Adolf Hitler's First Antisemitic Writing

Hitler returned from a military hospital to Munich in early 1919. There he underwent a Reichswehr sponsored course of systematic political education for demobilizing soldiers that featured Pan­German nationalism, antisemitism, and anti­socialism. These same themes were prominent in Bavarian politics following the repression of the Munich revolution of 1918­19. Because antisemitism had not played a notable part in Bavarian politics prior to the revolutionary disturbances, a Herr Adolf Gemlich was prompted to send an inquiry about the importance of the "Jewish question" to Captain Karl Mayr, the officer in charge of the Reichswehr News and Enlightenment Department in Munich. Mayr referred him to Hitler, who had distinguished himself in the above­mentioned course by the vehemence of his radical nationalist and antisemitic views, and by his oratorical talents. Hitler was already feeling his way toward a political career; four days before responding to Gemlich in the letter translated below, he had paid his first visit to the German Workers' Party (eventually renamed, the National Socialist Workers' Party) as a confidential agent of the Reichswehr.

In the letter to Gemlich he appears anxious to establish his credentials as a knowledgeable and sober anti-Semite. Compared to the inflammatory mass­meeting oratory that he was soon to make his specialty, Hitler's rhetoric here is quite tame, stressing the need for a "rational" and "scientific" antisemitism. Some historians have interpreted the letter's call for the "irrevocable removal [Entfernung]" of the Jews from German life as a prefiguring of the Holocaust. But it is clear from the context and from later statements that, at this point, Hitler meant segregation or expulsion rather than systematic liquidation.

The letter, Hitler's first explicitly political writing, impressed his Reichswehr superiors and he soon gained a reputation among radical rightist and socially respectable nationalist conservative groups as a man who could help inoculate the masses against revolution and whose antisemitic rhetoric could help discredit the democratic Weimar Republic. The letter may thus be seen as the launching of his political career. Source: Eberhard Jäckel (ed.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905­1924. (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 88­90. Translated by Richard S. Levy.'

Now, the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has acquired what it believes may be the original version of the document, known as the Gemlich letter and the center bought it in cost of $150,000. In July, the center plans to put it on public view for the first time, at its Museum of Tolerance, making the letter the centerpiece of its Holocaust exhibit.

TEXT [September 16, 1919]

Dear Herr Gemlich,

The danger posed by Jewry for our people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of our people. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clear recognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic and pernicious effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from personal contact and from the personal impression which the individual Jew leaves­­almost always an unfavorable one. For this reason, antisemitism is too easily characterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this is incorrect. Antisemitism as a political movement may not and cannot be defined by emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these: First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association. Even the Jews never designate themselves as Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans but always as German, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted much more than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A German who is forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman. It's the same with the Jew who lives among us and is forced to make use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does the Mosaic faith, so important for the survival of this race, settle the question of whether someone is a Jew or non­Jew. There is scarcely a race whose members belong exclusively to just one definite religion.

Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non­ German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.

The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.

The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.

This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.

He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.

In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.

The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom.[1] An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.

For both these ends a government of national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary.

The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed state­form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation.

And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility.

But these facts deny to the Republic the essential inner support of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution­­the Jews. Even though (as various statements of the leading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this pay­off consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repression of the antisemitic movement.

Respectfully,
Adolf Hitler

NOTE

[1] Pogrom in Russian means devastation. Until recently, the term described exclusively the organized or spontaneous massacres of Jews. In Russia the worst pogroms occurred in 1881, 1903, 1905, and during the civil war following the Revolution of 1917 in areas controlled by the anti­Bolshevik White armies, especially the Ukraine.

Anti-Semitic OWNED on Youtube!

Hasn't Steve Pallister been locked up before? That guy needs some serious meds and should not be allowed anywhere near a computer. The walls of solitary confinement would be too good for that guy. Hell, he LOOKS insane; he never quit promoting anti-Semitism also when the Australian police put him behind bars time after time and he get time after time sue at the court by the Australian anti-Defamation League. He is sending death threat to people on Youtube and put money on their head for killing them, this guy should be behind bars for good.

Well he's officially lost it...



Please keep reporting Steve Pallister to the Australian police at:

CANNING VALE POLICE STATION
Address: 449 Nicholson Road, Canning Vale, WA , 6155
Phone number: (08) 9456 9555
URL: http://www.police.wa.gov.au/

Emails:
Direct: Media@police.wa.gov.au

Through their website: http://www.police.wa.gov.au/ContactUs/tabid/922/Default.aspx

Anti-Semitic, Who Us?

I hate Zionists, nor Jews. It's anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism:

* A Chicago Jewish day school received a bomb threat.
* A molotov cocktail was thrown at a Chicago synagogue.
* Hand-made posters in support of Hamas were placed on two synagogues in Irvine, California.

None of these places are Israeli. And yet, somehow, they're all being attacked as if they were connected to Israel. Why is that?

Hmmm... Let's think:

Officials say they don't know if there's a link between the incident and increased violence in the Middle East.

Right. They don't know. They can't figure out why people will attack Jewish schools and religious institutions when they're angry with Israel, the Jewish State. But again, it isn't anti-Zionism. It's anti-Semitism.

Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti- Semitism in our time, through its systematic delegitimization, defamation, and demonization of Israel. Although not a priori anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers."

One major driving force of this anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism is the transformation of the Palestinian cause into a "holy war"; another source is anti-Americanism linked with fundamentalist Islamism. In the current context, classic conspiracy theories, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, are enjoying a spectacular revival.

The common denominator of the new anti-Zionism has been the systematic effort to criminalize Israeli and Jewish behavior, so as to place it beyond the pale of civilized and acceptable conduct.

Indeed, Israel is today the only state on the face of this planet that such a large number of disparate people wish to see disappear - itself a chilling reminder of the Nazi propaganda of the 1930s. The most virulent expressions of this "exterminationist" or genocidal anti-Zionism have come from the Arab-Muslim world, which is the historical heir of the earlier 20th-century forms of totalitarian anti-Semitism in Hitler's Germany and the Soviet Union. Even "moderate" Muslim statesmen such as Mahathir Mohammad have publicly repeated the classic anti-Semitic belief that "Jews rule the world" while eliciting virtually no objections in the Islamic world. The more radical Islamists from Al-Qaida to the Palestinian Hamas go much further since they fuse indiscriminate terror, suicide bombings, and a Protocols of Zion style of anti-Semitism with the ideology of jihad. In this case, the socalled "war against Zionism" unmistakably embraces the total demonization of the "Jewish other":

As the "enemy of mankind," as deadly poisonous snakes, as barbarian "Nazis" and "Holocaust manipulators" who control international finance, not to mention America, or the Western mass media, while they busily instigate wars and revolutions to achieve world domination.

Such conspiracy theories sailing under "anti-Zionist" colors constitute a highly toxic, even murderous worldview that today is linked to religious fanaticism and a worldwide revolutionary agenda. The same demonizing stereotypes can, however, be found in moderate pro-Western Egypt (home to the Protocols based anti-Semitic soap opera Rider without a Horse), secular Baathist Syria, conservative Wahhabite Saudi Arabia, and the Shiite fundamentalist Iran of the ayatollahs. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated from the Jews" - in other words, it is a totalist form of anti-Semitism.

Palestinian suffering and Arab "anti-Zionism" have helped to infect Europe with an old-new version of anti-Semitism in which Jews are rapacious, bloodsucking colonialists. The theme is that Jews were rootless, imperialist invaders who came to Palestine to conquer the land by brute force, to expel or "cleanse" it of its natives. They are the modern "Crusaders" with no legitimate rights to the soil - an alien transplant, absolutely foreign to the region. They succeeded only because of a gigantic occult conspiracy in which the Zionists (the Jews) manipulated Great Britain and subsequently America. This is a typically anti-Semitic narrative of which Hitler might have approved - widely believed around the world, even credited by millions of educated people in the West. The popularity of the Protocols today is the one telling symptom of the growing merger between anti-Semitism and "anti-Zionism".

Zionism is increasingly depicted in some mainstream media as being "criminal" in its essence as well as its behavior.

Zionism, the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, advocated, from its inception, tangible as well as spiritual aims. Jews of all persuasions, left and right, religious and secular, joined to form the Zionist movement and worked together toward these goals. Disagreements led to rifts, but ultimately, the common goal of a Jewish state in its ancient homeland was attained. The term “Zionism” was coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum.

Religious Hatred

by Rabbi David E. Eidensohn

A Christian friend sent me a piece from the Rev. Pike and asked if I wanted to respond. I answered him that these kind of articles are a problem because they use Christianity to attack Judaism, and this would require me to respond to Christianity. Also, they consider Judaism a gutter religion, and to respond to them would be to dignify their claims, such as rabbis such as me practice bestiality! What should I say, "I don't practice bestiality"? But if my friend sent it to me, and it is there, perhaps I should respond.

Pike's first paragraph begins, "The Bible says sex in marriage is one of G-d's greatest gifts." If this is so, why did the founder of Christianity never marry? Why did the Church, for thousands of years, forbid a spiritual priest to marry? Lie number one.

The second paragraph claims that G-d took Israel for his bride and when the founder of Christianity became the deity, he "rescued her from oblivion." Alas, "Israel...became a spiritual harlot." Another lie. G-d never changed His mind about Jews and He never changed Himself to be the founder of Christianity. That is blasphemy.

The next paragraphs say that Jews are involved in pornography because they descend from Pharisees, the rabbis of the Talmud, who practiced bestiality. I don't want to dignify this by calling it a lie. This is sick.

