With Libya in the news, it is interesting to revisit some WW2 history about it.
Fox Classics showed an old film late one Monday night called simply “Tobruk”. It starred the late Rock Hudson and several other well-known old time Hollywood film stars. I was not interested to stay up to watch it and was just about to switch off the TV when a Germanic-looking actor said to Rock Hudson: “I don’t look British and my name is Bergman. Yes we are Jews of German origin from Palestine fighting with the British”. I stayed up to the end and saw a very interesting and exciting WW2 story set in Libya.
There were some very telling conversational exchanges between the British commander and his soldiers and the Jewish brigade as they made their way across the Libyan desert to destroy Rommel’s supplies in Tobruk.
As I was interested to check what was real and what was fictionalised in the film,- from Wikipedia, I found this American Jewish historical journal entry about that Brigade below.
www.JASHP.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------
“The war was not going well for the British in early 1942. Rommel and his Italian allies were pushing back the British relentlessly. Losses were staggering for the British. They were being decimated in Libya and needed to retreat, to regroup, rest and resupply. British loss, after loss, British defeat after defeat, the ability of retreating in order, without disaster, was very questionable. If the Allied forces could not retreat in an orderly manner, the North African war would be lost. It did not look good. A delaying action was ordered by the British high command.
In a remote area of the Libyan Desert, near an old Turkish fort, the Free French Forces were ordered to stand and fight. The fort was built near an oasis. It was called Bir Hakeim and was the key to the great port city of Tobruk. A line was drawn ahead of the Germans. The First Free French Division, led by legendary General Marie-Pierre Koenig was ordered to hold. The French dug in. Thousands of individual fox holes were dug. Mines were laid in thick fields to slow the Germans. The French waited. A British brigade, unknown at the time to General Koenig, was hastily sent to hold the far end of the French line near Bir-el Harmat. They were a battalion of mine layers, poorly armed and provisioned, without heavy weapons, or anti-aircraft equipment but with a grim, teeth clenched determination. They were a battalion of 400 Jewish Palestinians under the command of Major Liebmann from Tel Aviv. It was May 26, 1942. The Jewish fighters dug in.
A German tank column approached the heavily outnumbered and out gunned Jewish position.
Raising a flag of truce the German commander came near to the Allied position and demanded they surrender or be annihilated. Noticing the strange flag flying, the German asked who they were. To the amazement of the German officer, Major Liebmann told him they were free Palestinian Jews fighting for the British government. They would not surrender. The flag was the flag of the Jewish people. It was June 2, 1942.
German 88mm canon opened up with terrible effect. German Stukas bombed and strafed, and bombed and strafed. Hundreds of sorties were eventually flown. German tanks advanced and attacked ferociously. Several were destroyed in the mine fields. A few penetrated the center of the lightly armed Jewish position. Jewish soldiers jumped on the tanks destroying them with Molotov cocktails, incinerating the German tank crews inside. Without even a radio to contact the French fighting a few miles up the line, the Jews held. Heavy black smoke billowed from the burning German tanks as the Germans retreated; their dead left on the hard, dry desert.
German and Italian armor attacked again and again on June 5 and June 6. The Jewish position held. Daily the Stukas bombed the Jews. German artillery was unrelenting, eventually destroying the Jewish water source. Still the Jewish position held refusing to surrender, even without water. Astonished the Germans continued attacking with no success. The Jews refused to surrender or be conquered.
June 10: Orders from the British 8th Army reached the French at Bir Hakeim and the Jews at Bir-el Harmat: retreat. The British 8th Army was safe. It had retreated in good order with its equipment and supplies. The delaying action could be called off. In the dark of the night of June 11, the French and the Jews slipped away, unbeknownst to the Germans. They had done the impossible.
Over the next few months, the reorganized and reequipped British 8th Army fought and defeated Rommel's famed Africa Corps at El Alamein. It was the beginning of the end for the Germans and their Italian allies in North Africa. The bloody tide of war had changed.
