Leo Rennert
The most salient part of Vice President Biden's speech in Tel Aviv came toward the end of his address -- after he spoke about the "unbreakable bond" between the U.S. and Israel, after he assured his audience that the administration has an "ironclad commitment to Israel's security," and after he reassured skeptical Israelis that America "stands shoulder to shoulder" with the Jewish state. Once these nice pieties were out of the way, Biden got to the real, unbalanced U.S. position vis-à-vis Israel and the Palestinians -- again "condemning" Israel for moving ahead with plans for more housing units in East Jerusalem, while showering fulsome praise on Palestinian President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad.
Having lauded Abbas and Fayyad as "willing partners" for peace and competent leaders to bring about a genuine two-state solution, Biden added in the same paragraph this contrast with the Israeli government:
But instead, two days ago, the Israeli government announced it would advance planning for new housing in East Jerusalem. Because that decision undermined the trust required for productive negotiations, I -- and at the request of President Obama -- condemned it immediately and unequivocally.
Biden's comments are doubly revealing.
First, the vice president made clear that it was Obama who made the decision to "condemn" the Israeli government -- one of the harshest criticisms ever leveled against Israeli leaders by an American president.
Second, Biden -- voicing Obama's views -- refrained from uttering anything approaching similar incendiary criticism of Abbas's multiple anti-Israel and anti-peace provocations.
The closest the vice president came to expressing any displeasure with Palestinian provocations was when he told his audience that "you've been frustrated by the unwillingness of some Palestinian leaders to curb incitement." This remark didn't even rise to a slap on the wrist, and it carefully omitted identification of who these Palestinian leaders might be. It's not something that need worry Abbas in the slightest.
Biden's juxtaposition of slamming Israel hard and refraining from bringing up anything about Abbas's multiple impediments to advancing the peace process makes a mockery of Obama-Biden pledges to hold all sides equally accountable when they get out of line.
Repeating words spoken earlier in the week by U.S. envoy George Mitchell, Biden told his Tel Aviv audience: "The United States will continue to hold both sides accountable for any statements or any actions that inflame tensions or prejudice the outcome of these talks."
Oh, really?
If Biden were true to his words, he would have denounced Abbas's persistent glorification of suicide bombers; Abbas's incitement campaign against Israel in Palestinian Authority media, schools and mosques; and Abbas's retention of clauses in the PLO/Fatah charter that call for the total elimination of the Jewish state. He also might have "condemned" Fayyad for joining Abbas in legitimizing terrorist murderers. Doesn't such conduct also "undermine trust required for productive negotiations"?
But while firing away at Netanyahu, Biden kept his powder dry with Abbas and Fayyad.
Why?
The answer rests with Obama's failure to make good on his promises to hold the Palestinian Authority, Arab leaders, and Israel equally accountable for their actions and statements. When the chips are down, only Israel's government arouses Obama's ire -- never Arab leaders or Abbas.
It's this unbalanced pursuit of an elusive peace that has thrown Obama's diplomacy off-track from the start. First, while overlooking Arab/Palestinian provocations, the president pursued a one-dimensional pressure campaign to get Netanyahu to impose an absolute freeze on housing construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That got him nowhere, except that Abbas was so delighted with Obama's exclusive focus on Netanyahu that the Palestinian leader abandoned direct negotiations and decided that he could get more by using Obama as his negotiating proxy.
Now, Biden and Obama have repeated the same diplomatic mistake. Faced with Israel's ill-timed announcement of plans for more housing units in East Jerusalem, they immediately fired their heaviest verbal guns at the Israeli government -- without pausing to consider that these housing units are not apt to be built for another several years and without thinking through that this unprecedented U.S. slap at Israel would again stoke Abbas's disinterest in direct negotiations while making Israelis wonder why the U.S. picks on only them.
Even the Israel-unfriendly New York Times opined on its editorial page that Obama's diplomacy has been clumsy and counterproductive.
In recent days, Syrian President Assad played host in Damascus at a chummy get-together with Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chieftain Narsrallah -- without Obama sallying forth with fulsome denunciation of the Syrian leader and his guests. In fact, it was just the opposite: Obama is making new diplomatic overtures to Assad by sending a U.S. ambassador to Damascus. A few days later, Ahmadinejad was embraced by Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, who listened patiently as Ahmadinejad uncorked his vile tirades against Israel and the U.S. Again, no harsh condemnation of what happened in Kabul.
Only Israel seems to get Obama's dander up, as illustrated by Biden's sharp comments this week. It's not exactly something to inspire confidence or expectations of even-handed U.S. mediation down the road.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/biden_trip_reveals_ominous_sid.html at March 12, 2010 - 10:04:24 AM CST
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Fox Becomes a Hen? ‘CAIR’ and Imbalance? News Corporation Falls Under Saudi Control
Paul Williams, PhD
Former prominent guests on Fox News, including Walid Shoebat, contend that the News Corporation has surrendered its “fair and balanced” coverage of Islam and events in the Middle East for a fistful of Saudi cash. Their contention is based on a series of recent developments within the media giant.
The first development was the news that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, invested $70 million in the Rotana Group, an enterprise owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah. The Rotana Group operates a host of TV channels throughout the Middle East and is a leading producer of Arabic movies.
Next came Mr. Murdoch’s decision to make Abu Dhabi, the headquarters of the News Corporation’s global media operations in the Middle East.
On Monday, the Fox Business Network announced that it will dispatch a full-time correspondent to the Middle East in order to inform Americans of the unique business opportunities in such places as Syria, a country that provides shelter for Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah and support the insurgents in Iraq.
In the wake of this announcement, Fox news commentators – including Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, A.B. Stoddard and Bill Kristol – condemned Geert Wilders, a well-respected Dutch dignitary and critic of radical Islam, as a “fascist” and a “demagogue.”
Mr. Krauthammer said that Mr. Wilders, who is the leading candidate for Prime Minister in The Netherlands, doesn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism, a distinction known only to Mr. Krauthammer.
While Mr. Beck labeled Mr. Wilders as a “fascist,” Ms. Stoddard expressed her agreement with Krauthammer and added that “if people like this (Mr. Wilders) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.
What caused this denunciation?
Mr. Wilders produced a short documentary on Islam in Holland called Fitna in which he argued that “there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’” and that the Prophet Muhammad would “. . . in these days be hunted down as a terrorist.”
In the past, the former member of the Dutch National Parliament was a frequent guest on Fox News. Last February, Bill O’Reilly welcomed Mr. Wilders to America, while condemning a scared Britain for banning him entrance to the country.
Other news about the parent company of Fox News began to surface, including reports that Kingdom Holding owns at least 7 percent of the News Corporation and has become the second largest shareholder in the Murdoch conglomerate. Some speculate that the actual shares controlled by Kingdom Holding through a hedge fund may exceed 25 percent.
Kingdom Holding is owned by Prince Talal, who is called “the Arabian Warren Buffet.”
Listed by Forbes as the world’s 22nd richest person, Prince Talal also owns substantial shares of Time Warner, Apple, eBay, Disney, and Citibank.
As for charity, he gives millions to Hamas and other pro-Palestinian organizations.
Critics say that Prince Talal’s sizeable investment in the News Corporation accounts for Fox News programs critical of Israel, including a series of special reports in which Carl Cameron and Brit Hume alleged that Israel gathered information about the attacks of 9/11 and failed to warn the American people.
Walid Shoebat, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who converted to Christianity, charges that Fox New now prohibits critics of Islam and Islamic terror from appearing on its broadcasts.
"He himself (Prince bin Talal) said, 'I just had to make a phone call to [tell them to] stop using the word Muslim' regarding the rioting in France," Mr. Shoebat notes. "Bill O'Reilly says to Ibrahim Hooper, the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that he is an upstanding citizen. Since when was the head of CAIR an upstanding citizen?"
Mr. Shoebat adds that viewers will no longer be seeing any so-called "Islamophobes" on Fox.
"Today, I'm not invited at Fox News. Neither is Robert Spencer or Brigitte Gabriel," he laments. "But Ibrahim Hooper is invited to speak at Fox News. It used to be that experts on terrorism who are critical of the Islamic views [were] able to get a voice on Fox News. Those days are gone."
Mr. Shoebat says that instead of airing those critical views of Islam, Fox News now legitimizes Hooper, the spokesman for CAIR, a group which he maintains is a front for Islamic terrorists.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Paul L. Williams is the author of The Day of Islam: The Annihilation of America and the Western World, The Al Qaeda Connection, and other best-selling books. He is a frequent guest on such national news networks as ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, MSNBC, and NPR. Visit his website at http://thelastcrusade.org.
Aviation Week: Hamas, Hizbullah May Push Israel to War
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136421
Aviation Week: Hamas, Hizbullah May Push Israel to War
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) Worrisome escalations in arms stockpiling by Hamas and Hizbullah have convinced defense analysts that another war with Israel is on the horizon this year or in 2011, according to the highly respected Aviation Week.
The publication relied on intelligence estimates that the two terrorist organizations, sponsored by Iran and Syria, have armed themselves far beyond their stockpiles of 2006, when both Hamas and Hizbullah kidnapped Israeli soldiers within a three-week period. The Hizbullah abduction of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev came during a missile attack on the north and led Israel into the 34-day Second Lebanon War. Both soldiers were killed. Three weeks earlier, Hamas attacked an IDF checkpoint at a Gaza crossing, killed two soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Shalit, who still is presumed alive in captivity.
Aviation Week noted that while Hamas and Hizbullah probably do not want an all-out war now, the current relative calm “may be illusory -- Tehran and Damascus could encourage Hamas and Hizbullah to attack Israel in furtherance of their regional aims." The journal added that "Iran has also threatened retaliation if Israel attacks its nuclear program; and with popular unrest a constant threat to the leadership in Tehran, a war with Israel, fought through Hamas or Hezbollah, could be one way of diverting Iranian public attention away from the regime.”
In the south, Hamas has smuggled in and assembled weapons far more destructive than those they possessed in the past, including advanced anti-aircraft missiles that can down Israeli planes. “Restoring Hamas’s arsenal with advanced ordnance is a major part of Iran’s strategy of targeting Israel from Lebanon and Gaza,” according to Aviation Week.