Unfortunately, ancient Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, had anti-Semitic teachings similar to Rev. Pike's material. Luther was a ferocious hater, not only of Jews, but he was involved in inflaming people to murder peasants. The Catholic Church had ferocious anti-Semites such as Ambrose and Augustine, indeed, hate of Jews is part and parcel of early Christianity.

After the Second World War with its Holocaust, most Christians changed their theology. The Catholics did, and so did the Evangelicals. But there are still Catholics like Mel Gibson's father (and maybe the son when he is drunk) who reject what the new Church has done, and believe in the old way, that Jews are to be hated. There are still Protestants like the Rev. Pike, who believe in the old way, that Christianity is there to pour on hate about Jews, who rejected their beliefs.

I recall my childhood in Washington, DC. We had a mixed neighborhood, and as little kids we all played together fine. When Billy Wilson went to a Catholic parochial school he became a ferocious anti-Semite and would come over to us and curse us and all Jews. When we played baseball, there was a Protestant called Tommy who would pitch a fastball at the head of any Jew who came to bat. The fact is, that the early Christian religion was ferociously anti-Semitic. This is documented by a Catholic priest in his classic, "Constantine's Sword."

Today it is rare to hear in America of a Christian who is anti-Semitic. In fact, Christians are the greatest friends of Israel, and are doing a lot for Jews. But the rot is still out there, especially on the Internet.

I wish to reiterate that this piece I am writing is because of respect for a dear Christian friend. I have other Christian friends who would do for me their best as I would do for them. We are partners in the terrible war against the fiends who want to pervert the world, dominate it and control it and contaminate our children. We must stand strong. We must stand together. We want a world of peace, without the radicals and without the haters. We must fight both.

Now in Jerusalem the Jews and Christians are standing together to fight the International Gay Parade. They want to take over and seduce our children. They won't because we are together and will defeat them.

Indeed, the best friend of the perverts is someone like Rev. Pike. By showing that religious people are haters they promote secularism. Hollywood is filthy because people prefer filth to religious wars. I don't say that people are right about that, but secularism has triumphed because religious hate caused wars and much bloodshed. That is a historical fact. Therefore, if we want to prevail against the radicals, we must answer the haters like Rev. Pike. He is the radical's best friend and only hope.

Now, let's look again into the claim about Israel as a bride of heaven. I believe, of course, that G-d took Israel as His bride at the Covenant with Abraham described in Genesis, about 3700 years ago. I also believe that the Covenant G-d made did not die, decline, or change in any way, and that Israel is today the bride of G-d. G-d does not change His mind, and He surely does not change Himself! The claim of Rev. Pike that G-d not only changed brides but changed Himself into the founder of Christianity is incredible, but then again, that is what he believes.

Rev. Pike explains that Jews are prone to porn because they come from Talmudic rabbis called Pharisees. I am a Pharisee, as I accept the teaching of the Talmud and the rabbis, and all of us reject Christianity. So Rev. Pike stokes the ancient hate of Israel for rejecting Christianity, and blames the rabbis. As a matter of fact, Christianity died out in Israel very soon after it was founded, and had to be reinvented in Greece by Jews who fled Israel. Jews, all of them, had no interest in Christianity. We are G-d's people and anyone mortal person or even an angel who comes to us and tells us to worship him had better start running. It is as simple as that.

The Catholic priest James Carroll in his modern classic "The Sword of Constantinople" tells us about Saint John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch around the time of Augustine's baptism. (Page 213) This is what this bishop taught about Jews: "I know that many people hold a high regard for the Jew, and consider their way of life worthy of respect at the present time. This is why I am hurrying to pull up this fatal notion by the roots... A place where a whore stands on display is a whorehouse. What is more, the synagogue is not only a whorehouse and a theater; it is also a den of thieves and a haunt of wild animals... No better disposed than pigs or goats, the Jews live by the rule of debauchery and inordinate gluttony. Only one thing they understand: to gorge themselves and to get drunk...By making themselves unfit for work, they have become ready for slaughter." This prepared people to kill Jews. Augustine absorbed this, as did others, and it remained the tenet of Christianity until the Second World War. Many changed them in order not to be laughing stocks, but not Rev. Pike. He is still out there trying to kill the heretics. That is why many people hate religion. The idea of killing heretics almost destroyed Europe, and it is feared by all civilized people. Rev. Pike is for real. He wants to kill the heretics. The first step is to demonize them, and then to declare that "such people are fit only to be slaughtered," as did Chrysostom and Augustine in their time.

Ambrose wanted to exterminate the Jews. Augustine wanted to torment them so badly that they would have to convert. But both of these profited by the lies told by Rev. Pike and the concept that Israel was a nation of "bestiality", etc.

Once you have a religious zeal in besmirching a decent nation, famed for its family values above all others, we have statements like this from Rev. Pike, "The Pharisees perverted the law to permit adultery." (Well, isn't that an improvement on bestiality? Maybe he means that the rabbis of the Talmud slept with married mates of animals.)

Rev. Pike tells us that Talmudic rabbis practiced adultery, bestiality, and rape. Sounds just like that German fellow over there. They went to the same school.

It goes on and on. Today we laugh at these kind of ravings, but for thousands of years, this was what people were taught by their clergy, and they responded in kind. That Jews survived is proof that we, Israel, are G-d's Chosen people and will never be destroyed. We are patient, we have waited long for our redemption. And we will see it flower and conclude with the destruction of hate.





Jew Haters

A History of Hate for Jews

There are many reasons for people to hate Jews. In fact, the Talmud says that hate for Jews began immediately upon the Jews receiving the Ten Commandments and the Torah. Just as children are jealous when father gives one child something but not the others, so are the nations of the world envious and angry at Jews for receiving the Torah instead of them.

And yet, during biblical times, true hate for Jews, or modern anti-Semitism, did not exist. The ancient pagans never murdered Jews because they were Jews. The ancient pagans conquered Israel and taxed and oppressed the Jews, but did not disdain their value as people. The problem in the biblical eras was just the opposite. The surrounding nations got along so well with Jews that Jews imitated them, worshipped their idols and intermarried with them, to the deep chagrin of the prophets and rabbis.

Some ancient nations, such as Babylonia, conquered Israel and exiled the Jews. But Nebuchadnezzar greatly valued the rabbis of Israel and appointed them his senior advisers. He was close to Jeremiah the Prophet, and Daniel was his adviser. The Persians conquered the Babylonians and helped the Jews return to Israel and even supported these efforts.

Alexander the Great was very good to the Jews of Israel, but upon his death, the Hellenists tormented the Jews without mercy. This period, about 2300 years ago, was a new level of hate for Jews. We thus demarcate between the pre-Hellenistic era and the post-Hellenistic era in anti-Semitism. Before the rise of Greece, nobody hated Jews, nobody raped Jewish women, nobody forced them to convert to another religion. The Greeks introduced the idea of forcing everyone to worship one way. The Greeks divided the world into the elite and the inferior. The elite did what they wanted and the inferior were slaves. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle accorded elitist status to people who thought the right way. Thus, unlike the Biblical Era, the post-Biblical Era, beginning with the Greeks, taught the powerful and the elitist to enslave others and destroy their capacity for independence. Thus religious freedom was now limited.

By its nature, paganism did not foist one belief upon others. Paganism allowed each person the freedom to find worship in a unique and individualistic manner. The Greeks, however, felt that any democracy and freedom of the masses threatened society, because society could only survive as an extension of the superior ideas of the philosopher-kings and elite. The Jews therefore thrived under the pagans, but suffered under the Greeks.

After the Greeks, the world's great religions accepted the social need for a unifying religion and philosophy. Judaism was then mortally threatened. By the fourth century the Church seized control of the Roman Empire. Saints Ambrose decreed that all who refused his religion must die. This would have been the end of the Jewish people, but for two events. One, the Roman Empire began to collapse, thus weakening its capacity or interest in fighting with Jews. Two, after Ambrose the senior prelate, Saint Augustine, decreed that Jews must be coerced to convert, not killed. This coercion was to treat them as inferior to other people, to oppress them, ghettoize them, and employ all kinds of torture and torment until Jews would surrender their religion. Without the conversion of the Jews, said Augustine, the Church has failed.

Five hundred years ago in Germany, Martin Luther raised the standard of the Reformation. First he attempted to attract Jews to his cause, but when they refused it, he became a furious hater of Israel. Thus, it is no accident that Germany eventually did what it did to Jews.

Religious hatred of Jews lasted as official Church Doctrine until after the Second World War. The horrors of the Holocaust forced the various facets of Western religion to re-think their theology. The Catholic Church made some changes in its theology. The Protestants did not, but many of them embraced a new behavior relative to the Jews. Thus, today, Israel's best friends are Protestants, although their churches never changed their theology. This leads many people to question the sincerity of the new warmth to Israel. It may serve to lessen the pressure to change the anti-Semitic theology of the Church. It may also open the door to converting Jews. The church works furiously to convert Jews, and such a policy would probably not exist if the church did not deprecate Judaism. If Judaism is acceptable to heaven, why convert them? Obviously, the converters do not accept Judaism.

The refusal of the Jews to accept Christianity is a major factor in anti-Semitism. However, G-d made a covenant with Israel and promised it would never stop. Christianity therefore believes that G-d changed His mind, something the Jews will not accept. At any rate, Jews believe in G-d because He gave us the Ten Commandments and the Torah at Sinai, and because of the many generations of prophets and their revealed prophecy. No mortal can come forward and instruct us to desert our religion. Thus, the religious differences between Israel and the nations is quite serious.