General Koenig watched as the ragged, unknown Allied survivors from the far end of the line staggered in to the French command center at Gasr-el-Abid. They dragged their wounded as best they could. Major Liebmann reported to a concerned General Koenig. Speaking in perfect French, he told General Koenig they were Jewish Palestinian soldiers. Of the 400 men who made up the battalion, over three hundred, 75%, had been killed or wounded. They were the survivors.
General Marie-Pierre Koenig
The General observed their flag flying proudly. It was being taken down and folded by a very tired Jewish soldier.
What is that man doing? Koenig demanded of Liebmann. Liebmann told the French General that British regulations did not let them fly their flag, the blue and white flag with the Star of David. The British did not want to see it. An instant command was barked. General Koenig ordered the soldier to stop folding the flag. Koenig ordered it placed on the front of his Jeep to fly next to and equal to the flag of France.
Turning to his officers, Koenig ordered all his soldiers to stand at attention and salute as the flag of the future state of Israel went by. It was the first Salute.
General Koenig remained a committed friend and advocate on behalf of Israel for the rest of his life. In the lower Galilee, near Nazareth, trees grow in the soil of a free Israel; the Marie-Pierre Koenig Grove.”
________________________________________
Jerry Klinger is President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation
www.JASHP.org
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
The Perils of Global Intolerance: slavery, tribal genocides in Africa.
Simon Deng at Stand With Israel Demonstration UN 22 September 2011.
Simon Deng, a former South Sudanese slave taken by a neighbor as a young boy to Islamist Northern Sudan gave this impassioned speech at the Durban Watch Conference in New York. He puts the lie to the Zionism is Racism canard of Durban III painting Israel as a pariah state. Rather as he points out it is the Arab Muslim Jihadis who have engaged in racial genocide of millions of Sudanese, whether Muslim or Christian. As he further points out it is Israel that is the ultimate destination of Sudanese refugees, as Egypt has oppressed them.
What follows is Simon Deng’s prepared remarks before the Durban Watch Conference on September 22, 2011.
_______________________________________________________
I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. –I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.
In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.
In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.
I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?
In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.
As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.
My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.
AM YISROEL CHAI!
The people of Israel lives!
Thank you
Simon Deng, a former South Sudanese slave taken by a neighbor as a young boy to Islamist Northern Sudan gave this impassioned speech at the Durban Watch Conference in New York. He puts the lie to the Zionism is Racism canard of Durban III painting Israel as a pariah state. Rather as he points out it is the Arab Muslim Jihadis who have engaged in racial genocide of millions of Sudanese, whether Muslim or Christian. As he further points out it is Israel that is the ultimate destination of Sudanese refugees, as Egypt has oppressed them.
What follows is Simon Deng’s prepared remarks before the Durban Watch Conference on September 22, 2011.
_______________________________________________________
I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. –I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.
The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.
But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.
In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.
In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.
Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?
What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.
Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.
I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.
I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.
I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.
As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.
I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.
Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?
In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”
Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.
So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.
Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.
In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.
On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.
In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.
As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.
I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.
My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.
AM YISROEL CHAI!
The people of Israel lives!
Thank you
Monday, October 17, 2011
GILAD SHALIT's unfortunate saga!
As difficult as it must be for the Israelis to accept the vastly unequal deal for the prisoner exchange in order to secure Gilad Shalit’s freedom, the world should nevertheless congratulate Israel for valuing one of its citizens to such an extent.
It's a vain hope! One does not see any of that in the world’s media of course, but we must accept that everywhere criminals eventually do end up being released,- including murderers. Some unfortunately even reoffend.
Whether Israel can, or cannot afford to pay such a high price for one solitary individual is up to the government to decide. But they must have the backing of the majority of their people for taking such a decision and this they have.
The treatment the Palestinian prisoners apparently receive in the Israeli jails may in fact act as an inducement to "return" into more congenial surroundings than their Hamas-led environment may provide them! The cost to the Israeli people is huge to maintain them.
Should they wish to return to live at the expense of the Israeli taxpayers again, getting free board and lodgings and the best educational opportunities apparently up to university degree level,-then they cannot revert to the homicide bombers that some were before,- at least one would hope not!But fanaticism is difficult to erase from individuals!
