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9/11 Truth, JFK assassination, Holocaust revision & ISIS interactive spreadsheet |
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Ben-Gurion's Scandal Voltairenet
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Pro-Israel Lobby in US Under Attack and see UPI ( 1% news, Sun Myung Moon) "Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life. and Harvard , "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy". |
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The article, which is already stirring furious debate in US academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby. WASHINGTON - (UPI) - Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kenney School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures American in academic life. They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organized the funneling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate. And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life. "Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts -- or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites -- violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write. "The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books. The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo- 1%s" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq. "The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo- 1%s, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo- 1%s' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests." "The neo- 1%s had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write. The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby. "For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says. "The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?" Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add. "The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel -- are essentially identical," they add. They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states. "Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add. "Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits." They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens." The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups. The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead. They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical." "Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed." © Copyright 2006 United Press International
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Jews Against Zionism list, from DoubleStandards website |
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Library of Congress Country Study Ottoman Empire |
Bint Jbeil THE JEWS OF IRAQ By Naeim Giladi Wikipedia pic |
THE JEWS OF IRAQ By Naeim Giladi naeim giladi write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors. I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called "cruel Zionism." I write about it because I was part of it. My Story Of course I thought I knew it all back then. I was young, idealistic, and more than willing to put my life at risk for my convictions. It was 1947 and I wasn't quite 18 when the Iraqi authorities caught me for smuggling young Iraqi Jews like myself out of Iraq, into Iran, and then on to the Promised Land of the soon-to-be established Israel. I was an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist underground. My Iraqi jailers did everything they could to extract the names of my co-conspirators. Fifty years later, pain still throbs in my right toe-a reminder of the day my captors used pliers to remove my toenails. On another occasion, they hauled me to the flat roof of the prison, stripped me bare on a frigid January day, then threw a bucket of cold water over me. I was left there, chained to the railing, for hours. But I never once considered giving them the information they wanted. I was a true believer. My preoccupation during what I refer to as my "two years in hell" was with survival and escape. I had no interest then in the broad sweep of Jewish history in Iraq even though my family had been part of it right from the beginning. We were originally Haroons, a large and important family of the "Babylonian Diaspora." My ancestors had settled in Iraq more than 2,600 years ago-600 years before Christianity, and 1,200 years before Islam. I am descended from Jews who built the tomb of Yehezkel, a Jewish prophet of pre-biblical times. My town, where I was born in 1929, is Hillah, not far from the ancient site of Babylon. The original Jews found Babylon, with its nourishing Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to be truly a land of milk, honey, abundance-and opportunity. Although Jews, like other minorities in what became Iraq, experienced periods of oppression and discrimination depending on the rulers of the period, their general trajectory over two and one-half millennia was upward. Under the late Ottoman rule, for example, Jewish social and religious institutions, schools, and medical facilities flourished without outside interference, and Jews were prominent in government and business. As I sat there in my cell, unaware that a death sentence soon would be handed down against me, I could not have recounted any personal grievances that my family members would have lodged against the government or the Muslim majority. Our family had been treated well and had prospered, first as farmers with some 50,000 acres devoted to rice, dates and Arab horses. Then, with the Ottomans, we bought and purified gold that was shipped to Istanbul and turned into coinage. The Turks were responsible in fact for changing our name to reflect our occupation-we