Why We Owe Israel Our Support
Today is “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day” (not to be confused with the Israeli “Jerusalem Day” held in May) an Iranian-invented occasion to call for the wiping off of Israel from the Middle East map. In celebration of the day Mahmoud Ahbmadinejad, of course, has already spewed his nonsense that Israel’s existence is illegal (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909545.html). So I think Israel supporters should also have Jerusalem day to show our support for Israel. In particular I think it’s important for all Americans to finally accept why we owe such support to the Jews.
What if you were given irrefutable evidence that top American and British leaders knew that Jews were ignominiously being slaughtered by the millions in 1942, but kept it hush-hush until late 1945, after which time most of the 9 million European Jews were quietly being executed in concentration camps ? The “final solution” didn’t really happen until 1942, so that would cover by far most of the concentration camp deaths. What if those deaths all occurred because most Jews thought they were just being “relocated” so they didn’t put up much of a fight? What if it could have been significantly avoided if of the US and the UK made the most meager efforts to notify the Jewish people (air-dropping leaflets was a daily occurrence), but instead they covered it up?
Well … that’s exactly what happened. Yes, our leaders were quietly complicit in the murder of millions of Jews over the space of a few years. This has been publicly known for over 30 years now, but I never heard about it throughout my public school education. I’m sure it still isn’t taught, although I don’t know why it isn’t. The point is that Roosevelt and his whole cabinet knew it was happening and suppressed the distribution of that information.
You don’t believe me? As I said, it’s thoroughly well documented. Read these excerpts from a speech (http://www.theopavlidis.com/reprints/matsas/part1.htm) given a few years ago to the Jewish Community Center in DC by Dr. Michael Matsas, an expert on the subject (Read his book if you want the documented references):
It stinks when history thumps you on the head. In the defense of those who heard second-hand (like most Church leaders) I’m sure that for most the stories and numbers were just to horrific to be believed as people learned about it through the American rumor mill, but that’s no excuse for the grievous level of apathy - though I think we see the same thing today with regard to the genocide in Darfur, Sierra Leone, and Tibet. Admittedly when this information first came my way my initial gut reaction was that this insidious covertness was never practiced by our leaders, followed by an assumption that there must have been a good reason that they kept quiet, but of course the very idea is ludicrous. Six million European Jews, that’s 2 out of every 3, were murdered and our elected leaders were silent partners for much of the slaughter.
What if you were given irrefutable evidence that top American and British leaders knew that Jews were ignominiously being slaughtered by the millions in 1942, but kept it hush-hush until late 1945, after which time most of the 9 million European Jews were quietly being executed in concentration camps ? The “final solution” didn’t really happen until 1942, so that would cover by far most of the concentration camp deaths. What if those deaths all occurred because most Jews thought they were just being “relocated” so they didn’t put up much of a fight? What if it could have been significantly avoided if of the US and the UK made the most meager efforts to notify the Jewish people (air-dropping leaflets was a daily occurrence), but instead they covered it up?
Well … that’s exactly what happened. Yes, our leaders were quietly complicit in the murder of millions of Jews over the space of a few years. This has been publicly known for over 30 years now, but I never heard about it throughout my public school education. I’m sure it still isn’t taught, although I don’t know why it isn’t. The point is that Roosevelt and his whole cabinet knew it was happening and suppressed the distribution of that information.
You don’t believe me? As I said, it’s thoroughly well documented. Read these excerpts from a speech (http://www.theopavlidis.com/reprints/matsas/part1.htm) given a few years ago to the Jewish Community Center in DC by Dr. Michael Matsas, an expert on the subject (Read his book if you want the documented references):
| American diplomats stationed in Istanbul and Cairo sent advice to Washington, as to how the Greek Jews could be saved. The documents with such advice were ignored and were filed in the National Archives, where I was the first one to discover them in 1975. I found over 500 pages of such documents, thanks to the “Freedom of Information Act.” The Allies with their silence helped the Germans in the slaughter of the Jews. The Allies with their silence eliminated even our instinct of survival, which in case of danger, orders you to hide, flee, or fight. They preferred to damage even their own military interests The Germans needed few soldiers to capture Jews who did not offer any resistance.Thanks to the abandonment of the Jews by our British and American allies, thousands of able Jewish men and women were led like lambs to the slaughter houses of the death camps. It is abundantly clear now that the United States knew about the mass killing of the Jews as early as July 1941. In October 1941 the American Military Attache in Berlin reported, “The normal procedure for the Nazis upon taking over a city in the East, was to establish local commandos, to separate the Jews, and to shoot them.” A logical conclusion, writes Richard Breitman, was that the deportees would also be killed if sent to the East.On August 1, 1942, a German businessman transmitted to the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland the information that Hitler had ordered the liquidation of all Jews throughout the territories occupied by Germany. The information was transmitted to England and the United States. John Pehle, the Executive Director of the War Refugee Board, made the following comments in a recent TV documentary: “The State Department was actively suppressing information about the Holocaust, while Undersecretary of State Breckinridge Long tried to cover it up. By suppressing information, the Government becomes an accomplice in what the Germans were doing, by hiding information from the American public. Officials of the Treasury Department who discovered the State Department’s deliberate obstruction of rescue efforts, revealed the “nasty scandal” in a report entitled, “Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews of Europe.”A rabbi from Baltimore, Maryland, in a bitter sermon, suggested that, “If we had any Jewish dignity, we would picket the White House and demand that the President use his influence to stop the killing of the Jews.” Within an hour, the Board of his Congregation fired him, for his disrespect of President Roosevelt, who was beloved by the American Jews and who received 90% of their votes.
