by Michael A. Hoffman II
Copyright © 2008
www.RevisionistHistory.org
We live in an upside-down mirror world where white is called black and black is white and the truth is the least precious of all the commodities marketed in America mystica.
On that blasted stage stands John Hagee, the physically and spiritually grotesque crypto-rabbi who styles himself a Christian preacher. This writer was informed by Alex Jones that Hagee openly applauds the murder of Palestinian civilians. Hagee, with his large following and unabashed worship of carnal Israel as personified by Talmudic Judaism and war-Zionism, is a poster boy for all that has gone haywire in America.
Hagee's bloodthirsty advocacy of extremist Israeli policy is a matter of record. That John McCain, the presumed Republican candidate for President, would ally with Hagee - last year or last month - is beyond surreal. Hagee is such a violence-loving nitwit that it soon dawned on McCain's handlers that Hagee was more of a liability than an asset, and a means of breaching the alliance born out of his endorsement of the McCain candidacy was sought.
Hagee's anti-Catholic remarks were seized upon as the means for the breach, but Hagee made amends for them with an apology. At last, sufficient grounds for extrication were discovered: Hagee had once said that Hitler had done God's work by forcing the Judaics out of Europe, to the favored Zionist entity in the Middle East.
Hagee, the Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Judaism, was transformed by the corporate media, in the alchemical twinkling of an eye, into a no-good "antisemite." In the eyes of the public this affair must have appeared to be yet another "shameful instance in the long history of the persecution of God's Chosen" etc. A major fundraiser for Israeli killers and Talmudic dealers and stealers of Palestinian real estate, becomes a Hitlerian "Jew-hater" in one wave of the media magicians' wand.
A colossal hoax like this can only be pulled off by preying on the ignorance of the people and the connivance of the self-censorship of Big Media. The media are fully aware that what John Hagee said of Hitler he learned from his masters - leading Israeli rabbis have effusively praised the German fuehrer in similar terms.
From the nineteenth century until the ascension of the Third Reich, Germany had been the center of the movement known to history as the "Haskalah," which cultivated and inspired the Judaic version of the Enlightenment that revolted against the Talmud. It was German Judaics who pioneered the break with 2,000 years of suffocating rabbinic rules, regulations and totalitarian mind control.
This was an unconscionable sin in the eyes of the rabbis of Orthodox Judaism. It was predicted by the rabbis of the past that the wrath of God would befall these wayward German Judaic "maskilim." According to leading, twenty-first century Israeli rabbis, the instrument of that righteous wrath was Adolf Hitler.
The Chief Rabbi of the powerful Israeli political party known as Shas, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, declared that the Judaics of Germany got what they deserved at the hands of Hitler. They were sinners who departed from the Talmud and they were rightly punished.
The Lithuanian-born Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, also preached that Hitler's murder of modern German Judaics was divinely ordained. Schach was not an obscure or marginal figure. According to the Nov. 3, 2001 edition of the New York Times, Rabbi Schach "wielded powerful influence over the country's politics for more than two decades...A fiery scholar who combined Talmudic erudition with shrewd political instinct, Rabbi Schach served as a key power broker through his spiritual leadership of Orthodox parties whose support was vital for the formation and survival of several Israeli governments. He led the Agudat Yisrael and Degel Hatorah parties of Ashkenazic Jews."
The rabbis of Orthodox Judaism fear two developments above all else, assimilation (marrying a gentile) and heresy (disbelieving the formerly oral law of the Mishnah, Gemara and subsequent halacha derived from them). Many German Judaics embodied both of these tendencies. Hitler despised them for the same reason, their integration into the German nation. In a symbiotic meeting of the minds, Hitler and the Orthodox rabbis had the same enemy.
If we had an honest news media, Hagee's remarks about Hitler would have been reported in the context of similar depraved remarks made by prominent Israeli rabbis. In this way, they too would have been tainted with Nazi associations and appalling indifference to human suffering. But that cannot be allowed. Rabbinic prestige must be protected at all costs and truth is the first casualty of the protection racket. Consequently, the American people are left with the delirious impression that John Hagee, a man who is a rabbi in all but name, is our most notorious "antisemite."
"...every cop is a criminal...all the sinners saints...heads is tails..."
-Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Sympathy for the Devil"
(Hoffman is nearing completion of his book "Judaism Discovered," due to be published this summer by Independent History and Research)
***
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Dagmar Barnouw Survivor of Allied Holocaust - Dresden
"The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, And Postwar Germans"
by Dagmar Barnouw (available now) www.amazon.com
"Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence"
by Dagmar Barnouw (due in September; pre-order now) www.amazon.com
Dagmar Barnouw, 72; USC professor wrote provocative books on post-WWII era
By Jocelyn Y. Stewart
Los Angeles Times | May 24, 2008
Dagmar Barnouw, a USC professor and author whose provocative works about the aftermath of World War II took aim at what she called the sanctification of Holocaust survivors, the "politics of not-forgetting Nazi evil" and the idea of collective German guilt, has died. She was 72. Barnouw died May 14 at a San Diego hospital from complications of a stroke she suffered April 14, said her husband, Jeffrey Barnouw. In a career that produced 12 books and 150 papers, Barnouw covered many topics, including the cultural politics of Thomas Mann and feminist and utopian science fiction.
But post-World War II Germany was a recurring theme for the scholar, who was born in Berlin. Her works -- described by some critics as "brilliant and unsettling" and by others as "deeply flawed" -- challenged long-held views of guilt and innocence, suffering and memory. In her most recent book, "War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans" (2005), Barnouw examined Germans' failure to acknowledge and mourn their war dead and the devastation German citizens suffered in Allied air raids.
After the war, ordinary Germans were viewed collectively as perpetrators of the Holocaust and responsible for World War II. Silenced by this presumed guilt, even German war remembrances maintained an exclusive focus on Jewish victims of the Nazi regime, to the detriment of historical reality, she wrote. "My concern is not that Germans suffered too -- all populations caught in this particularly terrible war suffered," she wrote in "War in the Empty Air." "The issue is the usefulness now, sixty years later, of an enduring hierarchy of suffering that has removed from historical memory the larger part of a war so familiarly and viciously destructive that it should have meant the end of all wars."
In his review for the H-Net website, Frank Biess of UC San Diego asserted that the book was "based on a distorted diagnosis of the postwar politics of memory." He faulted Barnouw for "rhetorical transgressions. It forcefully argues for a new politics of memory that would give more room to German suffering and reduce the centrality of the Holocaust. . . . The book ultimately fails to offer a conceptual agenda for a more complex and comprehensive history of the Second World War and its aftermath," Biess wrote.
In favorable reviews, the Journal of American Studies said Barnouw "establishes a case for creating a more complete historical remembrance for postwar generations," and the German Studies Review said "Barnouw confronts the petrified, sanctified and officially approved memories of the German past."