Many Jews broke, as Augustine said they would, and became fervent enemies of Israel. Some of the great anti-Semites were born Jews. This was true in recent times when large amounts of Jews embraced Communism and tormented religious Jews.

All of this hate is quite frightening. On the other hand, the Talmud says, "How can a sheep survive among seventy wolves?" Obviously, G-d and only G-d saved us from the nations of the world who try to devour us. This is our great solace. G-d is with us. In the future, surely, the near future, the Messiah will come and reveal the role of Israel and the supremacy of the Torah. Then all those who tormented them will have to answer to a very angry Creator, who proclaimed to the nations His love of Israel.

Why Some Caucasians are Becoming Nazis?

Here we explore the explosion of hate in present times among American and European Caucasians. As Caucasians increasingly refuse to marry or to have children, demographically, they fall behind others. Inevitably, as happened in Europe, others come to do the work the Caucasians are not available to do, and racial and religious conflict begins. This leads to hate, which often is directed at Jews, among others.

This article originally appeared in our sister website, www.gendercentral.com, that explores family issues. But one of its tenets is relevant to our topic.

No Fun Without Family

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

America is a culture of fun. Fun is a huge industry. Movie stars, sports figures, and entertainers make fortunes. Shaq O’Neil makes $200,000 a game, or $6,000 a minute of playing time.

The successful doctor up the block from me just took a second mortgage on his house. Without it, he can’t keep up with the HMOs, pay his insurance, and feed his family.

Kobe Bryant declined to plead in a rape case. Michael Jackson, who entertains our children, was arrested for child molestation. A sports columnist wrote recently how atypical a week it was because nobody in professional basketball got arrested.

A friend of mine worked thirty years for IBM. When he neared retirement age, IBM fired him. He now lives on a tiny pension, and is not getting any younger. Another friend told me a year before he was fired, “The computer industry drains you until you reach fifty, and then they let you go. They don’t want to support you in your old age.”

What he predicted came true. Everybody knows it is true. The Global companies and billionaires get rich while most people struggle. Today, a family cannot survive unless the wife leaves her children and works. This is because the pursuit of fun has doubled consumption since the fifties. Double consumption means double people working.

If we could devote the time we spend on “fun” to developing financial stability and security, we would have much more real fun.

Instead, we are becoming a society of very rich global business people and fun stars, and an increasingly oppressed everyone else.

Pulitzer Prize winning columnist David Broder of the Washington Post recently studied the finances of all of the states in the country. They are all going on the dole. One state built a new prison but has no money to hire guards. A county just sold the farm of an 89-year-old woman because she didn’t pay a few hundred dollars in taxes.

Does this sound important? If so, why do people sit for a few hours every night watching television or videos? Why are they not worried about an impending financial collapse of state government

You may think that the states will turn to the Federal government. However, the Federal annual income is about a trillion or two dollars. The Federal deficit is about 6 or 7 trillion. In a few years, that will rise to 25 trillion dollars. How can a country, spending printed paper with nothing to back it, survive? This is how they do it in the banana republics. But, as Paul Krugman of the New York Times observed, the financial debacle facing the Federal government is far worse than faced by any banana republic. (On our website gendercentral.com are various articles about the financial situation of the country.)

Does anyone care? No. They are too busy watching Michael Jackson and anyone else that provides “fun.”

You may think that I am saying that entertainers should get less money. This is not my message. I am not in favor of lessening anyone’s earnings. I want to do away with the “fanaticism of fun.” Fun as we have it in America is a consuming and deleterious thing. When we teach children to worship anyone who has certain physical characteristics and to deride others who are less blessed, we destroy our children.

My children, and nearly all of my neighbors, never heard of Shaq or Kobe , and certainly not Michael Jackson. We have no televisions. We never go to movies. We spend our money on our grandchildren, not sports.

A Presidential Commission on Fatherhood, during the Clinton administration, found that fewer Americans want marriage. People are now having babies without marriage, because marriage doesn’t work or is too demanding for “fun” people. The study found that American men consider children an expense that interferes with their fun. In my Orthodox Jewish community, we have no “professional fun.” That is why we have flourishing families, may they increase. Ultimately, family is the finest fun, the real thing.

My energy goes for my children and grandchildren. My walls are lined with pictures, not of movie stars, not of sports stars, but of grandchildren. Somebody said to me, “David, you are a billionaire.” What billionaire has what I have? You can’t buy a happy grandchild.

I have fun. I get down on the rug and bark like a dog. My little grandchildren go wild. Meanwhile, secular sir is out there drinking. What fun. Or he has other fun. “Fun” ultimately leads to searching for what is not available. Searching for fun leads to addictive and compulsory behavior, even perversion. When you live for fun, you never find it. Elvis Presley killed himself seeking a bigger dose of drugs. He no longer had “fun” from the old dose.

When you live for family, every day is heaven, even when a grandchild finds out where you keep your financial records and throws them all over the floor.

A child senses if a parent is dedicated. When a child realizes that parents live only for them, the child responds and makes the parent happier than any fun. When a child realizes that parents would rather be at the movies than listening to his prattle, the child can make the parents so miserable that there are no words for it.

Thus, “fun” and family are mutually exclusive. Throughout the Western world, people are into fun. They are not having children. Then they wonder why their world is disappearing.

In Europe they just raised the retirement age. There are not enough young people to put earnings into pension funds. People who are ready to retire have to get back to work. The future is bleak. People live longer, and retirement ages will be longer and longer. When will it end? There is no world without children.

France just had a heat wave that killed thousands of people. Who were they? They were old people who sat and suffocated because no children were there to help them. The government can’t do it. When my wife and I are 120 years old, our children will fight for the right to have us as guests.

Europeans have no young workers from their basic population. They have to import young people from around the world. This leads to racial and religious problems, even hate. It all begins from running after fun. Where it ends, nobody knows. The power is from babies. Nothing else matters. Fun means no demographic power. Family means demographic and ultimately political power.

As Western whites realize they can’t have fun and children, they go without children. They then import others or allow immigration from areas that are totally different or even opposing to what they want for their country. Seeing their world disappearing, many of them become Nazis.
I once met a financially successful woman in her forties who never married. She told me how much fun she has in her life. She just went to Hawaii . She swam, heard a good band, sampled the food, and probably met a man. Hopefully, she practiced safe sex. I felt so bad for her. I thought of what my daughters were doing. I raised them differently.

Once my daughters sat in front of the house and played with a little nephew. A woman walked by and asked them what they were doing. They replied, “We are babysitting our nephew.” The woman huffed and said, “My children don’t baby sit. They are not slaves!” My daughters had the proper upbringing, so they held in their feelings until they got into the house. Then we all had a good laugh.

In those days, there was very little money in the house. However, that Passover I bought little silver cups for my daughters. I said, “These cups are only for slaves.” Every year at the Passover meal, those cups adorned the table, and all of us thanked G-d that we were “slaves.”

I am a slave to my children. My children are slaves to the family. Slaves? By our standards, this is living, not slaving. But to the “fun” person, doing anything for anyone but yourself is “slavery.” When “fun” man meets “fun” woman, the first thing they do is have a fight over who is the “slave.” Half of marriages end in divorce, and many people just give up on marriage. They then have babies without marriage, which damages the child. The main thing is to have fun. Fun? Let me assure you. A broken child is no fun. A happy child is fun. And to have a happy child, you have to be a “slave.”

Professional “fun” is perverse. Family fun is real. Pleasure begins and ends with complete dedication to family.

In the sixties, rebellious college students took drugs and did sex. Some of them got sick of it and became religious. One such man came to a Yeshiva and said, “I was in San Francisco with a beautiful naked girl doing drugs. I thought this was pleasure. Believe me, it is a lot better now.”

Once, in a Rabbinical Court , we noticed a strangely clad woman coming to us. I couldn’t believe that in this day and age a woman could dress the way she was dressed. She looked like a poor imitation of a Medieval Nun. She had so much “fun” in her life, that now she wanted to find something else.

I once wrote a column that said, “Put your TV in the trash, or your child in the trash.” One of them has to go.

If you didn’t listen then, I tell you now, “Take your child out of the trash, and stay out of it yourself.”

The clock is ticking. I don’t mean the clock that ends the half in basketball. I mean the clock that ticks the seconds until our world disappears in fun.







Jew Haters

Talmud - A Pregnant Non-Jew is no Better Than a Pregnant Animal

by Bernie

Being an anti-Semite a few hundred years ago was not easy. Here's the problem: because his own life was miserable and poverty-ridden he needed to blame someone other than himself. This is an ancient and primitive excuse for one's own failures. You didn't plant the right crop this year? Sacrifice a goat to placate the Gods; hence the scapegoat.

But who to blame?
Who was rich, talented, and smart in his city and country? Who held lofty positions of power and glory? Obviously it was the hated Jew.

If it weren't for Jews like Benjamin Disraeli, Mayer Rothschild, Marcel Proust, and Heinrich Heine, who didn't deserve their fame, he could have been Prime Minister, a rich banker, a famous writer, a great poet.

But how does one denigrate a people who are successful, skillful, and educated? Well, the only recourse is to lie, to fabricate evil deeds and intentions. So began blood libels, false accusations that Jews murder children to use their blood in their religious rituals and holidays.