However the fear is that the 1000+:1 ratio is an inducement for a repeat kidnapping attempt but we must pray that no other Israeli parents, let alone individuals will have to endure what Gilad Shalit and his parents have had to suffer for so long.
Kidnapping for money, ransom and political gain seems to have become a popular activity in the Islamists' arsenal against Westerners in many parts of the world not only among the Palestinians via Hamas and Hetzbollah.
Where and when will all this madness finally end?
Gilad Shalit made it home this time at last.
MM
POSTCRIPT 18/10:Good to see Gilad Shalit well and back home with his parents. I don’t blame the Palestinians gloating over their people returning home @ 1000+:1, but they have all forgotten the 1000+ dead Gazans and many more injured as a result of their attacks on Israel. They threaten more of the same and if it should happen,- they too will suffer more of the same.
It's a vain hope! One does not see any of that in the world’s media of course, but we must accept that everywhere criminals eventually do end up being released,- including murderers. Some unfortunately even reoffend.
Whether Israel can, or cannot afford to pay such a high price for one solitary individual is up to the government to decide. But they must have the backing of the majority of their people for taking such a decision and this they have.
The treatment the Palestinian prisoners apparently receive in the Israeli jails may in fact act as an inducement to "return" into more congenial surroundings than their Hamas-led environment may provide them! The cost to the Israeli people is huge to maintain them.
Should they wish to return to live at the expense of the Israeli taxpayers again, getting free board and lodgings and the best educational opportunities apparently up to university degree level,-then they cannot revert to the homicide bombers that some were before,- at least one would hope not!But fanaticism is difficult to erase from individuals!
However the fear is that the 1000+:1 ratio is an inducement for a repeat kidnapping attempt but we must pray that no other Israeli parents, let alone individuals will have to endure what Gilad Shalit and his parents have had to suffer for so long.
Kidnapping for money, ransom and political gain seems to have become a popular activity in the Islamists' arsenal against Westerners in many parts of the world not only among the Palestinians via Hamas and Hetzbollah.
Where and when will all this madness finally end?
Gilad Shalit made it home this time at last.
MM
POSTCRIPT 18/10:Good to see Gilad Shalit well and back home with his parents. I don’t blame the Palestinians gloating over their people returning home @ 1000+:1, but they have all forgotten the 1000+ dead Gazans and many more injured as a result of their attacks on Israel. They threaten more of the same and if it should happen,- they too will suffer more of the same.
The EMIRATES & DUBAI AS A DESTINATION FOR THE UNCARING!
Why Dubai? The Wembley Plaza Hotel would have been much nicer, Mr Fox
For every piece of human misery that Dubai offers, the emirate has a wondrous piece of leisure to distract you
Tanya Gold
Saturday October 15 2011
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/14/dubai-liam-fox-fundamentalism-capitalism
One thing confused me about the headlines this week, which were essentially a morality tale about the loneliness of the professional politician. Why did Liam Fox choose Dubai for his mysterious stopovers between London and Afghanistan? Why couldn't it be somewhere else, perhaps the Wembley Plaza Hotel in Middlesex? Four times in 18 months the former defence secretary laid his head there, when Bahrain, or maybe Oman, were the usual options. But it was Dubai, one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Of all the slave states in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.
Fox is not alone. In 2010, over 700,000 British tourists stayed in Dubai's hotels, according to the Dubai tourism website. The British are Dubai's best customers, which exposes how much people will collude with, or ignore, evil if their hotel rooms are cheap, sumptuous and have cable TV. Virgin Holidays say on its website: "Dubai is like no other place on Earth. It is a truly fabulous destination where visitors can indulge in top-quality hotels, great shopping, fine dining, state-of-the-art spas and, of course, fantastic beaches. There is, however, more to Dubai than meets the eye ?"