Joyce Appleby, a longtime friend of Barnouw and professor emerita of history at UCLA, called the book "courageous." "She raised this issue of, 'Isn't there enough charity to appreciate the suffering of other people in Germany during the war?' " Appleby said in an interview with The Times. "It's the kind of book that you can imagine raised some hackles. But it's a very powerful book and one in which she examines post-World War II intellectual life in Germany as well as a bit of her own history," Appleby said.
Born March 22, 1936, Barnouw was a child when Allied bombing destroyed her family home in Dresden. Her father served in the German army during the war. Her mother, who had been a research scientist, led the family out of Dresden to a small muddy village in northern Bavaria where they were scorned as refugees. "Over the decades, I have sometimes remembered those years as nothing but hunger, cold, boredom and fear," Barnouw wrote in an autobiographical essay. "But it also seemed that in these memories, the child preoccupied with finding food and staying clear of the ferocious village geese, dogs and teenage boys was retreating."
After earning a degree in Germany, Barnouw traveled to the United States in 1962 as a Fulbright teacher at Stanford University. She earned a doctorate in German literature from Yale University in 1968, and the same year began her career in academia at the university. Before joining USC in 1988, where she was professor of German and comparative literature, Barnouw held positions at several universities including Purdue, Brown and UC San Diego. In a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and in a separate lawsuit, Barnouw accused UC San Diego of gender bias. The commission agreed, and the lawsuit was settled out of court. In 1977 Barnouw testified about her experiences in front of the state Legislature, which later passed a measure increasing UC employees' access to their personnel files. In Barnouw's case, men had filled her file with unfavorable -- and sexist -- reviews, according to Karen Leonard, a UC Irvine professor of anthropology and a founder of California Women in Higher Education, which supported Barnouw against the university.
Barnouw "had a very intense, almost fierce intellect, a very lively personality," Appleby said. "She had very strong opinions, which she had no fear about expressing." Barnouw also wrote about the war in Iraq, about Israel and Lebanon, about Oprah Winfrey's selection of Elie Wiesel's "Night" as a book club choice.
"Why was the new translation of 'Night' so important now?" Barnouw wrote in an essay posted on the History News Network. "Why did Oprah really choose that book? . . . Are we more comfortable with the familiar horrors that do not ask for our social and political intervention now, but only for the busy timeless rituals of never-forgetting?"
In addition to her husband, Barnouw is survived by son Benjamin Barnouw of Los Angeles; grandchildren Nicholas and Natalie, also of Los Angeles; one brother and two sisters, who live in Germany.
***
by Dagmar Barnouw (available now) www.amazon.com
"Germany 1945: Views of War and Violence"
by Dagmar Barnouw (due in September; pre-order now) www.amazon.com
Dagmar Barnouw, 72; USC professor wrote provocative books on post-WWII eraBy Jocelyn Y. Stewart
Los Angeles Times | May 24, 2008
Dagmar Barnouw, a USC professor and author whose provocative works about the aftermath of World War II took aim at what she called the sanctification of Holocaust survivors, the "politics of not-forgetting Nazi evil" and the idea of collective German guilt, has died. She was 72. Barnouw died May 14 at a San Diego hospital from complications of a stroke she suffered April 14, said her husband, Jeffrey Barnouw. In a career that produced 12 books and 150 papers, Barnouw covered many topics, including the cultural politics of Thomas Mann and feminist and utopian science fiction.
But post-World War II Germany was a recurring theme for the scholar, who was born in Berlin. Her works -- described by some critics as "brilliant and unsettling" and by others as "deeply flawed" -- challenged long-held views of guilt and innocence, suffering and memory. In her most recent book, "War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans" (2005), Barnouw examined Germans' failure to acknowledge and mourn their war dead and the devastation German citizens suffered in Allied air raids.
After the war, ordinary Germans were viewed collectively as perpetrators of the Holocaust and responsible for World War II. Silenced by this presumed guilt, even German war remembrances maintained an exclusive focus on Jewish victims of the Nazi regime, to the detriment of historical reality, she wrote. "My concern is not that Germans suffered too -- all populations caught in this particularly terrible war suffered," she wrote in "War in the Empty Air." "The issue is the usefulness now, sixty years later, of an enduring hierarchy of suffering that has removed from historical memory the larger part of a war so familiarly and viciously destructive that it should have meant the end of all wars."
In his review for the H-Net website, Frank Biess of UC San Diego asserted that the book was "based on a distorted diagnosis of the postwar politics of memory." He faulted Barnouw for "rhetorical transgressions. It forcefully argues for a new politics of memory that would give more room to German suffering and reduce the centrality of the Holocaust. . . . The book ultimately fails to offer a conceptual agenda for a more complex and comprehensive history of the Second World War and its aftermath," Biess wrote.
In favorable reviews, the Journal of American Studies said Barnouw "establishes a case for creating a more complete historical remembrance for postwar generations," and the German Studies Review said "Barnouw confronts the petrified, sanctified and officially approved memories of the German past."
Joyce Appleby, a longtime friend of Barnouw and professor emerita of history at UCLA, called the book "courageous." "She raised this issue of, 'Isn't there enough charity to appreciate the suffering of other people in Germany during the war?' " Appleby said in an interview with The Times. "It's the kind of book that you can imagine raised some hackles. But it's a very powerful book and one in which she examines post-World War II intellectual life in Germany as well as a bit of her own history," Appleby said.
Born March 22, 1936, Barnouw was a child when Allied bombing destroyed her family home in Dresden. Her father served in the German army during the war. Her mother, who had been a research scientist, led the family out of Dresden to a small muddy village in northern Bavaria where they were scorned as refugees. "Over the decades, I have sometimes remembered those years as nothing but hunger, cold, boredom and fear," Barnouw wrote in an autobiographical essay. "But it also seemed that in these memories, the child preoccupied with finding food and staying clear of the ferocious village geese, dogs and teenage boys was retreating."
After earning a degree in Germany, Barnouw traveled to the United States in 1962 as a Fulbright teacher at Stanford University. She earned a doctorate in German literature from Yale University in 1968, and the same year began her career in academia at the university. Before joining USC in 1988, where she was professor of German and comparative literature, Barnouw held positions at several universities including Purdue, Brown and UC San Diego. In a complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and in a separate lawsuit, Barnouw accused UC San Diego of gender bias. The commission agreed, and the lawsuit was settled out of court. In 1977 Barnouw testified about her experiences in front of the state Legislature, which later passed a measure increasing UC employees' access to their personnel files. In Barnouw's case, men had filled her file with unfavorable -- and sexist -- reviews, according to Karen Leonard, a UC Irvine professor of anthropology and a founder of California Women in Higher Education, which supported Barnouw against the university.