In order to convince other non-Jews that claims such as these are indeed true, the anti-Semites fabricated books and other literature, purported to be written by Jews of plots against non-Jews.

So was created the well-known fabrication The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, an antisemitic tract purporting to describe a plan to achieve global domination by the Jewish people.

Despite the fact that this lie was discredited as long ago as 1921, the Nazis used it to prove that Jews were a threat to Germany. In the present era, Muslims have taken up the lie to turn non-Jews against Jews and the State of Israel.

But it is getting harder and harder to fool non-Jews with this egregious nonsense because of sites like Snopes and Wikipedia which have debunked most of these fantasies, and so, we see more esoteric and convoluted fabrications being created, the kind not easily found on the Web.

Anti-Semites (including many Muslims) leave links to mostly antisemitic blogs and websites where distortions, fabrications, and deceptions are listed as proof of Jewish perfidy and hatred of non-Jews. One antisemitic site links to another and that to another in a mutual circle-jerk each providing "proof" of this or that lie against Jews.

Many of these lies are spread through emails with subject lines such, "Non-Jews as seen in the Jewish Talmud" or "Jewish Racism towards Non-Jews as expressed in the Talmud."

For example, Eman, an anti-Semite visitor left this comment in response to my article My Atheist Heaven: "A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant ANIMAL. Talmud: Coschen Hamischpat 405." as "proof" that Jews hate and despise non-Jews.

Let's pretend that it came from the Talmud, a compendium of Jewish Oral Law. Such a statement contradicts a basic tenet of Jewish Law: Genesis 1:26-27; "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over...all the creatures...So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Genesis does not say, 'Let us make Jews in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over...all the creatures..." There is nothing in all of Judaism where a human being, Jew or not, pregnant or not, is equal to an animal.

But let us actually examine "Talmud: Coschen Hamischpat 405."

First off, it is spelled Choshen Mishpat and it is not part of the Talmud. The spelling this visitor used, "Coschen Hamischpat," is the same as used in the "Der Sturmer"- the official magazine of the Nazi party and lifted from there. Anti-Semites hope that the casual reader will not know these details and actually believe that Jews despise non-Jews.

The Choshen Mishpat has nothing to do with Jewish opinion of non-Jews. It is a compilation of Jewish law pertinent to finance, torts, legal procedure and loans and interest and put together more than a thousand years after the Talmud.

Let's forget about the Nazi spelling - what does Choshen Mishpat 405 really say?:

Jeff Rense Program, Quotes 'With Attitude' From The Jewish Talmud CLAIM "A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant animal." Coschen hamischpat 405 RESPONSE The above quote is a wrong inference from a fiscal law in Shulchan Oruch, Choshen Mishpat 405.3, that relates to times when slavery was a standard and accepted practice across the world. It states that if an ox gored a pregnant woman, and this resulted in the loss of the fetus, the owner does not have to pay for the loss of the fetus (medical expenses and other damages are discussed elsewhere). If an ox gored a pregnant non-Jewish slave-woman, the owner of the ox has to pay for the loss of the fetus to the owner of the slave-woman (because the owner would have had another slave to work for him had the woman given birth). The same applies if the ox gored a pregnant cow, or a sheep, because had the animal given birth, the owner would have had an extra one. The law is clearly hinged on the rights of the owner, and does not compare non-Jews and animals in any way. It is purely legal, and does not have any philosophical or social implications.

So Eman, the phrase "A pregnant non-Jew is no better than a pregnant ANIMAL" does not appear in the text of either the Talmud or Choshen Mishpat 405, the actual law discussed has nothing to do with Jewish opinions of non-Jews, and it is a lie repeated on Muslim and neo-Nazi websites who themselves lifted it from a Nazi antisemitic magazine.

Anyone who reads the Torah knows that we are all Bnei Adam, sons of Adam, which is the Hebrew for human beings. Gentiles are unquestionably human, created in God's image, and Jewish law recognizes this as do the rabbis of the Talmud. While there are rituals that apply only to those who are part of the organic Jewish nation, with regard to rights such as the purchase of land or to spiritual status, gentiles are included. It is a major Jewish sin to hate anyone, Jew or non-Jew.



You Might Also like to Read:
List of Talmudic Books
What is Talmud?
The Truth About the Talmud
Talmud - Myths and Misquotes
Talmud - Killing Gentiles
Talmud - Tricking Gentiles
Talmud - The Term of Goy
Talmud - Theft From Gentiles
Talmud - In The Image of God
Talmud - The Real Story of Rabbi Elazar
Talmud - Sex With Three Years Old
Talmud - Refuting Various Claims About The Talmud
Talmud - Are Jews Commanded to Lie About The Talmud?
Talmud - Where Do Gentiles Fit Into The Jewish World?
The Talmud Does Not Consider Gentiles to be Animals
The Talmud Prohibits Jews From Withholding a Gentile's Wages
More Lies About the Talmud
Talmud and More
Questions and Challenges to the Talmud




PlancksConstant

Wikipedia's Jewish Problem

by Karin McQuillan

Wikipedia is used by 68 million people a month. Google Jerusalem, Israel, the Holocaust, jihad — the first reference to come up is Wikipedia. Most users mistakenly think it is an encyclopedia. Actually it is a special sort of blog, self-styled "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Open an article, click on the edit tab, add or remove what you like. Everyone in the world writes Wikipedia.

The Wiki ideal is consensus. Think of the above topics and consensus.

The Wiki rule of anonymous contributions abets abuse. Editors who disagree duke it out on the discussion page, a sort of Lord of the Flies world where ganging up and bullying reign. Wiki co-founder Larry Sanger left the project in protest against this "mob rule." As Sanger put it, "A few of the project's participants can be, not to put a nice word on it, pretty nasty. And this is tolerated."

Unless you like endless fighting with anti-Semites and Israel-haters, it is not pleasant to try to contribute to topics dealing with Israel. Major topics like Jerusalem or the Holocaust attract enough attention that destructive editors' depredations are kept at a minimum. More specialized topics, like Hajji Amin al-Husseini, the Nazi founder of the Palestinian movement, are a mess.

Propaganda purporting to be reference material, such as "Israel and the Apartheid Analogy," is tolerated although it is against the rules.

Wiki has guidelines, such as using referenced sources and not insulting fellow editors. There are also rules — more than one hundred pages of jargon-laden rules against 'edit warring' alone — including a rule to 'ignore all rules.' They are indeed ignored most of the time. Then suddenly one is enforced by summary judgement by Wiki's anonymous "administrators." If a rival editor's complaint is judged favorably, you are banned from Wiki on the spot. It is frontier justice: no time to present your case, no review of the controversy. This system has not worked well on Jewish or Israel related topics.

As Larry Sanger points out, it is a system that is easily gamed by the malicious, abetted by a nerd culture that doesn't understand proper supervision.

I had read a Jerusalem Post article saying that Wiki was being flooded by pro-Palestinian activists. I was aware the Electronic Intifada had worked the Wiki system so that CAMERA volunteers had been banned, because working together violates a Wiki rule. I clicked around on various discussion pages on Jewish or jihadi topics, interested in finding editors who were advocating accurate information. On topic after topic, when I clicked on the Jewish editor's name, I discovered they, too, had been banned.

I should have turned back right then, but I can be naïve and stubborn. I thought I could avoid the pitfalls. I told myself it would be satisfying to add good, solid content.

Although all things Jewish are my special interest, I thought I might succeed if I avoided Israel and anything contemporary or directly political. I thought I'd be guarded by the rule of having authoritative references for every statement.

I was a professional writer for fifteen years, and take great pleasure in accurate research. I wrote three books that were translated into five languages and am most proud that my two fact checkers found only one error in the last book. So it was natural that in retirement I thought it would be meaningful to contribute to Wikipedia.

I had an idea for a well-documented topic on which there is universal consensus among experts.

This topic appealed to me because it is about accuracy and journalistic ethics, something close to my heart. I decided to put in some information on "The New York Times and The Holocaust."

Years ago I had the privilege of auditing a class on the Holocaust with Eli Wiesel at the BU Divinity School, and came across a research article by a journalism professor, Dr. Laurel Leff that I never forgot.

While it was happening, and something could have been done, the New York Times had a deliberate policy to bury news of the Holocaust. The Times published the reports of the roundups, the gas chambers, the death toll, but by telling the news in a few sentences, in inch-high articles, on inside pages, they deliberately insured that the public didn't understand that the Jews of Europe were being massacred.

While this sorry story of illegitimate journalism is unknown to the general public, the record of the New York Times, like the rest of Holocaust history, is exhaustively documented. On their 100th anniversary and 150th anniversary, the New York Time's admitted it had "buried" the news of the Holocaust. It has been the subject of a museum exhibit, turned into a documentary; with interviews of top journalists and Holocaust experts. In 2005 Dr. Leff published a full page book on the subject, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper.

There is universal consensus on the facts. New York Time's retired executive editor Max Frankel nailed it this way on November, 2001, in their full-page 150th anniversary self-assessment, "Turning Away from the Holocaust.": "No article about the Jews' plight ever qualified as the Times' leading story of the day, or as a major event of a week or year." The Times ran only five editorials that mentioned Europe's Jews out of more than 17,000 during the war. Readers of the Times would not know that the Warsaw Uprising involved Jews. The Time's consistently editorialized in favor of President Roosevelt's decisions to bar European Jews trying to flee the death camps.

When the death camps were liberated, Eisenhower summoned the nation's top editors and publishers to join him as eyewitnesses. The Times sent Julius Ochs Adler, vice president and another family member of the Times dynasty. His account of Buchenwald ran on page six.

