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SHIMON PERES - NOW HOLOCAUST DENIER!
April 23, 2001
THE ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST - "MEANINGLESS" SAYS PERES
Buttressing the Israeli-U.S.-Turkish Alliance in the Middle East
"[Peres has gone] beyond a moral boundary
that no Jew should allow himself to trespass".
MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/23:
For the past few years we have mentioned the great importance of the new military axis in the Middle East that adds Turkey's size and power to the U.S.-Israeli alliance that dominates and controls the region. Shimon Peres may not be a former top General, like most of those who lead Israel these days; but he is a strategist taught at the feet of David Ben-Gurion himself and the Zionist movement has always understood the importance of keeping the Arab regimes weak and divided by manipulating the various regimes and armies of the non-Arab and non-Muslim powers in the region. The Turkish alliance with Israel, one that has been significantly strengthened in the past few years, is thus of considerable importance.
Also for the past few years MER has continually focused on the underlying realities of the Israeli Labor Party -- with specific information and analysis about such key personalities as Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Yossi Beilin, and the late Yitzhak Rabin. And we've always pointed out that Israel's Labor Party was most of all the Good Cop in the Good Cop/Bad Cop game that has gone on for so many decades now, with the retarded and co-opted Arab regimes (and that certainly includes that of Arafat and the "Authority") often being taken in by the rhetorical verbiage and taken for extended political rides to even greater bondage and subservience.
Shimon Peres has always been a political chameleon, and many would add a political charlatan as well. Now that he's swtiched horses and serves as Ariel Sharon's front man, the Good Cop of the Likud-led Government if you will, it seems he feels he can get away with just about anything.
Now Peres has never cared much for historical accuracy; and he has in fact been a master of political duplicity and double-dealing -- which is why even his peers in the Knesset rebuffed him so badly last year turning him away from the Israeli Presidency for practically an unknown. But this time, in actually denying the Armenian Holocaust in a very transparent effort to buttress the Israeli-Turkey alliance, Peres has really undone himself, revealing in a more naked way than ever before his personal crassness and slimy (yes, that's the word we mean here) character.
PERES STANDS ACCUSED OVER DENIAL OF
'MEANINGLESS' ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST
By Robert Fisk in Jerusalem
[The Independent - 20 April]:
One of Israel's leading scholars of the Jewish
Holocaust has angrily compared the country's Nobel
prize-winning Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, to a
holocaust denier after an interview in which Mr Peres
made the astonishing claim that the Armenians - 1.5
million of whom were slaughtered by Ottoman Turks in
1915 - never experienced a genocide.
Mr Peres' statement appeared in the Turkish Daily News
prior to a recent state visit to Turkey; the paper
says he went so far as to refer to the Armenian
account of the mass slaughter as "meaningless".
Israel Charny, the editor of the distinguished new
two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, has written to Mr
Peres, expressing his shame at the remarks and
accusing Mr Peres of going "beyond a moral boundary
that no Jew should allow himself to trespass".
Dr Charny, who is also executive director of the
Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem,
has reminded the Foreign Minister that Israeli
academics signed a public declaration at a recent
holocaust conference in Philadelphia stating that the
Armenian genocide was factual.
To the fury of Armenians, and of Dr Charny, Turkey is
funding a worldwide campaign to deny the facts of the
Armenian holocaust which was unleashed by Ottoman
rulers against Turkey's Christian minority in the
First World War. Tens of thousands of Armenian men
were executed by Turkish forces in 1915, and their
families deported to the Syrian desert where they were
systematically plundered, raped and butchered by
Turkish gendarmes and marauding Kurds.
At the time, the British Foreign Office denounced the
Armenian holocaust (Winston Churchill first used the
word about the Armenians) although today's British
Government, apparently fearing Turkish displeasure,
initially tried to prevent Armenian participation in
this year's Holocaust Memorial Day.
Dr Charny, who devotes 45 pages of detailed factual
evidence and copies of documents on the Armenian
holocaust in his encyclopedia, was among those Israeli
historians who refused to give in to Israeli Foreign
Ministry pressure when Turkey objected to the
inclusion of the Armenian slaughter in a 1982
holocaust conference in Tel Aviv. Dr Charny says Mr
Peres telephoned him then, urging him "not to insist
on including the subject of the Armenians".