An Arabic-language Lebanese newspaper affiliated with a Muslim terrorist group has reported that terrorists have been training with the weapons for a year. As previously reported, Hamas is believed to developing capability to fire a missile as far north as metropolitan Tel Aviv.
Hamas also has apparently acquired the same type of advanced anti-tank missiles that Hizbullah used against advance Israeli tanks in the Second Lebanon War. Another factor in the war scenario is the international al-Qaeda global jihad terror organization, whose influence is spreading in Gaza.
While the IDF is always preparing itself for attacks from Gaza, the Hamas control of the Philadelphi smuggling route, including the city of Rafiah that is situated on both sides of the border with Egypt, aggravates Israel’s problem. “Many experts believe that Israel should have targeted Rafiah during Operation Cast Lead instead of deploying troops to Gaza City, a move that might have kept the threat of future conflicts farther in the future,” Aviation Week reported.
Aviation Week: Hamas, Hizbullah May Push Israel to War
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) Worrisome escalations in arms stockpiling by Hamas and Hizbullah have convinced defense analysts that another war with Israel is on the horizon this year or in 2011, according to the highly respected Aviation Week.
The publication relied on intelligence estimates that the two terrorist organizations, sponsored by Iran and Syria, have armed themselves far beyond their stockpiles of 2006, when both Hamas and Hizbullah kidnapped Israeli soldiers within a three-week period. The Hizbullah abduction of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev came during a missile attack on the north and led Israel into the 34-day Second Lebanon War. Both soldiers were killed. Three weeks earlier, Hamas attacked an IDF checkpoint at a Gaza crossing, killed two soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Shalit, who still is presumed alive in captivity.
Aviation Week noted that while Hamas and Hizbullah probably do not want an all-out war now, the current relative calm “may be illusory -- Tehran and Damascus could encourage Hamas and Hizbullah to attack Israel in furtherance of their regional aims." The journal added that "Iran has also threatened retaliation if Israel attacks its nuclear program; and with popular unrest a constant threat to the leadership in Tehran, a war with Israel, fought through Hamas or Hezbollah, could be one way of diverting Iranian public attention away from the regime.”
In the south, Hamas has smuggled in and assembled weapons far more destructive than those they possessed in the past, including advanced anti-aircraft missiles that can down Israeli planes. “Restoring Hamas’s arsenal with advanced ordnance is a major part of Iran’s strategy of targeting Israel from Lebanon and Gaza,” according to Aviation Week.
An Arabic-language Lebanese newspaper affiliated with a Muslim terrorist group has reported that terrorists have been training with the weapons for a year. As previously reported, Hamas is believed to developing capability to fire a missile as far north as metropolitan Tel Aviv.
Hamas also has apparently acquired the same type of advanced anti-tank missiles that Hizbullah used against advance Israeli tanks in the Second Lebanon War. Another factor in the war scenario is the international al-Qaeda global jihad terror organization, whose influence is spreading in Gaza.
While the IDF is always preparing itself for attacks from Gaza, the Hamas control of the Philadelphi smuggling route, including the city of Rafiah that is situated on both sides of the border with Egypt, aggravates Israel’s problem. “Many experts believe that Israel should have targeted Rafiah during Operation Cast Lead instead of deploying troops to Gaza City, a move that might have kept the threat of future conflicts farther in the future,” Aviation Week reported.
Naomi Ragen: Bye, Bye Biden
The headlines in Israel during Mr. Biden's visit are making me angry. First,
his statement that Israel's announced plan to build 1,600 housing unit in
East Jerusalem "undermines peace."
What peace is that? The Arab "piece" plan, where Israel turns over more and
more "pieces" of land to Palestinians who can then turn them into
"terror-tory," as they did with Gush Katif? Mr. Biden, you come here
declaring that the Israeli and Palestinian sides are 'not that far apart'
and only Israel's policies are holding peace from breaking out, "endangering
American soldiers," as one headline put it. Are you for real?
You tell Israel not to attack Iran, and expect six million of us to wait
patiently as the current American administration pussyfoots with healthcare
while an A-Bomb is aimed at our heads. And ISRAELIS ARE ENDANGERING
AMERICANS?
Are you for real??
Nothing on the Palestinian side has changed
since the lies of Oslo and yet you fully expect Israel to give up
sovereignty over her capital, Jerusalem, in exchange for ....what?
I would like to remind Mr.Biden of the following Congressional resolution,
April 24, 1990:
"House Resolution Expressing Support for Jerusalem as Israel's Capital
Whereas the State of Israel has declared Jerusalem to be its capital;
Whereas from 1948 to 1967 Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens
of all faiths were not permitted access to holy sites in the area controlled
by Jordan;
Whereas since 1967 Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel
and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy
sites within the city; Whereas the President and the Secretary of State have
demonstrated their strong desire to achieve a just and lasting peace in the
Middle East and have worked diligently toward that end;
Whereas ambiguous statements by the Government of the United States
concerning the right of Jews to live in all parts of Jerusalem raise
concerns in Israel that Jerusalem might one day be redivided and access to
religious sites in Jerusalem denied to Israeli citizens; and the search for
a lasting peace in the region: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House
of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the Congress
(1) acknowledges that Jerusalem is and should remain the capital of the
State of Israel;
(2) strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which
the rights of every ethnic religious group are protected; and
(3) calls upon all parties involved in the search for peace to maintain
their strong efforts to bring about negotiations between Israel and
Palestinian representatives."
Bye, bye Mr. Biden. Thanks for dropping by. Come again soon when you have
your next liaison with reality, and the American administration is a little
more deserving of Israel's trust.
his statement that Israel's announced plan to build 1,600 housing unit in
East Jerusalem "undermines peace."
What peace is that? The Arab "piece" plan, where Israel turns over more and
more "pieces" of land to Palestinians who can then turn them into
"terror-tory," as they did with Gush Katif? Mr. Biden, you come here
declaring that the Israeli and Palestinian sides are 'not that far apart'
and only Israel's policies are holding peace from breaking out, "endangering
American soldiers," as one headline put it. Are you for real?
You tell Israel not to attack Iran, and expect six million of us to wait
patiently as the current American administration pussyfoots with healthcare
while an A-Bomb is aimed at our heads. And ISRAELIS ARE ENDANGERING
AMERICANS?
Are you for real??
Nothing on the Palestinian side has changed
since the lies of Oslo and yet you fully expect Israel to give up
sovereignty over her capital, Jerusalem, in exchange for ....what?
I would like to remind Mr.Biden of the following Congressional resolution,
April 24, 1990:
"House Resolution Expressing Support for Jerusalem as Israel's Capital
Whereas the State of Israel has declared Jerusalem to be its capital;
Whereas from 1948 to 1967 Jerusalem was a divided city and Israeli citizens
of all faiths were not permitted access to holy sites in the area controlled
by Jordan;
Whereas since 1967 Jerusalem has been a united city administered by Israel
and persons of all religious faiths have been guaranteed full access to holy
sites within the city; Whereas the President and the Secretary of State have
demonstrated their strong desire to achieve a just and lasting peace in the
Middle East and have worked diligently toward that end;
Whereas ambiguous statements by the Government of the United States
concerning the right of Jews to live in all parts of Jerusalem raise
concerns in Israel that Jerusalem might one day be redivided and access to
religious sites in Jerusalem denied to Israeli citizens; and the search for
a lasting peace in the region: Now, therefore, be it Resolved by the House
of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the Congress
(1) acknowledges that Jerusalem is and should remain the capital of the
State of Israel;
(2) strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which
the rights of every ethnic religious group are protected; and
(3) calls upon all parties involved in the search for peace to maintain
their strong efforts to bring about negotiations between Israel and
Palestinian representatives."
Bye, bye Mr. Biden. Thanks for dropping by. Come again soon when you have
your next liaison with reality, and the American administration is a little
more deserving of Israel's trust.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Jerusalem Neighborhoods: Old and New
Hillel Fendel Old, New Jerusalem Neighborhoods
Jerusalem was named Israel's capital, as it had been during King David's time, after the War of Independence in 1948-9. During and prior to the war, there had been talk of internationalizing the Old City and environs, but the plan was never implemented due to opposition from both the Jewish and Arab parties Alongside Israel's capital in the western half of the city was eastern Jerusalem, annexed by Jordan in 1950; a wall and barbed wire divided the city in two. By 1967, the population of Jewish Jerusalem had grown to 260,000. Among its most famous neighborhoods were then Me’ah She’arim, Rehavia, Emek Refaim/German Colony, Geulah, Givat Sha’ul, Beit HaKerem, Kiryat Moshe and Talpiyot.
Other notable neighborhoods include Ein Kerem, Katamon, Yemin Moshe, Nahlaot, Romema and Machaneh Yehuda, and the newer Har Nof and Bayit V’gan.
The Six Day War in 1967 marked Israel's successful military response to the deployment of several Arab national military forces threatening to “drive the Jews into the sea.” The war saw the Old City of Jerusalem come under Jewish control for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple 1,900 years before. Together with the Old City, Israel regained all of the area west of the Jordan River, known as Judea and Samaria.
Israel then expanded the borders of its historic capital, and built in its old-new areas the following neighborhoods:
* Ramat Eshkol (the first to be built), French Hill, and Sanhedria Murchevet, all not far from the center of town;
* Ramot (population: approximately 40,000), Ramat Shlomo (18,000), N’vei Yaakov (a recreation of the neighborhood that existed there before 1948; 20,000 people), Pisgat Ze’ev (42,000), and the Atarot industrial zone in the north;
* Gilo (population: 40,000), East Talpiyot (15,000), and Har Homa (11,000) in the southeast;
* Mt. Scopus and Mt. of Olives to the east.
Within 13 years after the Six Day War, the population of Jerusalem had increased by well over 55%, growing to nearly 410,000. It continued growing at a fast clip: In 1990, there were over 524,000 people, and 657,000 in the year 2000. The current population is close to 780,000.
The newly-approved 1,600 units to be built in Ramat Shlomo are slated to fill some of the area between Ramat Shlomo and Ramat Eshkol/Sanhedria.
How Not to Advance Arab-Israeli Peace
David Harris
Executive Director, AJC, and Senior Associate, St. Antony's College, Oxford University
Throughout his life, one of Yasser Arafat's favorite themes was that there was no historical Jewish connection to Israel.
