Guest Comment:How embarrasing it was for Biden that Jews would dare build houses in Jerusalem! How racist is it for the US to disallow Jews to live and expand their number in any part of Jerusalem! How biased is it for the US to cricitize Israel when it demolishes Arab housing that was built without permits.
The article is an intersting perspective form the UK to show how manufactured and contrived this entire "scandal" is. When Netanyahu promised to freeze building in Judea and Samaria, he specifically excluded Jerusalem and Clinton remarked how positive and unprecdented it was. So why are the Americans so shocked and upset? Aggie
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5840481/obama-picks-a-great-time-to-throw-israel-under-the-bus.thtml
Sunday, 14th March 2010
In the US, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League is shocked – shocked! – by the way the Obama administration has picked a fight with Israel over its plans to build more houses in east Jerusalem.
‘We are shocked and stunned at the administration’s tone and public dressing-down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem,’ ADL’s National Director Abe Foxman said in a statement... ‘US Vice President Joe Biden accepted the prime minister’s apology,’ Foxman said. “Therefore, to raise the issue again in this way is a gross overreaction to a point of policy difference among friends. ‘We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States,’ the statement continued. ‘One can only wonder how far the US is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table.’
All the way, Abe, all the way. And just when Iran is in the verge of getting the nuclear bomb with which it is threatening to destroy Israel and America, too. Great time to throw Israel under the bus, huh?
And maybe that’s the real point. Maybe this is even worse yet than the shocked Abe Foxman thinks. Because it’s not just that Israel apologised for a diplomatic blunder. The key point is that there was actually nothing to apologise for, since it was explicitly agreed between America and Israel that, as a concession to kick-start peace negotiations, Israel would stop building in the West Bank although it would continue to build in east Jerusalem. Indeed, Hillary Clinton herself, no less, praised Israel for this agreement.
America has thus effectively unilaterally repudiated that agreement. In other words, this whole uproar has been artificially manufactured by America to produce a crisis with Israel – while refusing, astonishingly, to condemn the Palestinians at all for their refusal to enter peace talks, their honouring of one of their worst terrorists by naming a square after her, their violent attacks on the Temple Mount in recent days, and so on. As Noah Pollak speculates at Commentary, the most troubling conclusion is that America has provoked this crisis in order to stop Israel from attacking Iran because America itself will not stop Iran from getting the bomb: I think it’s clear by now that Obama does not wish to make a confrontation with Iran part of his presidency. As I’ve written before, this means that Israeli security fears become a major problem for the administration: surely Obama realizes that one of his most important jobs is therefore preventing the Israelis from attacking.
How does one do that? Typically, the way the United States has alleviated Israeli security concerns is by affirming the closeness of the strategic relationship. But doing this on the Iran issue doesn’t work, for two reasons: 1) it would undermine Obama’s mission to the Arab world, which requires pushing the Israelis away; 2) and in the context of a nuclear Iran, it doesn’t really matter how close the U.S. and Israel are. The Israeli fear of the Iranian bomb is that one nuke would destroy the Jewish state, and that even in the absence of such a strike, Israel would be confronted with an emboldened Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis, more wars, constant (and credible) threats of annihilation, and over time would experience the psychological, demographic, and economic attrition of the country.
When we follow this logic chain to its conclusion, we find that Obama’s only option for restraining an Israeli attack is the one that we’re seeing unfold before our eyes: a U.S. effort to methodically weaken the relationship; provoke crises; consume the Netanyahu government with managing this deterioration; and most important, create an ambiance of unpredictability by making the Israelis fear that an attack on Iran would not just be met with American disapproval but also a veto and perhaps active resistance.
Well, folks, you read this all here a long time ago.
_____________________________
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Excellent letter to the editor
Editor
Jerusalem Post
While the timing of the housing plan announcement in Jerusalem might be considered unfortunate, suggesting that it 'undermines trust' is beyond comprehension given the full picture. When demands are made only of Israel - to freeze building needed for her citizens, to open roads to Arab traffic when terrorism has been the reason for restriction, when Israel is pressured repeatedly to take steps to prop up Abbas - there is no truth that there is a 'peace process'. That expression implies give and take on both sides and this is non-existent. What has the Obama administrations - as well as previous ones- required of Palestinian Arabs who have
used terrorism as a weapon against Jewish communities even before the re-creation of Israel in 1948, and since then have refused any Israeli offers to settle the conflict? While Israel's imaginary 'peace partners' refuse to recognize her historic legitimacy and instead glorify their 'martyrs' who murder innocent Israeli citizens where is their well deserved rebuke from those who would condemn Israel for simply providing living accommodations for her families? Indeed, the demand that Israel stop building is in itself outrageous.