Max Frankel called the Times decision to bury the news of the Holocaust 'the bitterest journalistic failure of the century,' a tragedy that abetted Hitler's genocide. He admitted the policy was directed by publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, for both political and personal reasons. Sulzberger didn't want Jews to be considered a people, with a right to a homeland in Israel; he didn't want his paper criticized as Jewish; and he didn't approve of Jews helping fellow Jews. He didn't want any daylight between his paper and FDR, including FDR's policy to ignore the ongoing Holocaust. Frankel asserted that having learned this lesson of past failure, the Times has since 'shed its sensitivity about its Jewish roots' and dropped its hostility to Israel.

Frankel quoted Dr. Leff extensively. He characterized her as "the most diligent independent student of the Times' Holocaust coverage." Leff documented how The New York Times, which defined the Holocaust as a non-story for the national media, made it impossible for Jewish groups during the war to galvanize the public or politicians to do anything for Hitler's Jewish victims. Legendary New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal (promoted to editor in 1961, he was forbidden to use his full name, Abraham, as it was too Jewish for the Times) was asked in a 2001 interview aired on the History Chanel, to review the Time's Holocaust coverage. "...it was no good. It was paltry. It was embarrassing. It was wrong. It was morally and journalistically wrong...If the Times had come out big on this, that would have brought a lot more attention in the country."

Among experts on the topic there are some minor points of discussion: was New York Times owner-publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger more motivated by political considerations, fear of anti-Semitism or the desire to protect his own privileged position as an assimilated Jew? Did he downplay the Holocaust because he felt welcome in the American elite only as long as he was indifferent to Jews and Zionism — the equivalent of liberal journalists today to whom fitting in at cocktail parties is more important than accuracy about Israel? His writings indicate a sincere belief in the Reform Judaism of his day, which repudiated Jewish peoplehood and nationhood. Like Jewish liberals today, he hated Jewish loyalty, preferring compassion for all mankind. All these motives are supported by Sulzberger's public speeches and private letters. All agree he set the policy to bury news of the Holocaust and was unopposed by any editor at the Times.

Dr. Leff's information on Sulzberger is chilling. Here are a few examples I included in the Wiki article: "Sulzberger took over the running of the New York Times on Ochs' death in 1935. He adopted a policy against printing any letters on the persecution of Jews in Germany, claiming that if he published letters decrying persecution, he would have to in fairness also publish letters in favor, so, he explained, "many valuable contributions attacking anti-Semitism have been excluded from these columns."

Sulzberger was incensed when Roosevelt used the term "Jewish race" in a statement on the refugee problem.

The Times publisher wrote there was "no common denominator" between the "poor unfortunate Jews now being driven around what was recently Poland....and myself." "In Poland this Jew is a part of a recognized minority. ... I, fortunately, (am) in no such category." Sulzberger explained "after a great deal of effort" he had purged the Times of such terminology — that is, the word Jew.

In June of 1942, he wrote: "As far as I am concerned, if a Jew were to become a Christian Scientist, he would cease being a Jew...I am quite prepared to admit however, that ...Hitler, in particular, has made this transition difficult."

After visiting the death camps in Europe in 1945, Sulzberger gave an address to a Reform temple stating that there was an overemphasis on Jewish refugees, who were after all, only a minority of the victims. He criticized Jews who tried to focus world interest on the problem of Jewish survivors, still in camps in Europe, "instead of using their great moral strength to plead the cause of all displaced persons."

I only found one controversial opinion on this topic, articulated by Harvard University Professor Ruth Wisse, who sees the New York Times repeating the same mistakes of the 1930s, as it buries news of Arab neo-Nazi motives and agendas:

Seventy-five years ago anti-Semitism found its home on the European right.

Today it's more likely to be found among intellectuals of the Left who, Prof. Wisse argues, suffer from a "massive intellectual resistance to acknowledging the threat." ... The Times missed the way Adolf Hitler's abuse of the Jews signaled a broader danger to the democratic freedoms and civil liberties of everyone, and set in stark relief Hitler's ambition to dominate the world. Prof. Wisse accuses the Times of a similar blindness today, when embarrassment over Jewish causes governs the newspaper's coverage of the Middle East, and the paper fails to report "in copious detail on the unmistakable signs of growing Arab extremism that erupted with spectacular force in the attacks on America of September 11."

I decided not to include the Wisse quote. Intelligent readers could draw their own parallels to present day New York Time's coverage of the Islamists' neo-Nazi war against Israel.

So you won't find the Ruth Wisse analysis in Wikipedia. Yet, perhaps her comments shed light on what follows — for you will not find the rest of the information either.

Do not bother to go to Wiki to read my entire article. It is not there. It has been removed and a short, inaccurate and polemical "stub" (Wiki jargon for treatment accorded to trivial topics) has been put in its place.

The information on Sulzberger that I added to the Sulzberger bio has been entirely removed.

The section I added to the New York Times page was also removed.

You can find a few sentences buried at the end of the article under a general sub-heading, "Controversy and Criticism," next to such scandals as junior journalist Jayson Blair's plagiarism in 2003. Wikipedia has buried the news of the New York Times burying the news of the Holocaust. History repeats itself without shame.

How did this happen? My initial post on the New York Times page attracted the attention of three hostile editors. They claimed I was a liar, the topic trivial, and that the Times had "dropped the ball only a little." They outnumbered me. Playing the Wiki system, they had me banned from the page while they removed the original article and substituted a few inaccurate paragraphs. They blocked the fact the Times had famously apologized in their 100 and 150th anniversary additions.

They blocked references to Dr. Leff's full length book. They blocked quotes from the founding directors of the Holocaust Museum, Michael Berenbaum; the Wyman Center for Holocaust studies, Rafi Medoff; Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Marvin Kalb; and they blocked A. M. Rosenthal, managing editor of the Times from 1962-78 and executive editor until 1988. They blocked all mention of Sulzberger, and all the details and numbers that give the topic its impact by making it meaningful. In short, they bury the news of the New York Times burying the news, much as the Times did it years ago.



Karin McQuillan is author of "Cheetah Chase", "Elephants' Graveyard" and "Deadly Safari". They trace the adventures of an American safari guide.

This appeared on the Unity Coalition for Israel (UCI)website.

Israel is the Heart of Our Civilization

by Nidra Poller

The airwaves are thick with the sound of raucous voices and clashing swords. O Jerusalem — well, ok, East Jerusalem — and the thundering hooves will brook no opposition! Get Israel!

At the slightest twinge of international pain from a geographical region known as the "Mideast conflict" they cry out, "Cut it off! Get rid of it, and the worldwide body politic will finally live in peace."

Ahmadinejad has promised hundreds of times to wipe Israel off the map without provoking much of a reaction. His proxies stock arms, poke and prod, without raising international eyebrows. Then Israel approves housing construction in Jerusalem and the sleeping warriors awake. Grrrrrr!

The Obama administration bares its fangs and the troops go into action. General Petraeus warns that the unresolved Israel-Palestine conflict is disturbing Muslim nations, stimulating extremism, and putting our boys in danger. Walt & Mearsheimer point the finger at homegrown Zionists who are twisting the arm of this vast nation, bringing it to its knees, and forcing Israel down our throats. The brave Petraeus denies he ever implied that our friendship with Israel could be a direct or indirect cause of American military casualties in friendly Muslim countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. But the hot potato has already been passed to Robert Gates who runs it smack between the White House goalposts and into the mouth of President Obama who can scold Israel off the top of his head.

Naughty [Zionist] boys... you're costing us "blood and treasure." Nothing less.

Israel is a pain. Dr. Quack has the solution. Cut out that festering appendix and the ummah will welcome us with open arms.

And just when we start to catch on, the president and his hired guns speak from the other side of their mouths. They were only kidding. Treating Prime Minister Netanyahu like a vacuum cleaner salesman at the White House was a sign of unfailing friendship. Israel and the United States are bosom buddies. Count on us! If blood and treasure must be spent by Big Friend America to save the neck of little guy Israel, we won't be stingy. All we ask in return is...

Make peace.

THE "TWO-STATE SOLUTION that everyone knows will resolve the conflict" is brandished like a scimitar: Israeli withdrawal to the '67 ('49 armistice) lines, dismantlement of settlements, a mini territorial tradeoff, a "solution" to the refugee problem, and the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital... Why is this "everyone knows the solution" religiously repeated when it has been amply demonstrated that neither Israel nor any Palestinian entity can accept it?

It is not a solution, it is a lethal narrative. A soft outer wrapping of apparently legitimate Palestinian aspirations hides a knife aimed at the heart of Jerusalem that would cripple Jewish sovereignty in the homeland. The insistence on a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem is inextricably joined to claims for statehood conceived as a natural right. The aim of the narrative is lethal — the destruction of Israel — and its constant repetition is a form of warfare.

On what grounds can Islam lay claim to any part of Jerusalem?

WHAT MAKES JERUSALEM SO PRECIOUS? — THE JEWS.

Mecca was sanctified by Islam, even though the black stone pre-existed the founding gesture, and Jerusalem was sanctified by Judaism. Subsequent religious claims to the city are accretions to the original consecration. Jerusalem is the Christian holy land because Jesus was a Jew. And Islam's claim is based on a scriptural injunction to supersede Judaism and Christianity. If claims to Jerusalem are based on religion, Judaism takes precedence.