Yes indeed, it is unique, and there is more than meets the eye. That copy could be rewritten to say, "It is a truly fabulous destination where visitors can indulge in top-quality state censorship, great homophobia, fine misogyny, state-of-the-art police brutality and, of course, fantastic indentured servitude," and it would not be libelous ? not in Britain, anyway. Dubai does not impose income tax, so the tourists are joined by an international convention of laughing parasites ? all refugees from tax. I used to hate them, until I realised that any British people who want to live in Dubai, we can probably afford to lose.
I went to Dubai two years ago because a friend was going for work and I am not a woman to let a friend go shopping in a tyranny alone. I knew there would be trouble, reading the guidebook on the plane. Dubai practises religious tolerance towards all religions, it said ? except Judaism. So I knew I shouldn't do anything explicitly Jewish in the UAE, such as complain about the racist cartoons of hook-nosed Jews sitting on the world as if it were a big space-hopper made of gentiles. UAE newspapers think all Jews look like Harvey Weinstein [http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/harvey-weinstein" title="] crossed with Shrek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek" title="]. But Dubai, owner of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building ? or spike ? on Earth has worse to show us than some casual antisemitism.
Dubai, like the rest of the UAE, is a repressive state, hiding behind religious piety and that dreadful word glitz. If Mickey Mouse is in residence here, he has some of the smartest kids locked up in Space Mountain. Do not dare to be gay, or adulterous, or a democrat in Dubai. Homosexuality will get you up to 10 years in prison ? party on, gays! A group of transvestites got five years in Abu Dhabi for dressing up; two lesbians got a month in Dubai, for kissing on the beach, before being spat out with deportation. I met a British woman in prison in Dubai. She was there for adultery, on the word of her husband ? pale, thin, denied access to her children, almost too atrophied to speak. In the end, I didn't interview her. Appearing in the British media might prejudice her case, and, anyway, she had no words.
It is an authoritarian oligarchy; the face of its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, smiles from billboards and, sometimes, from our Queen's own carriage at Ascot. There is no press freedom in the UAE, just self-censorship. Insulting the royal family, or the flag, or possibly the architecture, will get you banged up. Everything gets you banged up in Dubai, except conformity and mindless shopping in the malls, one of which has a mountain in a fridge, which you can ski down ? if skiing, rather than shopping in a tyranny, is your thing.
And in neighbouring emirates it is little better. Human Rights Watch is detailing the case of five Emirati reformers, all awaiting trial for talking about democracy. The attorney general, Salim Saeed Kubaish, says they are in prison for "instigation, breaking laws and perpetrating acts that pose a threat to state security, undermining the public order, opposing the government system, and insulting the president, the vice-president and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi".
One, Nasser bin Ghaith, an economist and lecturer at Sorbonne Abu Dhabi, managed to get a statement out from al-Wathba prison this month. "I have reached," he writes, "an unshakeable conviction that this court, measured against international norms of justice, is merely a farce and facade meant to legitimise and make credible verdicts and penalties that may have already been decided. It is purely an attempt to punish me and those with me for our political opinions." They will not get a fair trial.
And who built this city in the desert? There are 250,000 foreign workers in Dubai, drawn mostly from India and Bangladesh. They are indentured servants, that is, slaves. The usual way to recruit them is to draw them a picture of joy ? great wages, fabulous working conditions ? and charge them an enormous recruitment fee. Then, when they arrive, the construction companies often steal their passports, deny them their wages, and say they must work endlessly to pay for their return home, while living 10 to a room and working in the terrible heat. In Dubai, they cannot change jobs, and they cannot strike; those who do face violence, or deportation. Last year 113 Indians committed suicide in Dubai, or one every three days.
And there is no stopping. The recession is a blip as the UAE expands like an octopus. A vast project is afoot to create a new tourist paradise. Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi will be ready in 2020. The Louvre, which should know better, but doesn't, will have an annexe there; so will the Guggenheim, and so will New York ? New York! ? University.
We asked a Welsh couple why they came here. The answer arrived, from the man: the hotel staff would hold my dick if I asked. For me, that is not an advert, but others like to travel where labour is cheap and desperate and therefore loving. In my hotel they styled the ethnic minorities. African men carried my bag (my bag-carrier had a law degree), Bangladeshi men cleaned my room, and Thai women with false names ? who can be bothered to pronounce a Thai name when there are so many of them? ? served my dinner. These were human being beings acting as wallpaper.
