Tony Greenstein uncut

I posted the published version of a letter from Tony Greenstein to the Guardian. which was a response to a rather shabby history lesson by messrs Cesarani and Longerich. I thought I detected bad editing and this was confirmed for me in a comment to the post. Anyway here's the letter in full:

David Cesarani and Peter Longerich ask, concerning the film Downfall, [Guardian 7th April, ‘The Massaging of History’] whether the main thesis of the film, that the German’s were also victims of Nazism and the war, is becoming "a new form of German nationalism." The answer to this is that it will only become so if historians persist in putting forward a sanitised version of German history whereby all the German people, regardless of class, are held responsible for the rise of Naziism.

Downfall may be written from a right-wing, nationalist perspective, but there can be no doubting that the majority of Germans, were also victims of German fascism. Indeed to deny this is to accept the Nazi’s own racial categorisation of peoples as a single political and social whole.

The Germans were not collectively guilty for Naziism and the Holocaust, any more than the Spanish were collectively guilty for Franco, the Italians for Mussolini, the Chileans for Pinochet or indeed the British for Blair and Thatcher.

Messrs Cesarani and Longerich should acquaint themselves with some facts. The first concentration camp at Dachau was for the internment and murder of German communists and social democrats. The first victims of poison gas were not Jewish, they were the physically and mentally handicapped.

Electorally the Nazis never gained a majority of the popular vote. Indeed between July and November 1932, they actually lost 2 million votes. In the last free elections, in November 1932, the Communists (KPD) and Social-Democrats (SPD) received 13.2 million, mainly working-class votes, one and a half million more than the Nazis. And it was the working class and its organisations, prime among them the trade unions, which suffered from the Nazis. It was the German Right, not the German people, who put Hitler in power.

And there is of course another category of Germans who suffered under Naziism - German Jews. The central tenet of the Nazi’s Nuremberg Laws, that the Jews were not German, should never be accepted.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

I'm curious as to why Tony uses "yours sincerely". I was taught that you write "sincerely" when you have named the recipient and "faithfully" when you haven't. No doubt lots of zionists will accuse him of a serious inaccuracy for that.

Download Democracy Now! Debate

I just nicked the above download from Norman Finkelstein's website. Quite a find! Back in December a zionist commented on this blog that, in the Democracy Now! debate with Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein behaved like a two year old. There are a few mechanisms of debate avoidance that zionists use. Accusing their opponents of childishness is one. It's a way the zionists have of pretending to have an answer to the unanswerable case against Israel. They put up an "argument" when they have none. Some clearly don;t even care how ridiculous they make themselves look. That latter point would make an interesting study in itself.

But anyway, in the instance I'm referring to I think the guy even posted a link to the transcript of the debate that shows that Finkelstein was behaving in a quite gentlemanly way and that Dershowitz was using all sorts of verbal trickery and rudeness to undermine Finkelstein. Well reading a transcript will tell you what words have been spoken but a recordiing, of course, demonstrates how they were spoken. What the recording reveals is that through all of Dershowitz's lengthy turns to speak, Finkelstein did not interrupt any. Through Finkelstein's turns, Dershowitz interrupted every one and succeeded in suppressing much of what Finkelstein was trying to say. But never mind. By the end of the debate Dershowitz stood totally exposed as a liar and a plagiarist. Please right click the headline above, save the file and have a listen. If you have any problems with the download, go here.

Holocaust Industry - the movie

You've heard about it. You may have even read it. Well, now you can see the movie. "The Final Insult" is to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom at 8:00 p.m. on 11 April 2005. The Jewish Chronicle has it that

One of the strongest attacks [on the holocaust industry] was from controversial US academic Norman Finkelstein...He said "there is something grotesquely repellant about using the suffering of European Jews in a shakedown racket."

Finkelstein's site says that

The Holocaust Industry, will be the subject of an hour-long documentary ("The Final Insult") to be broadcast on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.

So is he the star or does he just have a walk-on part? Stay tuned.

Biogeographical ancestry?

