THE CULT OF THE SUICIDE/HOMICIDE BOMBERS.
A failed strategy!
Q:
Why were Kamikaze pilots considered worse than guys
who just bombed other guys?
A: IMHO:
Anyone watching films of the ww2 Pacific battles would understand why Kamikaze bombers were considered worse than “normal bombers”. Bombs are inanimate objects,- although today they are guided-missiles,- nevertheless, the kamikazes actually appear like a person or animal coming after you ! Looking into the person's eyes almost, at the controls of those little aircraft,- I could imagine a personal interaction with hatred and evil, between the victim and the kamikaze bomber.
It is not the same with inanimate objects thrown out of an aircraft, even if aimed at you. The persons at the controls of the bombers can probably divorce themselves from any personal feelings vis-à-vis their targets and victims! So while they are deadlier, the pilots do live to repeat this operation another day,- something that everyone understands happens in wars,- regretfully!
The suicide- (or homicide) bomber is out to kill as many people as he can,- personally, without achieving anything! That is simply his/her evil intent. What I fail to comprehend, is why are some so full of hatred,- or full of their jihadi beliefs,- that they are willing to pursue this course of action when their country or nation is not under threat, as the Japanese were? Desperation in their "plight"?
Is that their propaganda ploy?
What were they intent on achieving in Bali and London, for example?
From Israel, what can they expect as a result, other than more repression in their Territories? As a political tool,- what, other than a display of evil hatred,- is it meant to achieve? In Iraq,- it seems to be a tit-for-tat civil war,- intentionally orchestrated,- to what purpose? Whom does it serve if they kill innocent civilians,- men, women and children going about their normal daily business?
Apart from those who "feel sorry" for these "desperadoes", I cannot for the life of me see what they are achieving with this strategy! I think that the time has come to push this in our own Western media,- the results are not worth their efforts of sacrificing themselves,- and certainly not their kids!
See below.
(MM)
"http://pmw.org.il/bulletins_may2007.htm#b280507
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b2QhQQpHck&mode=related&search=
Part 2: Overview of the history of promotion of children's Shahada – Martyrdom
Shahada for children is a recurring message on both Fatah-controlled PA TV and Hamas-controlled Al Aqsa TV.
1. Hamas TV has been broadcasting regularly from March to May 2007 a video dramatization of the four-year-old daughter of female suicide bomber Reem Riyashi singing to her dead mother and vowing to follow in her footsteps. The video clip ends as the little girl picks up explosives from her mother's drawer.
Click to view video on YouTube or PMW website
2. Another Hamas video encouraging the participation of children in terrorism focuses on Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder and religious leader killed by Israel. The video portrays young children as the continuation of Yassin’s legacy. Children are shown in uniforms, holding rifles and participating in military training. The lyrics stress the children's connection to Yassin: “Even though they killed our [Ahmad] Yassin, the land will grow a thousand Ahmad.”
Click to view video on YouTube or PMW website (below)
3. In another video, which was broadcast on Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority TV hundreds of times from 2001 to 2004, a young boy leaves a farewell letter to his parents and goes off to seek Shahada, describing the death he aspires as "sweet." This PA clip is designed to offset a child's natural fear of death, by depicting Shahada as heroic and tranquil.
4. From 2000 to 2003, PA TV broadcast a music video depicting the delightful Shahid paradise of Muhammad Al-Dura, who died in crossfire. The child actor is shown flying a kite, frolicking on the beach and even at an amusement park. The clip opens with an invitation to other children from Al-Dura to aspire to Shahada: "I am waving to you not in parting, but to say 'follow me'." This video directing children to follow Al Dura to paradise as Martyrs was suddenly broadcast again in June, 2006, after Israeli troops had gathered at the border of the Gaza Strip, following the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
5. The result of such virulent propaganda is apparent, when listening to the interview on PA TV with two 11-year-old Palestinian girls talking about Shahada and describing it as a primary ideal and personal goal. They explain that "all Palestinian children" view Shahada as more worthwhile than living because of its promised grand Afterlife.
Please feel free to forward this bulletin, crediting Palestinian Media Watch"pmw.org.il/bulletins_may2007.htm#b280507"
"www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b2QhQQpHck&mode=related&search="
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The Islamic duty, according to the Koran, to respect Israel.
The Islamic duty to respect Israel
Posted By Melanie Phillips On May 28, 2007 @ 2:55 pm In Diary |
A reader wonders why more is not made of the fact that in several verses the Koran declares that Israel is the divinely appointed homeland of the Jews. The relevant verses are provided on the Arabs for Israel website and read thus:
2:47 Children of Israel! call to mind the favour which I bestowed upon you, and that I preferred you to all other nations. 2:122 O Children of Israel! call to mind the favor which I bestowed upon you, and that I preferred you to all other nations.
7:137 And We made the children of Israel, who were considered weak (and of no account), inheritors of lands in both east and west, - lands whereon We sent down Our blessings. The fair promise of thy Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because they had patience and constancy, and We leveled to the ground the great works and fine buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected (with such pride). 17:104 And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, “Dwell securely in the land of promise”:
10:93 We settled the Children of Israel in a beautiful dwelling-place, and provided for them sustenance of the best: it was after knowledge had been granted to them.
20:80 O ye Children of Israel! We delivered you from your enemy, and We made a Covenant with you to give you the right side (the blessed side) of Mount Sinai, and We sent down to you Manna (special food) and quails.
26:59 Thus it was, but We made the Children of Israel inheritors of such things (the promised land)
45:16 We did aforetime grant to the Children of Israel the Book the Power of Command, and Prophet hood; We gave them, for Sustenance, things good and pure; and We favored them above all other nations.
44: 32 And We have chosen them (the Children of Israel) above the ‘Alamîn (mankind, and jinns) and our choice was based on a deep knowledge.
32.23] And certainly We gave the Book to Moses, so be not in doubt concerning the receiving of it, and We made it a guide for the children of Israel.
[32.24] And We made of them Guiding Lights and leaders to guide by Our command as they were patient, and they were certain of Our communications.
[17:104] And we said to the Children of Israel afterwards, “ scatter and live all over the world…and when the end of the world is near we will gather you again into the Promised Land”.T
he interpretation of these verses, which is believed by a handful of Muslims around the world, is that no Muslim can interfere with the ingathering of the Jews to Israel since this is the word of the Almighty himself.
Curious indeed that we don’t hear anyone else referring to this particular interesting theological insight.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from Melanie Phillips’s Diary: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary
URL to article: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1531
Click here to print.
Posted By Melanie Phillips On May 28, 2007 @ 2:55 pm In Diary |
A reader wonders why more is not made of the fact that in several verses the Koran declares that Israel is the divinely appointed homeland of the Jews. The relevant verses are provided on the Arabs for Israel website and read thus:
2:47 Children of Israel! call to mind the favour which I bestowed upon you, and that I preferred you to all other nations. 2:122 O Children of Israel! call to mind the favor which I bestowed upon you, and that I preferred you to all other nations.
7:137 And We made the children of Israel, who were considered weak (and of no account), inheritors of lands in both east and west, - lands whereon We sent down Our blessings. The fair promise of thy Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because they had patience and constancy, and We leveled to the ground the great works and fine buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected (with such pride). 17:104 And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, “Dwell securely in the land of promise”:
10:93 We settled the Children of Israel in a beautiful dwelling-place, and provided for them sustenance of the best: it was after knowledge had been granted to them.
20:80 O ye Children of Israel! We delivered you from your enemy, and We made a Covenant with you to give you the right side (the blessed side) of Mount Sinai, and We sent down to you Manna (special food) and quails.
26:59 Thus it was, but We made the Children of Israel inheritors of such things (the promised land)
45:16 We did aforetime grant to the Children of Israel the Book the Power of Command, and Prophet hood; We gave them, for Sustenance, things good and pure; and We favored them above all other nations.
44: 32 And We have chosen them (the Children of Israel) above the ‘Alamîn (mankind, and jinns) and our choice was based on a deep knowledge.
32.23] And certainly We gave the Book to Moses, so be not in doubt concerning the receiving of it, and We made it a guide for the children of Israel.
[32.24] And We made of them Guiding Lights and leaders to guide by Our command as they were patient, and they were certain of Our communications.