became Khalaschi, meaning "Makers of Pure." I did not volunteer the information to my father that I had joined the Zionist underground. He found out several months before I was arrested when he saw me writing Hebrew and using words and expressions unfamiliar to him. He was even more surprised to learn that, yes, I had decided I would soon move to Israel myself. He was scornful. "You'll come back with your tail between your legs," he predicted. About 125,000 Jews left Iraq for Israel in the late 1940s and into 1952, most because they had been lied to and put into a panic by what I came to learn were Zionist bombs. But my mother and father were among the 6,000 who did not go to Israel. Although physically I never did return to Iraq-that bridge had been burned in any event-my heart has made the journey there many, many times. My father had it right. I was imprisoned at the military camp of Abu-Greib, about 7 miles from Baghdad. When the military court handed down my sentence of death by hanging, I had nothing to lose by attempting the escape I had been planning for many months. It was a strange recipe for an escape: a dab of butter, an orange peel, and some army clothing that I had asked a friend to buy for me at a flea market. I deliberately ate as much bread as I could to put on fat in anticipation of the day I became 18, when they could formally charge me with a crime and attach the 50-pound ball and chain that was standard prisoner issue. Later, after my leg had been shackled, I went on a starvation diet that often left me weak-kneed. The pat of butter was to lubricate my leg in preparation for extricating it from the metal band. The orange peel I surreptitiously stuck into the lock on the night of my planned escape, having studied how it could be placed in such a way as to keep the lock from closing. As the jailers turned to go after locking up, I put on the old army issue that was indistinguishable from what they were wearing-a long, green coat and a stocking cap that I pulled down over much of my face (it was winter). Then I just quietly opened the door and joined the departing group of soldiers as they strode down the hall and outside, and I offered a "good night" to the shift guard as I left. A friend with a car was waiting to speed me away. Later I made my way to the new state of Israel, arriving in May, 1950. My passport had my name in Arabic and English, but the English couldn't capture the "kh" sound, so it was rendered simply as Klaski. At the border, the immigration people applied the English version, which had an Eastern European, Ashkenazi ring to it. In one way, this "mistake" was my key to discovering very soon just how the Israeli caste system worked. They asked me where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I was the son of a farmer; I knew all the problems of the farm, so I volunteered to go to Dafnah, a farming kibbutz in the high Galilee. I only lasted a few weeks. The new immigrants were given the worst of everything. The food was the same, but that was the only thing that everyone had in common. For the immigrants, bad cigarettes, even bad toothpaste. Everything. I left. Then, through the Jewish Agency, I was advised to go to al-Majdal (later renamed Ashkelon), an Arab town about 9 miles from Gaza, very close to the Mediterranean. The Israeli government planned to turn it into a farmers' city, so my farm background would be an asset there. When I reported to the Labor Office in al-Majdal, they saw that I could read and write Arabic and Hebrew and they said that I could find a good-paying job with the Military Governor's office. The Arabs were under the authority of these Israeli Military Governors. A clerk handed me a bunch of forms in Arabic and Hebrew. Now it dawned on me. Before Israel could establish its farmers' city, it had to rid al-Majdal of its indigenous Palestinians. The forms were petitions to the United Nations Inspectors asking for transfer out of Israel to Gaza, which was under Egyptian control. I read over the petition. In signing, the Palestinian would be saying that he was of sound mind and body and was making the request for transfer free of pressure or duress. Of course, there was no way that they would leave without being pressured to do so. These families had been there hundreds of years, as farmers, primitive artisans, weavers. The Military Governor prohibited them from pursuing their livelihoods, just penned them up until they lost hope of resuming their normal lives. That's when they signed to leave. I was there and heard their grief. "Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange trees that we planted with our own hands. Please let us go, let us give water to those trees. God will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended." I asked the Military Governor to give them relief, but he said, "No, we want them to leave." I could no longer be part of this oppression and I left. Those Palestinians who didn't sign up for transfers were taken by force-just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. About four thousand people were driven from al-Majdal in one way or another. The few who remained were collaborators with the Israeli authorities. Subsequently, I wrote letters trying to get a government job elsewhere and I got many immediate responses asking me to come for an interview. Then they would discover that my face didn't match my Polish/Ashkenazi name. They would ask if I spoke Yiddish or Polish, and when I said I didn't, they would ask where I came by a Polish name. Desperate for a good job, I would usually say that I thought my great-grandfather was from Poland. I was advised time and again that "we'll give you a call." Eventually, three to four