Barnouw "had a very intense, almost fierce intellect, a very lively personality," Appleby said. "She had very strong opinions, which she had no fear about expressing." Barnouw also wrote about the war in Iraq, about Israel and Lebanon, about Oprah Winfrey's selection of Elie Wiesel's "Night" as a book club choice.
"Why was the new translation of 'Night' so important now?" Barnouw wrote in an essay posted on the History News Network. "Why did Oprah really choose that book? . . . Are we more comfortable with the familiar horrors that do not ask for our social and political intervention now, but only for the busy timeless rituals of never-forgetting?"
In addition to her husband, Barnouw is survived by son Benjamin Barnouw of Los Angeles; grandchildren Nicholas and Natalie, also of Los Angeles; one brother and two sisters, who live in Germany.
***
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Israelis jail Finkelstein for 24 hours, then deport him
Israel denies entry to high-profile critic Norman FinkelsteinBy Yossi Melman, Haaretz | May 25, 2008
The Shin Bet security service detained and deported an American Jewish professor who is a prominent critic of the Israeli occupation when he landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Friday.
Professor Norman Finkelstein was interrogated for several hours and held in an airport cell before being put on a plane back to Amsterdam, his point of departure. Finkelstein said he was told he could not return to Israel for 10 years.
The Shin Bet said Finkelstein "is not permitted to enter Israel because of suspicions involving hostile elements in Lebanon," and because he "did not give a full accounting to interrogators with regard to these suspicions."
However, in e-mail and phone interviews with Haaretz after leaving Israel for Amsterdam, Finkelstein said, "I did my best to provide absolutely candid and comprehensive answers to all the questions put to me. I am confident that I have nothing to hide. Apart from my political views, and the supporting scholarship, there isn't much more to say for myself: alas, no suicide missions or secret rendezvous with terrorist organizations. I've always supported a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. I'm not an enemy of Israel."
Finkelstein visited Lebanon a few months ago and met with Hezbollah operatives there, and subsequently published articles.
Finkelstein, 55, has accused Israel of exploiting the Holocaust for political ends. He recently left DePaul University following pressure by Jewish organizations and individuals, including Professor Alan Dershowitz.
He also said in the interview that he was "en route to Palestine to see one of my oldest and dearest friends, Musa Abu-Hashhash."
Finkelstein said he was asked whether he had met with Al Qaida operatives, whether he had been sent to Israel by Hezbollah and how he intended to finance his stay in Israel.
"I was kept in a holding cell at the airport for approximately 24 hours. It wasn't a Belgian bed-and-breakfast, but it wasn't Auschwitz either. I had several unpleasant moments with the guards at the airport and in the holding cell, but since martyrdom is not my cup of tea, I'll spare you the details," Finkelstein said.
He said he eventually used a cellphone belonging to another detainee and called another friend he was scheduled to see in Israel, the journalist Allan Nairn, who called attorney Michael Sfard. Sfard met with Finkelstein and told him he could appeal the ban; however, Finkelstein said he has been to Israel at least 15 times and declined to appeal.
Sfard on Saturday said banning Finkelstein from entering the country "recalls the behavior of the Soviet bloc countries."
---
"Finkelstein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, has written extensively regarding Israel's policies in the (Palestinian) territories and accuses Israel of manipulating the memory of the Holocaust...to justify illegitimate policies." -Eli Senyor, Ynetnews, May 24, 2008
***
Hundreds of New Testament books burned by Israelis
Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.
Or Yehuda, May, 20, 2008 (AP) - Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.
Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material. After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it. The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.
The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said. He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a "commandment" to burn materials that urge Jews to convert. "I certainly don't denounce the burning of the booklets," he said. "I denounce those who distributed the booklets."
Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family's West Bank home went off in his hands. Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church and set the building on fire. The same church was burned down 25 years ago by adherents of Orthodox Judaism.
HOFFMAN'S AFTERWORD
Notice this admission: "He ...called it a 'commandment' to burn materials that urge Jews to convert."
Where is this commandment found - in the Old Testament, which we are told is supposedly the holiest book of Judaism? Not at all. It's found in the Talmud, the actual rabbinic holy book. Why doesn't the media report this? Talmudism = totalitarian mind control.
Notice too the lack of outrage over this book-burning from Churchianity, the pope of Rome and the president of the United States. If Muslims or neo-Nazis had perpetrated this outrage, condemnation would have been world wide (and rightly so) and we reckon that demonstrations against it would have taken place in the streets of France, for example. In the US, talk show hosts would be livid and the pulpits would be brimming with indignation.
Ah, but "the West" is Talmudic, not Christian, although it clings to a Christian cultural facade. The "clash of civilizations" is between Islam and Talmudic Churchianity. Jesus has nothing to do with it. His Word is burned and when it comes to rabbinic assaults upon it, defenders of His Word are few and far between. It is the rabbis who are worshipped by Churchianity, not Jesus. They are more sacred by far.
Rabbis and your college professors are still wailing about the burning of the Talmud in the Middle Ages. The burning of hundreds of copies of the New Testament this month in "Israel" doesn't register, however, and will soon be down the memory hole.
***
Or Yehuda, May, 20, 2008 (AP) - Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.
Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material. After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it. The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.
The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said. He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a "commandment" to burn materials that urge Jews to convert. "I certainly don't denounce the burning of the booklets," he said. "I denounce those who distributed the booklets."
Earlier this year, the teenage son of a prominent Christian missionary was seriously wounded when a package bomb delivered to the family's West Bank home went off in his hands. Last year, arsonists burst into a Jerusalem church and set the building on fire. The same church was burned down 25 years ago by adherents of Orthodox Judaism.
HOFFMAN'S AFTERWORD
Notice this admission: "He ...called it a 'commandment' to burn materials that urge Jews to convert."
Where is this commandment found - in the Old Testament, which we are told is supposedly the holiest book of Judaism? Not at all. It's found in the Talmud, the actual rabbinic holy book. Why doesn't the media report this? Talmudism = totalitarian mind control.
Notice too the lack of outrage over this book-burning from Churchianity, the pope of Rome and the president of the United States. If Muslims or neo-Nazis had perpetrated this outrage, condemnation would have been world wide (and rightly so) and we reckon that demonstrations against it would have taken place in the streets of France, for example. In the US, talk show hosts would be livid and the pulpits would be brimming with indignation.
Ah, but "the West" is Talmudic, not Christian, although it clings to a Christian cultural facade. The "clash of civilizations" is between Islam and Talmudic Churchianity. Jesus has nothing to do with it. His Word is burned and when it comes to rabbinic assaults upon it, defenders of His Word are few and far between. It is the rabbis who are worshipped by Churchianity, not Jesus. They are more sacred by far.
Rabbis and your college professors are still wailing about the burning of the Talmud in the Middle Ages. The burning of hundreds of copies of the New Testament this month in "Israel" doesn't register, however, and will soon be down the memory hole.