[17:104] And we said to the Children of Israel afterwards, “ scatter and live all over the world…and when the end of the world is near we will gather you again into the Promised Land”.T
he interpretation of these verses, which is believed by a handful of Muslims around the world, is that no Muslim can interfere with the ingathering of the Jews to Israel since this is the word of the Almighty himself.
Curious indeed that we don’t hear anyone else referring to this particular interesting theological insight.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article printed from Melanie Phillips’s Diary: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary
URL to article: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1531
Click here to print.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
DEMOCRACY: ITS MEANING IN PRACTICE.
THE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY
Democracy has to start at home!
In our home, we were and are very democratic.
When we were an extended family, we discussed everything and acted as the elders told us to.
When we were just 4, we discussed everything, but the kids did as they were told,- by the parents.
I.E. :
They were given freedoms on a long 'leash',- but that 'leash' was reined-in as soon as they took advantage of this freedom to their detriment!
Now when we are jus 2 of us,- we discuss everything, but we do ,- what?
We have to give and take!
That is democracy! A democracy which can work for two very easily,- or you divorce!
Institutional, national or company, etc. democracies are just the same on a grander scale: some take advantage of the freedoms of the individual, to the detriment of everyone else. They have to be reined in, restricted, locked-up, locked-out, expelled, legislated against, or whatever.
There is no one rule that fits all. There is no law that says: we are all equal, -full stop.
We are all equal before the law,- fair enough!
But kids, adults, the able and disabled, the old and the young,- the crooks, the saintly, the clever and the idiots,- the poor and the rich, etc., etc.,- sorry, not one of us would claim equality on all fronts all our lives with everyone else!
One can repeat one's "democracy dogma" as much as one likes. The ideal may be in heaven, but on earth, my/our home is my/our castle and I/we set the rules.
If my home is on Crown land,- or if someone else has claims on my land,- we still have tenancy rights enshrined in laws. I don't expect to be shot at and murdered by the landlord,- but if I overstep my rights, the landlord will have a right to evict me via the correct enforcers of the law. I will have to accept it, like it or not,- if I am normal, of course!
If my neighbors overstep their rights to build a structure which adversely affects my property rights,- then there are also laws and avenues to appeal for both parties. Both will have to accept whatever the rulings,- if we are normal human beings!
On the other hand, if a potential mass-murderer were to live next door to any of us,- whose rights take precedence in a democracy? His or ours? He stays and we move?
I wouldn't!
ISRAEL,- THE JEWISH PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL HOMELAND.
Every nation has its problems and every nation deals with it as it sees fit, including our Oz (AUSTRALIA).
Dictatorships a-la-Zimbabwe or Iraq or past and present others,- need outside help to free their citizens.
But I don't think that democratic Israel needs anyone's lecturing on how to deal with its potential enemies within, as long as no one comes to help her deal with her actual enemies,- i.e. the former's brethren-, without!
The following is a Letter to the Editor, of The Age newspaper, Melbourne.
Monday 21 May, 2007.
Disingenuous claim
THERE is no doubt that the Holocaust was a terrible crime against humanity and that the establishment of a refuge for Jews in 1948 was a justifiable step. It is also true that Israel has faced many difficulties from its neighbours.
However, to imply that all citizens in the Jewish state have equal rights, as Philip Chester and Danny Lamm do, is disingenuous.
Those with "Jewish nationality" have all sorts of privileges in terms of employment and loans for housing and education. Most land is reserved for Jewish use. Immigration, quite obviously, favours Jews over non-Jews. The fact that the Israeli Government may not discriminate between citizens does not appear to prohibit non-state institutions from doing so.
Israel would like to be seen as a democratic state like any other. However, no other democracy privileges a particular ethnicity the way Israel does. There is a real conflict between a state being defined as "Jewish" and it being truly democratic. This is, no doubt, a difficult acknowledgement to make, but it is an issue that must ultimately be faced.
Instead of being the Promised Land for the Chosen People, if Israel would move to becoming a secular state embracing compassion, freedom and justice, for all citizens equally, it would truly be a light to the world.
John Perkins, St Kilda
-------------------------------------------
My reply to the Editor, The Age.
Disingenuous claim indeed, by John Perkins, St Kilda
If the world had stopped the evil killing and hatred of the Jewish people long, long ago, then perhaps Jews would not have needed to be a "people apart" in their own ethnic State.
But I don't know about being a "chosen people",- I would rather God and the world chose someone else for a change!
As for democracy,- if her neighbors and detractors were trying even 1% to be as fair and reasonable as Israel is trying to be towards all its citizens,- the whole world would be a better place.
For the time being, democracy in Israel is as good as its enemies allow it to be. It is a beacon of light to her neighbors.
But to be a "light on to the nations" requires a willingness by the nations to live in light, not in darkness!
MM
Democracy has to start at home!
In our home, we were and are very democratic.
When we were an extended family, we discussed everything and acted as the elders told us to.
When we were just 4, we discussed everything, but the kids did as they were told,- by the parents.
I.E. :
They were given freedoms on a long 'leash',- but that 'leash' was reined-in as soon as they took advantage of this freedom to their detriment!
Now when we are jus 2 of us,- we discuss everything, but we do ,- what?
We have to give and take!
That is democracy! A democracy which can work for two very easily,- or you divorce!
Institutional, national or company, etc. democracies are just the same on a grander scale: some take advantage of the freedoms of the individual, to the detriment of everyone else. They have to be reined in, restricted, locked-up, locked-out, expelled, legislated against, or whatever.
There is no one rule that fits all. There is no law that says: we are all equal, -full stop.
We are all equal before the law,- fair enough!
But kids, adults, the able and disabled, the old and the young,- the crooks, the saintly, the clever and the idiots,- the poor and the rich, etc., etc.,- sorry, not one of us would claim equality on all fronts all our lives with everyone else!
One can repeat one's "democracy dogma" as much as one likes. The ideal may be in heaven, but on earth, my/our home is my/our castle and I/we set the rules.
If my home is on Crown land,- or if someone else has claims on my land,- we still have tenancy rights enshrined in laws. I don't expect to be shot at and murdered by the landlord,- but if I overstep my rights, the landlord will have a right to evict me via the correct enforcers of the law. I will have to accept it, like it or not,- if I am normal, of course!
If my neighbors overstep their rights to build a structure which adversely affects my property rights,- then there are also laws and avenues to appeal for both parties. Both will have to accept whatever the rulings,- if we are normal human beings!
On the other hand, if a potential mass-murderer were to live next door to any of us,- whose rights take precedence in a democracy? His or ours? He stays and we move?
I wouldn't!
ISRAEL,- THE JEWISH PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL HOMELAND.
Every nation has its problems and every nation deals with it as it sees fit, including our Oz (AUSTRALIA).
Dictatorships a-la-Zimbabwe or Iraq or past and present others,- need outside help to free their citizens.
But I don't think that democratic Israel needs anyone's lecturing on how to deal with its potential enemies within, as long as no one comes to help her deal with her actual enemies,- i.e. the former's brethren-, without!
The following is a Letter to the Editor, of The Age newspaper, Melbourne.
Monday 21 May, 2007.
Disingenuous claim
THERE is no doubt that the Holocaust was a terrible crime against humanity and that the establishment of a refuge for Jews in 1948 was a justifiable step. It is also true that Israel has faced many difficulties from its neighbours.
However, to imply that all citizens in the Jewish state have equal rights, as Philip Chester and Danny Lamm do, is disingenuous.
Those with "Jewish nationality" have all sorts of privileges in terms of employment and loans for housing and education. Most land is reserved for Jewish use. Immigration, quite obviously, favours Jews over non-Jews. The fact that the Israeli Government may not discriminate between citizens does not appear to prohibit non-state institutions from doing so.
Israel would like to be seen as a democratic state like any other. However, no other democracy privileges a particular ethnicity the way Israel does. There is a real conflict between a state being defined as "Jewish" and it being truly democratic. This is, no doubt, a difficult acknowledgement to make, but it is an issue that must ultimately be faced.
Instead of being the Promised Land for the Chosen People, if Israel would move to becoming a secular state embracing compassion, freedom and justice, for all citizens equally, it would truly be a light to the world.
John Perkins, St Kilda
-------------------------------------------
My reply to the Editor, The Age.
Disingenuous claim indeed, by John Perkins, St Kilda
If the world had stopped the evil killing and hatred of the Jewish people long, long ago, then perhaps Jews would not have needed to be a "people apart" in their own ethnic State.