Here's an article on why we should ditch the concept of race altogether:

cultural and biologistic concepts of race and culture are inextricably intermingled. Perhaps this is why race-relations legislation is a conceptual mess, falling uneasily between social, political and folk constructions of biological race.

Thus it bans hate speech against Jews as a race but not against Muslims, as they are defined as a religion. Racist groups such as the BNP play by the changed rules of the game; they no longer oppose their children going to school with Pakistanis on the grounds of racial inferiority, but object to Muslims, as they are of a different "culture".

Now there must be many zionists who recognise that last point.

German Jews are German too

I'm only posting this letter from today's Guardian because I know the guy who wrote it. It looks badly edited to me.

The first concentration camp at Dachau was for Germans - communists and social democrats, who had gained one and a half million more votes than Hitler in the last free elections. It was the German right, not the people, who put Hitler in power. And, of course, another category of Germans suffered - German Jews. The central tenet of the Nuremberg laws, that Jews were not German, should never be accepted.
Tony Greenstein
Brighton

Of course, Israel's Law of "Return" bears more than a passing similarity to the Nuremberg Laws.

Nazi hunters hunt for Ken

From the Jewish Chronicle (subscription only).

Just when you thought that the zionist movement couldn't trivialise the holocaust any more than they have done, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles has decided to launch a campaign against Ken Livingstone for his nazi-guard jibe at Jewish reporter, Oliver Finegold. The Wiesenthal Centre used to track down racist war criminals and have them brought to justice. Now it harrasses and bullies the opponents of racist war criminals.

The Jewish Chronicle. also reports that the Mayor of Los Angeles, James Hahn, has written to the United States Conference of Mayors:

Mayor Livingstone will not be accorded any official welcome in the City of Los Angeles [and] I urge my fellow mayors to do the same.

The LA Mayor appears to have support from the Miami-Dade County Mayor and a resolution urging Livingstone to apologise (it doesn't say who to) is being presented to the Chicago City Council. Putting things into some kind of perspective, Jewish News reports that

a spokesman for Livingstone said: "The Mayor has not been "disinvited" to any city, nor has he any plans to visit Los Angeles."

So there! Los Angeles, Miami and Chicage are totally isolated from Ken Livingstone.

My name is Rachel Corrie

My Name Is Rachel Corrie is at the Royal Court, Sloane Square, London SW1 until April 30. Box office: 020-7565 5000.

Threat to al-Aqsa more serious than threat to Sharon

Ha'aretzreports that Kahanists are intent on destroying al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. This is a greater threat than the threat on Sharon's life by the same settlers because

The source defined the chances of the threat against the mount being actualized as greater than the threat to the prime minister's life, where the security risk remains stable ... largely because of the difficulty of protecting the mount.

Plus, no-one would miss Sharon whereas plenty would miss al-Aqsa.

Academic smart boycott of Israel

After a few blunders the academic boycott is getting smart:

The new boycott motion contains a clause to exclude "conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies".

Palestinian academics have also issued a call for an international boycott of Israel.

Sue Blackwell, a lecturer at Birmingham University and one of the authors of the motion, said: "We are now better organised. One of the reasons we didn't win last time was that there was no clear public call from Palestinians for the boycott. Now we have that, in writing."

Dr Jennifer Tonge: No regrets

Extract from "MPs Uncovered" in today's Guardian

Dr Jennifer Tonge

Liberal Democrat, Richmond Park
Ask Aristotle about Dr Jennifer Tonge

My proudest achievement since the 2001 general election:
Highlighting the plight of the Palestinians under occupation by Israel, by making a speech expressing empathy for suicide bombers - looking for the cause of terrorism.

For that she was sacked as a front-bencher by Charles Kennedy.

The failures of Kofi Annan or of the UN?