***
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Attorney Seeks to Question Pope about Molestation
VATICAN COVERUP IN PLACE SINCE 1962
***
Attorney seeks to question pope about sex abuse
LOUISVILLE, Ky. May 13, 2008 (AP) -- An attorney is seeking a court order to question Pope Benedict XVI in an ongoing church sex abuse case, saying the holy father is the most knowledgeable person alive about what the Catholic Church knew about sex abuse allegations.
Louisville attorney William McMurry said because the pope is 81 years old, he may not be available to give testimony later in the case. "The passage of time not only raises questions of Pope Benedict XVI's continued availability but also increases the likelihood that his memory of events dating back many years will grow less reliable," McMurry said.
The request comes in a suit brought by three men alleging the Vatican orchestrated a coverup of priests sexually abusing children in the United States since 1962. McMurry is seeking class-action status, saying there are thousands of victims nationally. The case is being considered by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Before he was pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith and oversaw reports of sexual abuse by priests. That office, along with its predecessor, the Congregation of the Holy Office, were directly involved with the investigation of sexual abuse by clerics.
McMurry said that would give Pope Benedict XVI an unparalleled knowledge of the scope of sex abuse complaints. "A witness is either important and crucial to this case or not," McMurry said. "The pope has certain knowledge relevant to this case."
Jeffrey Lena, the Berkeley, Calif.-based attorney for the Vatican, had little to say about the motion. "It's novel," Lena said. "It's not appropriate."
The case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Pope Benedict XVI may not live long enough to testify if the case is returned for trial, McMurry said. U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II ruled in January 2007 that the men may pursue their claim that top church officials should have warned the public or local authorities of known or suspected sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Louisville. Heyburn dismissed a large chunk of the lawsuit.
Along with the accusations against the Vatican, the suit challenges the constitutionality of the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which generally gives immunity to foreign countries from most lawsuits. McMurry said the law violates the plaintiff's rights to a trial on the merits of the case. McMurry also claims that the law doesn't apply to the Holy See because of its dual role as a religious institution and country.
The Bush administration defended the law, saying the U.S. government has recognized the Vatican as a country since 1984 and that the president alone, not the court system, may recognize a country.
Many lawsuits stemming from the U.S. clergy sex abuse crisis have named the pope, the Vatican and other high-ranking church officials but have failed. Plaintiffs' lawyers who have sought to challenge that protection often could not serve Vatican officials with the papers, among other logistical problems.
***
***
Attorney seeks to question pope about sex abuse
LOUISVILLE, Ky. May 13, 2008 (AP) -- An attorney is seeking a court order to question Pope Benedict XVI in an ongoing church sex abuse case, saying the holy father is the most knowledgeable person alive about what the Catholic Church knew about sex abuse allegations.
Louisville attorney William McMurry said because the pope is 81 years old, he may not be available to give testimony later in the case. "The passage of time not only raises questions of Pope Benedict XVI's continued availability but also increases the likelihood that his memory of events dating back many years will grow less reliable," McMurry said.
The request comes in a suit brought by three men alleging the Vatican orchestrated a coverup of priests sexually abusing children in the United States since 1962. McMurry is seeking class-action status, saying there are thousands of victims nationally. The case is being considered by the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Before he was pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith and oversaw reports of sexual abuse by priests. That office, along with its predecessor, the Congregation of the Holy Office, were directly involved with the investigation of sexual abuse by clerics.
McMurry said that would give Pope Benedict XVI an unparalleled knowledge of the scope of sex abuse complaints. "A witness is either important and crucial to this case or not," McMurry said. "The pope has certain knowledge relevant to this case."
Jeffrey Lena, the Berkeley, Calif.-based attorney for the Vatican, had little to say about the motion. "It's novel," Lena said. "It's not appropriate."
The case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Pope Benedict XVI may not live long enough to testify if the case is returned for trial, McMurry said. U.S. District Judge John Heyburn II ruled in January 2007 that the men may pursue their claim that top church officials should have warned the public or local authorities of known or suspected sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Louisville. Heyburn dismissed a large chunk of the lawsuit.
Along with the accusations against the Vatican, the suit challenges the constitutionality of the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, which generally gives immunity to foreign countries from most lawsuits. McMurry said the law violates the plaintiff's rights to a trial on the merits of the case. McMurry also claims that the law doesn't apply to the Holy See because of its dual role as a religious institution and country.
The Bush administration defended the law, saying the U.S. government has recognized the Vatican as a country since 1984 and that the president alone, not the court system, may recognize a country.
Many lawsuits stemming from the U.S. clergy sex abuse crisis have named the pope, the Vatican and other high-ranking church officials but have failed. Plaintiffs' lawyers who have sought to challenge that protection often could not serve Vatican officials with the papers, among other logistical problems.
***
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Once More into the Breach!
A message about Michael Hoffman's forthcoming book on Judaism and his recent appearance on Alex Jones' radio show:
May 7, 2008 - COEUR D'ALENE, IDAHO --It was very kind of Mr. Jones to host this writer twice, for a total of three hours. We have been contacted by many new people as a result. I'll share some of their letters with you soon. We'll also let you know if we can get permission to release the two shows on a set of audio CDs.
With the boycott against us by the people putatively on our own side - and this includes revisionists, anti-Zionists, and Protestant and Catholic conservatives all blacklisting this writer and all news about our forthcoming book, exposure on Alex Jones' program was very precious indeed. Please patronize his advertisers and thank the GNC radio network for broadcasting his program.
As for my book, it's almost finished! Yes, I know, you've heard that before, but actually it IS finished, the text that is. All that is left is the index. It's my conviction that a work this large and containing information this unusual and unprecedented should function as a handy and comprehensive reference work for years to come.
We want the reader to be able to consult the book on a host of topics pertaining to Judaism by consulting an index which is exceedingly thorough. I'm appalled by how many otherwise potentially useful books have no index, or a token index with just some proper names and place names and little more.
In a book as large as "Judaism Discovered" it would seem like a betrayal just to print the text without the kind of indexed guide to the contents that a mere "table of contents" cannot possibly achieve.
Approximately 225 pages have been indexed thus far, and we still have a long way to go. My daily schedule is to roll out of bed at 5 am and head downstairs to my office by 5:15 am and work until 10 pm, when I retire for the night. I rest on Sunday. I have no other life at this point. Everything else in my life and our work is being neglected and has been neglected for several months.
No newsletters have been published, much to the anger of subscribers to Revisionist History, no DVDs or CDs produced, very little urgent correspondence has been answered. In addition to her other work, my wife has taken up the slack when it comes to my family duties.
What this translates to is an enormous slide in the regular monthly sales our company, Independent History and Research, is accustomed to earning.
In addition to that shortfall, the donations sent for the completion and publication of the book have dwindled markedly since January. Donations were vigorous last autumn and helped us pay our bills and save toward the very expensive printing bill for this huge book.