But I don't know about being a "chosen people",- I would rather God and the world chose someone else for a change!
As for democracy,- if her neighbors and detractors were trying even 1% to be as fair and reasonable as Israel is trying to be towards all its citizens,- the whole world would be a better place.
For the time being, democracy in Israel is as good as its enemies allow it to be. It is a beacon of light to her neighbors.
But to be a "light on to the nations" requires a willingness by the nations to live in light, not in darkness!
MM
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
NOTES ON THE WINOGRAD REPORT: lecture by Dr. Sydney Engelberg.
NOTES FROM A LECTURE BY Dr. Sydney Engelberg, 14/5/2007. Melbourne.
“The Winograd Report (Israel):
Leadership in Times of Crisis.”
Dr. Engelberg is an independent leadership and orgnisation consultant, academic and senior executive at a Fortune100 company with extensive Leadership, Human Resource and Organisation Development experience in Israel, North America and Europe. Dr. Engelberg currently lives in Jerusalem, but is originally from South Africa and in the ‘70s was Master of Shalom College, Sydney.
The Winograd Commission of Inquiry was set up by the Israeli Government to investigate the second Lebanon war, whose conduct was highly criticised by all sectors of Israeli society. An interim report was released to the public in which the PM Ehud Olmert was strongly criticised, as well as his entire Cabinet. Calls for his resignation were made by a huge crowd of demonstrators in Rabin Square.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Engelberg described the definitions of “CRISIS” by a renowned Crisis Management Institute: i.e. they divide a crisis as being either a “smouldering crisis” or an “immediate or sudden crisis”. For the former, the leadership is responsible to monitor and prepare. For the latter, as the kidnapping of the soldiers by Hizbullah was, the leadership is not necessarily the ones responsible. This crisis (which precipitated the war) was in fact a “hybrid” of these and this is why PM Olmert cannot be held entirely responsible (i.e. to have prevented it!)
In dealing with a crisis : identifying it, prevention if possible, damage control when crisis hits using containment first and elimination next, then followed by dealing with the recovery from the crisis,- this is part of the CRISIS MANAGEMET STRATEGY. Then at the end, one must study and learn meaningful lessons from it so that the same crisis should not occur again.
Leadership in a crisis situation: competency of the leadership is paramount in dealing with a crisis. It must firstly build an environment of trust in the population, to allay fear, anxiety and uncertainty.
It needs the creation of an expanded mindset when dealing with a crisis.
Dr. Engelberg then quoted Albert Einstein: “a problem cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness it was created.” One must go up to a different level to solve it, i.e. one must distance oneself from the immediate problem.
One must be able to identify not only the obvious, but also the obscure vulnerabilities which caused the problem in the first place. One must look ahead and identify obscure threats before they eventuate.
But even the obvious vulnerabilities were not identified. For example, the bomb shelters were not necessarily well maintained; they were inadequate for the population who were sick, infirm or immobile; not sufficient thought was given to those who would need special care and the government should not have relied on the good graces of an individual to create a tent city in the South for the refugees from the North. They should have provided it immediately.
Wise decision making is necessary. An embarrassing situation evolved with Government paralysis ! Taking courageous actions and risk taking are all part of efficient crisis management, but these were not forthcoming.
Learning from the crisis to effect change is imperative.
CONCLUSION.
Dr. Engelberg concluded his presentation with a note of encouragement. He quoted two important commentators and a noted war historian who all wrote about the positive results of the war and noted that the Israelis are doing themselves a disservice and untold damage by being too negative about the outcomes from the war. In spite of the soldiers not being found unfortunately, there were several positives to point at, namely:
The Northern border has been quiet for a longer period than for the last 40 years; the UN forces prevent the terrorist groups from rebuilding their infrastructures; better relations with the Siniore Lebanese Government than ever before,- a government which is still in power in spite of Hizbullah demonstrations; politically successful ,-i.e. the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (ceasefire),- none was ever so favourable towards Israel as this one ; Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader is still in hiding and his standing with his own people seems to be waning; and the Winograd report has been received by the Arab world with a great deal of respect for the democratic process involved and almost admiration for the resilience of the Israeli citizens!
As for the political leadership, the people are fed up with all the politicians. None were invited to the mass rally in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. But many high profile leaders of all the Parties were there mingling but totally ignored by the crowd.
However, among the speakers who addressed the crowd were a couple of highly intelligent younger reservists who really inspired the crowd with their passion and deep-seated love for their country. Dr. Engelberg’s hope is that it is this younger generation rising up from the population who will be the next and future leaders of Israel. The country is in a state of transition at present, he said, which hopefully won’t last too long and he looks forward to a totally new generation of highly intelligent, well-motivated and honest younger, educated and well-trained group of political leaders taking over,- hopefully sooner than later!
The army is already well on the way to rectifying the errors of the Lebanese war; the economy has recovered; but the inertia of the current leadership is a worry!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MM
“The Winograd Report (Israel):
Leadership in Times of Crisis.”
Dr. Engelberg is an independent leadership and orgnisation consultant, academic and senior executive at a Fortune100 company with extensive Leadership, Human Resource and Organisation Development experience in Israel, North America and Europe. Dr. Engelberg currently lives in Jerusalem, but is originally from South Africa and in the ‘70s was Master of Shalom College, Sydney.
The Winograd Commission of Inquiry was set up by the Israeli Government to investigate the second Lebanon war, whose conduct was highly criticised by all sectors of Israeli society. An interim report was released to the public in which the PM Ehud Olmert was strongly criticised, as well as his entire Cabinet. Calls for his resignation were made by a huge crowd of demonstrators in Rabin Square.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Engelberg described the definitions of “CRISIS” by a renowned Crisis Management Institute: i.e. they divide a crisis as being either a “smouldering crisis” or an “immediate or sudden crisis”. For the former, the leadership is responsible to monitor and prepare. For the latter, as the kidnapping of the soldiers by Hizbullah was, the leadership is not necessarily the ones responsible. This crisis (which precipitated the war) was in fact a “hybrid” of these and this is why PM Olmert cannot be held entirely responsible (i.e. to have prevented it!)
In dealing with a crisis : identifying it, prevention if possible, damage control when crisis hits using containment first and elimination next, then followed by dealing with the recovery from the crisis,- this is part of the CRISIS MANAGEMET STRATEGY. Then at the end, one must study and learn meaningful lessons from it so that the same crisis should not occur again.
Leadership in a crisis situation: competency of the leadership is paramount in dealing with a crisis. It must firstly build an environment of trust in the population, to allay fear, anxiety and uncertainty.
It needs the creation of an expanded mindset when dealing with a crisis.
Dr. Engelberg then quoted Albert Einstein: “a problem cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness it was created.” One must go up to a different level to solve it, i.e. one must distance oneself from the immediate problem.
One must be able to identify not only the obvious, but also the obscure vulnerabilities which caused the problem in the first place. One must look ahead and identify obscure threats before they eventuate.
But even the obvious vulnerabilities were not identified. For example, the bomb shelters were not necessarily well maintained; they were inadequate for the population who were sick, infirm or immobile; not sufficient thought was given to those who would need special care and the government should not have relied on the good graces of an individual to create a tent city in the South for the refugees from the North. They should have provided it immediately.
Wise decision making is necessary. An embarrassing situation evolved with Government paralysis ! Taking courageous actions and risk taking are all part of efficient crisis management, but these were not forthcoming.
Learning from the crisis to effect change is imperative.
CONCLUSION.
Dr. Engelberg concluded his presentation with a note of encouragement. He quoted two important commentators and a noted war historian who all wrote about the positive results of the war and noted that the Israelis are doing themselves a disservice and untold damage by being too negative about the outcomes from the war. In spite of the soldiers not being found unfortunately, there were several positives to point at, namely:
The Northern border has been quiet for a longer period than for the last 40 years; the UN forces prevent the terrorist groups from rebuilding their infrastructures; better relations with the Siniore Lebanese Government than ever before,- a government which is still in power in spite of Hizbullah demonstrations; politically successful ,-i.e. the UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (ceasefire),- none was ever so favourable towards Israel as this one ; Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader is still in hiding and his standing with his own people seems to be waning; and the Winograd report has been received by the Arab world with a great deal of respect for the democratic process involved and almost admiration for the resilience of the Israeli citizens!
As for the political leadership, the people are fed up with all the politicians. None were invited to the mass rally in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. But many high profile leaders of all the Parties were there mingling but totally ignored by the crowd.