If Muslim claims to Jerusalem are not religious but secular they are inexplicable. Ramallah would be more suitable as the capital of a Palestinian state that truly intended to live peacefully side by side with Israel. Why should the world be dragged into a fierce tug of war when the territorial issue — if that is what it is really about — could be so easily resolved?

The lethal narrative carries a double secular-religious warhead.
Topography trumps chronology in a dazzling Muslim claim to the centrality of Jerusalem staked on the Al Aqsa mosque and the gilded Dome of the Rock that dominate the Temple Mount (the French call it l'esplanade des mosquées). That's not centrality, it's replacement theology! If that claim is granted, the heart of our civilization will be broken. The precedent established in Jerusalem will be extended to Paris, New York, London, the Hague, Detroit, Washington D.C... wherever a mosque is built, Islam will extend its political sovereignty. It will be the end of separation of church and state, the end of religious and political freedom.

Al Aqsa, built on the ruins of the Jewish Temple, is not proof of centrality, it is the emblem of replacement theology. Europeans, who are so eager to impose the division of Jerusalem, are awakening to the dangers that threaten their own capitals. The Swiss said no to minarets, France and Belgium don't want veiled women in their streets, plans for mega-mosques in Rome and London, were nixed...

But the belated, timid European awakening pales in the face of an American president who has raised anti-Zionism to new heights. Take this sequence: Last month, mosque-goers threw rocks down from the Temple Mount at Jews worshipping at the kotel (Western Wall). Local Islamists regularly stir up the masses with false claims that Israel is violating the sanctity of al Aqsa.

Then President Obama worked up a fury against the Israeli government with false claims that housing construction in "East" Jerusalem (as if it were another state, like South Dakota!) jeopardizes the peace process. Ramat Shlomo is in north Jerusalem but ideology doesn't have a compass. The restoration of the Har Hova synagogue, "right next to Islam's holiest sites," was a further affront to Islam dutifully relayed by the world's pundits, bereft of the slightest notions of logic and chronology. Barack Hussein Obama dragged Benyamin Netanyahu into the coal shed and bound him hand and foot with ultimatums. Add it all up: in the space of two short weeks the free world bowed to the will of Temple Mount Islamists!

The faulty religious justification for the division of Israel's capital alternates with a secular narrative that stands on a falsified baseline where all of Israel was Palestinian land stolen by Jewish colonizers who created an illegal state which was subsequently extended by military conquests to include "East Jerusalem." Out of the goodness of their hearts the Palestinians will reluctantly accept the fait accompli for a rump state within the 1949 armistice line. But that's all!

Everything else is illegal and all means of reconquest are justified.

Jerusalem was divided by the sword. The neighborhoods claimed today as exclusively reserved for Arab-Muslims are Jewish neighborhoods that were emptied of their rightful residents by atrocious massacres during the first war of independence. The survivors fled for their lives. Arabs moved in. When Europe — followed now by the United States — validates that sort of zoning regulation, the rules will apply to their own cities. No need for tanks rumbling down the Champs Elysèes or bombs raining down on Coventry. Just increase the pressure on the pesky State of Israel, cut off its blood supply, and discover — too late — that you've given yourself a massive heart attack.

Hillary Clinton's "tough love" AIPAC speech concluded with a Passover homily. Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, preached the Secretary of State, and at every step of liberation and up to the threshold of the Promised Land, there were always hangers-back who said it was "too dangerous, too hard, too risky." Today, she would have us believe, the Promised Land is a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Israelis, like their hero Moses, should just do the right thing!

Was there a rabbi in the house?

THE LESSON OF PESACH is that the children of Israel were liberated from slavery in Egypt by the alliance between their own determination and the "outstretched hand." The Jewish people have remained faithful to this Alliance, which is inseparable from the integrity of Jerusalem. The Pesach seder is not the commemoration of a dead past, it is expressly the here and now of liberation. "I was a slave in Egypt..." We do not bow our heads to pharaohs, to presidents, or to international opinion.

The emissaries sent to Canaan to get the lay of the land came back and warned that it would be too hard to redeem the divine promise. "It's no Paradise. And besides there's all kinds of tough guys there," they said, shivering in their sandals. Deemed unworthy of the promised homeland, the liberated slaves spent forty years in the wilderness, learning to be free. They gave birth to a new generation that had the courage to build a sovereign Jewish nation with Jerusalem as its capital.

The values they forged during that period of apprenticeship are at the heart of Western civilization. The most salutary lesson of the current crisis is that Israel is not suicidal. Jews will choose life, and assaults on Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and its outskirts are stabs in the back of the free world.

Nidra Poller in author, novelist, translator and journalist. She is based in Paris and writes about the Muslims in Europe, anti-semitism and the French media and politicians.





This essay was received April 23, 2010. An earlier version was published by www.atlasshrugs.com and Makor Rishon.

Exposing How Post-Zionists Manipulate History

by Avi Beker

The Israeli New Historians have heavily influenced academic teaching about the Arab-Israeli conflict on campuses throughout the world.

The New Historians disregarded and omitted the two most critical features of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war: the religious-jihadi nature of the Arab campaign and Arab rejection of the UN partition resolution. The narrative built by the New Historians changed the parameters of political negotiations: a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel is not meant to correct the 1967 "occupation" and create a framework for a territories-for-peace exchange but to atone for the alleged atrocities of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1948. The sharp reversal of his positions by Benny Morris, regarded by many as the dean of the New Historians, must be viewed as a full exposure of the fictitious structure and distorted facts of what was an orchestrated, antihistorical, anti-Zionist endeavor.


"Historians have tended to ignore or dismiss, as so much hot air, the jihadi rhetoric and flourishes that accompanied the two-stage assault on the Yishuv and the constant references in the prevailing Arab discourse to that earlier bout of Islamic battle for the Holy Land, against the Crusaders. This is a mistake. The 1948 War, from the Arabs' perspective, was a war of religion as much as, if not more than, a nationalist war over territory. Put another way, the territory was sacred: its violation by infidels was sufficient grounds for launching a holy war and its conquest or reconquest, a divinely ordained necessity." -- Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War --

What happens when historians ignore or dismiss central components of history? In the above statement, Benny Morris provides a very unusual glimpse at the major historians' omission of what was the central feature of the Arab war against Israel in 1947-1948: uncompromising jihad against the Jews. The Arabs never concealed that this was a religious war and they were on record in taking responsibility for it. The Arab Higher Committee representative Jamal Husseini told the UN Security Council on 16 April 1948: "The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight."

Husseini was quoted in the New York Times explaining that the Arabs "would never allow a Jewish State to be established in one inch of Palestine," and he issued a clear warning that attempts "to impose any solution contrary to the Arabs' birthright will only lead to trouble and bloodshed and probably to a third World War."

Behind such deadly threats that were delivered to the whole world was the ongoing use in the Arab world of religious incitement against the Jews in public broadcasts and in mosques. Prominent in this regard were the mufti of Jerusalem and main leader of the Arabs in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the religious scholars of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the highest religious authority for Sunni Islam, which issued an official call for a "worldwide jihad" immediately after the UN resolution on the partition plan had passed in November 1947. Religion was central to the war effort as demonstrated by the rector of Al-Azhar University, Muhammad Mamun Shinawi, who told the Egyptian expeditionary force as it crossed the border in Rafah on 15 May 1948 on its way to fight the newborn state of Israel: "The hour of Jihad has struck.... This is the hour in which...Allah promised paradise."

These two critical and central features of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence - the religious-jihadi nature of the campaign and Arab responsibility for launching the war in rejection of the partition resolution - are very often disregarded or deliberately ignored in the vast amount of literature on the war.

What happened in 1948? This is the core of the debate. Basically the revisionist New Historians sought to challenge what they termed Israel's official historical canon. They rejected the collective memory of Zionism and the state of Israel, particularly the memory regarding the state's establishment. By claiming to have discovered new archival evidence - which in most cases was not new at all - and while ignoring the historical context of the war, this group of Israeli historians turned the saga of Israel's birth upside down so as to prove that Israel was born in a sin of conspiracies, ethnic cleansing, and massacres.

This essay, in focusing on the return of Benny Morris to the fold of mainstream Israeli historians, will review the impact of the New Historians on Middle East studies in academia, on the peace process, and on Israel's general image. Morris in his new incarnation provides the best ammunition in the intellectual struggle against the anti-Zionist historians disguised as revisionist historians, who claim to possess "new" documents that show the "true" history. Ethan Bronner in the New York Times explains the role historians play in political debates:

History does not get written or read in a vacuum. The new historians had an agenda - promoting the peace process then beginning. And many Israelis, eager to put an end to their century-old conflict, were willing to be told that their successful nation building had come at a high cost to the Palestinians. They were adjusting their collective narrative to make room for coexistence with onetime enemies. Did the New Historians write history or, rather, attempt to promote a political agenda? Was it motivated by a wish that admitting responsibility for supposed past wrongdoings would be reciprocated by the other side? Morris's case proves how shifting political perspectives can lead to revolutionary changes in historical analysis and conclusions.

Academic Impact

The impact of the New Historians who revised and interpreted anew the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict cannot be exaggerated. Their amendment of what they termed the "official" Zionist version of history, mixed with postmodernist assumptions (such as that there is no one version of history), was not confined to intellectual debates in academia. Dismissed at the beginning as a fringe phenomenon, this revision of history became within less than a decade the mainstream reading and learning in universities around the world.[6] Benny Morris, who is considered the dean of the New Historians and coined the term, has provided since 1988 the intellectual infrastructure for this revamped history. Morris's selective use of documents and disregard of Arab hatred, anti-Semitism, and rejectionism toward the idea of a Jewish state have become a goldmine for anti-Zionist literature.