Unfortunately, since January, about 90% of our donors have stopped contributing.
The economy had not tanked at that time. We attribute the radical decline to a dwindling faith that the book is indeed going to be published.
Thousands of dollars have been contributed. It will take more than $20,000 to print the book in hardcover. With our regular income from sales of newsletters, CDs, DVDs and other media in decline because I had to neglect that end of our operation, we have had to live off the revenue from the donations, in addition to the large expenses connected with the book itself.
The informants inside Judaism that we have had to pay (the "inside" nature of our information will be obvious when the book is published) along with the rare books and manuscripts we have had to purchase have been very expensive. One example: Nathan Kamenetsky's two volume "Making of a Godol," which is under a cherem (rabbinic ban), cost us $140 to obtain. Multiply that figure times a hundred and you've got the budget for the big books (not counting the hundreds of smaller ones we've had to purchase).
That figure does not comprise the costs of the Israeli and European Orthodox Judaic newspapers and research journals we subscribe to or the other less costly but more numerous books we purchased.
A substantial donation we received from a man in California last autumn was gone by December and another sent by a physician in January is also nearly exhausted. We do have an interest-free, $6,000 loan toward the printing of the book, but that loan must be repaid by the end of this year.
With 90% of our usual donors missing in action since January and with the economy tanking here's what will happen with the book - if current trends continue:
1. Instead of printing 2,000 copies, we will only be able to print 1,000. Those 1,000 will probably sell out quickly to collectors as much as researchers and opinion-makers. People will demand more but there will be no more because a second printing will cost nearly as much as the first and revenue from sales of the first edition will have to go to pay our debts and, believe it or not, pay me something for the year I have spent writing the book (I'm not retired; have no second income, and have many of the same bills and family obligations as everyone else has).
Ask any publisher: a 1,000 copy print run is a collector/archival printing. It can't pay the bills for a second printing, it just covers obligations already incurred, so it ensures there will not be a second edition. The economy of scale in printing favors large print runs. 2,000 copies costs only a few thousand dollars more than 1,000 copies. Bills can be paid and the book can circulate beyond the collector community to the people we are trying to reach if we get 2,000 copies published. Printing 2,000 books can even be sufficiently profitable to fund a third printing, although we'd love to print 3,000 books the first time around, in the first edition, but that's a pipe dream at present, given the cost.
2. A 1,000 copy print run is not the worst of it. As it now stands, portions of the printing bill will have to come out of my life savings. Our income is down, bills are huge. When the book is published we must, at the very least, clear our debts. This means that the book will have to retail for $60 a copy. We wanted to sell it for $39.95, or $45 per copy, maximum. A $60 price tag can inhibit sales and keep the book out of the hands of the poor and the working class. But as things now stand, we will have no other choice.
Don't think for a minute that I'm being too pessimistic. I'm a natural-born optimist or I would not be fighting an up-hill battle like this one, for all these years. On the success or failure of "Judaism Discovered" rests the survival of all our operations, so great is our investment in this enormous project and I doubt we will ever be able to afford to do a book this vast and time-consuming ever again.
We need publicity more than we need money. If tens of thousands of people knew about us, a $5 donation from each of of them would take care of everything and the book would have an initial print run in the 5,000 copy range (!), which would mean it would pay its own way and actually be a financial asset, which it should be, since no one has written anything like this book. It fills a huge gap in our knowledge, in a critical area of contention in religion and history, and national and international policy and security.
I don't know if I'm beating a dead horse here or not by writing you. So many have already donated all they can, that we have hesitated going "once more into the breach." We thought we could avoid asking for donations again - just bite the bullet, publish a thousand books at $60 each retail ($35 wholesale), and write "finis" on this chapter of our writing and research career.
Moreover I have prayed to God that He would lend a hand, yet again, and that's when Alex Jones popped into the picture. I have been led, by the same inspiration, to bring this matter to your attention, yet again, after so long a hiatus. Some of you would want me to let you know about our situation. You would not want to discover, after the fact, that the book could have been published with many more copies and a lower price if we could have obtained just one last groundswell of assistance.
When will the book be published? I have given too many deadlines and missed them all to give you, yet again, the name of a month. By the grace of God, it will certainly be published this summer and yes, we will have a pre-publication sale as soon as the book goes to the printer.
It's crazy, I know, but I feel guilty that I've spent some 75 minutes writing this letter to you rather than working on the index for the book.
Thanks to God, this is just such a revolutionary book! If it obtains sufficient attention and circulation, I don't know how Judaism can survive with its prestige intact. I have endeavored to anticipate all potential objections and counter-arguments and pre-empt them all.
Above all I have concentrated on Judaism's deception and concealment mechanisms and made what I think is the book's most important discovery: the seeding of what I call "decoy texts" in the sacred rabbinic books, deliberately placed there to mislead prying gentiles. How this "hermeneutic of dissimulation" is operated will stun readers and provide them with a key to penetrating Judaism's masquerade, as a whole. And boy, do we need it now. Judaism is vulnerable. It used to be protected by a general reverence for "religion" but the neo-cons have spit upon and besmirched Islam with such uninhibited savagery and rancor that it has opened Pandora's box for Judaism as well. Many people sense that something is terribly wrong with rabbinic religion but they are not sure what it is and they don't want to be perceived as "antisemitic."
The old books and the old approaches can no longer do the job that is needed. I have catalogued more than 25 major books claiming to expose Islam. But on our side we have not had the energy to produce even one since I wrote "Judaism's Strange Gods" in 2000.
I suppose a book, by itself, can not single-handedly annihilate an imposture. But in so far as any book can damage or dent it, "Judaism Discovered," will be that book.
If you can't send a donation, I understand completely. I don't want to put you under pressure or duress. This letter is intended for those who have the means to donate but who have forgotten us, or lost faith or become complacent. If you can't send a donation I do ask you to please pray. We have been subject to all kinds of harassment recently: electronic warfare and many dirty tricks intended to obstruct and delay us.
MICHAEL A. HOFFMAN II
Donate by Paypal to: rarebooks14@mac.com
By VISA or Mastercard:
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/cgi-bin/store/agora.cgi?cart_id=7608452.21672*e_0J-6&product=Your_Donation
By check or money order in US funds to: Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816
THANK YOU.
***
May 7, 2008 - COEUR D'ALENE, IDAHO --It was very kind of Mr. Jones to host this writer twice, for a total of three hours. We have been contacted by many new people as a result. I'll share some of their letters with you soon. We'll also let you know if we can get permission to release the two shows on a set of audio CDs.
With the boycott against us by the people putatively on our own side - and this includes revisionists, anti-Zionists, and Protestant and Catholic conservatives all blacklisting this writer and all news about our forthcoming book, exposure on Alex Jones' program was very precious indeed. Please patronize his advertisers and thank the GNC radio network for broadcasting his program.