However, among the speakers who addressed the crowd were a couple of highly intelligent younger reservists who really inspired the crowd with their passion and deep-seated love for their country. Dr. Engelberg’s hope is that it is this younger generation rising up from the population who will be the next and future leaders of Israel. The country is in a state of transition at present, he said, which hopefully won’t last too long and he looks forward to a totally new generation of highly intelligent, well-motivated and honest younger, educated and well-trained group of political leaders taking over,- hopefully sooner than later!
The army is already well on the way to rectifying the errors of the Lebanese war; the economy has recovered; but the inertia of the current leadership is a worry!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MM
Sunday, May 13, 2007
PROTEST TO USA FOR JERUSALEM DAY BOYCOTT.
OPEN LETTER
Attention: President Bush.
Dear Mr. President,
It has come to my notice and to Jews everywhere that the US is boycotting the capital city of Israel and US ambassadors are not participating in the forthcoming celebrations of Jerusalem Day.
It seems that your eternal declarations of friendship and support for your most trustworthy ally in the Middle East are not sounding very genuine!
Jerusalem may be holy to many religions but it is central only to one! It is our eternal spiritual capital of the Jewish people all over the world. Only Israel and our people will cherish and safeguard it forever for all religions! We celebrate with the brave Israelis who finally returned this ancient capital to its former rightful sovereignty. "Jerusalem of gold" shines again for the first time in two millennia!
What is making the mighty USA so fearful? Why act contrary to US law as enacted by your Congress?
Expediency rather than principle?
I think that I can speak for most Jews around the world that we consider this to be an insult not only to Israel but also to all of us.
MM, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
Attention: President Bush.
Dear Mr. President,
It has come to my notice and to Jews everywhere that the US is boycotting the capital city of Israel and US ambassadors are not participating in the forthcoming celebrations of Jerusalem Day.
It seems that your eternal declarations of friendship and support for your most trustworthy ally in the Middle East are not sounding very genuine!
Jerusalem may be holy to many religions but it is central only to one! It is our eternal spiritual capital of the Jewish people all over the world. Only Israel and our people will cherish and safeguard it forever for all religions! We celebrate with the brave Israelis who finally returned this ancient capital to its former rightful sovereignty. "Jerusalem of gold" shines again for the first time in two millennia!
What is making the mighty USA so fearful? Why act contrary to US law as enacted by your Congress?
Expediency rather than principle?
I think that I can speak for most Jews around the world that we consider this to be an insult not only to Israel but also to all of us.
MM, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
Friday, May 04, 2007
ETHNIC CLEANSING OF JERUSALEM 1948.
The One State Final Solution to the Judenfrage - is it a serious subject for debate??
"http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/05/one-state-final-solution-to-judenfrage.html ">
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem - 1948
This page gives eye-witness accounts of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem. The entire world acquiesced in this war crime of the lackeys of imperialist powers, because of the interference of powerful lobbying interests. This war crime took place in Palestine, in 1948, when the Transjordan Legion, directed and financed by British imperialism, expelled the Jews of the old city of Jerusalem, depriving them of their legitimate rights.
The expulsion of the Jews was part of the racist genocidal Arab plan for ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem and Palestine in 1948. This was announced by the Arab league, but it was instigated and planned in part by the Nazi Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, and his able relative, Abdel Khader Al-Husseini. The strategy included ambushes such as this one, constant shelling and sniper fire, a blockade of the Jerusalem road that resulted in near starvation, and invasion by armies of the Arab states. Over a thousand Jewish civilians were killed in Jerusalem during this campaign.
Jews had been expelled by force from Jerusalem in the past by Christian Roman emperors and by the crusaders, only to return to the eternal capital and national and religious center. The expulsion of the Jews was the culmination of the Arab plan for ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem in 1948, planned by the Nazi Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, and his able relative, Abdel Khader Al-Husseini. The strategy included ambushes such as the convoy massacre, constant shelling and sniper fire, attacks of Irregulars and of the Jordan legion on the Jewish quarter and a blockade of the Jerusalem road that resulted in near starvation. Over a thousand Jewish civilians were killed during this campaign.
The Jewish Quarter had been under attack by Arab irregulars for many months and in desperate straits. Following the invasion by the Transjordanian Arab Legion, pressure increased. Despite the empty propaganda statements of anti-Zionist historians, the fledgling Jewish army was no match for the Jordan legion with its artillery, armored vehicles and British officered troops. Those who insist on Jewish superiority in numbers must explain why there were no soldiers available to rescue the Jews of the old city of Jerusalem. Troops that were sent to its defense were either so battle weary that they fell asleep on duty, or so unfit for battle that they didn't know how to use their weapons.. For many months a tiny Haganah force tried to defend inhabitants of the Jewish quarter, who numbered over 2,000 - mostly religious Jews and many non-Zionist. A large part of the original Jewish community of 5,000 had fled in the pogroms of 1936. These were Jews whose families had lived in Jerusalem for many generations. They had built some 59 synagogues and a rich tradition. On May 28 the defense of the old city finally collapsed, and Abdullah Al-Tell, commanding the Transjordan Legion, evacuated the Jewish civilians to West Jerusalem, taking the Haganah defenders prisoner. Al Tell had no choice, because otherwise Arab mobs would have murdered the civilians. So he claims. Of course, al-Tell had the choice of not conquering a defenseless civilian position, and of course he had the obligation, having conquered it, of ensuring the safety of its civilian residents, their belongings and their holy places. But nobody examines such issues if an Arab army is involved.
No "right of return" was invoked for these refugees, expelled from homes where their families had lived in peace for hundreds of years. Nobody in the world protested this ethnic cleansing. Nobody protested the fact that the Jordanians destroyed 58 of the 59 synagogues of the Jewish Quarter, or that they used the headstones of graves in the Mt. Olives cemetery to pave walkways for their latrines.
In the Six day war of 1967, Jerusalem was re-conquered by Israeli forces. Every Israeli felt that we had completed the task left undone in 1948.
A summary of the Hadassah convoy massacre only, is provided here: The Hadassah Convoy Massacre
The detailed account is provided on these pages:
Hadassah Convoy Massacre-Prologue
Hadassah Convoy Massacre-Preparations
Hadassah Convoy Massacre-The Attack
The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem
Conclusion - Later Phases of the war and Armistice
A similar genocidal campaign was planned and announced in 1967. However, instead of resulting in the ethnic cleansing of the Jews, it brought on the Six day war which liberated Jerusalem from the longest occupation in history, and returned it to its rightful historic owners.
Massacres and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine
The massacre of the Hadassah convoy and the expulsion of the Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem, continued a well established pattern in the land of Israel, that began even before there were Zionists, and reflected the relations between the Arab community and their Jewish subjects.
Other massacres and instances of genocidal violence, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in Palestine include:
Palestine Massacre: The forgotten pogrom: Safed 1834:
The Kfar Etzion Massacre
Arab Riots and Massacres of 1929
Hebron Massacre
The Arab Revolt of 1936
Ami Isseroff
Following is adapted from http://www.hadassah.org/education/content/StudyGuides/Convoy_ITAD.pdf
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hadassah in the Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem - 1948
Desperate situation in Mount Scopus
The night before the massacre, Rose Halprin and Bertha Schoolman had flown home and heard the news on arrival in New York. Judith Epstein and Rebecca Shulman, who remained in Tel Aviv, were having dinner at their hotel when a newspaperman came up to their table: “I have terrible news for you. Yassky was killed today.” On her return to New York Rebecca told the Board in New York, “I doubt whether we will be able to use Scopus again soon. I recommend that we start building somewhere else.” To Ethel Agron and Eli Davis the Board cabled in May: “We dedicate ourselves to the task of maintaining services and rebuilding Hadassah.” The British reinforced Antonius House and warned both Jews and Arabs that they could countenance no further military activity in Sheikh Jarrah. Nevertheless, on April 25, the Haganah under a young Palmach officer named Yitzhak Rabin, occupied Nashashibi House. But the next day he was shelled out by the British. The Israelis would not return for good until nineteen years later when, under Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, they occupied the entire Arab sector of Jerusalem.