years after coming to Israel, I changed my name to Giladi, which is close to the code name, Gilad, that I had in the Zionist underground. Klaski wasn't doing me any good anyway, and my Eastern friends were always chiding me about the name they knew didn't go with my origins as an Iraqi Jew. I was disillusioned at what I found in the Promised Land, disillusioned personally, disillusioned at the institutionalized racism, disillusioned at what I was beginning to learn about Zionism's cruelties. The principal interest Israel had in Jews from Islamic countries was as a supply of cheap labor, especially for the farm work that was beneath the urbanized Eastern European Jews. Ben Gurion needed the "Oriental" Jews to farm the thousands of acres of land left by Palestinians who were driven out by Israeli forces in 1948. And I began to find out about the barbaric methods used to rid the fledgling state of as many Palestinians as possible. The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological warfare, but Israel was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East. In the 1948 war, Jewish forces would empty Arab villages of their populations, often by threats, sometimes by just gunning down a half-dozen unarmed Arabs as examples to the rest. To make sure the Arabs couldn't return to make a fresh life for themselves in these villages, the Israelis put typhus and dysentery bacteria into the water wells. Uri Mileshtin, an official historian for the Israeli Defense Force, has written and spoken about the use of bacteriological agents. According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dayan, a division commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze their homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria. Acre was so situated that it could practically defend itself with one big gun, so the Haganah put bacteria into the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran from the north near a kibbutz. The Haganah put typhus bacteria into the water going to Acre, the people got sick, and the Jewish forces occupied Acre. This worked so well that they sent a Haganah division dressed as Arabs into Gaza, where there were Egyptian forces, and the Egyptians caught them putting two cans of bacteria, typhus and dysentery, into the water supply in wanton disregard of the civilian population. "In war, there is no sentiment," one of the captured Haganah men was quoted as saying. My activism in Israel began shortly after I received a letter from the Socialist/Zionist Party asking me to help with their Arabic newspaper. When I showed up at their offices at Central House in Tel Aviv, I asked around to see just where I should report. I showed the letter to a couple of people there and, without even looking at it, they would motion me away with the words, "Room No. 8." When I saw that they weren't even reading the letter, I inquired of several others. But the response was the same, "Room No. 8," with not a glance at the paper I put in front of them. So I went to Room 8 and saw that it was the Department of Jews from Islamic Countries. I was disgusted and angry. Either I am a member of the party or I'm not. Do I have a different ideology or different politics because I am an Arab Jew? It's segregation, I thought, just like a Negroes' Department. I turned around and walked out. That was the start of my open protests. That same year I organized a demonstration in Ashkelon against Ben Gurion's racist policies and 10,000 people turned out. There wasn't much opportunity for those of us who were second class citizens to do much about it when Israel was on a war footing with outside enemies. After the 1967 war, I was in the Army myself and served in the Sinai when there was continued fighting along the Suez Canal. But the cease-fire with Egypt in 1970 gave us our opening. We took to the streets and organized politically to demand equal rights. If it's our country, if we were expected to risk our lives in a border war, then we expected equal treatment. We mounted the struggle so tenaciously and received so much publicity that the Israeli government tried to discredit our movement by calling us "Israel's Black Panthers." They were thinking in racist terms, really, in assuming the Israeli public would reject an organization whose ideology was being compared to that of radical blacks in the United States. But we saw that what we were doing was no different than what blacks in the United States were fighting against-segregation, discrimination, unequal treatment. Rather than reject the label, we adopted it proudly. I had posters of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela and other civil rights activists plastered all over my office. With the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the Israeli-condoned Sabra and Shatilla massacres, I had had enough of Israel. I became a United States citizen and made certain to revoke my Israeli citizenship. I could never have written and published my book in Israel, not with the censorship they would impose. Even in America, I had great difficulty finding a publisher because many are subject to pressures of one kind or another from Israel and its friends. I ended up paying $60,000 from my own pocket to publish Ben Gurion's Scandals: How the Haganah & the Mossad Eliminated Jews, virtually the entire proceeds from having sold my house in Israel. I still was afraid that the printer would back out or that legal proceedings would be initiated to stop its publication, like the Israeli government did in an attempt to prevent former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky from publishing his first book. Ben Gurion's Scandals had to be translated into English from two