As for my book, it's almost finished! Yes, I know, you've heard that before, but actually it IS finished, the text that is. All that is left is the index. It's my conviction that a work this large and containing information this unusual and unprecedented should function as a handy and comprehensive reference work for years to come.
We want the reader to be able to consult the book on a host of topics pertaining to Judaism by consulting an index which is exceedingly thorough. I'm appalled by how many otherwise potentially useful books have no index, or a token index with just some proper names and place names and little more.
In a book as large as "Judaism Discovered" it would seem like a betrayal just to print the text without the kind of indexed guide to the contents that a mere "table of contents" cannot possibly achieve.
Approximately 225 pages have been indexed thus far, and we still have a long way to go. My daily schedule is to roll out of bed at 5 am and head downstairs to my office by 5:15 am and work until 10 pm, when I retire for the night. I rest on Sunday. I have no other life at this point. Everything else in my life and our work is being neglected and has been neglected for several months.
No newsletters have been published, much to the anger of subscribers to Revisionist History, no DVDs or CDs produced, very little urgent correspondence has been answered. In addition to her other work, my wife has taken up the slack when it comes to my family duties.
What this translates to is an enormous slide in the regular monthly sales our company, Independent History and Research, is accustomed to earning.
In addition to that shortfall, the donations sent for the completion and publication of the book have dwindled markedly since January. Donations were vigorous last autumn and helped us pay our bills and save toward the very expensive printing bill for this huge book.
Unfortunately, since January, about 90% of our donors have stopped contributing.
The economy had not tanked at that time. We attribute the radical decline to a dwindling faith that the book is indeed going to be published.
Thousands of dollars have been contributed. It will take more than $20,000 to print the book in hardcover. With our regular income from sales of newsletters, CDs, DVDs and other media in decline because I had to neglect that end of our operation, we have had to live off the revenue from the donations, in addition to the large expenses connected with the book itself.
The informants inside Judaism that we have had to pay (the "inside" nature of our information will be obvious when the book is published) along with the rare books and manuscripts we have had to purchase have been very expensive. One example: Nathan Kamenetsky's two volume "Making of a Godol," which is under a cherem (rabbinic ban), cost us $140 to obtain. Multiply that figure times a hundred and you've got the budget for the big books (not counting the hundreds of smaller ones we've had to purchase).
That figure does not comprise the costs of the Israeli and European Orthodox Judaic newspapers and research journals we subscribe to or the other less costly but more numerous books we purchased.
A substantial donation we received from a man in California last autumn was gone by December and another sent by a physician in January is also nearly exhausted. We do have an interest-free, $6,000 loan toward the printing of the book, but that loan must be repaid by the end of this year.
With 90% of our usual donors missing in action since January and with the economy tanking here's what will happen with the book - if current trends continue:
1. Instead of printing 2,000 copies, we will only be able to print 1,000. Those 1,000 will probably sell out quickly to collectors as much as researchers and opinion-makers. People will demand more but there will be no more because a second printing will cost nearly as much as the first and revenue from sales of the first edition will have to go to pay our debts and, believe it or not, pay me something for the year I have spent writing the book (I'm not retired; have no second income, and have many of the same bills and family obligations as everyone else has).
Ask any publisher: a 1,000 copy print run is a collector/archival printing. It can't pay the bills for a second printing, it just covers obligations already incurred, so it ensures there will not be a second edition. The economy of scale in printing favors large print runs. 2,000 copies costs only a few thousand dollars more than 1,000 copies. Bills can be paid and the book can circulate beyond the collector community to the people we are trying to reach if we get 2,000 copies published. Printing 2,000 books can even be sufficiently profitable to fund a third printing, although we'd love to print 3,000 books the first time around, in the first edition, but that's a pipe dream at present, given the cost.
2. A 1,000 copy print run is not the worst of it. As it now stands, portions of the printing bill will have to come out of my life savings. Our income is down, bills are huge. When the book is published we must, at the very least, clear our debts. This means that the book will have to retail for $60 a copy. We wanted to sell it for $39.95, or $45 per copy, maximum. A $60 price tag can inhibit sales and keep the book out of the hands of the poor and the working class. But as things now stand, we will have no other choice.
Don't think for a minute that I'm being too pessimistic. I'm a natural-born optimist or I would not be fighting an up-hill battle like this one, for all these years. On the success or failure of "Judaism Discovered" rests the survival of all our operations, so great is our investment in this enormous project and I doubt we will ever be able to afford to do a book this vast and time-consuming ever again.
We need publicity more than we need money. If tens of thousands of people knew about us, a $5 donation from each of of them would take care of everything and the book would have an initial print run in the 5,000 copy range (!), which would mean it would pay its own way and actually be a financial asset, which it should be, since no one has written anything like this book. It fills a huge gap in our knowledge, in a critical area of contention in religion and history, and national and international policy and security.
I don't know if I'm beating a dead horse here or not by writing you. So many have already donated all they can, that we have hesitated going "once more into the breach." We thought we could avoid asking for donations again - just bite the bullet, publish a thousand books at $60 each retail ($35 wholesale), and write "finis" on this chapter of our writing and research career.
Moreover I have prayed to God that He would lend a hand, yet again, and that's when Alex Jones popped into the picture. I have been led, by the same inspiration, to bring this matter to your attention, yet again, after so long a hiatus. Some of you would want me to let you know about our situation. You would not want to discover, after the fact, that the book could have been published with many more copies and a lower price if we could have obtained just one last groundswell of assistance.
When will the book be published? I have given too many deadlines and missed them all to give you, yet again, the name of a month. By the grace of God, it will certainly be published this summer and yes, we will have a pre-publication sale as soon as the book goes to the printer.
It's crazy, I know, but I feel guilty that I've spent some 75 minutes writing this letter to you rather than working on the index for the book.
Thanks to God, this is just such a revolutionary book! If it obtains sufficient attention and circulation, I don't know how Judaism can survive with its prestige intact. I have endeavored to anticipate all potential objections and counter-arguments and pre-empt them all.
Above all I have concentrated on Judaism's deception and concealment mechanisms and made what I think is the book's most important discovery: the seeding of what I call "decoy texts" in the sacred rabbinic books, deliberately placed there to mislead prying gentiles. How this "hermeneutic of dissimulation" is operated will stun readers and provide them with a key to penetrating Judaism's masquerade, as a whole. And boy, do we need it now. Judaism is vulnerable. It used to be protected by a general reverence for "religion" but the neo-cons have spit upon and besmirched Islam with such uninhibited savagery and rancor that it has opened Pandora's box for Judaism as well. Many people sense that something is terribly wrong with rabbinic religion but they are not sure what it is and they don't want to be perceived as "antisemitic."