Shelling and sniping made life on Scopus impossible and the road impassable despite the British presence. Fresh food and water were scarce. Davis had to find a way to get the more than 700 people down and contacted Major Jack Churchill: Major Churchill told me there was a slight chance of getting through to Mount Scopus, because the Arabs saw the British meant business. He agreed to make the trip up to Scopus and invited me along. The Major took a jeep and his driver. I sat while he stood in the jeep twirling his stick. He looked as though he were on parade in London. Nothing happened as we went through Sheikh Jarrah. On Scopus we were embraced. We had shown it was possible to get through.
Davis decided on the spot to risk a major evacuation because of the low morale. Ben- Gurion had told Hadassah and University representatives several days before the disaster that the hill was to be held at all costs. But Ahron Brezinsky, who was acting as medical director of the hospital, told Davis, “You cannot hold a front-line with sick people who do not want to stay. The atmosphere here is that of a refugee camp. With all the strategic importance of this place, we must get out with what we can.” Davis returned to town to organize the evacuation. A decision was taken to retain a 50-bed hospital on Scopus, demonstrating that the hospital was not being abandoned.
Davis scrounged the impoverished city for fuel for the partial evacuation. So empty was the city that he was reduced to collecting gasoline from private homes, institutions, friends--bottle by bottle. Four convoys made it. Brought into town were 200 patients, 100 student nurses and 300 staff members, as well and 600 tons of equipment and supplies. Not a shot was fired. Left behind were 150 persons, including eight student nurses who ran the kitchen and forty patients. In the university buildings were another 150 men.n.
On May 6, Haim Halevy, who administered Scopus, reported, “The hospital no longer exists for all practical purposes.” Water and flour were sufficient for two weeks, power was rationed to only four hours daily and “soon there won’t be any refrigeration.” Compounding the problem were intelligence reports that King Abdullah was about to shell Scopus before making a full-scale assault.
Hadassah “A” and Hadassah "B"
By the beginning of May, Davis and members of the Hadassah Council had managed to set up reasonably good facilities in Jerusalem’s Hadassah “A” and two blocks down the street in St. Joseph’s Convent, now known as Hadassah “B,” but the accommodations were hardly luxurious. St. Joseph’s, leased on April 29, had been a school for 600 Arab girls run by French nuns. After shells hit the converted hospital, the top floor was evacuated and patients were moved to the dank basements where there was neither water nor electricity. Shelves that stored potatoes were cleaned and became emergency beds. Nurses knelt on the stone floor to change bandages and physicians sat on the floor to examine patients. Together with “A” and “B,” the Straus Health Center and the Hasolel Street Clinic, Hadassah improvised 300 beds, nearly as many as it had on Scopus. Heroic volunteer work temporarily made up the difference. Nurse Madeline Lewin-Epstein, who had come with the AZMU in 1918, turned her large apartment into a twenty-bed hospital. She often braved sniper’s bullets and mortars to pick up the wounded in the streets and pull them into her home. Hers was the first military hospital in Jerusalem; many of her patients were wounded underground soldiers who could go nowhere else. British police officials would be sitting in a chair in the dental clinic of her popular husband, Sam Lewin-Epstein, while in the living room, only a few yards away, were the men they were hunting.
The fall of the Old City and Ethnic Cleansing
At the height of Hadassah’s problems, the Old City of Jerusalem fell to the Arabs on May 28.
Hadassah had staffed the hospital in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter early in the fighting, but the position of the Jews was hopeless against overwhelming numbers of Arabs. They fought until they were too few, too starved, too fatigued to go on. Avraham Laufer, one of the surgeons who was sent into the Jewish Quarter, reported that the top floors of the hospital had been shelled and seventy patients had to share mattresses and wooden benches in a synagogue and in basements. Laufer told of one young soldier who had shrapnel in an eye but refused to wait fifteen minutes for an operation to remove it because the situation at his post was desperate. “An hour later they carried him back.. His handsome face was blown away by a shell.” About 1,300 women and children were evacuated to the Jewish side of the city, while the men were taken to a prison camp in the Jordanian desert. Three among the POW’s were Hadassah physicians: Egon Rys, Eli Peiser and Laufer. Two weeks later, while Rys was in the prison camp, his wife, Hava, a Hadassah nurse, was killed in the last pre-truce shelling of the city.
The Old City refugees were put up in the abandoned houses of the Katamon quarter, a large neighborhood of Arab villas that had been conquered in bloody fighting by the Haganah .. There, Jerusalem’s meager food supplies were tightly rationed by volunteers, who themselves were now on starvation diets. Under the supervision of Sara Bavli, head of Hadassah Nutrition, these 1,300 and twenty thousand others were given frugal daily meals in what was known as a “battle of the calories.” One of the Hadassah volunteers who cared for the Old City refugee mothers and children was Betty Levin. She was given charge of a three-room abandoned apartment in which each corner served as “home” for ten refugees--120 in all. Recalls Betty: They told me that at the end of the fighting in the Old City they fled to a synagogue where they huddled together until the Arab Legion found them.
The Legion expelled them with only the nightgowns and slippers they wore.. My job was to feed them. In the morning, they got two slices of bread each and, for the children, four teaspoons of jam. One day, a distraught mother threw the bread down and cried, ‘My children are filthy: their heads are full of lice. I need soap.’ But there was no soap. Betty remembered that before the siege began, her absentee landlady had locked ten large blocks of laundry soap in a room.. Disregarding the mortars exploding around her, she walked back to her apartment, a kilometer distant, broke into the locked room and took the soap back to Katamon. There she sliced each block into sixteen squares. The lice were subdued and peace was restored to the apartment.
A State is Born
In the turbulence of siege, Friday, May 14, 1948 was no more than just another day of hunger and death in Jerusalem. No street celebrations marked David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of the State of Israel in the Tel Aviv Museum. Hardly anyone knew about it until the following day, for few in Jerusalem had electricity and news was passed by word of mouth. Only on Sunday, May 16, did The Palestinian Post t appear with its headline: STATE OF ISRAEL BORN.
The highway to Tel Aviv had been sealed again by the Arab armies. Daily rations were down to starvation levels. The Holy City’s only link with the outside world was a small one-engine plane that landed under fire in the Valley of the Cross. While great military advances were being made in the rest of the country, at the end of May, Jerusalem appeared to be doomed. The last of the British had left Jerusalem on May 14-- except for those officers who remained behind to command Abdullah’s Arab Legion.
Residents of the city knew these officers were in command because the merciless shelling would stop precisely at 4:00 pm daily, so British officers could enjoy their tea. It was during that hour that most Israelis dared to go outside for their rations. Scopus was no exception to the bombardment. The buildings suffered badly, but casualties were few because the underground tunnel between the nursing school and the hospital served as a perfect shelter.
In mid-April, after a British peace effort was rejected by the Mufti, the UN Security Council authorized the Consuls-General of the United States, France and Belgium to try to arrange a truce in Jerusalem. At the same time, American Consul-General Thomas Wasson, the most congenial and effective diplomat in the city, worked to secure Mount Scopus from attack. At the end of the month he was killed by Arab fire near his consulate.
Hadassah doctors fought twelve hours in vain to save his life.
Mt Scopus Comes Under UN Protection
Immediately after May 15, the British established a consulate in Jerusalem proper and appointed two consuls to handle Arab and Israeli affairs. Consul John Guy Tempest Sheringham applied himself to the Scopus problem and on May 31, a phone conversation with Hebrew University Administrator Dr. Werner Senator, he advised Israel to surrender Scopus. Senator left a record of the talk:
Sheringham: ‘The best way to safeguard the University and Hadassah buildings would be to accept King Abdullah’s offer to put them under the protection of the Arab Legion.’
Senator: ‘The best way it seems to me would be to advise King Abdullah not to shell the University and Hadassah.’
Sheringham: ‘Your military situation is not very bright. You have not succeeded in driving the Arabs out of Jerusalem.’
Senator: ‘The responsibility for the Legion’s acts against the University and Hadassah lay with the British Government.’
In Washington, innumerable pleas were made to every imaginable source to help relieve Scopus. The State Department was helpful in one respect: Secretary of State George Marshall agreed that cables from the National Board could be relayed through the consulate in Jerusalem to Davis and Ethel Agron.
In the end, an agreement was worked out whereby the United Nations would assume control of Scopus, over which it would fly its flag and provide observers to maintain the area as a demilitarized zone. Eighty-four Jewish police would guard installations at Hadassah and the Hebrew University while 40 Arabs would guard Arab property on Scopus. The UN agreed to supply and exchange the Jewish police in regular fortnightly convoys through the Arab Sheikh Jarrah Quarter.