languages. I wrote in Hebrew when I was in Israel and hoped to publish the book there, and I wrote in Arabic when I was completing the book after coming to the U.S. But I was so worried that something would stop publication that I told the printer not to wait for the translations to be thoroughly checked and proofread. Now I realize that the publicity of a lawsuit would just have created a controversial interest in the book. I am using bank vault storage for the valuable documents that back up what I have written. These documents, including some that I illegally copied from the archives at Yad Vashem, confirm what I saw myself, what I was told by other witnesses, and what reputable historians and others have written concerning the Zionist bombings in Iraq, Arab peace overtures that were rebuffed, and incidents of violence and death inflicted by Jews on Jews in the cause of creating Israel. The Riots of 1941 If, as I have said, my family in Iraq was not persecuted personally and I knew no deprivation as a member of the Jewish minority, what led me to the steps of the gallows as a member of the Zionist underground? To answer that question, it is necessary to establish the context of the massacre that occurred in Baghdad on June 1, 1941, when several hundred Iraqi Jews were killed in riots involving junior officers of the Iraqi army. I was 12 years of age and many of those killed were my friends. I was angry, and very confused. What I didn't know at the time was that the riots most likely were stirred up by the British, in collusion with a pro-British Iraqi leadership. With the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following WW I, Iraq came under British "tutelage." Amir Faisal, son of Sharif Hussein who had led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman sultan, was brought in from Mecca by the British to become King of Iraq in 1921. Many Jews were appointed to key administrative posts, including that of economics minister. Britain retained final authority over domestic and external affairs. Britain's pro-Zionist attitude in Palestine, however, triggered a growing anti-Zionist backlash in Iraq, as it did in all Arab countries. Writing at the end of 1934, Sir Francis Humphreys, Britain's Ambassador in Baghdad, noted that, while before WW I Iraqi Jews had enjoyed a more favorable position than any other minority in the country, since then "Zionism has sown dissension between Jews and Arabs, and a bitterness has grown up between the two peoples which did not previously exist." King Faisal died in 1933. He was succeeded by his son Ghazi, who died in a motor car accident in 1939. The crown then passed to Ghazi's 4-year-old son, Faisal II, whose uncle, Abd al-Ilah, was named regent. Abd al-Ilah selected Nouri el-Said as prime minister. El-Said supported the British and, as hatred of the British grew, he was forced from office in March 1940 by four senior army officers who advocated Iraq's independence from Britain. Calling themselves the Golden Square, the officers compelled the regent to name as prime minister Rashid Ali al-Kilani, leader of the National Brotherhood party. The time was 1940 and Britain was reeling from a strong German offensive. Al-Kilani and the Golden Square saw this as their opportunity to rid themselves of the British once and for all. Cautiously they began to negotiate for German support, which led the pro-British regent Abd al-Ilah to dismiss al-Kilani in January 1941. By April, however, the Golden Square officers had reinstated the prime minister. This provoked the British to send a military force into Basra on April 12, 1941. Basra, Iraq's second largest city, had a Jewish population of 30,000. Most of these Jews made their livings from import/export, money changing, retailing, as workers in the airports, railways, and ports, or as senior government employees. On the same day, April 12, supporters of the pro-British regent notified the Jewish leaders that the regent wanted to meet with them. As was their custom, the leaders brought flowers for the regent. Contrary to custom, however, the cars that drove them to the meeting place dropped them off at the site where the British soldiers were concentrated. Photographs of the Jews appeared in the following day's newspapers with the banner "Basra Jews Receive British Troops with Flowers." That same day, April 13, groups of angry Arab youths set about to take revenge against the Jews. Several Muslim notables in Basra heard of the plan and calmed things down. Later, it was learned that the regent was not in Basra at all and that the matter was a provocation by his pro-British supporters to bring about an ethnic war in order to give the British army a pretext to intervene. The British continued to land more forces in and around Basra. On May 7, 1941, their Gurkha unit, composed of Indian soldiers from that ethnic group, occupied Basra's el-Oshar quarter, a neighborhood with a large Jewish population. The soldiers, led by British officers, began looting. Many shops in the commercial district were plundered. Private homes were broken into. Cases of attempted rape were reported. Local residents, Jews and Muslims, responded with pistols and old rifles, but their bullets were no match for the soldiers' Tommy Guns. Afterwards, it was learned that the soldiers acted with the acquiescence, if not the blessing, of their British commanders. (It should be remembered that the Indian soldiers, especially those of the Gurkha unit, were known for their discipline, and it is highly unlikely they would have acted so riotously without orders.) The British goal clearly was to create chaos and to blacken the image of the pro-nationalist regime in Baghdad, thereby giving the British forces