It is almost understandable, if you are a psychopath. For every piece of human misery Dubai offers, it has a wondrous piece of leisure to distract you. This is, entirely, its terror. So there are buildings of incredible scope and ugliness, fake islands in the shape of continents, and the Burj al-Arab hotel, which is shaped like a sail and stuck above the Arabian Gulf.
This is all meat for gibbering travel PRs. There are many places on Earth as repressive, but North Korea and Saudi Arabia are not touted as dirty weekend destinations for residents of liberal democracies. Dubai is a place of horror, the land where fundamentalism meets hyper-capitalism. Could anything be worse? So again, Liam Fox, why?
For every piece of human misery that Dubai offers, the emirate has a wondrous piece of leisure to distract you
Tanya Gold
Saturday October 15 2011
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/14/dubai-liam-fox-fundamentalism-capitalism
One thing confused me about the headlines this week, which were essentially a morality tale about the loneliness of the professional politician. Why did Liam Fox choose Dubai for his mysterious stopovers between London and Afghanistan? Why couldn't it be somewhere else, perhaps the Wembley Plaza Hotel in Middlesex? Four times in 18 months the former defence secretary laid his head there, when Bahrain, or maybe Oman, were the usual options. But it was Dubai, one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Of all the slave states in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine.
Fox is not alone. In 2010, over 700,000 British tourists stayed in Dubai's hotels, according to the Dubai tourism website. The British are Dubai's best customers, which exposes how much people will collude with, or ignore, evil if their hotel rooms are cheap, sumptuous and have cable TV. Virgin Holidays say on its website: "Dubai is like no other place on Earth. It is a truly fabulous destination where visitors can indulge in top-quality hotels, great shopping, fine dining, state-of-the-art spas and, of course, fantastic beaches. There is, however, more to Dubai than meets the eye ?"
Yes indeed, it is unique, and there is more than meets the eye. That copy could be rewritten to say, "It is a truly fabulous destination where visitors can indulge in top-quality state censorship, great homophobia, fine misogyny, state-of-the-art police brutality and, of course, fantastic indentured servitude," and it would not be libelous ? not in Britain, anyway. Dubai does not impose income tax, so the tourists are joined by an international convention of laughing parasites ? all refugees from tax. I used to hate them, until I realised that any British people who want to live in Dubai, we can probably afford to lose.
I went to Dubai two years ago because a friend was going for work and I am not a woman to let a friend go shopping in a tyranny alone. I knew there would be trouble, reading the guidebook on the plane. Dubai practises religious tolerance towards all religions, it said ? except Judaism. So I knew I shouldn't do anything explicitly Jewish in the UAE, such as complain about the racist cartoons of hook-nosed Jews sitting on the world as if it were a big space-hopper made of gentiles. UAE newspapers think all Jews look like Harvey Weinstein [http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/harvey-weinstein" title="] crossed with Shrek [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek" title="]. But Dubai, owner of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building ? or spike ? on Earth has worse to show us than some casual antisemitism.
Dubai, like the rest of the UAE, is a repressive state, hiding behind religious piety and that dreadful word glitz. If Mickey Mouse is in residence here, he has some of the smartest kids locked up in Space Mountain. Do not dare to be gay, or adulterous, or a democrat in Dubai. Homosexuality will get you up to 10 years in prison ? party on, gays! A group of transvestites got five years in Abu Dhabi for dressing up; two lesbians got a month in Dubai, for kissing on the beach, before being spat out with deportation. I met a British woman in prison in Dubai. She was there for adultery, on the word of her husband ? pale, thin, denied access to her children, almost too atrophied to speak. In the end, I didn't interview her. Appearing in the British media might prejudice her case, and, anyway, she had no words.