In November 1942 Rabbi Stephen Wise publicly announced the murder of over two million Jews. In a meeting with the President, Roosevelt declared, “The Government of the United States is very well acquainted with most of the facts that you are now bringing to our attention.” Professor David Wyman said in his book, “The Abandonment of the Jews,” that “anti-Semitism was widespread and the State Department was actively blocking information about the genocide and deliberately obstructed rescue efforts. The press had little to say and this was in the inner pages. The President refused to focus on the issue. The United States and Great Britain were deeply committed to a policy of not rescuing the Jews, while, if the US accepted a policy of rescue, hundreds of thousands would have been saved and in the process it would have rescued the conscience of the nation.” Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau wrote, “We knew in Washington from August 1942 on that the Nazis were planning the extermination of all the Jews of Europe. Yet for nearly 18 months, the State Department did practically nothing. Officials procrastinated or suppressed information about atrocities.” Why did the Government of the United States demonstrate such hostility toward the European Jews? In the TV documentary “America and the Holocaust – Deceit and Indifference,” I believe there is the answer to this question. “Pervasive anti-Semitism dominated the US in 1940. Jews were unacceptable to many employers and they were unwelcome in resorts and country clubs.” Saving the Jews of Europe should have been a moral obligation for the US and not simply a humanitarian act. Five hundred fifty thousand American Jews served with distinction in the Armed Forces of the United States. Eleven thousand were killed, 40,000 were wounded, and almost all of them had relatives in Europe who were abandoned to the hands of the Germans. Those in power in the American government rejected thousands of applications for immigration to this enormous country. Among these applications was that of Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam. While 6 million Jews were dying in Europe, the United States was becoming a nuclear superpower, thanks to Jewish scientists like Albert Einstein, Oppenheimer, Zillard, Teller, Rabbi, and Admiral Hyman Rickover (inventor of the nuclear submarine), while the relatives of these Jews were left to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The abandonment of the European Jews by President Franklin D. Roosevelt became obvious when he refused entry to this immense country to the 900 German Jews of the “St. Louis.” Six hundred of them eventually were killed by the Germans. Why is there so much Christian hate toward the Jews? I discussed this subject with a professor of theology at Cornell University who did not know that I am a Jew. He concluded, “Killing the Jews is not enough.” “What can be worse than killing them?” I asked with obvious surprise and shock. “Eternal damnation,” was his reply. I wonder what Jesus would say, if he knew in what kind of degradation fell his noble teachings like “Love your neighbor as you would yourself’ or “Don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.” I conclude with a poem by Yitzhak Katznelson, which was written a few days before the Germans killed him, and it seems to be appropriate even today. Sure enough, the nations did not interfere, nor did they protest, Nor shake their heads, nor did they warn the murderers. Never a murmur. It was as if the leaders of the nations Were afraid that the killings might stop. |
It stinks when history thumps you on the head. In the defense of those who heard second-hand (like most Church leaders) I’m sure that for most the stories and numbers were just to horrific to be believed as people learned about it through the American rumor mill, but that’s no excuse for the grievous level of apathy - though I think we see the same thing today with regard to the genocide in Darfur, Sierra Leone, and Tibet. Admittedly when this information first came my way my initial gut reaction was that this insidious covertness was never practiced by our leaders, followed by an assumption that there must have been a good reason that they kept quiet, but of course the very idea is ludicrous. Six million European Jews, that’s 2 out of every 3, were murdered and our elected leaders were silent partners for much of the slaughter.