The old books and the old approaches can no longer do the job that is needed. I have catalogued more than 25 major books claiming to expose Islam. But on our side we have not had the energy to produce even one since I wrote "Judaism's Strange Gods" in 2000.
I suppose a book, by itself, can not single-handedly annihilate an imposture. But in so far as any book can damage or dent it, "Judaism Discovered," will be that book.
If you can't send a donation, I understand completely. I don't want to put you under pressure or duress. This letter is intended for those who have the means to donate but who have forgotten us, or lost faith or become complacent. If you can't send a donation I do ask you to please pray. We have been subject to all kinds of harassment recently: electronic warfare and many dirty tricks intended to obstruct and delay us.
MICHAEL A. HOFFMAN II
Donate by Paypal to: rarebooks14@mac.com
By VISA or Mastercard:
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/cgi-bin/store/agora.cgi?cart_id=7608452.21672*e_0J-6&product=Your_Donation
By check or money order in US funds to: Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816
THANK YOU.
***
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
'What you cede to Arabs can no longer be used for Jews'
APARTHEID IS MORAL WHEN THE ISRAELI MASTER RACE ENGAGES IN IT
THE ISRAELIS HAVE THE RIGHT TO STEAL LAND AND BE RACIST:
THEY ARE "VICTIMS OF NAZI OPPRESSION AND 'SOVIET ANTI-SEMITISM"
***
After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders
By Ethan Bronner | May 7, 2008 | NY Times
...Land is an especially sore point. Across Israel, especially in the north, are the remains of dozens of partly unused Palestinian villages, scars on the landscape from the conflict that gave birth to the country in 1948.
Yet some original inhabitants and their descendants, all Israeli Arab citizens, live in packed towns and villages, often next to the old villages, and are barred from resettling them while Jewish communities around them are urged to expand.
One recent warm afternoon, Jamal Abdulhadi Mahameed drove past kibbutz fields of wheat and watermelon, up a dirt road surrounded by pine trees and cactuses, and climbed the worn remains of a set of stairs, declaring in the open air: “This was my house. This is where I was born.”
He said what he most wanted now, at 69, was to leave the crowded town next door, come to this piece of uncultivated land with the pomegranate bushes planted by his father and work it, as generations had before him. He has gone to court to get it.
He is no revolutionary and, by nearly any measure, is a solid and successful citizen. His children include a doctor, two lawyers and an engineer. Yet, as an Arab, his quest for a return to his land challenges a longstanding Israeli policy.
“We are prohibited from using our own land,” he said, standing in the former village of Lajoun, now a mix of overgrown scrub and pines surrounded by the fields of Kibbutz Megiddo. “They want to keep it available for Jews. My daughter makes no distinction between Jewish and Arab patients. Why should the state treat me differently?”
The answer has to do with the very essence of Zionism — the movement of Jewish rebirth and control over the land where Jewish statehood first flourished more than 2,000 years ago.
“Land is presence,” remarked Clinton Bailey, an Israeli scholar who has focused on Bedouin culture. “If you want to be present here, you have to have land. The country is not that big. What you cede to Arabs can no longer be used for Jews who may still want to come.”
...Meanwhile, several right-wing rabbis have forbidden Jews from renting apartments to Arabs or employing them. And a majority of Jews, polls show, favor a transfer of Arabs out of Israel as part of a two-state solution, a view that a decade ago was thought extreme.
...Their story is part of a larger one: After the United Nations General Assembly voted in late 1947 for two states in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish, local Arab militias and their regional supporters went on the offensive against Jewish settlements, in anger over the United Nations’ support for a Jewish state. Zionist forces counterattacked. Hundreds of Palestinian villages, including Lajoun, were evacuated and mostly destroyed.
Palestinian Arabs became refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza, then under Egypt’s supervision. But some, like Mr. Mahameed, stayed in Israel. They were made citizens and were promised equality, but never got it.
Those who had left or had been expelled from their villages were not permitted back and have spent the past 60 years often a few miles away, watching their land farmed or built upon by newcomers, many of them refugees from Nazi oppression or Soviet anti-Semitism.
In 1953, the Israeli Parliament retroactively declared 300,000 acres of captured village land to be government property for settlement or security purposes.
Mr. Mahameed and his 200 fellow complainants live in the crowded town of Um el-Fahm near their former land.
“Our claim is that since the land has not been used all these years, there was no need to confiscate it,” said Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with Adalah, a Haifa-based group devoted to Israeli Arab rights.
She lost that argument in the district court, which agreed with the government that the pine trees and a water treatment plant in Lajoun constituted settlement. For her, the ruling is part of a long tradition of trickery by Israel’s legal and political systems that have nearly always come down against expanding Arab land use.
Ms. Bishara says Arabs occupy only a tiny percentage of Israel, despite making up one-fifth of its population.
..Still, it is not hard to detail the gap between Arabs and Jews in nearly every area — health, education, employment — and in government spending. Three times as many Arab families are below the poverty line as Jewish ones...
***
THE ISRAELIS HAVE THE RIGHT TO STEAL LAND AND BE RACIST:
THEY ARE "VICTIMS OF NAZI OPPRESSION AND 'SOVIET ANTI-SEMITISM"
***
After 60 Years, Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders
By Ethan Bronner | May 7, 2008 | NY Times
...Land is an especially sore point. Across Israel, especially in the north, are the remains of dozens of partly unused Palestinian villages, scars on the landscape from the conflict that gave birth to the country in 1948.
Yet some original inhabitants and their descendants, all Israeli Arab citizens, live in packed towns and villages, often next to the old villages, and are barred from resettling them while Jewish communities around them are urged to expand.
One recent warm afternoon, Jamal Abdulhadi Mahameed drove past kibbutz fields of wheat and watermelon, up a dirt road surrounded by pine trees and cactuses, and climbed the worn remains of a set of stairs, declaring in the open air: “This was my house. This is where I was born.”
He said what he most wanted now, at 69, was to leave the crowded town next door, come to this piece of uncultivated land with the pomegranate bushes planted by his father and work it, as generations had before him. He has gone to court to get it.
He is no revolutionary and, by nearly any measure, is a solid and successful citizen. His children include a doctor, two lawyers and an engineer. Yet, as an Arab, his quest for a return to his land challenges a longstanding Israeli policy.
“We are prohibited from using our own land,” he said, standing in the former village of Lajoun, now a mix of overgrown scrub and pines surrounded by the fields of Kibbutz Megiddo. “They want to keep it available for Jews. My daughter makes no distinction between Jewish and Arab patients. Why should the state treat me differently?”
The answer has to do with the very essence of Zionism — the movement of Jewish rebirth and control over the land where Jewish statehood first flourished more than 2,000 years ago.
“Land is presence,” remarked Clinton Bailey, an Israeli scholar who has focused on Bedouin culture. “If you want to be present here, you have to have land. The country is not that big. What you cede to Arabs can no longer be used for Jews who may still want to come.”