When Adolf Hitler was preparing the Nazi extermination
of Europe's Jews, he asked his Wehrmacht generals if
the world any longer remembered the Armenian genocide;
but Israel has often adopted an ambiguous attitude
towards the 20th century's first holocaust.
Unwilling to antagonise its present-day Turkish ally -
and in some cases unwilling to compare Armenian
suffering with that of European Jewry - the Israeli
Foreign Office persuaded the Jewish Holocaust survivor
Elie Wiesel to withdraw from the 1982 conference's
debates on the Armenians.
In Dr Charny's unprecedented letter to Mr Peres, he
says: "It seems that because of your wishes to advance
very important relations with Turkey, you have been
prepared to circumvent the subject of the Armenian
genocide in 1915-1920 ... it may be that in your broad
perspective of the needs of the state of Israel, it is
your obligation to circumvent and desist from bringing
up the subject with Turkey, but, as a Jew and an
Israeli, I am ashamed of the extent to which you have
now entered into the range of actual denial of the
Armenian genocide, comparable to denials of the
Holocaust."
The Turkish newspaper states Mr Peres said Israel
should not determine a "philosophical position" on the
Armenian holocaust. "We reject attempts to create a
similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian
allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust
occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went
through but not a genocide."
If Mr Peres has been quoted accurately - and he has
made no attempt to correct the newspaper - his remarks
will deeply offend millions of Armenians. It is
standard Turkish policy to refer with contempt to
Armenian suffering as "allegations" and to downgrade
the Armenian holocaust as a mere "tragedy". To the
relief of the millions of Armenians descendants of the
1915 bloodbath, Dr Charny has never wavered. His
encyclopedia states bluntly that both the Armenian and
Jewish genocides were the products of state-initiated
policies. "The Armenian genocide occurred under the
circumstances of the Turkish revolution and the First
World War," it says, "while the [Jewish] Holocaust was
a product of the Nazi revolution and the Second World
War."
Turkey maintains, despite US diplomatic evidence at
the time, that the Armenians were mere victims of a
"civil war". An American diplomat, Leslie Davis, the
US consul at Harput, saw the bodies of thousands of
Armenians in the Turkish countryside in 1915, many of
them knifed to death. "A massacre, however horrible
the word may sound, would be humane in comparison,"
he wrote.
HOLOCAUSTS THE WORLD FORGET
By Eric S. Margolis*
NEW YORK - 22 April:
The 24th of April marks the anniversary of the first holocaust
of the 20th century - the near destruction of Armenians, an ancient
Christian mountain people of Asia Minor.
In 1915, at the height of World War I, Turkey deported some 2 million
Armenians from their homes in Anatolia to Syria. Bandits and marauders
attacked the long columns of Armenian civilians, torturing, raping, and
killing. Bashi bazooks (Turkish irregulars), wild Kurdish tribesmen, and
common criminals sacked Armenian towns, slaughtering the inhabitants.
According to Armenian historians, two out of three Armenians - 1.5 million -
were murdered or died from hunger or disease from 1915-1920. In the
1940's, two out of three European Jews met the same fate at the hands of
Germany's National Socialists(Nazis). Like Jews, still traumatized
Armenians are demanding the world recognize and remember their national
calamity.
Turkey, heir to the Ottoman Empire, denies there was ever a planned genocide
of Armenians. Turkey was under attack from Britain, France, and Russia.
Eastern Anatolia, where most Armenians lived, was being invaded by Russian
armies. Some Armenians had rebelled against Ottoman rule and were helping
the Russian invaders. Other Armenian nationalist groups had battled Turks
and Kurds since the 1870's.
According to Turks, deportation of rebellious Armenians turned into a
bloodbath because there were not enough government troops to guard the
caravans from raiders. Turks were also suffering at the time. In 1915-16,
according to Turkish historians, 2.5 million Turkish and Kurdish civilians
perished from war, hunger, and disease in chaotic eastern Anatolia. Turkish
scholars insist no more than 600,000 Armenians died
Armenians, like Jewish groups, are well-organized, have financial clout, and
are very good at promoting their cause. In recent years, Armenian lobbying
groups have gotten the United States and France to recognize the Armenian
Holocaust, acts that have enraged Turkey, a bulwark of the NATO alliance.