The group also denied what they called the Israeli myth of "the few against the many" regarding the 1948 War, and for some (such as Ilan Pappé) these post-Zionist views were replaced by a self-declared anti-Zionism. In addition to Morris and Pappé, two or three others are considered part of the founding group of the New Historians. Simha Flapan, who was the first (1987) to engage in "demythologizing" the story of Israel's founding, was included in the list retrospectively after his death. Avi Shlaim emphasized what he viewed as the conspiratorial nature of Israel's collaboration with Britain and Jordan against the Palestinians. Another writer, Tom Segev, who arrived to this group as a post-Zionist, postmodern journalist, wrote about the Yishuv's (prestate Israel) attitudes toward the Holocaust and about Israeli society during the 1967 Six Day War, and latter added his own interpretation of the British Mandate in Palestine. In Segev's book it is hard to find the role of the Jews in British policy calculations in Palestine, and it is the Arabs who drove the British out.

The books written by these revisionist historians were published by prestigious publishing houses. They immediately affected the textbooks of Middle East studies syllabuses and reoriented the direction of new research projects and policy ideas on the peace process. The leading opinion-making publications in the United States, the dailies, weeklies, and foreign policy journals, devoted extensive reviews and discussions to what were perceived as groundbreaking works. Typically, even the more objective academics who did not accept all of the New Historians' premises found it necessary to present the conflict in terms of two competing views of history, admitting that "the very concept of objectivity has in recent decades been subjected to relentless attack."

The buzzword in studying the conflict was therefore "narrative," which was supposed to replace the "nonobjective" record of history. Instead of discussing the broad context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is central to the history of each of its particular wars, the popular approach started to isolate it as an Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The new books focused on alleged myths, on distorted collective memories, explaining that both sides were sanctifying hatred and resentment by "building legitimacy through narrative." Narrative - defined by the dictionary as "a story or account of events, experiences or the like, whether true or fictitious" - replaced the search for truth in historical research. Some argue that regardless of validity, a narrative is important because it is part of a collective memory, the belief-set of a group. However, as Morris would realize about two decades later, such fictitious narratives can be very dangerous when they have only one purpose: to deny responsibility for past hatred and to perpetuate it for generations to come.

In Israel, the transformation of history into narratives was reflected in the state-run TV miniseries Tekuma (Revival). Broadcast in 1998, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the state, it adopted many of the New Historians' findings. A year later these postmodern theories were given legitimacy by the Ministry of Education itself in its revised high school textbook (A World of Changes: History for Ninth Grade), part of a new curriculum aimed at teaching history from an expressly "universal" (as opposed to "nationalist") perspective. This trend even entered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which through its history division cosponsored a book that cast serious doubt on previous images of the War of Independence.

Replacing the Historical Canon

The basic arguments of the New Historians can be summarized as five challenges to the official Zionist canon of the history of 1948:

The official version said that Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state; the New Historians claimed that it tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Shlaim and Pappé describe in their books a conspiracy between Britain and the Jews at the expense of the Palestinians, and Shlaim extends this to a conspiracy between Zionism and King Abdullah of Transjordan to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. In another stretch of imagination, a Palestinian professor (a former negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization) argues that the target of the Arab armies was not the Jews but rather the expulsion of the Arabs in Palestine before taking it over.

The official version said - so claimed the revisionists - that the Palestinians fled their homes of their own free will; the New Historians said that the refugees were chased out or expelled. Here Morris's contribution was central though he himself was later quoted out of context. This aspect was pivotal for the moral and political campaign to delegitimize Israel. The official version said that the balance of power favored the Arabs; the New Historians said that Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms, and denied what they regarded as the myth of a heroic liberation war of the few against the many. While denigrating and inciting against Israel, the New Historians also came to the rescue of the Arab image and revised or denied the official Israeli claim that the Arabs had a coordinated plan to destroy Israel. The New Historians said that the Arabs were divided or denied their death threats altogether.

All these four questions lead to the ongoing debate among historians: did the Yishuv in 1947 joyously embrace partition? Who is responsible for the lack of peace? Is it Israeli intransigence or the Arab unwillingness to accept a Jewish state? Some historians (including Flapan and Shlaim) have claimed that the Arabs wanted peace but the Zionists have been wily in maneuvering Arab leaders (such as al-Husseini, Gamal Abdel Nasser, or Yasser Arafat) into the rejectionist camp.
Impact on the Peace Process

The revisionist historians did not just end up conquering the syllabuses and the instruction in academia; they also took over the arena of Middle East diplomacy and politics. The New Historians had a major impact on the peace process and in shaping the positions taken by the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the Americans. While negotiating for the Oslo agreements in 1992-1993, the then Israeli deputy foreign minister Yossi Beilin was reading Morris's book on the Palestinian refugees; later Beilin said the book was a must for Israeli negotiators. Subsequently, during meetings of joint Palestinian-Israeli groups to promote the peace process, the refugee issue became the focal point in attempting to create "agreed mutual perception" of the parties' grievances and to assume responsibility for past wrongdoings.

The revisionists and their guilt-filled narrative loomed over the Israeli negotiators at Camp David hosted by President Bill Clinton in July 2000 and, a few months later, at the Taba talks in the Sinai. The Palestinian negotiators at both forums referred to the work of the New Historians, especially Benny Morris, in trying "to establish Israel's share of responsibility for the plight of the 1948 refugees." Israeli negotiators Beilin and Gilad Sher quoted from Morris's book, and Daniel Levy, Beilin's assistant, has described how important it was for the Israeli team to change the historical narrative so as to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on their "right of return."

Another participant at Camp David was the then Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, himself a historian who admitted that the New Historians had "definitely helped in consolidating the Palestinians' conviction as to the validity of their own narrative" and that the "Israeli peacemakers also came to the negotiating table with perspectives that were shaped by recent research...powerful arguments on the 1948 war...[which] became part of the intellectual baggage of many of us, whether we admitted it or not."

In sum, the narrative built by the New Historians changed the parameters of political negotiations: a peace agreement was not meant to correct the 1967 "occupation" and create a framework for a territories-for-peace exchange, but to atone for the alleged atrocities of the Nakba (Palestinian catastrophe) of 1948. It became apparent to all that the main obstacle to peace was the problem of the refugees' "right of return" to all parts of Israel.

Morris's Retreat

The person who laid the foundation for historical post-Zionism, Benny Morris, is also the one who undermined it in bringing the most serious challenge to its intellectual integrity. Morris still appears unable to say "I was wrong" and express regret for helping build the intellectual basis for the campaign against Israel and Zionism. Instead of exposing his own distortions and fallacies, he says he has found new documents in the Israeli archives that gave him a new perspective on the conflict. Reading his new interpretation of the same events makes it clear how the New Historians - at best - wrote history out of context, completely detached from the reality of its origins. In most cases they engaged in a deliberate falsification and used the "grand lie" technique against Israel.

Then suddenly, about twenty years later, Morris discovered that the Arabs had declared a jihad against Zionism already back in the 1930s. He explains his new approach as stemming from the opening of archives, including the IDF's archive, which was closed to researchers previously. He also adds that "in the current book [1948] I placed the refugee problem within the overall context of the War of Independence," and with the help of recent studies, "I tried to present a new and comprehensive description of the war, and primarily of the connections between the military processes and the diplomatic processes."

A new description? The exact opposite, in fact. His two most recent books, 1948 and One State, Two States, which were released over the past two years, completely contradict his arguments and the factual basis for his revolutionary historical approach. Morris returns to what was so detested by the New Historians, or as they put it: the canonical version of the official Zionist narrative. His new books demolish all the premises and conclusions of the New Historians. He feels no need to apologize for presenting a sharp indictment of all of post-Zionism, claiming that "historians tended to belittle the importance of the religious rhetoric during the war" and the central role of "religious motivation." This is exactly the omission committed by Morris in his previous books. The dismissal of the threats of jihad was intentional and critical for those who set out to write the "new" narrative and to turn the Nakba into the Palestinian "Holocaust."

The jihad was apparent to all in the existing literature since 1948: threats of annihilation were heard from all Arab sides and even from the dais of the United Nations in 1947 and 1948. As noted, the mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, repeated such threats over and over again; and religious scholars in Cairo issued an official manifesto calling for jihad two days after the partition resolution was passed in November 1947. The translation of the religious decree into military action was the invasion of the Arab armies, which were called the Arab Liberation Army and the Jihad al-Mukades (Holy War) Army.

On the day that Israel declared its independence, Arab League secretary-general Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha declared a holy war. He said, "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." Azzam Pasha, who was the leading spokesperson of all Arab states, had been similarly clear and violent in opposing the partition resolution: "The partition line will be nothing but a line of fire and blood." Al-Husseini stated, "I declare a holy war, my Moslem brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!"

Suddenly, and consistently, Morris renounces the post-Zionist narrative in numerous articles, interviews, and lectures, and presents his new position in scholarly books. Indeed, Morris informs his readers that his previous books missed the historical context of the 1948 War, which was a jihadi onslaught by the Muslim world against the Jewish community in Palestine. From the start Morris was little embarrassed, telling The Guardian in 2002: "The rumour that I have undergone a brain transplant is (as far as I can remember) unfounded - or at least premature. But my thinking about the current Middle East crisis and its protagonists has in fact radically changed during the past two years."