Here's a curious article in the Observer. Written by former UN human rights lawyer, Kenneth Cain, it berates Kofi Annan for allowing various abuses by UN troops and officials and for allowing genocidal campaigns to occur under his watch. There's a bit of an "all Cretans are liars" element to it when Cain accuses the left of standing idly by and leaving condemnation of the UN to American hard right whilst telling us that he (Cain) is a leftist himself. I think, to be fair, the left has never had much time for the UN. It was the UN that partitioned Palestine thereby inviting the zionist movement to carry out one of the first ethnic cleansing campaigns of the post-holocaust era. Also the major imperialist powers have a veto over anything the UN does. When many people who would ordinarily support an American war were anxious that America was becoming lawless even by its own appalling standards they looked for a second UN resolution to support the war on Iraq. And this is troubling for leftists; the fact that something bewilderingly wrong can actually be made OK by the imprimatur of the UN.

But Cain goes further than just criticising leftist inactivity on the question of UN incompetence and corruption.

I am co-author of a book critical of Annan's peacekeeping legacy, Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone . My co-author, Dr Andrew Thomson, penned a line that drove the UN leadership to fire him. Lamenting UN negligence in failing Bosnian Muslims whom it had promised to protect in its 'safe area' of Srebrenica - where 8,000 men were slaughtered - Thomson wrote: 'If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.'

Our book is often criticised by fellow travellers on the left because we hold Annan and the UN accountable.

I don't know what he means by fellow travellers. It's an expression that usually means people who run with a party without joining but in this instance, the party is the. left and he doesn't name any fellow travellers or leftist groups. If only the left had a kind of rabbinate or papacy that could set up a list of official leftists. Couldn't be done, one lot would split away and set up a provisional list.

Anyway that's not the only issue I have. Look at some of these criticisms, specifically, of Kofi Annan.

Next to these tributes is another installation - a reproduction of the infamous fax by the UN Force Commander, General Romeo Dallaire, imploring the then head of UN peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, for authority to defend Rwandan civilians - many of whom had taken refuge in UN compounds under implicit and sometimes explicit promises of protection.

Here, too, is Annan's faxed response - ordering Dallaire to defend only the UN's image of impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate civilians waiting to die. Next, it details the withdrawal of UN troops, even while blood flowed and the assassins reigned, leaving 800,000 Rwandans to their fate.

Next to these tributes is another installation - a reproduction of the infamous fax by the UN Force Commander, General Romeo Dallaire, imploring the then head of UN peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, for authority to defend Rwandan civilians - many of whom had taken refuge in UN compounds under implicit and sometimes explicit promises of protection.

Here, too, is Annan's faxed response - ordering Dallaire to defend only the UN's image of impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate civilians waiting to die. Next, it details the withdrawal of UN troops, even while blood flowed and the assassins reigned, leaving 800,000 Rwandans to their fate

Away from Rwanda:

His own legions have raped and pillaged. In two present scandals, over the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, and sex-for-food in Congo, Annan was personally aware of malfeasance among his staff, but again responded with passivity.

We then get details of the sheer corruption of a UN chief administration officer (CAO) in Liberia:

the new CAO tapped our phones, paid locals to spy for him and threatened to send home anyone who opposed him, all to facilitate his own quest for a 15 per cent kickback on everything we purchased.

The worst part was watching him try to coerce as many of his young 'local staff' to sleep with him as possible....

I was the human rights lawyer and these girls would come to my office in tears asking for help. I wrote memo after memo of complaint to my chain of command, but no one did anything. I even confronted the CAO personally. To no effect. When I visited the UN human resources office in New York to complain personally, they laughed at my naive outrage: 'It happens all the time in the field,' they said. 'There's nothing we can do.'

In the meantime, a quarter of a million Liberians died, and warring factions committed war crimes. And the UN did - nothing. Just as it was simultaneously doing nothing, more infamously, in Rwanda and Bosnia.

Before I met him in Liberia, that CAO, Krishna Gowandan, had been knocking around West Africa for years in various UN jobs, always mired in corruption, never disciplined, always promoted and reassigned - a pattern all too familiar at the UN - during which time the head of personnel was Kofi Annan....