He would assert that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, that the Western Wall has no Jewish significance, and even that Abraham himself wasn't a Jew.
Indeed, he went so far as to reject the Jewish link to Jerusalem in the presence of President Bill Clinton during the Camp David talks, evoking outrage from the American leader and offering insight into why the negotiations were doomed to fail.
Arafat's views, unsurprisingly, were echoed relentlessly by Palestinian media outlets and textbooks, not to mention Muslim clergy. Generations of Palestinians were "educated" to believe that the Jews were interlopers, not a people indigenous to the Middle East. This had nothing to do with history, since there was abundant evidence of the intimate Jewish tie to the land dating back well over 3500 years, not to mention the spiritual and metaphysical meaning of Jerusalem as the heart and soul of the Jewish narrative.
And, needless to say, Arafat never chose to explain why Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible nearly 700 times, while not once in the Koran. Or why, when Jerusalem was in Jordanian hands from 1948 to 1967, not a single Arab leader besides Jordan's king chose to visit what was then considered a backwater city. Only when all of Jerusalem fell into Israel's hands in 1967 did the city suddenly seem to take on a magical, magnetic meaning for the Arab and larger Muslim world.
Instead, at the risk of stating the obvious, Arafat's revisionism had everything to do with politics and propaganda.
If Palestinian leaders could cut the link between Jews and the region, then they would undermine the very legitimacy of Israel.
Moreover, there was something else at work. It wasn't just that the Jews allegedly had no ties to any of these sites, but also that the Muslims did. In other words, what was at work was a usurpation of Jewish history and its replacement with Islamic history - a kind of across-the-board supersessionism by a religion that began more than 2000 years after Judaism.
Arafat died in 2004, but his beliefs most assuredly didn't.
Typical of this ongoing mindset is the Palestinian Authority's chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, who recently denied that Jews had ever lived in Jerusalem or that the Jewish Temple ever existed.
And now, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan joins the fray, continuing his recent policy of never missing an opportunity to castigate Israel and proclaim pan-Islamic solidarity. In a Saudi newspaper, he states that the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Rachel's Tomb "were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites."
For the record, the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron, is revered as Judaism's second holiest site, after the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Rachel's Tomb, in Bethlehem, is Judaism's third holiest site. As for the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israel has gone out of its way since 1967 to respect Muslim religious authority there, even as the land underneath the mosque, the Temple Mount, is central to Jewish religion and history.
Indeed, this troubling pattern of trying to deny or extinguish a Jewish presence extends deeper into the region.
The other evening, my wife and I met a distinguished American journalist with over three decades' experience covering major news stories around the world.
Hearing an accent, she asked my wife where she was from. On learning that my wife was originally from Libya, she inquired as to when and why she had left. My wife replied that, as a Jew, she and her family were compelled to flee their ancestral homeland in 1967, just after the Six-Day War triggered a paroxysm of violence that resulted in the murder of many Libyan Jews.
The journalist said that she hadn't realized Jews ever lived there, much less that Jews, together with native Berbers, predated the Arab conquest and occupation of Libya by centuries. She couldn't conceive that every last trace of the Jewish presence in Libya, including synagogues and cemeteries, had been wiped out, as if the Jews had never existed.
When my wife added that the story was more or less repeated across much of the Arab world, with hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to leave because of persecution, violence, and intimidation, our interlocutor voiced embarrassment that all of this was new to her. Why hadn't she known, she asked rhetorically?
Well, the answer may be threefold.
First, the Arab countries themselves have sought to avoid any discussion of the subject, much less acknowledge the presence of Jews on their soil for centuries or, in the case of nations like Libya, millennia. For their own reasons, they would rather whitewash history.
Second, the Western media barely focused on the mass exodus or its implications. It just wasn't deemed a newsworthy story. As one striking illustration, the New York Times devoted exactly two tiny news briefs in 1967 to the end of the Libyan Jewish community.
Third, the Jewish refugees, until quite recently, were too busy establishing new lives to dwell on their kidnapped histories - or, more precisely, their erased histories, as if they had never existed in lands they once called home.
And even when they tried, who was listening? The UN? No. The media? No. Arab leaders like Assad of Syria and Qadhafi of Libya? No. Even Western officials largely yawned when presented with the facts, perhaps because it only made a complicated Middle East puzzle still more so, even if it was an essential piece of that puzzle.
But all is not entirely bleak. There are a few bright spots.
Morocco and Tunisia have always been exceptions to the rule. While the bulk of Jews from both countries did leave for fear of their future, those who stayed behind have been respected as an integral part of the nations' fabric and fiber.
And this week in Cairo, history is being made. A synagogue and a yeshiva, both associated with the legacy of the towering 12th-century Jewish rabbi, scholar, and physician Maimonides, have been carefully restored and will be open to the public, marking a step forward in finally acknowledging the Jewish role in Egypt's history.
The quest for coexistence is achieved not by treaties alone, but by a spirit of mutual acceptance, understanding, and respect.
Those who would cavalierly deny the Jewish people their history and religious sensitivities, whether in Jerusalem, Hebron, or Tripoli, while demanding full recognition of all their own claims, are doing the cause of peace no service.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/how-not-to-advance-arab-i_b_489158.html?view=print
Executive Director, AJC, and Senior Associate, St. Antony's College, Oxford University
Throughout his life, one of Yasser Arafat's favorite themes was that there was no historical Jewish connection to Israel.
He would assert that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, that the Western Wall has no Jewish significance, and even that Abraham himself wasn't a Jew.
Indeed, he went so far as to reject the Jewish link to Jerusalem in the presence of President Bill Clinton during the Camp David talks, evoking outrage from the American leader and offering insight into why the negotiations were doomed to fail.
Arafat's views, unsurprisingly, were echoed relentlessly by Palestinian media outlets and textbooks, not to mention Muslim clergy. Generations of Palestinians were "educated" to believe that the Jews were interlopers, not a people indigenous to the Middle East. This had nothing to do with history, since there was abundant evidence of the intimate Jewish tie to the land dating back well over 3500 years, not to mention the spiritual and metaphysical meaning of Jerusalem as the heart and soul of the Jewish narrative.
And, needless to say, Arafat never chose to explain why Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible nearly 700 times, while not once in the Koran. Or why, when Jerusalem was in Jordanian hands from 1948 to 1967, not a single Arab leader besides Jordan's king chose to visit what was then considered a backwater city. Only when all of Jerusalem fell into Israel's hands in 1967 did the city suddenly seem to take on a magical, magnetic meaning for the Arab and larger Muslim world.
Instead, at the risk of stating the obvious, Arafat's revisionism had everything to do with politics and propaganda.
If Palestinian leaders could cut the link between Jews and the region, then they would undermine the very legitimacy of Israel.
Moreover, there was something else at work. It wasn't just that the Jews allegedly had no ties to any of these sites, but also that the Muslims did. In other words, what was at work was a usurpation of Jewish history and its replacement with Islamic history - a kind of across-the-board supersessionism by a religion that began more than 2000 years after Judaism.
Arafat died in 2004, but his beliefs most assuredly didn't.
Typical of this ongoing mindset is the Palestinian Authority's chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, who recently denied that Jews had ever lived in Jerusalem or that the Jewish Temple ever existed.
And now, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan joins the fray, continuing his recent policy of never missing an opportunity to castigate Israel and proclaim pan-Islamic solidarity. In a Saudi newspaper, he states that the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Rachel's Tomb "were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites."
For the record, the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron, is revered as Judaism's second holiest site, after the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Rachel's Tomb, in Bethlehem, is Judaism's third holiest site. As for the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israel has gone out of its way since 1967 to respect Muslim religious authority there, even as the land underneath the mosque, the Temple Mount, is central to Jewish religion and history.
Indeed, this troubling pattern of trying to deny or extinguish a Jewish presence extends deeper into the region.
The other evening, my wife and I met a distinguished American journalist with over three decades' experience covering major news stories around the world.
Hearing an accent, she asked my wife where she was from. On learning that my wife was originally from Libya, she inquired as to when and why she had left. My wife replied that, as a Jew, she and her family were compelled to flee their ancestral homeland in 1967, just after the Six-Day War triggered a paroxysm of violence that resulted in the murder of many Libyan Jews.
The journalist said that she hadn't realized Jews ever lived there, much less that Jews, together with native Berbers, predated the Arab conquest and occupation of Libya by centuries. She couldn't conceive that every last trace of the Jewish presence in Libya, including synagogues and cemeteries, had been wiped out, as if the Jews had never existed.
When my wife added that the story was more or less repeated across much of the Arab world, with hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to leave because of persecution, violence, and intimidation, our interlocutor voiced embarrassment that all of this was new to her. Why hadn't she known, she asked rhetorically?
Well, the answer may be threefold.
First, the Arab countries themselves have sought to avoid any discussion of the subject, much less acknowledge the presence of Jews on their soil for centuries or, in the case of nations like Libya, millennia. For their own reasons, they would rather whitewash history.
Second, the Western media barely focused on the mass exodus or its implications. It just wasn't deemed a newsworthy story. As one striking illustration, the New York Times devoted exactly two tiny news briefs in 1967 to the end of the Libyan Jewish community.
Third, the Jewish refugees, until quite recently, were too busy establishing new lives to dwell on their kidnapped histories - or, more precisely, their erased histories, as if they had never existed in lands they once called home.
And even when they tried, who was listening? The UN? No. The media? No. Arab leaders like Assad of Syria and Qadhafi of Libya? No. Even Western officials largely yawned when presented with the facts, perhaps because it only made a complicated Middle East puzzle still more so, even if it was an essential piece of that puzzle.
But all is not entirely bleak. There are a few bright spots.
Morocco and Tunisia have always been exceptions to the rule. While the bulk of Jews from both countries did leave for fear of their future, those who stayed behind have been respected as an integral part of the nations' fabric and fiber.
And this week in Cairo, history is being made. A synagogue and a yeshiva, both associated with the legacy of the towering 12th-century Jewish rabbi, scholar, and physician Maimonides, have been carefully restored and will be open to the public, marking a step forward in finally acknowledging the Jewish role in Egypt's history.