In his own testimony, Morris explains that a new historical awareness about Arab sources of rage, hatred, and anti-Semitism led him to a new reading of the 1948 war. He is even able to document the intellectual transplant surgery he was undergoing:

My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or Sheli [a dovish party of the late 1970s], and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa.

Morris goes further in his interview and explains - as was unknown in his previous books and is unheard of in politically correct circles - that there is a "deep problem in Islam." It is a world in which "life doesn't have the same value it does in the West." The Arabs belong to a "tribal culture" in which "revenge" plays a "central part" within a society so lacking in "moral inhibitions" that "if it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them."

Rewriting the Revisionist History

The complete disregard of historical context can be detected in the tables of contents and in the indexes of the New Historians' books. Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism is nonexistent; if one reads Ilan Pappé or Avi Shlaim on the conflict he may think that jihad was invented on September 11, 2001.

The New Historians' omissions regarding al-Husseini's role in fomenting hatred against the Jews are part of their great exercise of rewriting history. There were plenty of records on the mufti from the early stages of the conflict under the British Mandate. To evaluate his role as the only recognized leader of the Palestinians until after Israel's establishment, there was no need for new archives to be opened. It is striking that an anti-Israeli Palestinian American such as Rashid Khalidi presents more self-criticism on the destructive role of the two most prominent Palestinian leaders, al-Husseini and Arafat, and also devotes more analysis to Arab anti-Semitism than do the Israeli New Historians. At the same time, Khalidi refers to Morris's early book on the Palestinian refugees as a "groundbreaking" work that "shattered many myths."

Morris "B" (in 2008) reveals how the confluence of Islamic anti-Semitism and jihad played a critical role at the early stages of the conflict in Palestine. It was an integral part of the Arab Revolt in 1936 and it was pursued repeatedly by outsiders such as the speaker of the Iraqi parliament Sa'id al-Haj Thabit when he visited Palestine in March 1936. Morris also notes the mufti's active role in the Nazi jihadist propaganda to the Middle East and in recruiting Bosnian Muslims to the Wehrmacht. The mufti, says Morris, was "deeply anti-Semitic" and justified the Holocaust based on the Jewish character with "their exaggerated conceit and selfishness, rooted in their belief that they are the chosen people of God." Jihad was even part of the diplomatic exchanges sometime before the 1948 War. The Palestinians' main political organ at the time, the Arab Higher Committee, used the term jihad as a formal threat and ultimatum early in 1946 in a letter to British prime minister Clement Attlee.

In the last chapter of 1948, Morris is detailed and persuasive on the critical role of religious hatred in 1947-1948. He concludes: "The jihadi impulse underscored both popular and governmental responses in the Arab world to the UN partition resolution and was central to the mobilization of the 'street' and the governments for the successive onslaughts [during the war.]... The mosques, mullahs, and 'ulema all played a pivotal role in the process." With these open and prevailing attitudes, the threat to the Jews was very clear in the eyes of Arab observers. As one Christian Lebanese quoted by Morris told the press: "The Jewish State has no chance to survive now that the 'holy war' has been declared. All the Jews will eventually be massacred."

With threats of jihad and extermination coming from all over and with the rejection of the diplomatic track, coupled with the calls to deploy all available military force, the Yishuv could only prepare for the worst-case scenario. As many voices made doomsday warnings, the leaders of the Yishuv had no need to engage in theoretical war games. When the 'ulema of Al-Azhar University proclaimed a "worldwide jihad in defense of Arab Palestine," British foreign minister Ernest Bevin expressed his concern for "the safety of thousands of Jews scattered in the Arab world" and in particular the hundred thousand Jews of Baghdad who were at "risk of having their throats cut."

Jihad was openly declared both in demonstrations in Damascus and in diplomatic circles in the United Nations, where the head of the Egyptian delegation said that "the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Muslim countries would be jeopardized by the establishment of a Jewish state." In May 1948, U.S. secretary of state (and World War II hero) George C. Marshall warned Israeli foreign-minister-to-be Moshe Sharett against signing Israel's Declaration of Independence: "Believe me; I am talking about things about which I know. You are sitting there in the coastal plains of Palestine, while the Arabs hold the mountain ridges. I know you have some arms and your Haganah, but the Arabs have regular armies. They are well trained and they have heavy arms. How can you hope to hold out?"

A comparison between Morris "A" and Morris "B" shows how the historical context can become blurred and even distorted by using selective facts that are inflated at the expense of the larger and more critical forces of history. It may be true that at the end of the war the newborn IDF emerged better organized, trained, and motivated. Yet during the war itself, as Morris shows in his more recent incarnation, there was a totally different assessment. The majority in the interim Jewish government before statehood as well as the Arabs, British, and Americans all thought the Arabs would defeat the Jewish army in Palestine. It is true that with current hindsight we can explain how the Arabs failed to organize adequately and how the Palestinian Arabs failed to mobilize their own resources because of "their well established traditions of disunity, corruption, and organizational incompetence." However, the war context was different: "In rough demographic and geographical terms, without doubt, the Arabs were far, almost infinitely, stronger than the Yishuv...and the disproportion in terms of land mass and economic resources, or potential economic resources, was, if anything, even greater."

The four armies that invaded Palestine on 15 May, even after leaving behind large formations to protect their regimes, "were far stronger than the Haganah formations" in all kinds of equipment, having far more tanks, artillery, and combat aircrafts (Israel lacked all of these initially). It is natural that at this point, particularly after witnessing the Arab mindset in the systematic destruction of all Jewish settlements by Arab invading armies, the Yishuv's aim was simply "to survive." In addition to a clear perception of military inferiority, based on facts and calculations, it was obvious to the Yishuv leaders that the international diplomatic environment was "consistently pro-Arab" and that the British and the Americans were working together on retracting the implementation of the UN vote to establish a Jewish state.

The New Historians' attempt to prove the British collusion with the Jews against the Arabs is refuted by both the diplomatic and military posture of the Mandatory power. To the contrary, the British were helping in training and in supplying weapons to the Arab Legion of Transjordan, which was the best-trained army in the region, and they worked actively with the Americans to foil the partition in Palestine. Their assessment of the military situation was expressed by the Chief of the Imperial Staff: "In the long run the Jews would not be able to cope...and would be thrown out of Palestine unless they came to terms with [the Arabs]." On 16 May 1948, the British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham determined that the balance of forces "seems to have turned much in favor of the Arabs." Their representative in Amman, Alec Kirkbride, passed along a message from Azzam Pasha: "It doesn't matter how many [Jews there are]. We will sweep them into the sea."

Conclusions

In his most recent book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, Benny Morris casts a dark cloud over the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. He asserts that the primary reason there is no peace is "the stifling darkness, intolerance, authoritarianism, and insularity of the Muslim world," a reality that makes any solution a dim prospect.

The problem with Morris is that these factors, as well as those numerous statements on jihad and exterminating the Jews, were in the public domain everywhere in the Middle East, the United Nations, and the Western press and academic publications since 1947-1948. The opening of archives that historians so solemnly flaunt as "new sources" can sometimes add to the knowledge but not necessarily to the historical context and awareness. New documents may provide some previously unavailable details, but in most cases they cannot change the direction of historical research. Worst of all, a selective use of archives that ignores the historical context, ends up in distortions and misleading accounts. It can only serve those like Ilan Pappé, who does not attempt to disguise his anti-Zionist agenda and defines the "new history" as a revolutionary movement whose goal is to "reconsider the validity of the quest for a Jewish nation-state in what used to be geographic Palestine."

In reply to readers in the Irish Times, Morris was unequivocal on the refugee problem:

The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became "refugees" - and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee) - was not a "racist crime"...but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves. There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing."
Morris went on to say that, given the deadly threats "and the anticipated Arab armies' invasion routes...I for one cannot fault [the Jews'] fears or logic."

The new Morris blames the Arabs for their misfortunes, denies the existence of a Jewish strategy of expulsion or transfer, and, in effect, defends the right of David Ben-Gurion to expel even more, in light of the threats of jihad. Suddenly, in the concluding chapters in both books, Morris brings the case of the Jews who were expelled from Arab lands, showing that there was an exchange of refugees, with approximately the same figures, as a result of the war. The Arabs who declared the war, says Morris, are also responsible for perpetuating the tragedy of the Palestinians in refugee camps, unlike those Jewish refugees who were absorbed in Israel.

As noted, Morris speaks openly about his failed expectations regarding the Palestinians' aims in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Probably, in addition to his learning process on the roots of the conflict, he could not ignore the fact that there are virtually no "new historians" on the Arab or the Palestinian side who could inquire into how the religious factor was so detrimental in perpetuating the conflict and how radical Islam was instrumental in inciting against the acceptance of a Jewish state. Hence, he ends his study on 1948 with a clear "J'accuse" against those historians who fail to understand the Arab rejection of the Jewish state and disregard clear facts and statements of religious hatred.

In his more recent books and articles, Morris has become the leading and most effective voice in exposing how the remaining New Historians cling to their unfounded and false messages. Morris's journey and his radical retreat from his earlier publications constitute an unusual testament to the thin line separating history from propaganda or even falsehood. When the recording of events is motivated by a determination to create a postmodern political narrative, it may end up escaping from history altogether.

Dr. Avi Beker teaches in the MA program on diplomacy at Tel Aviv University, returning from two years as a visiting professor at Georgetown University. He is the former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress and has published books and articles on international politics and security and world Jewry.

This article was published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, JCPA. Contact them by mail at jcpa@netvision.net.il