...Meanwhile, several right-wing rabbis have forbidden Jews from renting apartments to Arabs or employing them. And a majority of Jews, polls show, favor a transfer of Arabs out of Israel as part of a two-state solution, a view that a decade ago was thought extreme.
...Their story is part of a larger one: After the United Nations General Assembly voted in late 1947 for two states in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish, local Arab militias and their regional supporters went on the offensive against Jewish settlements, in anger over the United Nations’ support for a Jewish state. Zionist forces counterattacked. Hundreds of Palestinian villages, including Lajoun, were evacuated and mostly destroyed.
Palestinian Arabs became refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza, then under Egypt’s supervision. But some, like Mr. Mahameed, stayed in Israel. They were made citizens and were promised equality, but never got it.
Those who had left or had been expelled from their villages were not permitted back and have spent the past 60 years often a few miles away, watching their land farmed or built upon by newcomers, many of them refugees from Nazi oppression or Soviet anti-Semitism.
In 1953, the Israeli Parliament retroactively declared 300,000 acres of captured village land to be government property for settlement or security purposes.
Mr. Mahameed and his 200 fellow complainants live in the crowded town of Um el-Fahm near their former land.
“Our claim is that since the land has not been used all these years, there was no need to confiscate it,” said Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with Adalah, a Haifa-based group devoted to Israeli Arab rights.
She lost that argument in the district court, which agreed with the government that the pine trees and a water treatment plant in Lajoun constituted settlement. For her, the ruling is part of a long tradition of trickery by Israel’s legal and political systems that have nearly always come down against expanding Arab land use.
Ms. Bishara says Arabs occupy only a tiny percentage of Israel, despite making up one-fifth of its population.
..Still, it is not hard to detail the gap between Arabs and Jews in nearly every area — health, education, employment — and in government spending. Three times as many Arab families are below the poverty line as Jewish ones...
***
Saturday, May 03, 2008
THAT OTHER HOLOCAUST: Vonnegut's Newly Discovered Eyewitness
Review: "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets," from the book: Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut (G.P. Putnam's Sons. 2008). Reviewed by Ray Blount Jr. | NY Times | May 4, 2008
...The best thing in this posthumous collection of previously unpublished odds and ends by Kurt Vonnegut is a great piece of writing, the strongest thing by him that I have read. It relates an experience — his experience during the firebombing of Dresden — that after years of frustration he finally dealt with in a best-selling novel. Turns out he had already told the story, better, before he found his distinctive style. ...The next-best thing is presented as a copied document, or at least (has any actual typescript ever been so neat?) a facsimile. It is dated May 29, 1945. It is a letter headed "FROM: Pfc. K. Vonnegut, Jr., TO: Kurt Vonnegut."
SENT TO THE DE-LOUSING SHOWER BUT NOT GASSED
It begins: "Dear people." It closes: "Love, Kurt - Jr." It informs his family that he is in an American repatriation camp in Le Havre after having been held prisoner by the German Army. It tells "in précis" how he was captured, transported in a cattle car and "herded ... through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after 10 days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't."
EYEWITNESS TO THE ALLIED HOLOCAUST IN DRESDEN
And how he was a captive in Dresden when Allied bombers "killed 250,000 people in 24 hours and destroyed all of Dresden — possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me."
And how his captors put him to work carrying corpses. "Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres." And how, as the Allies pressed into Germany, "our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians ... strafed and bombed us, killing 14, but not me." And so on. Almost affectless, is this letter, but starkly effective.
..."Wailing Shall Be in All Streets," (is) a great laconic horror story. It is Vonnegut's straightforward account of his capture and mistreatment, his survival of the fire-bombing in an abattoir's underground meat locker, and most notably his enforced corpse-gathering. The details are too nearly unspeakable to be quoted out of context. At a time when this country's invasion of Iraq has produced, according to independent estimates, some hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets" hit me harder than I can recall being hit by John Hersey's "Hiroshima" or Goya's series "The Disasters of War." We are not told when Vonnegut wrote this piece. Evidently, however, it is what he set down right after the war and couldn't find a way to publish. (Partly because the American people didn't want to know what happened to Dresden.)
That is what we may surmise, at least, from interviews he gave over the years and especially from his long preamble to what is generally regarded as his masterpiece, "Slaughterhouse-Five," which in 1969 attempted to cover the same ground, and which I have just reread and found considerably less impressive than "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets."
***
...The best thing in this posthumous collection of previously unpublished odds and ends by Kurt Vonnegut is a great piece of writing, the strongest thing by him that I have read. It relates an experience — his experience during the firebombing of Dresden — that after years of frustration he finally dealt with in a best-selling novel. Turns out he had already told the story, better, before he found his distinctive style. ...The next-best thing is presented as a copied document, or at least (has any actual typescript ever been so neat?) a facsimile. It is dated May 29, 1945. It is a letter headed "FROM: Pfc. K. Vonnegut, Jr., TO: Kurt Vonnegut."
SENT TO THE DE-LOUSING SHOWER BUT NOT GASSED
It begins: "Dear people." It closes: "Love, Kurt - Jr." It informs his family that he is in an American repatriation camp in Le Havre after having been held prisoner by the German Army. It tells "in précis" how he was captured, transported in a cattle car and "herded ... through scalding delousing showers. Many men died from shock in the showers after 10 days of starvation, thirst and exposure. But I didn't."
EYEWITNESS TO THE ALLIED HOLOCAUST IN DRESDEN
And how he was a captive in Dresden when Allied bombers "killed 250,000 people in 24 hours and destroyed all of Dresden — possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me."
And how his captors put him to work carrying corpses. "Civilians cursed us and threw rocks as we carried bodies to huge funeral pyres." And how, as the Allies pressed into Germany, "our guards deserted us. On that happy day the Russians ... strafed and bombed us, killing 14, but not me." And so on. Almost affectless, is this letter, but starkly effective.
..."Wailing Shall Be in All Streets," (is) a great laconic horror story. It is Vonnegut's straightforward account of his capture and mistreatment, his survival of the fire-bombing in an abattoir's underground meat locker, and most notably his enforced corpse-gathering. The details are too nearly unspeakable to be quoted out of context. At a time when this country's invasion of Iraq has produced, according to independent estimates, some hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets" hit me harder than I can recall being hit by John Hersey's "Hiroshima" or Goya's series "The Disasters of War." We are not told when Vonnegut wrote this piece. Evidently, however, it is what he set down right after the war and couldn't find a way to publish. (Partly because the American people didn't want to know what happened to Dresden.)
That is what we may surmise, at least, from interviews he gave over the years and especially from his long preamble to what is generally regarded as his masterpiece, "Slaughterhouse-Five," which in 1969 attempted to cover the same ground, and which I have just reread and found considerably less impressive than "Wailing Shall Be in All Streets."
***
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