Uttering words of assurance to Israel regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship is simply not enough. Both countries have common values that include democracy. Israel is the bulwark of that democracy in a region that is infested with frightening roots of terror for the world at large. Considering that the U.S. and nations of the west are engaged in an effort to help Iraq achieve democracy, it is incongruous that a terrorist apartheid state be created through a fictitious 'peace process' that would lead to the destruction of Israel. This reality must be conveyed to Mr. Biden who has, no doubt come to Israel with the best of intentions.
Sincerely,
Chana
Jerusalem
Jerusalem Post
While the timing of the housing plan announcement in Jerusalem might be considered unfortunate, suggesting that it 'undermines trust' is beyond comprehension given the full picture. When demands are made only of Israel - to freeze building needed for her citizens, to open roads to Arab traffic when terrorism has been the reason for restriction, when Israel is pressured repeatedly to take steps to prop up Abbas - there is no truth that there is a 'peace process'. That expression implies give and take on both sides and this is non-existent. What has the Obama administrations - as well as previous ones- required of Palestinian Arabs who have
used terrorism as a weapon against Jewish communities even before the re-creation of Israel in 1948, and since then have refused any Israeli offers to settle the conflict? While Israel's imaginary 'peace partners' refuse to recognize her historic legitimacy and instead glorify their 'martyrs' who murder innocent Israeli citizens where is their well deserved rebuke from those who would condemn Israel for simply providing living accommodations for her families? Indeed, the demand that Israel stop building is in itself outrageous.
Uttering words of assurance to Israel regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship is simply not enough. Both countries have common values that include democracy. Israel is the bulwark of that democracy in a region that is infested with frightening roots of terror for the world at large. Considering that the U.S. and nations of the west are engaged in an effort to help Iraq achieve democracy, it is incongruous that a terrorist apartheid state be created through a fictitious 'peace process' that would lead to the destruction of Israel. This reality must be conveyed to Mr. Biden who has, no doubt come to Israel with the best of intentions.
Sincerely,
Chana
Jerusalem
US/Israel Relations Worst Since James Baker Said "F" The Jews, They Wont Vote For US Anyway
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2010/03/us-israel-relations-at-lowest-point.html?utm_source=co2hog
The Lid
In his first fourteen months President Obama has driven US/Israel relations to his lowest point since George HW Bush's Secretary of State James Baker said of deteriorating relations, "'F' The Jews, They Wont Vote For US Anyway."
The President and the Secretary of State have botched up the relations with Israel from the very beginning. And it will get worse before it gets better. The fact is the only way it will get better is Obama leaving office. Yesterday after the public and private scolding by the vice president over the building of housing units in Jerusalem, Hillary Clinton, continued the hollering, as she scolded Bibi Netanyahu over the phone. Afterward her office practically bragged about the scolding to the media.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.
Clinton called Netanyahu “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” Crowley said. Clinton, he said, emphasized that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”
In her call, Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as the site for their future capital. "The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States' strong commitment to Israel's security," Crowley said. "She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate, not just through words but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process."
While the timing of the Israel's announcement of 1600 housing added to existing housing developments was not great, there was nothing wrong at all with the announcement itself. Israel has always considered all of Jerusalem as it capitol and has never agreed to stop building in her capitol. Even the ten month freeze that Netanyahu offered did not include Jerusalem. America's insistence that Israel cannot build onto existing neighborhoods in her capitol not only breaks previous agreements but is bigoted in nature. The same government that would not stand for one of her own cities keeping Jews from moving in, is insisting that Jews are not allowed to live in their holiest city.
The Obama administration's reaction was so over the top that even the ADL's Abe Foxman, who usally puts his proggressive politics in front of the mission of his organization, complained.
"We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem," ADL director Abraham Foxman said in a statement. "We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States. One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table."
"It is especially troubling that this harsh statement came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly and privately explained to Vice President Biden the bureaucratic nature in making the announcement of proposed new building in Jerusalem, and Biden accepted the prime minister's apology for it. Therefore, to raise the issue again in this way is a gross overreaction to a point of policy difference among friends.