Armenians have whipped the Turks at public relations and political lobbying.
Turkey retaliated by canceling arms contracts and reminding censorious
France that 500,000 to one million civilians were killed by French police
and troops during Algeria's 1950's bloody war of independence from France.
Last week, Israel's Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, enraged Armenians by
asserting their slaughter by the Turks was ` a tragedy but not a genocide.'
Peres rejected any similarities between the Jewish Holocaust and the
Armenian genocide. Peres was obviously catering to Israel's important, new
ally, Turkey, and reflecting the view held by most Jews that that the Jewish
Holocaust was a unique event.
Having long studied the events of 1915-20, my own conclusion is that there
was, in fact, a genocide, in which a million or more Armenians were
murdered or died from disease and exposure. True, Turkey was losing the war.
Armenians had rebelled and were aiding the invading Russians, who had long
stoked Armenian nationalist fervor. Christian Armenians and Muslims
committed atrocities against one another. Still, nothing the Armenians had
done could possibly justify their barbarous treatment.
The Turks committed a terrible crime. Modern-day Turkey should stop denying
it, apologize to Armenians, and close this tragic chapter.
But let us also put this crime in historic context. Deportation of
rebellious peoples was common in those days. The expanding Russian Empire
had deported 1.3 million Muslims from the Caucasus from 1827-1878 alone, and
committed genocide against the Cherkass, Ingush, Dagestanis, and Chechen,
slaughtering over one million of these Muslim mountaineers. Great numbers
of Greeks, Turks, and Albanians were driven from their homes in Turkey or
the Balkans in the 1920's.
The 20th century's worst crime - by now virtually forgotten - was Stalin's
Red Holocaust in Eastern Europe in the 1930's and 40's. Over seven million
Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were murdered,
starved to death, or died in Stalin's death camps.
Stalin also destroyed the Tatars, the remaining Caucasian Muslims, Volga
Germans, and one million Muslim Kazaks. As late as 1949, 95,000 Baltic
people were deported to Siberian death camps . In 1945, at least 2 million
ethnic Germans of East Europe were slaughtered, two million were raped, and
12-15 million ethnically cleansed.
Ironically, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the newly independent state of
Armenia went to war with neighboring Azerbaijan over the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia captured the enclave and created a `cordon
sanitaire' around it, expelling 800,000 Muslim Azeris from their homes -
roughly the same number of Palestinians driven from their homes in 1947-48
by the new state of Israel. Victims of oppression can turn all too quickly
to inflicting suffering on others.
Each and every one of these horrors deserves to be recognized and
commemorated. Each crime was unique, but, in the end, they were all
expressions of totalitarian brutality, evil ideology, or religious-racist
hatred. Armenians had the grim distinction of being the 20th century's
first victims of mass murder - but alas, 1not the last.
Armenians are a remarkably gifted and productive people. Yet many remain
prisoners of their frightful past. It's time for them to move on from the
nightmare of 1915, end their century-old vendetta against the Turks, and
devote their energies to the present. A good way to start would be to
rebuild Armenia, which is in shambles today. A prosperous, democratic,
well-run Armenia would help to put the ghosts of World War I to rest.
* Mr. Margolis is a Syndicated Columnist from Canada with considerable
experience covering foreign affairs.
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April 2001
ARAB-AMERICANS - PATHETIC STATE OF AFFAIRS (April 30, 2001) Regular readers of MER won't be all that surprised; though many others will be, especially those who misguidedly and in many cases sincerely give their money, support, and most of all their hopes to these pathetic groups.
THE DARK SIDE OF ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE Day (April 30, 2001) Leave it to the Arab Americans to screw things up all the time. As the iconoclastic Israel writer Israel Shamir said as he prematurely departed American shores a few days ago: "With such Palestinian activists, who needs the Israeli lobby?"