The quest for coexistence is achieved not by treaties alone, but by a spirit of mutual acceptance, understanding, and respect.
Those who would cavalierly deny the Jewish people their history and religious sensitivities, whether in Jerusalem, Hebron, or Tripoli, while demanding full recognition of all their own claims, are doing the cause of peace no service.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/how-not-to-advance-arab-i_b_489158.html?view=print
European Parliament backs Goldstone report
EU endorses UN report on Gaza war, calls for probe into alleged war crimes, removal of Israeli imposed blockade on Strip
Associated Press
YNET News
In a move likely to worsen EU ties with Israel, the European Parliament urged its 27-member states Wednesday to monitor the Israeli and Palestinian probes into alleged war crimes in Gaza. The parliament also called on Israel to immediately open border crossings with the Gaza Strip, saying its blockade is worsening the humanitarian crisis there.
Moving Closer
UN passes Goldstone report resolution / Yitzhak Benhorin
General Assembly approves proposal by Arab League calling on Ban Ki-moon to report on probes of Operation Cast Lead in five months; but Israel's ambassador asks, 'Who will investigate on Palestinian side?'
Full story
The resolution backed the findings of a UN-appointed expert panel chaired by South African Judge Richard Goldstone, which concluded that both sides committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during thewar that began in December 2008 and ended in January 2009.
The parliamentary move, which would give the EU an unprecedented role in evaluating the progress of Israel's war crimes probe, was sharply criticized by Israel.
"We find this resolution flawed and counterproductive," said Yoel Mester, spokesman for Israeli mission to EU. "While other players are striving to find to support the peace process and to start the proximity talks between Israel and Palestinians, it is regrettable that the European Parliament choses to concentrate on a highly controversial issue."
In December, the EU accused Israel of trying to divide the bloc to stop it from passing a resolution calling for Jerusalem to be the shared capital of Israel and for a future Palestinian state. The measure was adopted despite Israel's opposition.
The European Union also has criticized Israel over its suspected role in the slaying of a Hamas militant in Dubai and the killers' alleged use of forged EU passports.
Israel, meanwhile, has been annoyed by a demand from the European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to be allowed to visit the Gaza Strip, which remains under Hamas control.
The European Parliament measure, passed by 335-287, said Ashton should "monitor actively the implementation of recommendations included in the Goldstone Report."
"For the first time, a resolution voted in the European Parliament acknowledges Israeli's violations of international humanitarian law," parliament member Kyriacos Triantaphyllides said.
Refrain from unilateral decisions
In January, the UN General Assembly gave the two sides five more months to finalize their own investigations into war crimes allegations during the conflict, in which 13 Israelis and almost 1,400 Palestinians were killed.
On Monday, Foreign Ministry Avigdor Lieberman said he would allow Ashton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon into Gaza, after routinely banning foreign officials from crossing into Gaza since Hamas' violent takeover of the strip in 2007, maintaining that such visits bolster the Islamic militant group.
In a related development Wednesday, Ashton condemned Israel's plan to expand a Jewish neighborhood in disputed east Jerusalem, saying it should reverse the decision and "refrain from unilateral decisions and actions that may jeopardize the final status negotiations."
"The EU reiterates that settlements are illegal under international law," Ashton said in a statement. "They undermine current efforts for restarting peace negotiations ... and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible."
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
British Commander: The IDF Tried to Safeguard Civilians
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2010, pp. 75-6
http://www.meforum.org/2605/idf-tried-to-safeguard-civilians
Following a lengthy period during which Hamas bombarded southern Israel unopposed, Israel finally attacked Gaza in an attempt to cripple Hamas's fighting capabilities. The ensuing conflict in December 2008 and January 2009 led to a high casualty count on the Palestinian side. Even before the war ended, the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body thought biased against Israel, met at the behest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in a special session to condemn the Israeli assault and to call for a mandate to carry out a fact-finding mission designed to investigate the conflict. The Goldstone report,[1] written by this mission, said little about Hamas but much about Israeli "war crimes." Many voices stood out against the report and its methodology. One of the most emphatic was that of a senior British soldier, Col. Richard Kemp MBE, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a veteran of action in the 1990- 91 Kuwait war and elsewhere. On October 16, 2009, he appeared before an emergency session of the Human Rights Council. The complete transcript of his address appears below.[2]—The Editors
Testimony at the U.N.
I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf war. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and worked on international terrorism for the U.K. Government's Joint Intelligence Committee.
Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.
Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.
The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media and international human rights groups that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.
The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.
Despite all of this, of course, innocent civilian lives were lost. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American, and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.
More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas's way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice its own civilians.
Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.
And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
[1] "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," U.N. Human Rights Council, New York, Sept. 15, 2009
[2] "UK Commander Challenges Goldstone Report," UN Watch, Geneva, accessed Oct. 29, 2009.
Winter 2010, pp. 75-6
http://www.meforum.org/2605/idf-tried-to-safeguard-civilians
Following a lengthy period during which Hamas bombarded southern Israel unopposed, Israel finally attacked Gaza in an attempt to cripple Hamas's fighting capabilities. The ensuing conflict in December 2008 and January 2009 led to a high casualty count on the Palestinian side. Even before the war ended, the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body thought biased against Israel, met at the behest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in a special session to condemn the Israeli assault and to call for a mandate to carry out a fact-finding mission designed to investigate the conflict. The Goldstone report,[1] written by this mission, said little about Hamas but much about Israeli "war crimes." Many voices stood out against the report and its methodology. One of the most emphatic was that of a senior British soldier, Col. Richard Kemp MBE, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and a veteran of action in the 1990- 91 Kuwait war and elsewhere. On October 16, 2009, he appeared before an emergency session of the Human Rights Council. The complete transcript of his address appears below.[2]—The Editors
Testimony at the U.N.
I am the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan. I served with NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf war. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and worked on international terrorism for the U.K. Government's Joint Intelligence Committee.
Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.
Hamas, like Hizballah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.
The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media and international human rights groups that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.
The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.
Despite all of this, of course, innocent civilian lives were lost. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American, and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.
More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas's way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice its own civilians.
Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.
And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
[1] "Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," U.N. Human Rights Council, New York, Sept. 15, 2009
[2] "UK Commander Challenges Goldstone Report," UN Watch, Geneva, accessed Oct. 29, 2009.
Call to Demote Arab MK as Knesset Speaker
Hillel Fendel
A7 News
MK Michael Ben-Ari demands that Arab MK Ahmed Tibi be suspended from his position as Deputy Knesset Speaker after he called pre-State Jewish heroes “terrorists.”
Ben-Ari, of the Nationa Union party, has sent an urgent request to MK Yariv Levin ( Likud), chairman of the Knesset House Committee, to hold a session on the matter and vote on Tibi’s suspension.
The incident occurred during the special Knesset session on Tuesday honoring the memories of the 13 Olei HaGardom – lit., those who ascended the Gallows – who were executed by the pre-State British Mandatory regime during the struggle for Israel's independence. The 13 were killed between 1938 and 1947, though two of them, Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani, blew themselves up just moments before they were to be hanged. Present at the ceremony were families of the heroes and many other guest, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch.
In the middle of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech, Tibi yelled out, “Why are they being honored? These are heroes – or terrorists?"
Tibi: I Achieved My Goal
Interviewed Wednesday morning on Army Radio, Tibi said he arrived at the special Knesset session for only one purpose - to make the above point. When asked by interviewer Razi Barkai why he has not protested the Palestinian Authority's plans to name a central Ramallah square after a terrorist, Tibi became slightly flustered and said, "I didn't know I was coming here to discuss the Palestinian Authority," and did not answer the question.
Ben-Ari noted that Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin reminded Tibi that the accepted rule is that heckling and interruptions are not acceptable during ceremonious sessions, yet Tibi continued screaming just the same, “calling our national heroes ‘terrorists,’ until Rivlin was forced to expel him from the session."
“Given the above,” Ben-Ari wrote, “one who violates the Knesset rules while insulting our national heroes has lost his legitimacy to serve as Deputy Speaker – a position in which he demands of others to abide by the rules that he himself violates! … In addition, the Speaker serves as substitute for the President of Israel, and the Deputy Speaker serves as substitute for the Speaker. Is it conceivable that in some type of hypothetical circumstances, one who so disgraces our national heroes should serve as President and/or Speaker?!”
Biden Condemns Construction Project in Israel's Capital
Hana Levi Julian
A7 News
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden flatly condemned a years-old city construction project in Israel's capital late Tuesday, saying it is “undermining the trust” needed to jump-start final status talks with the Palestinian Authority.
“I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem,” Biden said in a prepared statement. “The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I've had here in Israel.”
The term “proximity talks” is the new phrase that refers to final status negotiations between Israel and the PA, so called because the Obama administration will now be serving as an intermediary. PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his aides have refused to meet for direct talks with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other top government officials and have gone back to the pre Oslo Agreements way of "speaking" to Israel.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also slammed the government's approval of the project, issuing a statement Wednesday that said “the settlement activity is contrary to Israel's obligations under the Roadmap, and undermines any movement towards a viable peace process.”
The Speaker of the Knesset, MK Ruby Rivlin, reacted by supporting Israel's right to build in Jerusalem, as did other right wing MK's.
According to the Interior Ministry, which also issued a statement Tuesday night, the authorization for the project, a plan by the Jerusalem District Planning Committee to build 1,600 housing units in eastern Jerusalem, was routine. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said the announcement had been an ordinary "procedural matter," and not a deliberate attempt to insult Biden or anyone else. He added that although Jerusalem is not part of the building freeze announced by Netanyahu in November, so that the building will take place in the nation's capital, the timing was regrettable and he would have delayed the announcement had he been aware it was coming up. The opposition Kadima party condemned the decision.
The project, slated for the hareidi-religious neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, had been on the table for more than three years, did not require approval of the prime minister, and has been submitted for public comment – a 60-day process. It is still subject to final approval, and still must be reviewed by the committee. If after that process it passes muster, the project will extend the existing neighborhood by adding an access road from the west, upgrading the current entrance road, and adding apartments on the southeastern side. Many of the apartments are meant for public housing. Each apartment will be approximately 120 square meters (1,290 square feet). The total project will comprise some 580 dunams (143 acres).