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Nonsense that Israel’s existence is illegal? I think not. The illegal settlements that continue to encroach upon Palestinian land are not nonsense. The fact that Israel is the only state that refuses to define its borders is not nonsense. Nor the fact that it continues to thumb its nose at 70 UN resolutions, and refuses to end a military siege and occupation of a whole people in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, performing its own slow genocide and ethnic cleansing to illegal further its expansionist aims. And for this its supported by $15 million a day - Israel only constitutes 0.02% of the world’s population, yet receives a third of America’s total aid. A renegade, rogue, apartheid state that keeps the native Palestinians in open-air prisons. Never again? Palestinians had nothing to do with the European Judaeocide. And why aren’t Dafurians or Burmese as deserving of our aid and attention?
The Holocaust industry and playing upon guilt is a scam, as exposed by several scholars, including Norman Finkelstein. We are in dangers of losing the real lesson of the Shoah, by perpetrating new genocides against Semites (Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese). Israel hasn’t been overtly threatened or attacked. But it has attacked its neighbors — Lebanon, Palestine, Syria — repeatedly, wilfully, and with devastating consequences. Do a few captured soldiers warrant destroying an entire nation’s civilian infrastructure? Of course not.
In 1988, US forces shot down an unarmed civilian Iranian Airbus, Iran Air Flight 655, on July 3 1988 — killing all 290 Iranian men, women and children on board. After initially claiming it was in self-defense, the Reagan administration shushed it up — just how many of us remember the name USS Vincennes? Now that serves as a model of diplomatic restraint.
The US government paid reparations to Iran, eventually, but never apologized.
Look it up for yourself if you don’t know already know about it. And lest we forget Israel’s attacks on the US — the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty.
Jews deserve our support. Arabs deserve out support. But Israel deserves censure. And invoking the Holocaust just won’t do to justify its abhorrent, unjustifiable behavior.
Comment by Peacemonger — October 6, 2007 @ 11:10 am
“Peacemonger”, your handle is an interesting oxymoron (peace: contentment and the absence of hostility; monger: A person promoting something undesirable or discreditable), I’m not sure you understand the nature of peace.
You cannot promote peace because peace is not something that you make. Rather it is something you experience … kind of like charity, or an emotion. It is the ends, not the means to the ends. In other words, at best you can only promote a moral approach to life that will result in peace - but that isn’t even the most important dynamic about peace.
The most important dynamic about experiencing peace is that it depends solely on yourself. As long as you look to others to make you peaceful you will always be disappointed, and that is why the Palestinian people will never be at peace. That is precisely why the whole Middle East region has been a war zone for as long as time has existed. That is also the primary reason why even without Israel’s existence the prospects for peace over there is so bleak.
We all have a moral imperative - and it is personally from following that imperative where inner peace results, and so I can no more bestow peace upon the Palestinian than I can force him to bestow peace upon me. It can only come from within. My moral imperative is that I pay penance where penance is due. As an American I believe that to be true with regard to the debt we owe to the American Indian - which debt I believe is fairly compensated with programs already in place. We also owe debt to the African American - which I also believe is being fairly compensated, or at least we’re working toward it (incidentally, I see no such programs in any other country). In both those cases I think that the programs can and occasionally have had a deleterious effect on those peoples, and so we constantly need to re-evaluate the situation. At some point I also believe that penance or debt is paid, though for inner peace it is necessary to err on the side of safety.
I also feel this debt to the millions of Jews that were slaughtered which slaughter could have been greatly reduced were it not for good old American bigotry. Although I find your claims of the genocide as instigated by Jews ludicrous, even if they were true my moral imperative would still be unchanged because my imperative is based on what I owe, not on what others deserve. Whether the Jews deserve it or not is not the issue for peace enabling activities. I am further convinced that world peace can only be experienced in this manner. Palestinian efforts that expect peace to come from without (instead of within) based on policies of aggression have always failed and they will always fail.
Admittedly, the US has done a lot of damage in a lot of places and it has resulted in many undeserved deaths, but as I mentioned above I know of no other country that makes a greater effort to voluntarily pay a penance for such wrongdoings. Even in the event of Flight 655 that you mentioned, Iran dropped the incident after reparations were made (Dec 12, 2006 international court).
I am also confident that the only hope for middle-east peace is that the various ethnic and religious groups also follow life-promoting moral imperatives. Instead we observe imperatives based on self-serving principles that have little regard for the lives of others - whether that be a suicide bomber or the women and children they target.
Though doubtlessly, a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still - and I’m sure I haven’t even been successful in my effort to convince you of your cognitive error. I only hope that others who read this, being an objective third party, could see the error and choose for themselves a “what penances do I owe” approach that will result in their own peace and ultimately influence the peace of those around them.
Comment by Dave Austin — October 8, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
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