"The Administration should have confidence and trust in Israel whose tireless pursuit for peace is repeatedly rebuffed by the Palestinians and whose interests remain in line with the United States."
Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams places the blame squarely at the feet of the President.
The current friction in U.S.-Israel relations has one source: the mishandling of those relations by the Obama administration. Poll data show that Israel is as popular as ever among Americans. Strategically we face the same enemies -- such as terrorism and the Iranian regime -- a fact that is not lost on Americans who know we have one single reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East.
The two problems that bedevil relations with Israel are Iran policy and Israeli settlements. On Iran, we say nuclear weapons would be "unacceptable" but want to rely solely on sanctions to stop them -- and administration officials go out of their way to say any use of force would be catastrophic. Not surprisingly Israelis wonder if we're serious -- and if, as is likely, sanctions prove too weak to succeed, so will many Americans.
On settlements, the Obama administration demanded a 100 percent construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, something never required before even by the Palestinians as a precondition for negotiations. This stance cornered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who could demand no less, and led the U.S. administration last week to "condemn" the announcement of plans for Israeli construction that is years away. The verb "condemn" is customarily reserved by U.S. officials for acts of murder and terrorism -- not acts of housing.
As this example shows, the Obama administration continues to drift away from traditional U.S. support for Israel. But time and elections will correct that problem; Israel has a higher approval rating these days than does President Obama.
Just before the 2008 election I wrote this in an article for American Thinker:
Whether he wins or loses, all signs point to the fact is Barack Obama will receive the majority of the Jewish vote in the presidential elections. But even a few percentage point shift in the Jewish vote can mean a McCain win in some of the key battleground states.
The astounding part of that is that Obama is receiving the vote DESPITE the fact that he has assembled a crew of advisers that have a negative opinion of Israel. Despite that a Barack Obama presidency may turn out to be the most anti-Israel administration since George HW Bush.....
....A Barack Obama Presidency would return US/Israel relations back to the days of James Baker's "They have my number they can call me." A US trying to impose a dangerous one-sided solution on the Jewish State.
I have never been so unhappy to be correct.
The Lid
In his first fourteen months President Obama has driven US/Israel relations to his lowest point since George HW Bush's Secretary of State James Baker said of deteriorating relations, "'F' The Jews, They Wont Vote For US Anyway."
The President and the Secretary of State have botched up the relations with Israel from the very beginning. And it will get worse before it gets better. The fact is the only way it will get better is Obama leaving office. Yesterday after the public and private scolding by the vice president over the building of housing units in Jerusalem, Hillary Clinton, continued the hollering, as she scolded Bibi Netanyahu over the phone. Afterward her office practically bragged about the scolding to the media.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.
Clinton called Netanyahu “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” Crowley said. Clinton, he said, emphasized that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”
In her call, Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as the site for their future capital. "The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States' strong commitment to Israel's security," Crowley said. "She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate, not just through words but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process."
While the timing of the Israel's announcement of 1600 housing added to existing housing developments was not great, there was nothing wrong at all with the announcement itself. Israel has always considered all of Jerusalem as it capitol and has never agreed to stop building in her capitol. Even the ten month freeze that Netanyahu offered did not include Jerusalem. America's insistence that Israel cannot build onto existing neighborhoods in her capitol not only breaks previous agreements but is bigoted in nature. The same government that would not stand for one of her own cities keeping Jews from moving in, is insisting that Jews are not allowed to live in their holiest city.
The Obama administration's reaction was so over the top that even the ADL's Abe Foxman, who usally puts his proggressive politics in front of the mission of his organization, complained.
"We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem," ADL director Abraham Foxman said in a statement. "We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States. One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table."
"It is especially troubling that this harsh statement came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly and privately explained to Vice President Biden the bureaucratic nature in making the announcement of proposed new building in Jerusalem, and Biden accepted the prime minister's apology for it. Therefore, to raise the issue again in this way is a gross overreaction to a point of policy difference among friends.
"The Administration should have confidence and trust in Israel whose tireless pursuit for peace is repeatedly rebuffed by the Palestinians and whose interests remain in line with the United States."
Former Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams places the blame squarely at the feet of the President.
The current friction in U.S.-Israel relations has one source: the mishandling of those relations by the Obama administration. Poll data show that Israel is as popular as ever among Americans. Strategically we face the same enemies -- such as terrorism and the Iranian regime -- a fact that is not lost on Americans who know we have one single reliable, democratic ally in the Middle East.