ABDULLAH AND THE CIA - LONG HISTORICAL CONSPIRACY AGAINST PALESTINIANS (April 30, 2001) The Israelis and the Americans are busy using the Mubarak Regime in Egypt and the Hashemite Regime in Jordan in an increasingly desperate attempt to quash Intifada II and create still
more years for the Israelis to consolidate and make permanent their grip on the Palestinians.
WAR MACHINES ON THE MARCH - MER FLASHBACK (April 29, 2001) Before the Second Intifada began, before last year's aborted Camp David fiasco, before this year's sweeping victory of Ariel Sharon and the attempt to then position Ehud Barak as Defense Minister, MER was already writing about what was to come while most of the media was sidetracked with and seduced by "the peace process."
THE "APARTHEID PEACE" REMAINS THE GAME BEING PLAYED (April 28, 2001) They -- the same personalities representing the same countries that created this "Apartheid Peace" and its resultant intensified uprising against it -- are at it again.
THE SLAUGHTER IN ALGERIA (April 28, 2001) This book contains shocking testimony about what is happening inside a
country where, according to reliable estimates, more than 150,000 of its
citizens have been slaughtered during the past decade.
THE ARAB AMERICAN and JEWISH AMERICAN SCENES (April 27, 2001) You gotta love all these scams that so many so tragically so often fall for -- especially the confused and naive Arab Americans.
THE GAZA CONCENTRATION CAMP (April 27, 2001) Over the years the Israelis have essentially turned The Gaza Strip from a Ghetto to a kind of Concentration Camp. In this small area today live more than 1 million Palestinians, a large number of whom have never been able to leave and reenter.
ARAFAT'S ESCAPE PLAN - MER FLASHBACK (April 26, 2001) More than $100 million dollars in a secret bank account set up by the Israelis and designed to make it possible for Arafat and friends to flee a coup and set up a "government in exile"?
SHA'ATH and PERES DESERVE EACH OTHER -- BUT HOW TRAGIC FOR THE PALESTINIANS (April 26, 2001) Sharon is sending Peres to Cairo, and Sha'ath visiting Sweden says there is a "crack in the wall of darkensss."
BERKELEY STUDENTS TAKE THE LEAD (April 25, 2001) With the total failure of the Arab American organizations at the national level, and of course provoked now by an Intifada II that is half a year old and the election of Ariel Sharon as PM in Israel, the grassroots are finally stirring a little, students in the lead as at other times in history.
CASINO FIRST! (April 25, 2001) In the old days of Intifada I Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres were busy pursuing their "Gaza First" strategy. It was never presented, but always designed, as a kind of trap for the Palestinians; and it was continually rejected by the Palestinian negotiating team that went to Madrid and then Washington, headed by Dr. Haider Abdul-Shafi.
Washington Scene: THE TRAGIC STATE OF ARAB AMERICAN AFFAIRS (April 25, 2001) Three things this week underscored the pathetically tragic state of affairs for the Arab American community which remains, well, politically retarded and as a result miserably weak...not to mention oh so co-opted and manipulated.
ISRAEL & TURKEY - MAJOR MILITARY ALLIANCE (April 25, 2001) While the misnomered "peace process" continues to dominate the news, arms continue to flood into the Middle East region and possible war preparations are underway.
SHIMON PERES - NOW HOLOCAUST DENIER! (April 23, 2001) For the past few years we have mentioned the great importance of the new military axis in the Middle East that adds Turkey's size and power to the U.S.-Israeli alliance that dominates and controls the region.
ARAFAT'S TRAVEL NOW RESTRICTED - MAYBE ON PURPOSE? (April 23, 2001) The front-page Washington Post article over the weekend about what the Israelis are up to helps reveal what the new General in charge of the Israeli Army, Ariel Sharon, is attempting to accomplish.
BLOODY SUNDAY AS SIX BOMBS ROCK ISRAEL, GAZA (April 22, 2001) Two explosions hit Israel over the space of several hours, and four
bombs were detonated in Gaza City which is under Palestinian control.
TERROR IN TEL AVIV TODAY AS US PREPARES FOR BIOLOGICAL ATTACK (April 22, 2001) Like so many things in life, terror is a two-edged sword. No doubt the Israelis will use today's bomb blast in Tel Aviv to still further clamp down on and try to choke the Palestinians into submission.