The bodies burn today in Darfur - and the women are raped - amid the sound of silence from Annan. How many genocides, the prevention of which is the UN's very raison d'être, will we endure before the left is moved to criticise Annan?

Ok there are parts where this article is more critical of an unnamed left than it is of Annan. But there's more:

As head of peacekeeping then, and as secretary-general now, Annan's power to effect any change on the ground, our critics remind us, is constrained by the interests of the Security Council (the US and France didn't want to intervene in Rwanda, the French again in Bosnia, and China and Russia now in Darfur). Therefore it's unrealistic to argue that Annan should risk his job by exhorting his Security Council bosses to do the right thing in the face of genocide.

And then, whilst the writer wants Annan removed

Annan is not personally corrupt or incompetent. But the UN cannot have failed more catastrophically when the stakes have been highest. If he does not lose his job for that, then for what? And if not now, when?

So the guy doesn't want Annan in post though he says that he is neither corrupt nor incompetent. If he is neither corrupt nor incompetent then turning a blind eye to genocide and syphoning money from key projects is what the UN is for. Within three years of its establishment, the UN was encouraging the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in breach of its own charter and doing so by partitioning Palestine...in breach of its own charter. Why should anyone expect any different to Kofi Annan's corrupt and incompetent way of handling UN business.

Rafah's traumatised children

This is an Observer article on the way children in Rafah are suffering under the Israeli occupation:

Worst affected are those who have seen relatives or friends killed in front of them, but children are also traumatised by shooting, night raids, demolitions and other people's stress. 'In the long term, the trauma will grow with the child and becomes part of the personality,' says Abu Hein. 'The disease matures with them.'

Another belated April fool

Look at this letter from nine comedians and actors. Actually, as you'll see, they're all comedians now:

We were all opposed to the government's military intervention in Iraq. Though, obviously, we welcome the fall of Saddam, the emergence of democracy in Iraq, alongside other signs of change and progress in the Middle East, we continue to believe military action was the wrong decision.

We do not question the Prime Minister's integrity: we question the decision he reached. However, we also acknowledge that general elections are not decided on one issue alone, and that the country must take into account many factors in choosing its government.

On that basis, despite our firmly held views on Iraq, we strongly support the re-election of a Labour government.

We believe they are the party that can most be trusted to manage the economy, improve public services, deal with crime and continue to make social change for the better.

We believe Britain is a better and fairer country than it was in 1997 and that the country needs to keep going in the same direction of modernisation and investment.

We are alarmed at the prospect of a return to a Tory government that cannot be trusted on the economy or with public services, which has a regressive attitude to social issues and which would not match Labour's commitment to great causes such as Africa, climate change and peace in the Middle East.

We have all at various times, principally over Iraq, been angry with Tony Blair but at the next election the country will be faced with a choice - between him or Michael Howard - as Prime Minister. When the election finally comes, we will be supporting Tony Blair and encouraging people to vote Labour.
Tracy Brabin
Jo Brand
Michelle Collins
Brian Cox
Diarmud Gavin
Prunella Scales
Timothy West
Rebecca Wheatley
Richard Wilson

This is becoming the big integrity question. Any literate person who doesn't question Blair's integrity, puts a question mark over their own own integrity or is simply being a comedian.

Aren't bananas kosher?

There's a very sad story on the front page of the Jewish Chronicle. (Subscription required) this weekend. It's about a woman who converted to orthodox Judaism in Israel in 1990 under the auspices of the Sephardi Beth Din. (Rabbinical court) who is not allowed to send her son to the Jews' Free School because her conversion is not recognised by the UK's Beth Din. Why it's not recognised is a long story and I'm not sure I understand it myself but what struck me was her statement to the JC.

I am shocked and upset at what the Beth Din has decided. I and my family are accepted as Jews in Israel, my son went to a Jewish school in Israel and my husband served in the army. Yet when we want to send out son to a Jewish school here, we are told we are not Jewish. How can we be Jewish in one country and not in another? It's not some banana republic. This is a ridiculous situation and we will do everything we can to get them to change their minds.