Hadassah and the University were evacuated on July 6 and demilitarization was completed on July 7 when the first police, Israeli soldiers in police uniform, went up.
=========================================================================
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"http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/05/one-state-final-solution-to-judenfrage.html ">
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Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem - 1948
This page gives eye-witness accounts of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem. The entire world acquiesced in this war crime of the lackeys of imperialist powers, because of the interference of powerful lobbying interests. This war crime took place in Palestine, in 1948, when the Transjordan Legion, directed and financed by British imperialism, expelled the Jews of the old city of Jerusalem, depriving them of their legitimate rights.
The expulsion of the Jews was part of the racist genocidal Arab plan for ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem and Palestine in 1948. This was announced by the Arab league, but it was instigated and planned in part by the Nazi Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, and his able relative, Abdel Khader Al-Husseini. The strategy included ambushes such as this one, constant shelling and sniper fire, a blockade of the Jerusalem road that resulted in near starvation, and invasion by armies of the Arab states. Over a thousand Jewish civilians were killed in Jerusalem during this campaign.
Jews had been expelled by force from Jerusalem in the past by Christian Roman emperors and by the crusaders, only to return to the eternal capital and national and religious center. The expulsion of the Jews was the culmination of the Arab plan for ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem in 1948, planned by the Nazi Grand Mufti Hajj Amin Al Husseini, and his able relative, Abdel Khader Al-Husseini. The strategy included ambushes such as the convoy massacre, constant shelling and sniper fire, attacks of Irregulars and of the Jordan legion on the Jewish quarter and a blockade of the Jerusalem road that resulted in near starvation. Over a thousand Jewish civilians were killed during this campaign.
The Jewish Quarter had been under attack by Arab irregulars for many months and in desperate straits. Following the invasion by the Transjordanian Arab Legion, pressure increased. Despite the empty propaganda statements of anti-Zionist historians, the fledgling Jewish army was no match for the Jordan legion with its artillery, armored vehicles and British officered troops. Those who insist on Jewish superiority in numbers must explain why there were no soldiers available to rescue the Jews of the old city of Jerusalem. Troops that were sent to its defense were either so battle weary that they fell asleep on duty, or so unfit for battle that they didn't know how to use their weapons.. For many months a tiny Haganah force tried to defend inhabitants of the Jewish quarter, who numbered over 2,000 - mostly religious Jews and many non-Zionist. A large part of the original Jewish community of 5,000 had fled in the pogroms of 1936. These were Jews whose families had lived in Jerusalem for many generations. They had built some 59 synagogues and a rich tradition. On May 28 the defense of the old city finally collapsed, and Abdullah Al-Tell, commanding the Transjordan Legion, evacuated the Jewish civilians to West Jerusalem, taking the Haganah defenders prisoner. Al Tell had no choice, because otherwise Arab mobs would have murdered the civilians. So he claims. Of course, al-Tell had the choice of not conquering a defenseless civilian position, and of course he had the obligation, having conquered it, of ensuring the safety of its civilian residents, their belongings and their holy places. But nobody examines such issues if an Arab army is involved.
No "right of return" was invoked for these refugees, expelled from homes where their families had lived in peace for hundreds of years. Nobody in the world protested this ethnic cleansing. Nobody protested the fact that the Jordanians destroyed 58 of the 59 synagogues of the Jewish Quarter, or that they used the headstones of graves in the Mt. Olives cemetery to pave walkways for their latrines.
In the Six day war of 1967, Jerusalem was re-conquered by Israeli forces. Every Israeli felt that we had completed the task left undone in 1948.
A summary of the Hadassah convoy massacre only, is provided here: The Hadassah Convoy Massacre
The detailed account is provided on these pages:
Hadassah Convoy Massacre-Prologue
Hadassah Convoy Massacre-Preparations
Hadassah Convoy Massacre-The Attack
The Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem
Conclusion - Later Phases of the war and Armistice
A similar genocidal campaign was planned and announced in 1967. However, instead of resulting in the ethnic cleansing of the Jews, it brought on the Six day war which liberated Jerusalem from the longest occupation in history, and returned it to its rightful historic owners.
Massacres and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine
The massacre of the Hadassah convoy and the expulsion of the Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem, continued a well established pattern in the land of Israel, that began even before there were Zionists, and reflected the relations between the Arab community and their Jewish subjects.
Other massacres and instances of genocidal violence, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing in Palestine include:
Palestine Massacre: The forgotten pogrom: Safed 1834:
The Kfar Etzion Massacre
Arab Riots and Massacres of 1929
Hebron Massacre
The Arab Revolt of 1936
Ami Isseroff
Following is adapted from http://www.hadassah.org/education/content/StudyGuides/Convoy_ITAD.pdf
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hadassah in the Ethnic Cleansing of Jerusalem - 1948
Desperate situation in Mount Scopus
The night before the massacre, Rose Halprin and Bertha Schoolman had flown home and heard the news on arrival in New York. Judith Epstein and Rebecca Shulman, who remained in Tel Aviv, were having dinner at their hotel when a newspaperman came up to their table: “I have terrible news for you. Yassky was killed today.” On her return to New York Rebecca told the Board in New York, “I doubt whether we will be able to use Scopus again soon. I recommend that we start building somewhere else.” To Ethel Agron and Eli Davis the Board cabled in May: “We dedicate ourselves to the task of maintaining services and rebuilding Hadassah.” The British reinforced Antonius House and warned both Jews and Arabs that they could countenance no further military activity in Sheikh Jarrah. Nevertheless, on April 25, the Haganah under a young Palmach officer named Yitzhak Rabin, occupied Nashashibi House. But the next day he was shelled out by the British. The Israelis would not return for good until nineteen years later when, under Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, they occupied the entire Arab sector of Jerusalem.
Shelling and sniping made life on Scopus impossible and the road impassable despite the British presence. Fresh food and water were scarce. Davis had to find a way to get the more than 700 people down and contacted Major Jack Churchill: Major Churchill told me there was a slight chance of getting through to Mount Scopus, because the Arabs saw the British meant business. He agreed to make the trip up to Scopus and invited me along. The Major took a jeep and his driver. I sat while he stood in the jeep twirling his stick. He looked as though he were on parade in London. Nothing happened as we went through Sheikh Jarrah. On Scopus we were embraced. We had shown it was possible to get through.
Davis decided on the spot to risk a major evacuation because of the low morale. Ben- Gurion had told Hadassah and University representatives several days before the disaster that the hill was to be held at all costs. But Ahron Brezinsky, who was acting as medical director of the hospital, told Davis, “You cannot hold a front-line with sick people who do not want to stay. The atmosphere here is that of a refugee camp. With all the strategic importance of this place, we must get out with what we can.” Davis returned to town to organize the evacuation. A decision was taken to retain a 50-bed hospital on Scopus, demonstrating that the hospital was not being abandoned.
Davis scrounged the impoverished city for fuel for the partial evacuation. So empty was the city that he was reduced to collecting gasoline from private homes, institutions, friends--bottle by bottle. Four convoys made it. Brought into town were 200 patients, 100 student nurses and 300 staff members, as well and 600 tons of equipment and supplies. Not a shot was fired. Left behind were 150 persons, including eight student nurses who ran the kitchen and forty patients. In the university buildings were another 150 men.n.
On May 6, Haim Halevy, who administered Scopus, reported, “The hospital no longer exists for all practical purposes.” Water and flour were sufficient for two weeks, power was rationed to only four hours daily and “soon there won’t be any refrigeration.” Compounding the problem were intelligence reports that King Abdullah was about to shell Scopus before making a full-scale assault.
Hadassah “A” and Hadassah "B"
By the beginning of May, Davis and members of the Hadassah Council had managed to set up reasonably good facilities in Jerusalem’s Hadassah “A” and two blocks down the street in St. Joseph’s Convent, now known as Hadassah “B,” but the accommodations were hardly luxurious. St. Joseph’s, leased on April 29, had been a school for 600 Arab girls run by French nuns. After shells hit the converted hospital, the top floor was evacuated and patients were moved to the dank basements where there was neither water nor electricity. Shelves that stored potatoes were cleaned and became emergency beds. Nurses knelt on the stone floor to change bandages and physicians sat on the floor to examine patients. Together with “A” and “B,” the Straus Health Center and the Hasolel Street Clinic, Hadassah improvised 300 beds, nearly as many as it had on Scopus. Heroic volunteer work temporarily made up the difference. Nurse Madeline Lewin-Epstein, who had come with the AZMU in 1918, turned her large apartment into a twenty-bed hospital. She often braved sniper’s bullets and mortars to pick up the wounded in the streets and pull them into her home. Hers was the first military hospital in Jerusalem; many of her patients were wounded underground soldiers who could go nowhere else. British police officials would be sitting in a chair in the dental clinic of her popular husband, Sam Lewin-Epstein, while in the living room, only a few yards away, were the men they were hunting.