The two problems that bedevil relations with Israel are Iran policy and Israeli settlements. On Iran, we say nuclear weapons would be "unacceptable" but want to rely solely on sanctions to stop them -- and administration officials go out of their way to say any use of force would be catastrophic. Not surprisingly Israelis wonder if we're serious -- and if, as is likely, sanctions prove too weak to succeed, so will many Americans.
On settlements, the Obama administration demanded a 100 percent construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, something never required before even by the Palestinians as a precondition for negotiations. This stance cornered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who could demand no less, and led the U.S. administration last week to "condemn" the announcement of plans for Israeli construction that is years away. The verb "condemn" is customarily reserved by U.S. officials for acts of murder and terrorism -- not acts of housing.
As this example shows, the Obama administration continues to drift away from traditional U.S. support for Israel. But time and elections will correct that problem; Israel has a higher approval rating these days than does President Obama.
Just before the 2008 election I wrote this in an article for American Thinker:
Whether he wins or loses, all signs point to the fact is Barack Obama will receive the majority of the Jewish vote in the presidential elections. But even a few percentage point shift in the Jewish vote can mean a McCain win in some of the key battleground states.
The astounding part of that is that Obama is receiving the vote DESPITE the fact that he has assembled a crew of advisers that have a negative opinion of Israel. Despite that a Barack Obama presidency may turn out to be the most anti-Israel administration since George HW Bush.....
....A Barack Obama Presidency would return US/Israel relations back to the days of James Baker's "They have my number they can call me." A US trying to impose a dangerous one-sided solution on the Jewish State.
I have never been so unhappy to be correct.
How Quick They Forget: A Short History of U.S. Policy and Israeli Construction in East Jerusalem
Barry Rubin*
March 14, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/blog/2010/03/how-quick-they-forget
For more than four months the U.S. government has been celebrating Israel agreeing to stop construction on settlements in the West Bank while continuing building in east Jerusalem as a great step forward and Israeli concession deserving a reward. Suddenly, all of this is forgotten to say that Israel building in east Jerusalem is some kind of terrible deed which deserves punishment. Israelis are used to this pattern: give a big concession and a few months later that step is forgotten as Israel is portrayed as intransigent and more concessions are demanded with nothing in return. Here is a short history of this round:
October 31, 2009: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lavishly praises Israel as making "unprecedented" concessions in stopping construction on West Bank settlements while it is still going to build in east Jerusalem.
November 1, 2009: The U.S. State Department cheers Israel's announcement that it will stop construction on West Bank settlements but not in east Jerusalem: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
March 12, 2010: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says that Israel building in east Jerusalem is an "insult" to the United States, jeopardizes the bilateral relationship, and damages the cause of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, even though the Palestinian Authority has refused to negotiate for 14 months; made President Brack Obama look very foolish after destroying his publicly announced September plan to have negotiations in two months; and broke its promise not to sponsor the Goldstone report in the UN, no word of criticism has ever been offered by any administration official regarding the PA's continuous and very public sabotage of peace process efforts.
Can people please point out that there's a bit of a contradiction here?
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
March 14, 2010
http://www.gloria-center.org/blog/2010/03/how-quick-they-forget
For more than four months the U.S. government has been celebrating Israel agreeing to stop construction on settlements in the West Bank while continuing building in east Jerusalem as a great step forward and Israeli concession deserving a reward. Suddenly, all of this is forgotten to say that Israel building in east Jerusalem is some kind of terrible deed which deserves punishment. Israelis are used to this pattern: give a big concession and a few months later that step is forgotten as Israel is portrayed as intransigent and more concessions are demanded with nothing in return. Here is a short history of this round:
October 31, 2009: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lavishly praises Israel as making "unprecedented" concessions in stopping construction on West Bank settlements while it is still going to build in east Jerusalem.
November 1, 2009: The U.S. State Department cheers Israel's announcement that it will stop construction on West Bank settlements but not in east Jerusalem: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
March 12, 2010: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says that Israel building in east Jerusalem is an "insult" to the United States, jeopardizes the bilateral relationship, and damages the cause of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, even though the Palestinian Authority has refused to negotiate for 14 months; made President Brack Obama look very foolish after destroying his publicly announced September plan to have negotiations in two months; and broke its promise not to sponsor the Goldstone report in the UN, no word of criticism has ever been offered by any administration official regarding the PA's continuous and very public sabotage of peace process efforts.