I always thought bananas were kosher.

Also in the JC

Jewish boys arrested for racial abuse of Muslim woman

I think this is a case involving 3 teenagers harrassing a Muslim woman for a couple of years now. Police had said there was nothing they could do but, according to the JC, video evidence has made the arrests possible.

MPAC targets Jack Straw

Apparently the Muslim Public Affairs Committee has been "attempting to unseat [Jack Straw]....by claiming he is "ideologocally driven to support Israel."" MPAC should know Straw better than to accuse of him being "ideologically driven" to do anything. That would suggest that he has principles and he has none. When the UK wanted some kind of Iranian support for the war on Iraq, Straw penned an article for the occasionally anti-semitic Tehran Times "sympathising" with the plight of Arabs in what he called, once only, "Palestine". This, of course, caused a furore in Israel. Since then he has got back on the zionist track, only ever making reference to Israeli deaths in the intifada. I remember when about 200 Israelis had been killed he said that every Israeli knew someone who had been killed by terrorists. At the time this would have meant that every Israeli who got killed by Palestinians, knew about 30,000 people. He made no reference at all to the fact that far more Palestinians had been killed and that every Palestinian is suffering from the struggle with Israel whereas a recent survey put "terrorism" fourth on a list of Israelis' concerns, behind, crime, the economy and road accidents.

The article goes on to say that Oona King is also in MPAC's sights, suggesting that "the black-Jewish MP" has "perceived sympathy for Israel." Actually, it's her support for the war wot dunnit. Oona King is on record as comparing Israel's governance of Gaza to the nazis' governance of the Warsaw ghetto.

The JC. does employ a lot of sheer deviousness in its support for Israel so it's hard to know what is true and what is not. I can only hope that MPAC wouldn't be so witless as to target Jack Straw and Oona King on account of them being Jews. Again I say, that to accuse Jack Straw of being "ideologically driven" is a compliment that the abject opportunist doesn't deserve.

And pigs might fly

Oliver Letwin tells Conservative Friends of Israel that "he looked forward to a time when there would be no need for organisations such as the CFI" because one day "Israel's...case would no longer be in question." I didn't know that annihilating the Palestinians was Tory policy.

Iain Hook

As reported in the Socialist Worker, the Foreign Office has rejected a BBC request to hand over information about Israel's shooting of the unarmed Iain Hook in Jenin. The reason they offer is informative. "Officials argued that releasing the information could damage Britain's relations "with another state." It doesn't say which state. I like to think it's America and not Israel but that's just me. The JC. then goes on to give the Israeli army's version of events without any suggestion that their version is hotly disputed by the UN and witnesses. The article even says that his phone, that is the phone that he was using at the time an Israeli soldier shot him in the back, was mistaken for a gun. The inquest is being conducted by Ipswich coroner, Dr Peter Dean.

Hitler knew details of the holocaust

This might look like a pope is catholic kind of a story but it has long been said that Hitler, whilst wanting the eradication of the Jews from Europe (and presumably the world), didn't actually order or have detailed knowledge of the holocaust. David Irving is particularly fond of this one. Of course many organising criminals in governments and on the streets, don't have detailed knowledge of crimes committed on their behalf. Look at Ariel Sharon, who is said to have ordered or allowed the massacres at Shatila and Sabra with a wave of his hand. Anyway, thanks to a book on Hitler (The Hitler Book ), compiled for Stalin, it appears that he knew it all, from the strategy to the operations.

Still more on anti-semitism

"The leader of Germany's Jewish community has warned of a rampant anti-Semitism in academic and intellectual circles." He also says that he receives a lot of anti-semitic emails from people who often give their names and addresses. Apparently, 25 complaints have been made against people who sign such letters. We'll see how the complaints get on in due course but it must be said that the article is dominated by the allegation of academic and intellectual anti-semitism and yet not one example is given.