The fall of the Old City and Ethnic Cleansing
At the height of Hadassah’s problems, the Old City of Jerusalem fell to the Arabs on May 28.
Hadassah had staffed the hospital in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter early in the fighting, but the position of the Jews was hopeless against overwhelming numbers of Arabs. They fought until they were too few, too starved, too fatigued to go on. Avraham Laufer, one of the surgeons who was sent into the Jewish Quarter, reported that the top floors of the hospital had been shelled and seventy patients had to share mattresses and wooden benches in a synagogue and in basements. Laufer told of one young soldier who had shrapnel in an eye but refused to wait fifteen minutes for an operation to remove it because the situation at his post was desperate. “An hour later they carried him back.. His handsome face was blown away by a shell.” About 1,300 women and children were evacuated to the Jewish side of the city, while the men were taken to a prison camp in the Jordanian desert. Three among the POW’s were Hadassah physicians: Egon Rys, Eli Peiser and Laufer. Two weeks later, while Rys was in the prison camp, his wife, Hava, a Hadassah nurse, was killed in the last pre-truce shelling of the city.
The Old City refugees were put up in the abandoned houses of the Katamon quarter, a large neighborhood of Arab villas that had been conquered in bloody fighting by the Haganah .. There, Jerusalem’s meager food supplies were tightly rationed by volunteers, who themselves were now on starvation diets. Under the supervision of Sara Bavli, head of Hadassah Nutrition, these 1,300 and twenty thousand others were given frugal daily meals in what was known as a “battle of the calories.” One of the Hadassah volunteers who cared for the Old City refugee mothers and children was Betty Levin. She was given charge of a three-room abandoned apartment in which each corner served as “home” for ten refugees--120 in all. Recalls Betty: They told me that at the end of the fighting in the Old City they fled to a synagogue where they huddled together until the Arab Legion found them.
The Legion expelled them with only the nightgowns and slippers they wore.. My job was to feed them. In the morning, they got two slices of bread each and, for the children, four teaspoons of jam. One day, a distraught mother threw the bread down and cried, ‘My children are filthy: their heads are full of lice. I need soap.’ But there was no soap. Betty remembered that before the siege began, her absentee landlady had locked ten large blocks of laundry soap in a room.. Disregarding the mortars exploding around her, she walked back to her apartment, a kilometer distant, broke into the locked room and took the soap back to Katamon. There she sliced each block into sixteen squares. The lice were subdued and peace was restored to the apartment.
A State is Born
In the turbulence of siege, Friday, May 14, 1948 was no more than just another day of hunger and death in Jerusalem. No street celebrations marked David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of the State of Israel in the Tel Aviv Museum. Hardly anyone knew about it until the following day, for few in Jerusalem had electricity and news was passed by word of mouth. Only on Sunday, May 16, did The Palestinian Post t appear with its headline: STATE OF ISRAEL BORN.
The highway to Tel Aviv had been sealed again by the Arab armies. Daily rations were down to starvation levels. The Holy City’s only link with the outside world was a small one-engine plane that landed under fire in the Valley of the Cross. While great military advances were being made in the rest of the country, at the end of May, Jerusalem appeared to be doomed. The last of the British had left Jerusalem on May 14-- except for those officers who remained behind to command Abdullah’s Arab Legion.
Residents of the city knew these officers were in command because the merciless shelling would stop precisely at 4:00 pm daily, so British officers could enjoy their tea. It was during that hour that most Israelis dared to go outside for their rations. Scopus was no exception to the bombardment. The buildings suffered badly, but casualties were few because the underground tunnel between the nursing school and the hospital served as a perfect shelter.
In mid-April, after a British peace effort was rejected by the Mufti, the UN Security Council authorized the Consuls-General of the United States, France and Belgium to try to arrange a truce in Jerusalem. At the same time, American Consul-General Thomas Wasson, the most congenial and effective diplomat in the city, worked to secure Mount Scopus from attack. At the end of the month he was killed by Arab fire near his consulate.
Hadassah doctors fought twelve hours in vain to save his life.
Mt Scopus Comes Under UN Protection
Immediately after May 15, the British established a consulate in Jerusalem proper and appointed two consuls to handle Arab and Israeli affairs. Consul John Guy Tempest Sheringham applied himself to the Scopus problem and on May 31, a phone conversation with Hebrew University Administrator Dr. Werner Senator, he advised Israel to surrender Scopus. Senator left a record of the talk:
Sheringham: ‘The best way to safeguard the University and Hadassah buildings would be to accept King Abdullah’s offer to put them under the protection of the Arab Legion.’
Senator: ‘The best way it seems to me would be to advise King Abdullah not to shell the University and Hadassah.’
Sheringham: ‘Your military situation is not very bright. You have not succeeded in driving the Arabs out of Jerusalem.’
Senator: ‘The responsibility for the Legion’s acts against the University and Hadassah lay with the British Government.’
In Washington, innumerable pleas were made to every imaginable source to help relieve Scopus. The State Department was helpful in one respect: Secretary of State George Marshall agreed that cables from the National Board could be relayed through the consulate in Jerusalem to Davis and Ethel Agron.
In the end, an agreement was worked out whereby the United Nations would assume control of Scopus, over which it would fly its flag and provide observers to maintain the area as a demilitarized zone. Eighty-four Jewish police would guard installations at Hadassah and the Hebrew University while 40 Arabs would guard Arab property on Scopus. The UN agreed to supply and exchange the Jewish police in regular fortnightly convoys through the Arab Sheikh Jarrah Quarter.
Hadassah and the University were evacuated on July 6 and demilitarization was completed on July 7 when the first police, Israeli soldiers in police uniform, went up.
=========================================================================
ZNN - Zionism News Network - is for distribution of information about Zionism, Israel, Israeli and Zionist history, Israel advocacy and anti-Semitism and telling people about your Web site or activist issues.
Visit these Web sites: href="http://www.zionism-israel.com">
href="http://www.zionismontheweb.org">
href="http://www.zionism.netfirms.com">
=========================================================================
Thursday, May 03, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21660439-25377,00.html
THE AUSTRALIAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rare support for democracy in a sea of misunderstanding
Despite its mistakes, Israel is a legitimate nation should not be treated as a pariah, writes foreign editor Greg Sheridan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
03may07
WHEN you're young, you think that every piece of mail is going to be that special letter that recognises your brilliance. As you get older, you realise that most pieces of mail are bills. But recently I did get a remarkable piece of mail. It told me that if I would accept, I would be awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
Sponsored jointly by the Israeli Government and the local Jewish community, it is awarded to people who have supported Israel conspicuously.
Since I believe that Israel is a democracy in good standing I was delighted to accept the award, which has been won by sundry heads of government, foreign ministers, social democrat and conservative European politicians and many others over the years.
Its previous Australian recipients include Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and Frank Sartor, formerly lord mayor of Sydney and now a minister in the NSW Labor Government.
Since the award was announced I have had a certain amount of mail urging me not to accept it. I must disappoint these folks, many of whom have written in good will and some detail, for I am greatly honoured to receive the Jerusalem Prize. I cannot accept the idea that Israel is an illegitimate state, or not really a democracy, or that it should be treated as a pariah.
It goes without saying that in accepting this award I do not compromise my independence as a commentator. I have often been critical of Israeli policies. Last year I opposed its military operation in Lebanon.
My views are unusual in the commentator class but they are mainstream in Australian politics. In a fine address to a gathering of Labor Friends of Israel last week, Labor
leader Kevin Rudd praised the "vibrancy of Israel's democracy". He said that both Hamas, the dominant political grouping among the Palestinians, and Hezbollah, are terrorist organisations and "you can't negotiate with terrorists".
"Israel's strategic challenges," he said, "are great and that's why it's important that the modern state of Israel and its govern-
ment has friends around the world. And I simply state unequivocally that we remain a strong and close friend of Israel in good times and bad."