The Interior Ministry said in its statement that Netanyahu had been unaware of the plan and its timing.
Biden's statement was issued at the close of his second day in the region on a visit that was promoted primarily as confidence-building mission meant to emphasize America's support for Israel. “There is no space between us,” Biden told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Jerusalem on Monday.
The prime minister responded by telling journalists following their two-hour meeting that the American vice president was “a real friend to me, and a real friend to Israel and to the Jewish people.” Biden is the latest in a parade of American officials to arrive in Israel in recent weeks on a mission to keep the Netanyahu administration in line with American policy on Iran and talks with the PA.
Last November, Netanyahu responded to pressure from the White House by authorizing a freeze on construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. However, he was unwilling to extend that freeze to the neighborhoods of Jerusalem that were restored to the capital following the 1967 Six Day War -- a point of contention with the PA which has refused to resume talks with Israel unless the freeze is declared permanent and includes Jerusalem.
Israel asks US VP Biden to condemn PA naming of square after terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi
This follows PMW's report that the PA chose to name the square after the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, tomorrow, on the anniversary of her terror attack, in which terrorists killed 37. Earlier today, it was reported that Abbas had rejected PM Netanyahu's demand, conveyed by the US, that the event honoring the terrorist be cancelled.
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1733 Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Square with picture of terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.
In her hands is an automatic rifle.
The ongoing confrontation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over the naming of a square after the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi continues as Prime Minister Netanyahu has requested of US Vice President Biden to try to stop the naming of the square after the terrorist, or at the very least to publically condemn it. [Channel 2 News, Israel] In January, Palestinian Media Watch publicized that the Municipality of Ramallah planned to name a public square in honor of the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who led the worst terror attack in Israel's history when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and murdered 37 civilians in 1978. Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately protested to the US and sharply criticized the PA. Now it has been reported that "the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] has personally raised the issue with Vice President Biden." [Channel 2 News, Israel]
"Israel is now demanding that the Vice President [Biden] at least condemn the [PA] incitement - a topic Israel has complained about before but now the PM has personally raised the issue with Vice President Biden. The Palestinians plan to name on Thursday a square in Ramallah for terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who participated in the hijacking of what is known as the "blood bus" in 1978 [in which 37 were killed]. The PA is calling her a Martyr and national hero. Israel protested to the US over this two months ago and the Americans turned to the Palestinians but the Palestinians are continuing with the inauguration [of the square to the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi]. Senior officials in Jerusalem tell me [Udi Segal] they expect the United States will raise this issue today with the Palestinian Authority, and Israel is hoping at the very least for a strong American condemnation of this incitement."
[Israel Channel 2 TV news]
Timeline on Dalal Mughrabi Square debate:
Dec. 31, 2009: PMW releases story of PA's intention to name square after Mughrabi
Click to view PMW's release of PA's naming of square after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.
Jan. 7, 2010: PM Netanyahu protests PA's honoring Mughrabi to the US
"Today, and a week ago, senior officials from the Prime Minister's office conveyed a protest to the US against Mahmoud Abbas... that the governor of Ramallah named a square in her [Mughrabi's] honor."
[Israeli News Channel 2]
Jan. 10: PM Netanyahu opens cabinet meeting with criticism of PA's honoring Mughrabi
"Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah in honor of a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the Coastal Road - encourages terror."
[Galei Zahal, (IDF radio), Jan. 10, 2010]
Jan. 11: PA Minister of Culture, Siham Barghouti, rejects Netanyahu's protest
"Honoring them this way [by naming places after Martyrs] is the least we can give them, and this is our right."
[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 11, 2010]
Jan. 17: PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas rejects Netanyahu's protest
"I do not deny [the naming]. Of course we want to name a square after her [Mughrabi]... [We] carried out military activities; can I then later renounce all that we have done? No, I don't renounce it."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 17, 2010]
Feb. 3: Ashraf Ajrami, former PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs, defends naming
"[PA] talk about Shahids (Martyrs) is considered, from their [Israel's] point of view, extremism and support for terror... Likewise, naming a square after Dalal Mughrabi is [according to Israel] reason for criticism and attack."
[Al-Ayyam, Feb. 3, 2010]
Feb. 25: Mahmoud Al-Aloul, General Commissioner for Recruitment and Organization, emphasizes importance of naming
"Mahmoud Al-Aloul, member of the Fatah Central Committee and General Commissioner for Recruitment and Organization, emphasized that it is important to continue commemorating the memory of the Shahids (Martyrs) and the Palestinian acts of heroism, and most importantly the anniversary of the Martyrdom of Dalal Mughrabi, heroine of the Coastal Road operation [terror attack], which falls on March 11th each year."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 25, 2010]
March 7: PA daily announces Thursday's inauguration of square
"The El-Bireh Municipality has completed construction work at the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi Square ... and has commenced preparations for its inauguration this Thursday, the anniversary of Mughrabi's Martyrdom... City Council member Aida Abu-Ubeid said that the square is considered a symbol of the sacrifice of the Palestinian woman. She also noted that flowers and trees will be planted there, and that a picture of the Shahida Dalal Mughrabi will be placed at the center of the square."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 7, 2010]
March 9: Israeli Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein asks PM Netanyahu to involve US in canceling the inauguration, as reported in "Haaretz":
"The square is to be dedicated tomorrow with senior PA officials in attendence, and Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein has asked Netanyahu to approach the American administration about stopping the event."
[Haaretz website, March 10, 2010
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155420.html]
Today, March 10: Abbas rejects PM Netanyahu's demand to cancel the event:
Initial radio reports indicate that Abbas has rejected PM Netanyahu's demand to cancel the event, conveyed via the US special envoy George Mitchell. Later reports now claim that Netanyahu's office is "waiting to see" if Abbas will cancel:
"Sources in the Prime Minister's Office said that Israel is waiting to see whether Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] will cancel the event. Senior political personnel have said that if the Palestinians want peace, they must educate towards peace."
[IBA website, March 10, 2010
http://www.iba.org.il/bet/?entity=625801&type=1]
Today, March 10: Israel hopes the US will condemn PA naming of square after terrorist
"Israel is now demanding that the Vice President [Biden] at least condemn the [PA] incitement - a topic Israel has complained about before but now the PM has personally raised the issue with Vice President Biden. The Palestinians plan to name on Thursday a square in Ramallah for terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who participated in the hijacking of what is known as the "blood bus" in 1978 [in which 37 were killed]. The PA is calling her a Martyr and national hero. Israel protested to the US over this two months ago and the Americans turned to the Palestinians but the Palestinians are continuing with the inauguration [of the square to the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi]. Senior officials in Jerusalem tell me [Udi Segal] they expect the United States will raise this issue today with the Palestinian Authority, and Israel is hoping at the very least for a strong American condemnation of this incitement."
[Israel Channel 2 TV news]
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1733 Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Square with picture of terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.
In her hands is an automatic rifle.
The ongoing confrontation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over the naming of a square after the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi continues as Prime Minister Netanyahu has requested of US Vice President Biden to try to stop the naming of the square after the terrorist, or at the very least to publically condemn it. [Channel 2 News, Israel] In January, Palestinian Media Watch publicized that the Municipality of Ramallah planned to name a public square in honor of the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, who led the worst terror attack in Israel's history when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and murdered 37 civilians in 1978. Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately protested to the US and sharply criticized the PA. Now it has been reported that "the Prime Minister [Netanyahu] has personally raised the issue with Vice President Biden." [Channel 2 News, Israel]
"Israel is now demanding that the Vice President [Biden] at least condemn the [PA] incitement - a topic Israel has complained about before but now the PM has personally raised the issue with Vice President Biden. The Palestinians plan to name on Thursday a square in Ramallah for terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who participated in the hijacking of what is known as the "blood bus" in 1978 [in which 37 were killed]. The PA is calling her a Martyr and national hero. Israel protested to the US over this two months ago and the Americans turned to the Palestinians but the Palestinians are continuing with the inauguration [of the square to the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi]. Senior officials in Jerusalem tell me [Udi Segal] they expect the United States will raise this issue today with the Palestinian Authority, and Israel is hoping at the very least for a strong American condemnation of this incitement."
[Israel Channel 2 TV news]
Timeline on Dalal Mughrabi Square debate:
Dec. 31, 2009: PMW releases story of PA's intention to name square after Mughrabi
Click to view PMW's release of PA's naming of square after terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.
Jan. 7, 2010: PM Netanyahu protests PA's honoring Mughrabi to the US
"Today, and a week ago, senior officials from the Prime Minister's office conveyed a protest to the US against Mahmoud Abbas... that the governor of Ramallah named a square in her [Mughrabi's] honor."
[Israeli News Channel 2]
Jan. 10: PM Netanyahu opens cabinet meeting with criticism of PA's honoring Mughrabi
"Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah in honor of a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the Coastal Road - encourages terror."
[Galei Zahal, (IDF radio), Jan. 10, 2010]
Jan. 11: PA Minister of Culture, Siham Barghouti, rejects Netanyahu's protest
"Honoring them this way [by naming places after Martyrs] is the least we can give them, and this is our right."
[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 11, 2010]
Jan. 17: PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas rejects Netanyahu's protest
"I do not deny [the naming]. Of course we want to name a square after her [Mughrabi]... [We] carried out military activities; can I then later renounce all that we have done? No, I don't renounce it."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 17, 2010]
Feb. 3: Ashraf Ajrami, former PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs, defends naming
"[PA] talk about Shahids (Martyrs) is considered, from their [Israel's] point of view, extremism and support for terror... Likewise, naming a square after Dalal Mughrabi is [according to Israel] reason for criticism and attack."