Stupid article by David Aaronovitch

David Aaronovitch writes of how he turned down an offer to be the JC's. editor. He sites as one reason the fact that he is "not Jewish enough," before traipsing off into a barely coherent ramble about why he's "not Jewish enough." He then gets to another reason which gave him his headline Preaching to the converted is no fun. Why then am I hearing rumours that this pro-war zionist is going to work for Rupert Murdoch's Times.?

Leap of faith?

This is a welcome article in the Guardian. by John Rose today, about the possibilities for a post-zionist future in the Middle East. The piece that struck me was this quote about Baghdadi Jews in the Jewish Chronicle. in 1949.

On the whole, Islamic tolerance has enabled Baghdadi Jews to flourish as a centre of learning and commerce. They and their kind would like to stay.

Now the Jewish Chronicle. moved from being the "organ of British Jewry" to becoming a zionist newspaper in 1913. That quote is clearly non-zionist. Without access to their archives I can only wonder as to the context. Watch this space.

Professor Massad changes course

I got this post from the excellent Umkahlil blog. I wish I'd found it in time for April Fools Day:

Professor Massad Unveils New Course Offering . . . Ahlan Wasahlan Ya Israel
Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University, seeking to assuage the sensibilities of his Zionist students and Project David auditers, revealed today the syllabus for his revised course, formerly The Politics of Israel and Palestine. Seeking a new beginning Massad's class sports a new moniker, Ahlan Wa sahlan Ya Israel, Welcome to Israel.

Massad will definitively show that there is no such thing as a Palestinian.
According to Massad, the first week of the course will focus on how those steely Sabras 'made the desert bloom,' thus compelling Arabs to swarm the 'land without a people for a people without a land.'

'We Arabs have TWENTY-EIGHT countries that we can live in,' Massad sagely proffers. With the zealotry of a reformed Arab, Massad continues, 'I will show that even though we'd only been in Palestine for twenty years before Israel's Independence Day, we probably could have stayed if we hadn't listened to the Nazi sympathizing Mufti who told us all to leave.' Massad says that the course, which he plans to enhance with a showing of Exodus, will also show how tiny Israel put down hoardes of invading Arab armies in 1948, again in 1967, and how Arabs eschewed many offers of the olive branch.

For one unit, special emphasis will be given to the 'Arab' mind. 'I am particularly excited about this part,' enthused Massad. On board for guest speakers are Raphael Patai, author of the seminal Arab Mind, and the Professor's new friends, Middle East experts Daniel Pipes, Bernard Lewis, and to provide a little ethnic diversity, Joseph Farah of worldnetdaily.

Friday nights Professor Massad will provide Israeli specialities: hummus and falafel

Expectations: Students will be assessed on the following:

Essay Why do all Arabs lie?

Multiple Choice: Golda Meir, the great Israeli leader once said, 'I can forgive the Arabs for killing our children, but I can't forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.'

Why do the Arabs wanna give Golda such grief? a. they hate their kids b.they use their children as shields because they're cowards c. they hate Jews because they're Jews d. they're not like us e. all of the above

Ahlan Wa Sahlan Ya Israel
Instructor: Profesor Joseph Massad
Required Readings:
The New Republic
The New York Sun
Little Green Footballs
TheFrontPage
NROnline
William Safire
Charles Krauthammer
Mona Charen
israpundit
George Will
worldnetdaily
Commentary

What no Israeli music or traditional Israeli folk dancing?

More on Iain Hook

I got a hit from someone looking up "Iain Hook" on Google. Tracking back, I found the site linked above. It carries a very simple statement from the UN Relief and Works Agency - UNWRA:

Our preliminary findings into the circumstances surrounding the death of Iain Hook in Jenin don't agree with the statement made by the Israeli military that firing had been coming out of the UNRWA compound in Jenin.
It is quite clear to UNRWA at this stage that such a report of live fire from the compound is totally incredible.

I posted earlier that the UK government is participating in the Israeli cover-up of this murder of a British citizen.

Anti-semitism at Columbia? Preposterous!