ISRAEL'S ETHNIC CLEANSING SECRETS (April 21, 2001) Israel's prime minister-elect, in the throes of forming a new
government, is known to be a militant nationalist. Ariel Sharon's view
of history is that the Zionists unequivocally have justice on their
side in the conflict over what is known to Jews as the Land of Israel
and to Palestinians as Palestine.
HISTORIC JEWISH STATEMENT SUPPORTING PALESTINIAN INTIFADA (April 21, 2001) Two months after the first Palestinian Intifada began in December 1987, a group of professionals, all American Jews including many professors and lawyers, joined together to publish as a full page ad in THE NATION Magazine of 13 February 1988 this historic statement: "Time To Dissociate From Israel"
ARAB AMERICANS STILL TERRIBLY WEAK (April 20, 2001) Three things this week underscored the pathetically tragic state of affairs for the Arab American community which remains, well, politically retarded and as a result miserably weak...not to mention oh so co-opted and manipulated.
FROM THE FRONT (April 19, 2001) Attempts by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to crush Palestinian violence by adopting still harsher military tactics came to nought last night, after guerrillas in the Gaza Strip fired more mortars into Israel, and one of the worst battles for months erupted on the edge of Bethlehem.
MUBARAK - MORE FRIGHTENED THAN ANGRY OR CREDIBLE (April 19, 2001) They use to call him the "laughing cow". Anwar Sadat made him Vice-President thinking he'd never really have to worry much about him. And he himself has never made anyone Vice-President fearing any and everyone.
QANA MASSACRE - 5TH ANNIVERSARY (April 18, 2001) It was only four years ago;
but already it has been mostly forgotten -- the terrible Qana Massacre in
southern Lebanon, and the atrocious cover-up by Israel, the U.S. and the
U.N. that followed.
QANA REMEMBERED (April 18, 2001) It was five years ago today that hundreds of civilians under U.N. protection in southern Lebanon were brutally killed or maimed by the Israeli Army. With Shimon Peres then Prime Minister after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israelis desperately tried to cover it all up and pretend it was just a mistake of war.
LATEST NEWS FROM THE FRONTS (April 17, 2001) With a heavy rocket barrage, Israel seized
nearly a square mile of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, retaking
Palestinian-controlled territory for the first time since 1994 in retaliation for
a mortar attack on a small Israeli desert town.
ROBERT FISK SPEAKS UP OH SO THOUGHTFULLY AND COURAGEOUSLY (April 17, 2001) The famous American Jewish iconoclastic journalist Izzy Stone (I.F.Stone) once told me over a long
dinner in my apartment that the role of real and serious journalists in our day and age needed to be "to
afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted."
ISRAEL STRIKES STILL HARDER, IMPOTENT ARAB "CLIENT REGIMES" COWER (April 17, 2001) We shouldn't be surprised what the Israelis are doing. Ehud Barak may have hesitated, but after all in the end both he and Shimon Peres publicly gave their endorsements to Ariel Sharon and Sharon has been warning and threatening to do just such things for a very long time.
HASHEMITES CONTINUE TO COLLABORATE (April 16, 2001) Today the Jordanian Foreign Minister goes to Israel even as Israeli bombs kill Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians and the whole region is being humbled and shaken by the Israeli Generals, accused war criminal Ariel Sharon now in charge.
CIA BUGS ARAFAT AND ALL P.A. LEADERSHIP (April 14, 2001) Arafat has been paid a very great amount of money for the deals he signed in Washington, Cairo, Sharm, Hebron, et. al. He, his family (the Tawils), and top cronies like Nabil Shaath, Abu Mazen, et. al., now have hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts as a result.
EPILOGUE TO A DECADE - A SERIOUS ISRAELI ANALYSIS (April 14, 2001) From what would usually be called the far far left in Israel and whose voice is rarely heard these days beyond their own circles -- but which we would term the serious, sophisticated, highly committed and principled Israeli intelligentsia -- there is a magazine published every other month called "Challenge".