[Al-Ayyam, Feb. 3, 2010]
Feb. 25: Mahmoud Al-Aloul, General Commissioner for Recruitment and Organization, emphasizes importance of naming
"Mahmoud Al-Aloul, member of the Fatah Central Committee and General Commissioner for Recruitment and Organization, emphasized that it is important to continue commemorating the memory of the Shahids (Martyrs) and the Palestinian acts of heroism, and most importantly the anniversary of the Martyrdom of Dalal Mughrabi, heroine of the Coastal Road operation [terror attack], which falls on March 11th each year."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 25, 2010]
March 7: PA daily announces Thursday's inauguration of square
"The El-Bireh Municipality has completed construction work at the Shahida (Martyr) Dalal Mughrabi Square ... and has commenced preparations for its inauguration this Thursday, the anniversary of Mughrabi's Martyrdom... City Council member Aida Abu-Ubeid said that the square is considered a symbol of the sacrifice of the Palestinian woman. She also noted that flowers and trees will be planted there, and that a picture of the Shahida Dalal Mughrabi will be placed at the center of the square."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 7, 2010]
March 9: Israeli Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein asks PM Netanyahu to involve US in canceling the inauguration, as reported in "Haaretz":
"The square is to be dedicated tomorrow with senior PA officials in attendence, and Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein has asked Netanyahu to approach the American administration about stopping the event."
[Haaretz website, March 10, 2010
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1155420.html]
Today, March 10: Abbas rejects PM Netanyahu's demand to cancel the event:
Initial radio reports indicate that Abbas has rejected PM Netanyahu's demand to cancel the event, conveyed via the US special envoy George Mitchell. Later reports now claim that Netanyahu's office is "waiting to see" if Abbas will cancel:
"Sources in the Prime Minister's Office said that Israel is waiting to see whether Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] will cancel the event. Senior political personnel have said that if the Palestinians want peace, they must educate towards peace."
[IBA website, March 10, 2010
http://www.iba.org.il/bet/?entity=625801&type=1]
Today, March 10: Israel hopes the US will condemn PA naming of square after terrorist
"Israel is now demanding that the Vice President [Biden] at least condemn the [PA] incitement - a topic Israel has complained about before but now the PM has personally raised the issue with Vice President Biden. The Palestinians plan to name on Thursday a square in Ramallah for terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, the terrorist who participated in the hijacking of what is known as the "blood bus" in 1978 [in which 37 were killed]. The PA is calling her a Martyr and national hero. Israel protested to the US over this two months ago and the Americans turned to the Palestinians but the Palestinians are continuing with the inauguration [of the square to the terrorist Dalal Mughrabi]. Senior officials in Jerusalem tell me [Udi Segal] they expect the United States will raise this issue today with the Palestinian Authority, and Israel is hoping at the very least for a strong American condemnation of this incitement."
[Israel Channel 2 TV news]
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Biden’s Two Roadmaps: PA and Iran
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
A7 News
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden kicked off his first official Middle East tour promoting a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders by assuring President Shimon Peres, "There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel in terms of Israel's security, our mutual security -- none at all.” However, President Peres expressed concern over the lack of specific American action. "We have trust in President [Barack] Obama,” he said but asked that he "surround Iran with an envelope" to help stop the Iranian nuclear threat. "Nobody knows exactly what they are doing," Peres said.
Biden insisted, "Since our administration came to power, I would point out that Iran is more isolated -- internally, externally -- has fewer friends in the world.”
While the vice president played up the Iran angle for Israel, the main purpose of his trip is to advance the PA plan to become a country. "I think we are at a moment of real opportunity," Biden said at a meeting with President Peres on the day before his scheduled meeting with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
Both Israel and the PA have agreed to indirect talks, similar to those mediated by the United States 16 years ago.
However, the PA leadership was divided even on the agreement for indirect talks, and there is almost universal pessimism over the prospects for President Obama’s new diplomatic initiative. “The mutual goal in the latest round of talks is to avoid being blamed for their failure,” TIME magazine’s Tony Karon wrote.
The Arab world has given U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell only four months to meet its demands for a new PA state that includes all of eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. PA officials said Monday they would agree to land swaps on condition that the size of the PA does not shrink.
Karon explained, “Setting conditions and deadlines is a way for PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to offset the domestic political damage he suffers from participating in endless rounds of fruitless negotiations.
“Last Friday's confrontations between Israeli police and stone-throwing Palestinian youths in Jerusalem may be a portent that the latest round of peace talks could, in fact, be starting under the cloud of a looming Intifada.”
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
http://www.kcjc.com/201003059119/news/exhibit-explains-nazis-use-of-deadly-medicine.html
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
Written by Rick Hellman, Editor
The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.
As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment. That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.
Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.
“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.
MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.
A blood-based state
“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.
“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”
That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”
“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”
What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.
For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.
The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”
“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”
Viewing the exhibit
The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.
The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.
The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
For more information, call (816) 268-8000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.
“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Wednesday speaker series
There is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or kansascity.educate@nara.gov This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” -- Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History
• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute
• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists
• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”
• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics
• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
PDF Print E-mail
News
Written by Rick Hellman, Editor
Friday, 05 March 2010 12:00
alt
Nazi officials at the ‘The Miracle of Life’ exhibition, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 1935. The new Nazi museum leadership asserted that societies resembled organisms that followed the lead of their brains. The most logical social structure was one that saw society as a collective unit, literally a body guided by a strong leader.
The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.
As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment.
That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.
Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.
“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.
MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.
A blood-based state
alt
Photo provided by National Archives and Records Administration, College Park: Group portrait of T-4 Euthanasia program personnel at a social gathering. One of them plays the accordion.
“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.
“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”
That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”
“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”
What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.
For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.
The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”
“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”
Viewing the exhibit
alt
Photo provided by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Head shots showing various racial types. Most western anthropologists classified people into ‘races’ based on physical traits such as head size and eye, hair and skin color. This classification was developed by Eugen Fischer and published in the 1921 and 1923 editions of Foundations of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene.
The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.
The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.
The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
For more information, call (816) 268-8000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.
“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Wednesday speaker series
altThere is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or kansascity.educate@nara.gov This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” -- Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History
• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute
• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists
• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”
• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics
• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 231
Trackback(0)
trackbackTrackBack URI for this entry
Comments (1)Add Comment
...
written by Peter Aleff, March 05, 2010
An important but usually forgotten aspect of the Nazi eugenics programs is that their intellectual foundation came from the eugenics movement here in the USA, as documented in detail by Edwin Black in his book "War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to create a Master Race", Thunder Mouth Press, New York, 2003, and in other books such as, for instance, Martin S. Pernick: "The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of 'Defective' Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915", Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
Moreover, the eugenics movement is not yet safely relegated to the dustbin of history but continues to linger on as the result of crypto-eugenic medical studies in which eugenics-minded medical doctors rigged clinical trials to achieve eugenic goals right here in the USA -- even several years after the defeat of the Nazis.
For instance, a small group of doctors who were trained during the heyday of eugenics duped their profession and smuggled their crypto-eugenic study results into the pediatric doctrine where they still dominate the daily routine in this country's intensive care nurseries. They started the withholding of life-saving oxygen from premature babies because they suspected their "defective germ plasm" to be the reason for a then new epidemic of baby-blinding and wanted to so eliminate these "defective persons of which the world has enough already", as documented at http://retinopathyofprematurit...enics.htm.
The evil after-effects of the pseudoscientific eugenics movement will continue to harm real people if such long hidden remnants of its thinking are not openly acknowledged and at long last ended.
Respectfully submitted,
Peter Aleff
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
PDF Print E-mail
News
Written by Rick Hellman, Editor
Friday, 05 March 2010 12:00
alt
Nazi officials at the ‘The Miracle of Life’ exhibition, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 1935. The new Nazi museum leadership asserted that societies resembled organisms that followed the lead of their brains. The most logical social structure was one that saw society as a collective unit, literally a body guided by a strong leader.
The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.
As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment.
That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.
Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.
“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.
MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.
A blood-based state
alt
Photo provided by National Archives and Records Administration, College Park: Group portrait of T-4 Euthanasia program personnel at a social gathering. One of them plays the accordion.
“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.
“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”
That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”
“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”
What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.
For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.
The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”
“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”
Viewing the exhibit
alt
Photo provided by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Head shots showing various racial types. Most western anthropologists classified people into ‘races’ based on physical traits such as head size and eye, hair and skin color. This classification was developed by Eugen Fischer and published in the 1921 and 1923 editions of Foundations of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene.
The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.
The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.
The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
For more information, call (816) 268-8000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.
“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Wednesday speaker series
altThere is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or kansascity.educate@nara.gov This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” -- Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History
• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute
• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists
• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”
• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics
• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
Written by Rick Hellman, Editor
The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.
As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment. That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.
Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.
“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.
MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.
A blood-based state
“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.
“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”
That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”
“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”
What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.
For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.
The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”
“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”
Viewing the exhibit
The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.
The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.
The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
For more information, call (816) 268-8000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.
“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Wednesday speaker series
There is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or kansascity.educate@nara.gov This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” -- Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History
• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute
• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists
• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”
• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics
• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
PDF Print E-mail
News
Written by Rick Hellman, Editor
Friday, 05 March 2010 12:00
alt
Nazi officials at the ‘The Miracle of Life’ exhibition, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 1935. The new Nazi museum leadership asserted that societies resembled organisms that followed the lead of their brains. The most logical social structure was one that saw society as a collective unit, literally a body guided by a strong leader.
The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.
As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment.
That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.
Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.
“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.
MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.
A blood-based state
alt
Photo provided by National Archives and Records Administration, College Park: Group portrait of T-4 Euthanasia program personnel at a social gathering. One of them plays the accordion.
“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.
“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”
That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”
“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”
What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.
For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.
The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”
“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”
Viewing the exhibit
alt
Photo provided by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Head shots showing various racial types. Most western anthropologists classified people into ‘races’ based on physical traits such as head size and eye, hair and skin color. This classification was developed by Eugen Fischer and published in the 1921 and 1923 editions of Foundations of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene.
The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.
The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.
The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
For more information, call (816) 268-8000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.
“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Wednesday speaker series
altThere is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or kansascity.educate@nara.gov This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” -- Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History
• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute
• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists
• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”
• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics
• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 231
Trackback(0)
trackbackTrackBack URI for this entry
Comments (1)Add Comment
...
written by Peter Aleff, March 05, 2010
An important but usually forgotten aspect of the Nazi eugenics programs is that their intellectual foundation came from the eugenics movement here in the USA, as documented in detail by Edwin Black in his book "War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to create a Master Race", Thunder Mouth Press, New York, 2003, and in other books such as, for instance, Martin S. Pernick: "The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of 'Defective' Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915", Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
Moreover, the eugenics movement is not yet safely relegated to the dustbin of history but continues to linger on as the result of crypto-eugenic medical studies in which eugenics-minded medical doctors rigged clinical trials to achieve eugenic goals right here in the USA -- even several years after the defeat of the Nazis.