This is truly a bipartisan position in Australia. Israel has probably never had a better friend as Prime Minister than John Howard. This was evident in Howard and Downer's decision, along with only a handful of others, to vote at the UN in 2004 against a resolution to condemn Israel's security barrier, following a ruling against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
Again, Rudd's view is enlightening. He criticised the vote but argued not that Canberra should have voted against Israel, merely that it should have abstained. Rudd's star new candidate for Eden-Monaro, the distinguished former colonel and military lawyer, Mike Kelly, has argued in a legal journal that the ICJ was wrong and that Israel's security barrier is legal.
But let's pull back and look at a bit of history. There have always been Jews in Palestine. Israel was created by a resolution of the UN to partition Palestine between the Jewish and Palestinian populations. When Israel was founded in 1948 it was immediately attacked by the massed armies of five Arab neighbours.
Twice more Israel had to fight wars of national survival against the armies of its Arab neighbours - in 1967 and 1973. And all through from that time to this, with only fairly brief pauses, it has been subject to terrorist attacks.
In 2000, in Camp David and in subsequent negotiations, the government of the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, offered the Palestinians their own nation on more than 95 per cent of the West Bank, all of Gaza and part of East Jerusalem. There was also the offer of some land from Israel proper to compensate for that part of the West Bank which is in effect predominantly Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem.
But this offer of land was in exchange for the Palestinians, and Israel's Arab neighbours, embracing peace - accepting Israel's legitimacy, ending their hate-filled and anti-Semitic propaganda designed to make schoolchildren despise the Jews, and stopping terrorist and other attacks on Israel.
The then Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, walked away from this offer and did not even make a counter offer, because, like some of the leaders of neighbouring nations, he had never accepted that Israel had a right to exist at all.
None of this means that Israel is beyond criticism. Israel, like any democratic nation, makes plenty of mistakes and sometimes it makes moral mistakes. But it is a robust democracy founded on decent values and it tries to correct its mistakes. This week's Winograd Report on last year's Lebanon action was fiercely critical of Ehud Olmert's Government. That suggests Olmert made some mistakes. But the bigger story is what a vibrant, genuine, problem-solving democracy Israel is to commission such a report and let its findings go where they may. Moreover, the question is not whether Israel is perfect, but are its actions reasonable for a democracy under such constant threat and attack. How would we react in circumstances similar to those Israel faces?
Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are all different, yet they are all intimately related. They draw from diverse sources, yet they are all, in their virulent forms, fundamentally irrational and evidence of psychological and ideological dysfunction rather than genuine analysis.
Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the deaths of near enough to 1.5 million Iraqi Arabs and Iranians. He killed 300,000 to 400,000 of his own citizens deliberately and a million or more died in the wholly unjustified war he launched against Iran. Anyone who was seriously concerned about Muslim suffering in the Middle East would have concentrated on Saddam all the years he was in power.
Yet the UN, and the Left internationally, focuses with obsessive zeal on Israel. I once interviewed Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia and a great Muslim leader, and asked him about the Middle East. Israel, he told me, "is a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding".
Commentators should write about Israel the same as they write about any other nation, with a desire to tell the truth, know the facts and make judgments based on civilised values. I agree with Wahid. Israel is a democracy - that fact speaks for itself.
privacy terms © The Australian
THE AUSTRALIAN
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Rare support for democracy in a sea of misunderstanding
Despite its mistakes, Israel is a legitimate nation should not be treated as a pariah, writes foreign editor Greg Sheridan
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03may07
WHEN you're young, you think that every piece of mail is going to be that special letter that recognises your brilliance. As you get older, you realise that most pieces of mail are bills. But recently I did get a remarkable piece of mail. It told me that if I would accept, I would be awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
Sponsored jointly by the Israeli Government and the local Jewish community, it is awarded to people who have supported Israel conspicuously.
Since I believe that Israel is a democracy in good standing I was delighted to accept the award, which has been won by sundry heads of government, foreign ministers, social democrat and conservative European politicians and many others over the years.
Its previous Australian recipients include Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and Frank Sartor, formerly lord mayor of Sydney and now a minister in the NSW Labor Government.
Since the award was announced I have had a certain amount of mail urging me not to accept it. I must disappoint these folks, many of whom have written in good will and some detail, for I am greatly honoured to receive the Jerusalem Prize. I cannot accept the idea that Israel is an illegitimate state, or not really a democracy, or that it should be treated as a pariah.
It goes without saying that in accepting this award I do not compromise my independence as a commentator. I have often been critical of Israeli policies. Last year I opposed its military operation in Lebanon.
My views are unusual in the commentator class but they are mainstream in Australian politics. In a fine address to a gathering of Labor Friends of Israel last week, Labor
leader Kevin Rudd praised the "vibrancy of Israel's democracy". He said that both Hamas, the dominant political grouping among the Palestinians, and Hezbollah, are terrorist organisations and "you can't negotiate with terrorists".
"Israel's strategic challenges," he said, "are great and that's why it's important that the modern state of Israel and its govern-
ment has friends around the world. And I simply state unequivocally that we remain a strong and close friend of Israel in good times and bad."
This is truly a bipartisan position in Australia. Israel has probably never had a better friend as Prime Minister than John Howard. This was evident in Howard and Downer's decision, along with only a handful of others, to vote at the UN in 2004 against a resolution to condemn Israel's security barrier, following a ruling against Israel in the International Court of Justice.
Again, Rudd's view is enlightening. He criticised the vote but argued not that Canberra should have voted against Israel, merely that it should have abstained. Rudd's star new candidate for Eden-Monaro, the distinguished former colonel and military lawyer, Mike Kelly, has argued in a legal journal that the ICJ was wrong and that Israel's security barrier is legal.
But let's pull back and look at a bit of history. There have always been Jews in Palestine. Israel was created by a resolution of the UN to partition Palestine between the Jewish and Palestinian populations. When Israel was founded in 1948 it was immediately attacked by the massed armies of five Arab neighbours.
Twice more Israel had to fight wars of national survival against the armies of its Arab neighbours - in 1967 and 1973. And all through from that time to this, with only fairly brief pauses, it has been subject to terrorist attacks.
In 2000, in Camp David and in subsequent negotiations, the government of the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, offered the Palestinians their own nation on more than 95 per cent of the West Bank, all of Gaza and part of East Jerusalem. There was also the offer of some land from Israel proper to compensate for that part of the West Bank which is in effect predominantly Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem.
But this offer of land was in exchange for the Palestinians, and Israel's Arab neighbours, embracing peace - accepting Israel's legitimacy, ending their hate-filled and anti-Semitic propaganda designed to make schoolchildren despise the Jews, and stopping terrorist and other attacks on Israel.
The then Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, walked away from this offer and did not even make a counter offer, because, like some of the leaders of neighbouring nations, he had never accepted that Israel had a right to exist at all.
None of this means that Israel is beyond criticism. Israel, like any democratic nation, makes plenty of mistakes and sometimes it makes moral mistakes. But it is a robust democracy founded on decent values and it tries to correct its mistakes. This week's Winograd Report on last year's Lebanon action was fiercely critical of Ehud Olmert's Government. That suggests Olmert made some mistakes. But the bigger story is what a vibrant, genuine, problem-solving democracy Israel is to commission such a report and let its findings go where they may. Moreover, the question is not whether Israel is perfect, but are its actions reasonable for a democracy under such constant threat and attack. How would we react in circumstances similar to those Israel faces?
Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are all different, yet they are all intimately related. They draw from diverse sources, yet they are all, in their virulent forms, fundamentally irrational and evidence of psychological and ideological dysfunction rather than genuine analysis.
Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the deaths of near enough to 1.5 million Iraqi Arabs and Iranians. He killed 300,000 to 400,000 of his own citizens deliberately and a million or more died in the wholly unjustified war he launched against Iran. Anyone who was seriously concerned about Muslim suffering in the Middle East would have concentrated on Saddam all the years he was in power.
Yet the UN, and the Left internationally, focuses with obsessive zeal on Israel. I once interviewed Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia and a great Muslim leader, and asked him about the Middle East. Israel, he told me, "is a democracy in a sea of misunderstanding".
Commentators should write about Israel the same as they write about any other nation, with a desire to tell the truth, know the facts and make judgments based on civilised values. I agree with Wahid. Israel is a democracy - that fact speaks for itself.
privacy terms © The Australian
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