reason to proceed to the capital and to overthrow the al-Kilani government. Baghdad fell on May 30. Al-Kilani fled to Iran, along with the Golden Square officers. Radio stations run by the British reported that Regent Abd al-Ilah would be returning to the city and that thousands of Jews and others were planning to welcome him. What inflamed young Iraqis against the Jews most, however, was the radio announcer Yunas Bahri on the German station "Berlin," who reported in Arabic that Jews from Palestine were fighting alongside the British against Iraqi soldiers near the city of Faluja. The report was false. On Sunday, June 1, unarmed fighting broke out in Baghdad between Jews who were still celebrating their Shabuoth holiday and young Iraqis who thought the Jews were celebrating the return of the pro-British regent. That evening, a group of Iraqis stopped a bus, removed the Jewish passengers, murdered one and fatally wounded a second. About 8:30 the following morning, some 30 individuals in military and police uniforms opened fire along el-Amin street, a small downtown street whose jewelry, tailor and grocery shops were Jewish-owned. By 11 a.m., mobs of Iraqis with knives, switchblades and clubs were attacking Jewish homes in the area. The riots continued throughout Monday, June 2. During this time, many Muslims rose to defend their Jewish neighbors, while some Jews successfully defended themselves. There were 124 killed and 400 injured, according to a report written by a Jewish Agency messenger who was in Iraq at the time. Other estimates, possibly less reliable, put the death toll higher, as many as 500, with from 650 to 2,000 injured. From 500 to 1,300 stores and more than 1,000 homes and apartments were looted. Who was behind the rioting in the Jewish quarter? Yosef Meir, one of the most prominent activists in the Zionist underground movement in Iraq, known then as Yehoshafat, claims it was the British. Meir, who now works for the Israeli Defense Ministry, argues that, in order to make it appear that the regent was returning as the savior who would reestablish law and order, the British stirred up the riots against the most vulnerable and visible segment in the city, the Jews. And, not surprisingly, the riots ended as soon as the regent's loyal soldiers entered the capital. My own investigations as a journalist lead me to believe Meir is correct. Furthermore, I think his claims should be seen as based on documents in the archives of the Israeli Defense Ministry, the agency that published his book. Yet, even before his book came out, I had independent confirmation from a man I met in Iran in the late Forties. His name was Michael Timosian, an Iraqi Armenian. When I met him he was working as a male nurse at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Abadan in the south of Iran. On June 2, 1941, however, he was working at the Baghdad hospital where many of the riot victims were brought. Most of these victims were Jews. Timosian said he was particularly interested in two patients whose conduct did not follow local custom. One had been hit by a bullet in his shoulder, the other by a bullet in his right knee. After the doctor removed the bullets, the staff tried to change their blood-soaked cloths. But the two men fought off their efforts, pretending to be speechless, although tests showed they could hear. To pacify them, the doctor injected them with anesthetics and, as they were sleeping, Timosian changed their cloths. He discovered that one of them had around his neck an identification tag of the type used by British troops, while the other had tattoos with Indian script on his right arm along with the familiar sword of the Gurkha. The next day when Timosian showed up for work, he was told that a British officer, his sergeant and two Indian Gurkha soldiers had come to the hospital early that morning. Staff members overheard the Gurkha soldiers talking with the wounded patients, who were not as dumb as they had pretended. The patients saluted the visitors, covered themselves with sheets and, without signing the required release forms, left the hospital with their visitors. Today there is no doubt in my mind that the anti-Jewish riots of 1941 were orchestrated by the British for geopolitical ends. David Kimche is certainly a man who was in a position to know the truth, and he has spoken publicly about British culpability. Kimche had been with British Intelligence during WW II and with the Mossad after the war. Later he became Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, the position he held in 1982 when he addressed a forum at the British Institute for International Affairs in London. In responding to hostile questions about Israel's invasion of Lebanon and the refugee camp massacres in Beirut, Kimche went on the attack, reminding the audience that there was scant concern in the British Foreign Office when British Gurkha units participated in the murder of 500 Jews in the streets of Baghdad in 1941. The Bombings of 1950-1951 The anti-Jewish riots of 1941 did more than create a pretext for the British to enter Baghdad to reinstate the pro-British regent and his pro-British prime minister, Nouri el-Said. They also gave the Zionists in Palestine a pretext to set up a Zionist underground in Iraq, first in Baghdad, then in other cities such as Basra, Amara, Hillah, Diwaneia, Abril and Karkouk. Following WW II, a succession of governments held brief power in Iraq. Zionist conquests in Palestine, particularly the massacre of Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin, emboldened the anti-British movement in Iraq. When the Iraqi government signed a new treaty of friendship with London in January 1948, riots broke out all over the