It is an authoritarian oligarchy; the face of its ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, smiles from billboards and, sometimes, from our Queen's own carriage at Ascot. There is no press freedom in the UAE, just self-censorship. Insulting the royal family, or the flag, or possibly the architecture, will get you banged up. Everything gets you banged up in Dubai, except conformity and mindless shopping in the malls, one of which has a mountain in a fridge, which you can ski down ? if skiing, rather than shopping in a tyranny, is your thing.
And in neighbouring emirates it is little better. Human Rights Watch is detailing the case of five Emirati reformers, all awaiting trial for talking about democracy. The attorney general, Salim Saeed Kubaish, says they are in prison for "instigation, breaking laws and perpetrating acts that pose a threat to state security, undermining the public order, opposing the government system, and insulting the president, the vice-president and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi".
One, Nasser bin Ghaith, an economist and lecturer at Sorbonne Abu Dhabi, managed to get a statement out from al-Wathba prison this month. "I have reached," he writes, "an unshakeable conviction that this court, measured against international norms of justice, is merely a farce and facade meant to legitimise and make credible verdicts and penalties that may have already been decided. It is purely an attempt to punish me and those with me for our political opinions." They will not get a fair trial.
And who built this city in the desert? There are 250,000 foreign workers in Dubai, drawn mostly from India and Bangladesh. They are indentured servants, that is, slaves. The usual way to recruit them is to draw them a picture of joy ? great wages, fabulous working conditions ? and charge them an enormous recruitment fee. Then, when they arrive, the construction companies often steal their passports, deny them their wages, and say they must work endlessly to pay for their return home, while living 10 to a room and working in the terrible heat. In Dubai, they cannot change jobs, and they cannot strike; those who do face violence, or deportation. Last year 113 Indians committed suicide in Dubai, or one every three days.
And there is no stopping. The recession is a blip as the UAE expands like an octopus. A vast project is afoot to create a new tourist paradise. Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi will be ready in 2020. The Louvre, which should know better, but doesn't, will have an annexe there; so will the Guggenheim, and so will New York ? New York! ? University.
We asked a Welsh couple why they came here. The answer arrived, from the man: the hotel staff would hold my dick if I asked. For me, that is not an advert, but others like to travel where labour is cheap and desperate and therefore loving. In my hotel they styled the ethnic minorities. African men carried my bag (my bag-carrier had a law degree), Bangladeshi men cleaned my room, and Thai women with false names ? who can be bothered to pronounce a Thai name when there are so many of them? ? served my dinner. These were human being beings acting as wallpaper.
It is almost understandable, if you are a psychopath. For every piece of human misery Dubai offers, it has a wondrous piece of leisure to distract you. This is, entirely, its terror. So there are buildings of incredible scope and ugliness, fake islands in the shape of continents, and the Burj al-Arab hotel, which is shaped like a sail and stuck above the Arabian Gulf.
This is all meat for gibbering travel PRs. There are many places on Earth as repressive, but North Korea and Saudi Arabia are not touted as dirty weekend destinations for residents of liberal democracies. Dubai is a place of horror, the land where fundamentalism meets hyper-capitalism. Could anything be worse? So again, Liam Fox, why?
Wednesday, October 05, 2011
NOBEL PRIZES 2011
http://www.amanforpeace.net/FeuersteinInTheWorld
Professor Reuven Feuerstein the eminent psychologist from Jerusalem (and my esteemed cousin born 90 years ago in Botosani, Romania, my home town too) is a nominee on the short list for the Peace Prize 2011.We all await anxiously the announcement, but the fact that he was nominated by an esteemed array of his peers around the world, is a sufficient accolade.
His institute in Jerusalem is:
The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential
When faced with any disability or challenge, one of the primary motivating factors is hope. Hope reflects the fundamental belief that there is a possibility to bring about significant change, which in turn leads to a more optimistic future. True hope can only be achieved if there is solid evidence that real change will actually take place. This is where Professor Reuven Feuerstein’s Theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability comes into play.