The campaign against Joseph Massad et al. has hit the buffers for the time-being as the panel set up to investigate claims of intimidation of Jewish (read zionist) students rejected the complaints against him. That, of course, doesn't mean that the zionist campaign off-campus won't continue but Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, has stuck his neck out to say that "it was "preposterous" to say the school is anti-Semitic or has a hostile climate for Jewish students." The investigating panel did throw one scrap to the zionist movement:

the five-member panel did identify one instance in which a professor "exceeded commonly accepted bounds" of behavior when he angrily implied a student should leave his classroom after she defended Israel's conduct toward Palestinians.

Now how intimidated could a defender of ethnic cleansing feel?

Will the next Pope be a Zionist?

I found this article on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency website. It's a horrible piece and goes to show the sheer inhumanity of some religious types. The headline is Potential pope favors Jewish presence in Israel. We're off to a flying start. For centuries no-one objected to a Jewish presence in Israel (or Palestine as it used to be called). Then it gets more explicitly zionist.

A potential successor to Pope John Paul II spoke out strongly in favor of the Jewish claim to Israel.

Ok, still a bit mealy-mouthed. What does this Jewish claim amount to? Armed sovereignty of Jews over non-Jews?

Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn also rejected the notion that European Christian support for Israel stems from guilt over the Holocaust.

No serious observer ever thought it did stem from guilt. It's imperialism stupid!

"Only once in human history did God take a country as an inheritance and give it to his chosen people," Schoenborn said Wednesday in an address at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

So god prefers Jews and a Jewish state must accord Jews preferential treatment under its apartheid laws because if god was a legal system that's what he would do. And who are godly Catholics to argue with god?

A Palestinian priest challenged Schoenborn's claim that Christians should celebrate the Jewish return to Israel, but Schoenborn responded that while the Arab-Israeli conflict is a matter of international law, the Jewish presence in Israel dates back to the Bible.

Meaning what exactly? Well, this guy is 58. If he becomes pope his pontificacy could last 30, or even 50 years. Perhaps we should welcome this, after all he'll have plenty of time to explain his deliberately meaningless and racist drivel. We shouldn't be too surprised at this. I remember back in the 1980s when apartheid South Africa was embarked on one of its subterfuges to hide apartheid behind some kind of tricameral parliament where whites would rule supreme and "coloured" would have some kind of bogus representation. Blacks were excluded still and the ANC called for a boycott. While the election campaign was on, the pope was in a plane crossing southern Africa. The story goes that the plane developed difficulties near to Mozambique. Instead of landing in Mozambique the papal plane landed in the land of apartheid. Whilst in South Africa, the pope said that it would be a sin to boycott the elections. So our man Christoph might get to follow in a fine apartheid supporting papal tradition.

Selling Jerusalem

Here are two articles on how zionists are taking over East Jerusalem by stealth, if you can call it stealth. The first, from This Week in Palestine, sets out how the Greek Orthodox Church has been selling "its" land to zionist settler groups.

For one hundred and twenty four years (1872 – 1996), my family ran a souvenir and an antique business inside Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate, exactly between the two building blocks that were sold, as the media reported, by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to some right-wing Jewish organization. Omar Ibn Al-Khattab Square is home to me and to the tens of other businesses that now risk evacuation all because of the greed of someone who sold his soul for 30 pieces of silver. Initially, the thought of Jaffa Gate, Bab El-Khalil, losing its identity broke my heart and sent chills down my spine, but as time passed, my determination to do something about the matter grew stronger.

The second, from Ha'aretz, I found far more harrowing in that it involved the eviction of a mother and her three children from their home, by zionist settlers with armed police in tow acting in complicity with the woman's husband and the children's father.

That night, Ateret Kohanim people [the settler group], escorted by hundreds of police and Border Police, entered Silwan, seized the apartment that had been purchased from the Asala family at the bottom of the street and then entered the six-story building and told Maraga's wife to get out immediately with her three children.

There's a lot more to this than that snippet. Read the whole article and you will see that this conniving to implant fascist activists in the heart of Arab communities goes all the way to the Prime Minister.