For instance, a small group of doctors who were trained during the heyday of eugenics duped their profession and smuggled their crypto-eugenic study results into the pediatric doctrine where they still dominate the daily routine in this country's intensive care nurseries. They started the withholding of life-saving oxygen from premature babies because they suspected their "defective germ plasm" to be the reason for a then new epidemic of baby-blinding and wanted to so eliminate these "defective persons of which the world has enough already", as documented at http://retinopathyofprematurit...enics.htm.
The evil after-effects of the pseudoscientific eugenics movement will continue to harm real people if such long hidden remnants of its thinking are not openly acknowledged and at long last ended.
Respectfully submitted,
Peter Aleff
Exhibit explains Nazis’ use of ‘Deadly Medicine’
PDF Print E-mail
News
Written by Rick Hellman, Editor
Friday, 05 March 2010 12:00
alt
Nazi officials at the ‘The Miracle of Life’ exhibition, German Hygiene Museum, Dresden, 1935. The new Nazi museum leadership asserted that societies resembled organisms that followed the lead of their brains. The most logical social structure was one that saw society as a collective unit, literally a body guided by a strong leader.
The shower stall that’s actually a gas chamber is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the Holocaust. And while most people undoubtedly associate it with Auschwitz, the first time this tool of hygiene was perverted into a mass-murder weapon was as part of the Nazi campaign to clear Germans with mental and physical defects out of state institutions by any means necessary.
As many as 200,000 men, women and children deemed undesirable were killed in this program between 1939 and 1945, and many of the doctors who carried it out moved smoothly into concentration-camp employment.
That is just one revelation in “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” a traveling exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that opens March 16 for a three-month run at the new home of the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.
A related speaker series will further expound on the topics of eugenics, medicine in the Third Reich and more. (See below for details)
The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and the Center for Practical Bioethics have partnered with the National Archives to present the exhibit.
Their leaders believe “Deadly Medicine” has much to say to viewers today, particularly as the national political discourse is being dominated by issues of medical care, its cost and the morality of its distribution.
“It speaks to issues of individual responsibility, professional responsibility and medical ethics,” said Jean Zeldin, executive director of MCHE.
Zeldin first saw the exhibition when it premiered at the USHMM in Washington five years ago. “I felt it was a significant exhibit, and we should bring it here,” she said.
MCHE had worked with the National Archives (it was formerly part of the Bannister Federal Complex, Bannister Road and Troost Avenue) for over a decade, Zeldin said. It serves as the repository for the master tapes MCHE recorded with local Holocaust survivors in 1994, Zeldin said.
So when the National Archives got a brand new space in a rehabilitated building near Union Station, officials there jumped at the chance to house “Deadly Medicine” in its new gallery. It’s just the second exhibition in the new space.
A blood-based state
alt
Photo provided by National Archives and Records Administration, College Park: Group portrait of T-4 Euthanasia program personnel at a social gathering. One of them plays the accordion.
“Deadly Medicine” brings together photographs, video testimonies and artifacts from international collections. It shows how the Nazis took a commonly held, if now rejected, early-20th century belief in eugenics — i.e., the perfection of the human race through science — and warped it even further with their twisted theories about the purity of German blood.
“In February 1920, three years before the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler defines citizenship in terms of biology and birth,” said Fran Sternberg, MCHE’s director of university programs and adult education. “So the whole state is a blood-based state. And then you define who is hostile to the health of the blood and who is beneficial.”
That is how, Sternberg said, a doctor who has taken the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” can allow himself to operate a gas chamber/shower: In his mind, he’s not killing a person; he’s eradicating a germ and protecting the health of the body politic. The Nazi term for it was “racial hygiene.”
“Nazis are not out-of-this-world demons,” Sternberg said, “These are highly educated scientists from renowned research institutes and universities. … For whatever reason — for personal advancement or because they were real Nazis — they were comfortable spinning their ethics to comply with the regime.
“Nobody forced them to do anything. People got involved in committees … and saw it as a valuable and valid exercise.”
What began with the forced sterilization of undesirables ended with the industrial-scale murder of millions we now call the Holocaust.
For interested adults, some of the visiting speakers will take on the sub-topic of Nazi doctors in greater detail. Nearly 1,000 high school students are also scheduled to tour the exhibit during the day.
The exhibit also shows how the corruption of leading institutions by the Nazis made it easier for average Germans to go along with Hitler.
“When every institution is telling you this is OK — the army, education, the arts, media, judiciary — it’s got to be OK,” said Sternberg. “Your teacher is telling you this, not some weird Nazi guy.”
“It helps explain how it could have happened,” Zeldin said. “You have to go back to the concept of the racial state, as opposed to looking at the opening of Auschwitz as the beginning of the Holocaust.”
Viewing the exhibit
alt
Photo provided by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Head shots showing various racial types. Most western anthropologists classified people into ‘races’ based on physical traits such as head size and eye, hair and skin color. This classification was developed by Eugen Fischer and published in the 1921 and 1923 editions of Foundations of Human Genetics and Racial Hygiene.
The public is invited to attend a ceremonial ribbon-cutting for “Deadly Medicine” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 16, at the National Archives, 400 W. Pershing Road. It will include a tour led by the curator of the exhibit, Susan Bachrach of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Deadly Medicine” is a free exhibition and will be open March 16 through June 10. Viewer discretion advised, as it contains material that may be disturbing to some viewers.
The National Archives at Kansas City is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday for exhibit viewing; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. those same days for research. Free parking is available for visitors, with additional free parking available in the Union Station Parking Garage on the west side of Union Station.
The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
For more information, call (816) 268-8000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or visit www.archives.gov/central-plains.
“Deadly Medicine” is organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is sponsored in part by the Samberg Family Foundation, the Dorot Foundation, the Viterbi Family Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the Rosenbluth Family — Al, Sylvia, Bill, and Jerry. Additional support was provided by the Takiff Family Foundation and the David Berg Foundation. The Kansas City presentation of “Deadly Medicine” is made possible with the support of Saint Luke’s Health System, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the Missouri Humanities Council, the Kansas Humanities Council, Sprint Foundation and Oppenstein Brothers Foundation. Bus subsidies have been provided by the Earl J. and Leona K. Tranin Special Fund and the Flo Harris Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
Wednesday speaker series
altThere is no charge for the following programs, but seating is limited and reservations are required two days prior to the event. Visitors may see the exhibit and have light refreshments from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the National Archives gallery, followed by the program at 7 p.m. in the venues indicated. For reservations, contact the National Archives at (816) 268-8010 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (816) 268-8010 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or kansascity.educate@nara.gov This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
• March 24 at the Arthur Stillwell Room at Union Station – “German Physicians and Nazi Crimes: the Medical Profession and its Role in Nazi Germany” -- Patricia Heberer, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• April 7 at National Archives at Kansas City -- “Nazi Culture: Daily Life in Germany, 1933-1939” -- Panel presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Carla Klausner of UMKC’s Department of History
• April 14 at National Archives – Film screening of “Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich” -- introduction and discussion led by Cheryl Lester, Department of American Studies, University of Kansas, and Milton Katz, Department of Liberal Arts, Kansas City Art Institute
• April 21 at National Archives – “Confronting Complicity: Professionals in the Third Reich” -- Panel presented by the MCHE’s Holocaust Education Academic Roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey W. Myers, Department of History, Avila University
Panelists
• April 28 at National Archives – “Racial Science in the United States Today” --
Leonard Zeskind, president, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and author of “Blood and Politics”
• May 12 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology” -- William F. Meinecke Jr., Education Department, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• May 26 at National Archives – “The Perfect Baby: Eugenics, Race and Bioethics” -- Glenn McGee, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics, Center for Practical Bioethics
• June 2 at Arthur Stillwell Room, Union Station – “The Doctors’ Trial” -- Professor Harry Reicher, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Facing Iran: Lessons Learned Since Iraq's 1991 Missile Attack on Israel
Published March 2010
Vol. 9, No. 21
Moshe Arens
* The Iranians learned a great deal from the destruction of Iraq's Osirak reactor by the Israel Air Force in 1981. The Osirak reactor was the key element in the Iraqi nuclear program: a single target which, when it was destroyed, set that program back very substantially. The Iranians saw this and they dispersed their nuclear program. Much of it is deep underground. There is no single target which, if destroyed, would substantially set back the Iranian nuclear program * When I came to Washington as Israel's ambassador in 1982, the atmosphere was one of hostility and there was talk of imposing sanctions against Israel as a reaction to its unilateral action against the Osirak reactor. Yet after a few years the view in Washington changed completely. It is difficult to envision the Americans undertaking Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf in 1991 if the Iraqi nuclear program had continued beyond 1981 and had not been so seriously set back by the Israeli action.
* Some say that while the missiles Israel faces are relatively cheap weapons, we are launching a very expensive missile interceptor system against it, which does not seem very wise at first sight. However, the damage that might be caused by the incoming missile may far exceed the cost of the anti-missile system.
* Israel's missile interceptor system poses a dilemma to anybody who decides to launch missiles against Israel, especially a missile that has a nuclear warhead. The dilemma is that the missile may very well be intercepted and thus expose the launching of a nuclear missile, even if it didn't reach its target, which could bring about the response that could be expected for committing this deed.
* At the start of the Gulf War, the Americans said they expected that within 48 hours the U.S. Air Force would eliminate the missile launch capability of the Iraqis. If they did not succeed, Israel would be free to take whatever action it considered appropriate. Although there was intensive aerial activity directed at hitting the Scud launchers, not a single Scud launcher was hit or immobilized during the Gulf War. Furthermore, the U.S.-made Patriot missiles in Israel did not succeed in intercepting a single Scud missile.
Today, in 2010, in the United States and the Western world there is a very real and acute awareness of the danger that Iranian nuclear activity - which is clearly designed to achieve a nuclear military capability - poses to the world, not just to Israel.