The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP) was established with the goal of continuing and expanding the educational and psychological work initiated by Prof. Feuerstein. The work of the ICELP is based on the theories of Structural Cognitive Modifiability and Mediated Learning Experience, which serve as a basis for three applied systems: the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD), Instrumental Enrichment (IE) cognitive intervention program, and Shaping Modifying Environment.
ICELP specializes in providing a wide range of Services, Trainings, Research and Development.
Created By Logic&Design
Professor Reuven Feuerstein the eminent psychologist from Jerusalem (and my esteemed cousin born 90 years ago in Botosani, Romania, my home town too) is a nominee on the short list for the Peace Prize 2011.We all await anxiously the announcement, but the fact that he was nominated by an esteemed array of his peers around the world, is a sufficient accolade.
His institute in Jerusalem is:
The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential
When faced with any disability or challenge, one of the primary motivating factors is hope. Hope reflects the fundamental belief that there is a possibility to bring about significant change, which in turn leads to a more optimistic future. True hope can only be achieved if there is solid evidence that real change will actually take place. This is where Professor Reuven Feuerstein’s Theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability comes into play.
The International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP) was established with the goal of continuing and expanding the educational and psychological work initiated by Prof. Feuerstein. The work of the ICELP is based on the theories of Structural Cognitive Modifiability and Mediated Learning Experience, which serve as a basis for three applied systems: the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD), Instrumental Enrichment (IE) cognitive intervention program, and Shaping Modifying Environment.
ICELP specializes in providing a wide range of Services, Trainings, Research and Development.
Created By Logic&Design
Land without peace: Why Abbas went to the U.N.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/land-without-peace-why-abbas-went-to-the-un/2011/09/29/gIQACaoI8K_story.html
By Charles Krauthammer,
Published: September 29
While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.
It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — 10 months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.
To which Abbas responded by boycotting the talks for nine months, showing up in the 10th, then walking out when the freeze expired. Last week he reiterated that he will continue to boycott peace talks unless Israel gives up — in advance — claim to any territory beyond the 1967 lines. Meaning, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. This is not just absurd. It violates every prior peace agreement. They all stipulate that such demands are to be the subject of negotiations, not their precondition.
Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”
Nor is this new. It is perfectly consistent with the long history of Palestinian rejectionism. Consider:
●Camp David, 2000. At a U.S.-sponsored summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offers Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza — and, astonishingly, the previously inconceivable division of Jerusalem. Arafat refuses. And makes no counteroffer, thereby demonstrating his unseriousness about making any deal. Instead, within two months, he launches a savage terror war that kills a thousand Israelis.
●Taba, 2001. An even sweeter deal — the Clinton Parameters — is offered. Arafat walks away again.
●Israel, 2008. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes the ultimate capitulation to Palestinian demands — 100 percent of the West Bank (with land swaps), Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem with the Muslim parts becoming the capital of the new Palestine. And incredibly, he offers to turn over the city’s holy places, including the Western Wall — Judaism’s most sacred site, its Kaaba — to an international body on which sit Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Did Abbas accept? Of course not. If he had, the conflict would be over and Palestine would already be a member of the United Nations.
This is not ancient history. All three peace talks occurred over the past decade. And every one completely contradicts the current mindless narrative of Israeli “intransigence” as the obstacle to peace.
Settlements? Every settlement remaining within the new Palestine would be destroyed and emptied, precisely as happened in Gaza.
So why did the Palestinians say no? Because saying yes would have required them to sign a final peace agreement that accepted a Jewish state on what they consider the Muslim patrimony.
The key word here is “final.” The Palestinians are quite prepared to sign interim agreements, like Oslo. Framework agreements, like Annapolis. Cease-fires, like the 1949 armistice. Anything but a final deal. Anything but a final peace. Anything but a treaty that ends the conflict once and for all — while leaving a Jewish state still standing.
After all, why did Abbas go to the United Nations last week? For nearly half a century, the United States has pursued a Middle East settlement on the basis of the formula of land for peace. Land for peace produced the Israel-Egypt peace of 1979 and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Israel has offered the Palestinians land for peace three times since. And been refused every time.
Why? For exactly the same reason Abbas went to the United Nations last week: to get land without peace. Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel.