EASTER IN THE "HOLY LAND" (April 13, 2001) Two thousand years ago on the ancient streets of Jerusalem it was the Roman army in control, the Jewish people under occupation, and Jesus, a heretical Jewish rabbi, heading to his crucifixation as a result of "official" Jewish and Roman cooperation.
DEATH MY REMOTE CONTROL AS HIT SQUADES RETURN (April 13, 2001) Israel's strategy has always been to overwhelm and suffocate the Palestinians. At various times different tactics have been used ranging from diplomacy to brutality, from talk of "Statehood" to the imposition of neo-Apartheid.
ISRAELI ARMY ON THE RAMPAGE (April 12, 2001) A seven-year-old Palestinian girl was shot in the face by an Israeli rubber bullet while at school in the West Bank village of al-Khader when clashes broke out nearby, medical sources said.
IT'S WAR, MURDER, ASSASSINATIONS AND BEATINGS (April 12, 2001) With Robert Fisk, based out of Beirut and the longest serving Western journalist in the region, and Phil Reeves among the Palestinians and the Israelis, The Independent is usually heads above the English rest in both its coverage and analysis.
ISRAELIS ATTACK EVEN MORE BOLDLY (April 11, 2001) The Israelis won't be returning to "Zone A"; why should they? After all one of the major goals of the Madrid-Oslo "Peace Process" was to get the Palestinians into isolated and controlled "autonomous population centers" and let them fend for themselves.
ISRAEL BEGINS MINI INVASION STRATEGY (April 11, 2001) The Israelis have changed Generals, and the new master General Ariel Sharon is doing things his way. But then nearly everyone else among the Israeli elite has lined up right behind him.
ABDULLAH - KING OF JORDAN, AGENT OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS (April 11, 2001) Abdullah II, ruler of Jordan, once called TransJordan, once called the East Bank of Palestine, is once again in Washington. The pattern is all too familiar.
ISRAELIS START USING GROUND TO GROUND MISSILES TO ATTACK PALESTINIANS (April 10, 2001) Starting yesterday, and for the first time in the occupied territories against the Palestinians, the Israelies have begun to use surface to surface missiles. In doing so the Israelis are once again throwing down the gauntlet to the entire Arab and Muslim world.
RACISM, MILITARISM, NEO-NAZISM IN THE "JEWISH STATE" (April 10, 2001) Racism, militarism, and a peculiar form of Israeli neo-Nazism thrives in today "Jewish State". Harsh conclusions, true; but buttressed by considerable evidence, both factual and ideological.
"VOICE OF AMERICA" EXPANDING TOWARDS CRUCIAL MIDDLE EAST (April 9, 2001) Just a few years ago, after the original Camp David agreement in 1978, the joke around Cairo was that the "Voice of America" was really all those loud muffler-broken U.S-supplied buses helping choke, or unchoke depending on your perspective, Cairo's teeming streets.
BARAK AND SHARON PLAN NEXT WAR (April 9, 2001) Long before anyone even thought Ariel Sharon might become Israeli Prime Minister...
Long before anyone even thought Shimon Peres would serve as Sharon's Foreign Minister...
While the "Peace Process" and plans for "Camp David II" were riding high...
MER was writing about the coming war being planned by Generals Barak and Sharon in tandem.
DEIR YASSIN REMEMBERED AND "THE QUILT" (April 8, 2001) "It's so unfair... After 50 years the Israelis have nuclear
weapons, the Mossad, Hollywood, a kosher White House,
and their own Assistant Secretary of State; while the
Arabs have corruption, secret-police, pathetic Arab-
American organizations, Arafat, and the 50th
anniversary quilt!"
THE PATHETIC ARAFAT - GIVER AND BEGGAR (April 8, 2001) This guy Arafat, and those who advise him, are truly getting ore pathetic all the time. We now learn that while his people suffer even worse than before as a result of what he and his cronies have done, and not done, Arafat has been busy giving expensive jewelry gifts to the former American President, First Lady, and Secretary of State (and no doubt there is a larger list!).