Some people like to think that Israel has nothing to worry about because of the sizable Muslim population in the area and that the Iranians would not dare to cause massive destruction in an area where many Muslims might get injured or killed. However, as Prof. Bernard Lewis has said on a number of occasions, this kind of immunity is imaginary because radical Muslims are convinced that God knows how to tell the difference between Jews and Muslims.
What Iran Learned from the Israeli Attack on the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor
The Iranians learned a great deal from the destruction of Iraq's Osirak reactor by the Israel Air Force in 1981, which set back Saddam Hussein's nuclear project very significantly. At the time of the Gulf War nine years later, Israel estimated that the Iraqis really did not have any nuclear capability, that the destruction of the Osirak reactor set them back so far that they did not have the capability to endanger Israel with nuclear weapons. The Osirak reactor was the key element in the Iraqi nuclear program: a single target which, when it was destroyed, set that program back very substantially.
The Iranians saw this and they dispersed their nuclear program. There is no single element or target which, if destroyed, would substantially set back the Iranian nuclear program. Much of it is deep underground. So the Iranians have done their best to obtain immunity from the possibility of an aerial attack of the kind that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor, making any military move, regardless of who might consider taking it, substantially more difficult.
Changing U.S. Attitudes toward the Osirak Attack
I came to Washington as Israel's ambassador in 1982, a little over a year after the destruction of the Osirak reactor. The atmosphere in Washington at the time was one of hostility, anger, even antagonism - and this was the Reagan administration, an administration correctly considered as very friendly towards Israel. The administration thought Israel's action was ill-conceived, a mistake that could only cause problems rather than solve them. When I arrived in Washington there was talk of actually imposing sanctions against Israel as a reaction to this unilateral action by Israel against the Osirak reactor.
After a few years the view in Washington on that particular action had changed completely. It is difficult to envision the Americans undertaking Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf in 1991 if the Iraqi nuclear reactor had still existed, if the Iraqi nuclear program had continued beyond 1981, and if that program had not been so seriously set back by the Israeli action.
General David Ivri, who was the commander of the Israel Air Force at the time of the Osirak operation, had a photograph of the destroyed reactor in his office, given to him by Dick Cheney, the American secretary of defense during the Gulf War, with his compliments. This was an indication of the appreciation that today is felt by most, if not all, about the very important, positive aspects of that particular operation. People's views changed with time, and what started out with feelings of antagonism and even hostility changed to strong appreciation for what was done for the benefit of everybody, certainly for the benefit of the Western world and, of course, Israel.
Israel's Experience Under Long-Range Missile Attack
During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel experienced a major missile attack from a distant Muslim country, facing Soviet-made Scud missiles from Iraq. Since we did not believe that the Iraqis had a nuclear capability in 1991, we were not concerned about being hit by nuclear weapons. However, we knew they had conventional explosive warheads, and our estimate was that they also had chemical warheads.
The first question that arose was whether the Iraqis could be deterred from launching these missiles against Israel. I met with Egyptian President Mubarak shortly before the Gulf War, who was of the opinion that Iraq would not dare fire these missiles against Israel. It turned out that he was wrong, and so were many people who thought that Israel could deter Saddam Hussein from firing his missiles against Israel.
Saddam Hussein fired thirty-nine missiles against Israel during the Gulf War. Fortunately, only six landed in populated areas, one of them not far from my house. There was considerable property damage but only one civilian was killed. Most of Israel's population went around with gas masks and took shelter in sealed rooms or underground shelters during those five weeks, as every day or so we found ourselves under fire from these missiles.
The Iraqis did not use chemical warheads during the Gulf War, and we can only assume - since they had chemical warheads at the time - that they were deterred from doing so by what they thought might be the Israeli response or, more probably, by what the American response might be. Iraq knew there was very close coordination and collaboration between the United States and Israel, and there might be an American response that they might not welcome.
As the countdown began for the Gulf War, for the American invasion of Kuwait and Iraq, Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz said quite openly that the Iraqis were going to fire their Scud missiles against Israel. He told Secretary of State Jim Baker in Geneva shortly before the U.S. military operation: "If we are attacked, we will fire missiles against Israel."
The precautions Israel took - the preparation of sealed rooms, the distribution of gas masks - were very unpleasant. During the war little Israeli children were walking around with little brown boxes at their sides that contained the gas mask kit they were prepared to put on their faces the minute the alarm was sounded. Whenever an alarm was sounded - which happened almost every day during the war - people ran for shelters, ran for sealed rooms, and put on their gas masks.
Those Scud missiles were a somewhat upgraded version of the German V2 rockets from World War II. The Germans fired these rockets against Britain toward the end of the war and caused very considerable damage. There was no way of intercepting them. We did not know how to shoot down a ballistic missile that comes at us at supersonic speeds.
The Drive to Develop Missile Interceptors
During the Gulf War, Israel was already in the process of developing a missile designed to intercept Scud rockets. This had become possible because of technological advances, primarily in computer and radar technology. This development had started some years before the Gulf War, partially funded by the United States as part of what Reagan called the Star Wars Initiative, when the U.S. launched a very large program to develop anti-missile missiles. Today Israel has the Arrow system that can intercept missiles that come from Iran.
Some say that while the missile we intend to intercept is a relatively cheap weapon, we are launching a very expensive weapon against it, which does not seem very wise at first sight. However, the damage that might be caused by the missile may far exceed the cost of the anti-missile system.
Israel's missile interceptor system poses a dilemma to anybody who decides to launch missiles against Israel, especially a missile that has a nuclear warhead. The dilemma is posed by the knowledge that the missile may very well be intercepted and thus expose the launching of a nuclear missile, even if it didn't reach its target, which could bring about the response that could be expected for committing this deed. When this is taken into account, a decision might very well be made that this chance should not be taken and such a missile should not be launched.
There are many ways of trying to fool a missile interceptor, such as the use of decoys and the use of maneuvering reentry vehicles that will try to escape the interceptor. But for every measure there is a countermeasure, and the people who are developing the Arrow system are taking all that into consideration.
Israel is also very close to fielding the Iron Dome missile interceptor system against short-range missiles with a range of tens of kilometers. The shorter the range of the missile, the more difficult it is to intercept because you simply have less time available to react.
American-Israeli Relations During the Gulf War
During the Gulf War there was a very "noisy" communications channel with the United States. The physical contact was good. I spoke with Secretary of Defense Cheney at least every day, sometimes two or three times a day.
The Americans were very concerned that Israel might take preemptive action even before they began their military operation. They were very eager that Israel not get involved in any way because they had built a coalition with Arab countries - Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia (they were operating out of Saudi Arabia) - and they were afraid that coalition might fall apart if Israel openly got involved in the operation.
The Americans asked that we not undertake any preemptive action, that we let them handle the situation. They said they expected that within 48 hours the U.S. Air Force would eliminate the missile launch capability of the Iraqis. If it turned out that they were not going to be able to do it within forty-eight hours, Israel would be free to take whatever action it considered appropriate.
It was under these assumptions that Desert Storm began, and Israel did not take any preemptive action. When the first Scuds fell, we waited for the United States to take care of the problem. As it turned out, the problem of hitting mobile launchers was far more difficult than the U.S. had envisioned. Although there was intensive aerial activity directed at hitting the Scud launchers, not a single Scud launcher was hit or immobilized during the five weeks of the Gulf War. Hitting moving targets that appear only for a very short time and then disappear is very difficult, even to this day.
Even at that point, the United States was very eager that Israel not intervene in any way. So, despite the previous U.S. assurance that Israel would be free to take action if the missile threat could not be eliminated within forty-eight hours, after seventy-two hours President Bush called Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Jim Baker called me, insisting that we not take any action, that we not in any way "spoil" the operation that was underway.
Then the Americans sent over the Patriots. The Patriot was probably the most advanced anti-aircraft missile around at the time, and was advertised as also having anti-missile capability. When the Gulf War started, the United States insisted that the Patriot, which was operating in Saudi Arabia, was effective in destroying Scud missiles. The U.S. urged us to also accept Patriot missiles and was prepared to send them to Israel with American crews because Israeli crews had not yet been trained.
As it turned out, the Patriot missiles in Israel did not succeed in intercepting a single Scud missile. Today there is a more advanced version of the Patriot that is said to have limited capability for intercepting ballistic missiles.
Israeli Plans to Attack Iraqi Missile Sites
During this five-week period I even traveled to Washington to tell President Bush that we could not reconcile ourselves with the continuing situation of these missiles falling on Israel with no reaction and that we had to take action.
But what kind of action? The initial feeling in Israel was that we should get the Israel Air Force to respond, but this didn't make much sense when the United States and its British allies were employing an armada of aircraft that were flying out of Saudi Arabia and off aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, plastering Iraq day and night. The U.S. was not interested in Israel participating in any way in the fighting during the Gulf War. So it didn't seem to make sense to use our air force under these circumstances.
In order to neutralize the launching of the Scuds, it became clear very quickly that the only way this could be done would be by ground troops. Ground troops would have to search for the places where the launchers were being hidden and take action on the ground. That is no simple operation. It is 1,000 kilometers from Israel to Baghdad and it would involve landing ground troops in western Iraq.
Nevertheless, we prepared that kind of an operation. Gen. Nehemia Tamari was scheduled to lead it. We told the Americans that we had no choice, that we had to take that kind of action. The Americans didn't like it, though they finally accepted it. But before we were able to launch this operation, the Americans declared a cease-fire and the war was over.
I was for an Israeli response. I gave instructions to prepare a military operation in western Iraq, a very difficult and dangerous one, mainly because I thought it would be wrong for Israel to be hit without responding for the first time in its history. I thought this would send the wrong message to Israel's enemies.
In the meantime, we have taken actions against terrorists in military operations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Gaza. So I don't think that the fact that we did not respond during the Gulf War in 1991 permanently damaged Israel's deterrent capability.
* * *
Prof. Moshe Arens was Israel's defense minister during the 1991 war with Iraq. He served as Israel's Minister of Defense in three different governments, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and was Israel's Ambassador to the United States. This Jerusalem Issue Brief is based on his presentation at the Institute for Contemporary Affairs on January 28, 2010. http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=1&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=3478&TTL=Facing_Iran:_Lessons_Learned_Since_Iraq%27s_1991_Missile_Attack_on_Israel