Can people please point out that there's a bit of a contradiction here?
*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
Netanyahu: Let’s Not Get Carried Away’ with US Crisis
Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tried to calm down the political crisis with the United States and told the Cabinet Sunday morning “not to get carried away and to calm down” following an unprecedented public rebuke from top American officials. In what a UPI analyst headlined “Biden's Operation Boondoggle,” the Vice President’s arrival in Israel last week coincided with a government announcement for construction of previously-approved housing for Jews in the Jewish Ramat Shlomo neighborhood bordered on all sides by the densely populated Jewish neighborhoods of Sanhedria, Ramot Eshkol, French Hill and Ramot.
The United States considers the area, along with Gilo, Ramot and other outlying Jerusalem neighborhoods, to be part of a future Palestinian Authority state, and U.S. President Barack Obama has called them “settlements.” Ramot alone has over 40,000 residents.
Virtually every Israeli leader in the entire political spectrum, except for Arab legislators, has repeatedly stated that a final agreement for a PA state cannot include all of the area that was restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
However, Vice President’s Biden’s condemnation of the plan for 1,600 more housing units, followed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s publicly charging that it “undermines” American policy, have whipped up Arab protests in the street and in the political realm.
Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized to Biden over the timing of the announcement, which he said was done without his knowledge, and thought the issue was a tempest in a teapot. However, Clinton (pictured), who previously has referred to Jews with a crude and racist epithet, surpassed him the following day with her public condemnation.
Sunday morning, the Prime Minister ordered an inquiry into the timing of the ministerial statement on the housing at Ramat Shlomo.
Virtually all foreign and Israeli media have placed Israel in a bad light for ostensibly upsetting American plans to mediate between the PA and Israel for a new Arab state within Israel’s borders. However, an “editor-at-large” for UPI, which generally reports with less bias than other news agencies, wrote that the “anemic Middle East 'peace process' is beginning to look like The Fool's Errand.”
Commentator Arnaud de Borchgrave explained that what neither U.S. President Barack Obama nor his vice president seemed to realize was that Netanyahu and his supporters “were deeply aggrieved when the U.S. president went to Cairo last June 4 for an address to the Muslim world without stopping in Israel on the way home….
“Obama's background, his middle name Hussein, his Muslim father and Muslim stepfather, and his associations with Arabs and Muslims have made the 44th president of the United States an object of derision and contempt among many Jews. They have assumed since Day One, correctly, he wanted Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem dismantled to make room for what [former President George W.] Bush called "a contiguous and viable Palestinian state."
De Borchgrave revealed that following Biden's displeasure with the announcement of new construction at Ramat Shlomo (pictured), the Prime Minister inadvertently broke the glass of a framed document the vice president had given him. The document was a certificate that several trees were planted in Jerusalem in memory of the vice president's mother, who Biden said was a strong supporter of Israel.
Is this why the Palestinians 'deserve' a state, Mr Biden?
Melanie Phillips
The New York Times reports that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have dedicated a public square to the memory of a woman who in 1978 helped carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history:
The woman being honored, Dalal Mughrabi, was the 19-year-old leader of a Palestinian squad that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They killed an American photojournalist, hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children, according to official Israeli figures. Ms. Mughrabi and several other attackers were killed. To Israelis, hailing Ms. Mughrabi as a heroine and a martyr is an act that glorifies terrorism. But, underscoring the chasm between Israeli and Palestinian perceptions, the Fatah representatives described Ms. Mughrabi as a courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history. Defiant, they insisted that they would not let Israel dictate the names of Palestinian streets and squares.
‘We are all Dalal Mughrabi,’ declared Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s main decision-making body, who came to join the students. ‘For us she is not a terrorist’, he said, but rather ‘a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.’
Note in particular the last three words. This man is talking about Israel: not the West Bank, not Gaza, but Israel. It was, of course, not her land and never was, not at any time throughout history; nor were the West Bank or Gaza. The only people for whom this ever constituted their national homeland were the Jews. But it is that land, Israel, a state that was actually established by international agreement, that Fatah wants. In other words, it wants Israel destroyed: and that is the one and only cause of this conflict. This is not a boundary dispute. Fatah wants Israel destroyed – as its leaders have said over and over again down the years.