PASSOVER IN THE TIME OF THE INTIFADA (April 8, 2001) "I have been invited to a neighbor's Seder this year, and in my fantasy I have thought that I would rather sit on a box at home by myself in the dark with my face to the wall for the length of time the Seder lasts, out of a mixture of shame and protest against Israel's denial of freedom to her Palestinian neighbors."
THE LAST PASSOVER (April 7, 2001) "Is this the last Passover that I will celebrate?
My heart is not in the celebration this year.
And it can never be again until freedom for Jews
is also freedom for Palestinians."
THE NEXT EXPULSION OF THE PALESTINIANS? (April 7, 2001) The effect of the four-month-old al-Aqsa intifada has been to
radicalize and polarize all sides and thus the current situation
poses a great danger to the Palestinian people.
ISRAELIS AND U.S. CONGRESS POUND PALESTINIANS (April 6, 2001) What is happening now is the result of all the past years of ineptitude, corruption,
stupidities, and mistakes by the the various Arab "client regimes", Yasser Arafat's
included of course, as well as from the various "client organizations" allied
with them, especially in the US.
ISRAELIS BUILD, AMERICANS DECEIVE, ARABS WINK AND HIDE (April 6, 2001) This little game has gone on quite literally for decades now. The Israelis
twist and turn, delay and obfuscate, but all the while push forward. The Americans
say one thing and do another, and when the going gets hot they provide a little
criticism of Israel for the Arab media but reserve the important things that
really matter for ongoing and escalating cooperation with the Israelis.
"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 4 (April 5, 2001) This time they are going to march down a largely weekend deserted street in New York City, after gathering at a closed Israeli Consulate, to listen to a group of largely unknown speakers familiar only to themselves, with no strategy other than to gather among themselves to listen to themselves and to be able to say for themselves that they are doing something important...
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT AGAINST TOP THREE ARAFAT PEOPLE? (April 5, 2001) Believing the official Israelis is all but impossible at this point; so one
has to do the best one can to put together the pieces in ways that make sense.
What happened yesterday was probably not an actual assassination attempt --
if that's what the Israelis wanted to do to these three they have the capabilities
to do so and not to miss.
THE JORDANIAN POLICE STATE (April 4, 2001) About five days before the convening of the Arab Summit in Amman,
dozens of masked security men armed to the teeth, along with officers
of the Intelligence service (mukhabarat), stormed the house of Siajj
Said Daraghmeh near Jabri on the Gardens Street in Amman.
"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 3 (April 4, 2001) Saturday a few thousand Arab Americans are planning to make it to Washington
"demanding" the "Right of Return" for Palestinian refugees. What should one
think about this?
"RIGHT OF RETURN" CONF A "DISASTER" - PART 2 (April 3, 2001) The region itself has corrupt and incompetent "client regimes", now including
that of Yasser Arafat. And that explains a great deal why such an important
and rich part of the world with over 200 million people is so regularly humbled
and bleeding.
"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 1 (April 3, 2001) This year the selected slogan for Arab Americans is "the Right of Return". A
couple of years ago at the time of the 50th anniversary of the 1948 war -- the
"nakba", the "disaster" -- the slogan was "the Quilt".
"INVASION" PREPARATIONS AS MUBARAK COMES COLLECTING (April 2, 2001) Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has come to Washington once again. His visits have
become customary to in a sense collect his allowance and meet with his new American
keepers, which are in fact really the old Bush crowd he is very familiar with.
PERES 'MORE AGGRESSIVE' THAN SHARON (April 2, 2001) "Peres is more aggressive than I am, (said Sharon). "Peres responded (to the Cabinet), "Yes, he had to restrain me this time."
PLOT TO KILL ARAFAT'S TOP PEOPLE (April 1, 2001) Yesterday the Senior U.S. Senator from New York, Chuck Shumer, went before
the Washington cameras to denounce Yasser Arafat as a "terrorist" and demand
he comply with U.S./Israeli dictate or else.
ANOTHER ARAB SUMMIT COMES AND GOES (April 1, 2001) If the demonstrators going to the Palestinian Rally in New York next weekend
had any guts, and any smarts, after they gather at the Israeli Consulate they
would move on and conduct their serious shouting where the Arab Ambassadors and
the Arab League hang their sorry hats.
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