said. "This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case."
DePaul's political science department and personnel committee both voted to support Finkelstein's tenure application. But it was opposed by the dean of the school's liberal arts college as well as a university board charged with granting tenure and promotions, which acknowledged Finkelstein's popularity with students and effectiveness in the classroom.
Holtschneider said that the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure had nothing to throttling academic freedom.
"In fact, academic freedom is alive and well at DePaul," he said. "It is guaranteed both as an integral part of the university's scholarly and religious heritage, and as an essential condition of effective inquiry and instruction."
The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein earned his doctorate from Princeton in 1988. He published five books and taught political theory at DePaul since 2001, school officials said.
University spokeswoman Denise Mattson said Sunday that Finkelstein's teaching term expires next June, but he can elect to leave his post immediately.
He was one of nine faculty members to be denied tenure or promotions this year, she said.
One of Finkelstein's books was "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering." The book, first published in 2000, has been translated into two dozen languages, according to Finkelstein's Web site.
Finkelstein's most recent book, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," is largely an attack on Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel." In it, he argues Israel uses the outcry over perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.
Dershowitz threatened to sue the book's publisher for libel.
Finkelstein supporter Raul Hilberg, a Holocaust scholar and emeritus political science professor at the University of Vermont, said he believes the school's tenure process was unfairly influenced.
"The person who is denied tenure under these circumstances clouds the institution that has made that kind of a decision," Hilberg said. "He's a sort of academic street fighter, he's not going to just collapse."
Finkelstein's Web site: www.normanfinkelstein.com
DePaul University President Dennis Holtschneider:
http://sherman.depaul.edu/media/webapp/mrfind.html
***
President, DePaul University
dholtsch@depaul.edu
Dear President Holtschneider
In your enthusiastic support for DePaul's university's inquisition against the brilliant author and researcher Norman Finkelstein, culminating with the denial of tenure, you have disgraced the legacy of your institution's namesake, St. Vincent DePaul, who fought without fear or favor for the rights of the unpopular and the oppressed.
In your disingenuous statement, you use risible jargon to justify the repression against Dr. Finkelstein, claiming Finkelstein "...divert(s) the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration."
Actually Finkelstein's meticulous research stimulated the "conversation" in ways too dynamic and subtle for the Israeli lobby to handle.
You obviously feared the effect of bucking the Israeli lobby on your university's endowment. In other words, you sold Finkelstein for thirty pieces of silver. May God have mercy on your soul for the grave injustice you have done to a courageously honest and highly independent scholar, whose original research is desperately needed for the enlightenment of humanity; an enlightenment you have denied the students of DePaul University.
Sincerely, Michael A. Hoffman II
DEPAUL DENIES TENURE TO CONTROVERSIAL POLITICAL SCIENCE PROFESSOR
By Ashley M. Heher
Associated Press | June 10, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/illinois/chi-ap-il-depaulprofessor,1,5192817.story
CHICAGO -- A political science professor at DePaul University who has accused some Jews of improperly using the legacy of the Holocaust to get compensation payments has been denied tenure by a close vote after a drawn-out public fight.
Norman Finkelstein, whose work has sparked a long-running feud with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, said he was disappointed by the decision.
"They can deny me tenure, deny me the right to teach," the 53-year-old told the Chicago Sun-Times. "But they will never stop me from saying what I believe."
On his Web site Sunday, Finkelstein posted a letter from university president Dennis Holtschneider explaining why a faculty panel voted 4-3 to deny him tenure at the Catholic university.
The three-page note cites Finkelstein's "deliberately hurtful" scholarship along with his lack of involvement with the school and his tendency for public clashes with other scholars.
"In the opinion of those opposing tenure, your unprofessional personal attacks divert the conversation away from consideration of ideas, and polarize and simplify conversations that deserve layered and subtle consideration," Holtschneider wrote in a letter dated June 8.
An e-mail message left Sunday for Finkelstein, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., was not returned. A telephone recording said his Brooklyn phone had been temporarily disconnected.
The debate over his tenure raised the ire of many in academic and religious circles, and blogs and petitions that both support and deride him have appeared on the Internet.
Dershowitz, the lawyer famous for representing O.J. Simpson and other high-profile clients, has urged DePaul officials to reject Finkelstein's tenure bid.
"This should not have been a close case," he said in an e-mail Sunday. "Finkelstein's only academic output is ad hominem attacks on ideological enemies. ... The only reason this appeared close was because outsiders from the hard left mounted a political campaign on his behalf."
In a statement issued by the university, Holtschneider noted the heated debate surrounding Finkelstein's tenure.
"Over the past several months, there has been considerable outside interest and public debate concerning this decision," he said. "This attention was unwelcome and inappropriate and had no impact on either the process or the outcome of this case."
DePaul's political science department and personnel committee both voted to support Finkelstein's tenure application. But it was opposed by the dean of the school's liberal arts college as well as a university board charged with granting tenure and promotions, which acknowledged Finkelstein's popularity with students and effectiveness in the classroom.
Holtschneider said that the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure had nothing to throttling academic freedom.
"In fact, academic freedom is alive and well at DePaul," he said. "It is guaranteed both as an integral part of the university's scholarly and religious heritage, and as an essential condition of effective inquiry and instruction."
The son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein earned his doctorate from Princeton in 1988. He published five books and taught political theory at DePaul since 2001, school officials said.
University spokeswoman Denise Mattson said Sunday that Finkelstein's teaching term expires next June, but he can elect to leave his post immediately.
He was one of nine faculty members to be denied tenure or promotions this year, she said.
One of Finkelstein's books was "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering." The book, first published in 2000, has been translated into two dozen languages, according to Finkelstein's Web site.
Finkelstein's most recent book, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," is largely an attack on Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel." In it, he argues Israel uses the outcry over perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.
Dershowitz threatened to sue the book's publisher for libel.
Finkelstein supporter Raul Hilberg, a Holocaust scholar and emeritus political science professor at the University of Vermont, said he believes the school's tenure process was unfairly influenced.
"The person who is denied tenure under these circumstances clouds the institution that has made that kind of a decision," Hilberg said. "He's a sort of academic street fighter, he's not going to just collapse."
Finkelstein's Web site: www.normanfinkelstein.com
DePaul University President Dennis Holtschneider:
http://sherman.depaul.edu/media/webapp/mrfind.html
***
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Relations forbidden to marry
From the King James Bible (pulpit edition in folio) MDCCLXX (1770)
Relations forbidden to a man are on the left; those forbidden to a woman appear in the right column.
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