Fatah is led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian ‘President ‘and head of the Palestinian Authority. The PA stood on the sidelines at this disgusting ceremony, tattempting to minimise both their involvement and the significance of this commemoration. A PA security official who was there, General Adnan Damiri, tried to distance himself from Mughrabi's aims by claiming that the Palestinians were ‘seeking peace’ based on a state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.
Of course this is not true. Were it really the case, they could have had a state of their own on the numerous occasions it has been offered to them over the past seven decades. What they really want is reflected rather more accurately in the words of Tawfiq Tirawi. The brutal reality is that the PA, led by Abbas, treats as a heroine a terrorist who murdered 38 Israeli civilians and thirteen children along with an American to further the aim of the destruction of Israel. No wonder the PA put off this ceremony until Joe Biden had gone back to the US.
Even though Biden's blushes were spared, however, the fact remains that the US and the west, which waxed apoplectic over Israel’s building new homes in east Jerusalem -- even though this was in fact expressly acknowledged as acceptable in previous agreements – believe that Abbas and Fatah are ‘moderates’ who ‘deserve’ a state of their own which they intend to force Israel to give them. But in naming this square after their ‘martyr’ and ‘heroine’ Dalal Mughrabi, the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership have demonstrated once again both their own true murderous character -- and the gullibility or worse of America and western nations, which are remorselessly bullying Israel into offering its throat to such enemies.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5837916/is-this-why-the-palestinians-deserve-a-state-mr-biden.thtml
The New York Times reports that the Palestinian Authority and Fatah have dedicated a public square to the memory of a woman who in 1978 helped carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history:
The woman being honored, Dalal Mughrabi, was the 19-year-old leader of a Palestinian squad that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They killed an American photojournalist, hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children, according to official Israeli figures. Ms. Mughrabi and several other attackers were killed. To Israelis, hailing Ms. Mughrabi as a heroine and a martyr is an act that glorifies terrorism. But, underscoring the chasm between Israeli and Palestinian perceptions, the Fatah representatives described Ms. Mughrabi as a courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history. Defiant, they insisted that they would not let Israel dictate the names of Palestinian streets and squares.
‘We are all Dalal Mughrabi,’ declared Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s main decision-making body, who came to join the students. ‘For us she is not a terrorist’, he said, but rather ‘a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.’
Note in particular the last three words. This man is talking about Israel: not the West Bank, not Gaza, but Israel. It was, of course, not her land and never was, not at any time throughout history; nor were the West Bank or Gaza. The only people for whom this ever constituted their national homeland were the Jews. But it is that land, Israel, a state that was actually established by international agreement, that Fatah wants. In other words, it wants Israel destroyed: and that is the one and only cause of this conflict. This is not a boundary dispute. Fatah wants Israel destroyed – as its leaders have said over and over again down the years.
Fatah is led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian ‘President ‘and head of the Palestinian Authority. The PA stood on the sidelines at this disgusting ceremony, tattempting to minimise both their involvement and the significance of this commemoration. A PA security official who was there, General Adnan Damiri, tried to distance himself from Mughrabi's aims by claiming that the Palestinians were ‘seeking peace’ based on a state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.
Of course this is not true. Were it really the case, they could have had a state of their own on the numerous occasions it has been offered to them over the past seven decades. What they really want is reflected rather more accurately in the words of Tawfiq Tirawi. The brutal reality is that the PA, led by Abbas, treats as a heroine a terrorist who murdered 38 Israeli civilians and thirteen children along with an American to further the aim of the destruction of Israel. No wonder the PA put off this ceremony until Joe Biden had gone back to the US.
Even though Biden's blushes were spared, however, the fact remains that the US and the west, which waxed apoplectic over Israel’s building new homes in east Jerusalem -- even though this was in fact expressly acknowledged as acceptable in previous agreements – believe that Abbas and Fatah are ‘moderates’ who ‘deserve’ a state of their own which they intend to force Israel to give them. But in naming this square after their ‘martyr’ and ‘heroine’ Dalal Mughrabi, the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership have demonstrated once again both their own true murderous character -- and the gullibility or worse of America and western nations, which are remorselessly bullying Israel into offering its throat to such enemies.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5837916/is-this-why-the-palestinians-deserve-a-state-mr-biden.thtml
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Biden Trip Reveals Ominous Side of Obama's Treatment of Israel
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
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
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
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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
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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
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