Israel gave up land without peace in south Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war (the Lebanon war of 2006) and 50,000 Hezbollah missiles now targeted on the Israeli homeland. In 2005, Israel gave up land without peace in Gaza, and again was rewarded with war — and constant rocket attack from an openly genocidal Palestinian mini-state.
Israel is prepared to give up land, but never again without peace. A final peace. Which is exactly what every Palestinian leader from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas has refused to accept. Which is why, regardless of who is governing Israel, there has never been peace. Territorial disputes are solvable; existential conflicts are not.
Land for peace, yes. Land without peace is nothing but an invitation to national suicide.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
By Charles Krauthammer,
Published: September 29
While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the United Nations to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.
It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — 10 months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.
To which Abbas responded by boycotting the talks for nine months, showing up in the 10th, then walking out when the freeze expired. Last week he reiterated that he will continue to boycott peace talks unless Israel gives up — in advance — claim to any territory beyond the 1967 lines. Meaning, for example, that the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem is Palestinian territory. This is not just absurd. It violates every prior peace agreement. They all stipulate that such demands are to be the subject of negotiations, not their precondition.
Abbas unwaveringly insists on the so-called “right of return,” which would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state. And he has repeatedly declared, as recently as last week in New York: “We shall not recognize a Jewish state.”
Nor is this new. It is perfectly consistent with the long history of Palestinian rejectionism. Consider:
●Camp David, 2000. At a U.S.-sponsored summit, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offers Yasser Arafat a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza — and, astonishingly, the previously inconceivable division of Jerusalem. Arafat refuses. And makes no counteroffer, thereby demonstrating his unseriousness about making any deal. Instead, within two months, he launches a savage terror war that kills a thousand Israelis.
●Taba, 2001. An even sweeter deal — the Clinton Parameters — is offered. Arafat walks away again.
●Israel, 2008. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert makes the ultimate capitulation to Palestinian demands — 100 percent of the West Bank (with land swaps), Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem with the Muslim parts becoming the capital of the new Palestine. And incredibly, he offers to turn over the city’s holy places, including the Western Wall — Judaism’s most sacred site, its Kaaba — to an international body on which sit Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Did Abbas accept? Of course not. If he had, the conflict would be over and Palestine would already be a member of the United Nations.
This is not ancient history. All three peace talks occurred over the past decade. And every one completely contradicts the current mindless narrative of Israeli “intransigence” as the obstacle to peace.
Settlements? Every settlement remaining within the new Palestine would be destroyed and emptied, precisely as happened in Gaza.
So why did the Palestinians say no? Because saying yes would have required them to sign a final peace agreement that accepted a Jewish state on what they consider the Muslim patrimony.
The key word here is “final.” The Palestinians are quite prepared to sign interim agreements, like Oslo. Framework agreements, like Annapolis. Cease-fires, like the 1949 armistice. Anything but a final deal. Anything but a final peace. Anything but a treaty that ends the conflict once and for all — while leaving a Jewish state still standing.
After all, why did Abbas go to the United Nations last week? For nearly half a century, the United States has pursued a Middle East settlement on the basis of the formula of land for peace. Land for peace produced the Israel-Egypt peace of 1979 and the Israel-Jordan peace of 1994. Israel has offered the Palestinians land for peace three times since. And been refused every time.
Why? For exactly the same reason Abbas went to the United Nations last week: to get land without peace. Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel.
Israel gave up land without peace in south Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war (the Lebanon war of 2006) and 50,000 Hezbollah missiles now targeted on the Israeli homeland. In 2005, Israel gave up land without peace in Gaza, and again was rewarded with war — and constant rocket attack from an openly genocidal Palestinian mini-state.
Israel is prepared to give up land, but never again without peace. A final peace. Which is exactly what every Palestinian leader from Haj Amin al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas has refused to accept. Which is why, regardless of who is governing Israel, there has never been peace. Territorial disputes are solvable; existential conflicts are not.
Land for peace, yes. Land without peace is nothing but an invitation to national suicide.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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