country. The treaty was quickly abandoned and Baghdad demanded removal of the British military mission that had run Iraq's army for 27 years. Later in 1948, Baghdad sent an army detachment to Palestine to fight the Zionists, and when Israel declared independence in May, Iraq closed the pipeline that fed its oil to Haifa's refinery. Abd al-Ilah, however, was still regent and the British quisling, Nouri el-Said, was back as prime minister. I was in the Abu-Greib prison in 1948, where I would remain until my escape to Iran in September 1949. Six months later-the exact date was March 19, 1950-a bomb went off at the American Cultural Center and Library in Baghdad, causing property damage and injuring a number of people. The center was a favorite meeting place for young Jews. The first bomb thrown directly at Jews occurred on April 8, 1950, at 9:15 p.m. A car with three young passengers hurled the grenade at Baghdad's El-Dar El-Bida Café, where Jews were celebrating Passover. Four people were seriously injured. That night leaflets were distributed calling on Jews to leave Iraq immediately. The next day, many Jews, most of them poor with nothing to lose, jammed emigration offices to renounce their citizenship and to apply for permission to leave for Israel. So many applied, in fact, that the police had to open registration offices in Jewish schools and synagogues. On May 10, at 3 a.m., a grenade was tossed in the direction of the display window of the Jewish-owned Beit-Lawi Automobile Company, destroying part of the building. No casualties were reported. On June 3, 1950, another grenade was tossed from a speeding car in the El-Batawin area of Baghdad where most rich Jews and middle class Iraqis lived. No one was hurt, but following the explosion Zionist activists sent telegrams to Israel requesting that the quota for immigration from Iraq be increased. On June 5, at 2:30 a.m., a bomb exploded next to the Jewish-owned Stanley Shashua building on El-Rashid street, resulting in property damage but no casualties. On January 14, 1951, at 7 p.m., a grenade was thrown at a group of Jews outside the Masouda Shem-Tov Synagogue. The explosive struck a high-voltage cable, electrocuting three Jews, one a young boy, Itzhak Elmacher, and wounding over 30 others. Following the attack, the exodus of Jews jumped to between 600-700 per day. Zionist propagandists still maintain that the bombs in Iraq were set off by anti-Jewish Iraqis who wanted Jews out of their country. The terrible truth is that the grenades that killed and maimed Iraqi Jews and damaged their property were thrown by Zionist Jews. Among the most important documents in my book, I believe, are copies of two leaflets published by the Zionist underground calling on Jews to leave Iraq. One is dated March 16, 1950, the other April 8, 1950. The difference between these two is critical. Both indicate the date of publication, but only the April 8th leaflet notes the time of day: 4 p.m. Why the time of day? Such a specification was unprecedented. Even the investigating judge, Salaman El-Beit, found it suspicious. Did the 4 p.m. writers want an alibi for a bombing they knew would occur five hours later? If so, how did they know about the bombing? The judge concluded they knew because a connection existed between the Zionist underground and the bomb throwers. This, too, was the conclusion of Wilbur Crane Eveland, a former senior officer in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whom I had the opportunity to meet in New York in 1988. In his book, Ropes of Sand, whose publication the CIA opposed, Eveland writes: In attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the U.S. Information Service library and in synagogues. Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. . . . Although the Iraqi police later provided our embassy with evidence to show that the synagogue and library bombings, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaigns, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization, most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had "rescued" really just in order to increase Israel's Jewish population." Eveland doesn't detail the evidence linking the Zionists to the attacks, but in my book I do. In 1955, for example, I organized in Israel a panel of Jewish attorneys of Iraqi origin to handle claims of Iraqi Jews who still had property in Iraq. One well known attorney, who asked that I not give his name, confided in me that the laboratory tests in Iraq had confirmed that the anti-American leaflets found at the American Cultural Center bombing were typed on the same typewriter and duplicated on the same stenciling machine as the leaflets distributed by the Zionist movement just before the April 8th bombing. Tests also showed that the type of explosive used in the Beit-Lawi attack matched traces of explosives found in the suitcase of an Iraqi Jew by the name of Yosef Basri. Basri, a lawyer, together with Shalom Salih, a shoemaker, would be put on trial for the attacks in December 1951 and executed the following month. Both men were members of Hashura, the military arm of the Zionist underground. Salih ultimately confessed that he, Basri and a third man, Yosef Habaza, carried out the attacks. By the time of the executions in January 1952, all but 6,000 of an estimated 125,000 Iraqi Jews had fled to Israel. Moreover, the pro-British, pro-Zionist puppet el-Said saw to it that all of their possessions were frozen, including their cash assets. (There were ways of getting Iraqi dinars out, but when the immigrants went to exchange them in Israel they found that the Israeli government kept 50 percent of the value.) Even those Iraqi Jews who had not registered to emigrate, but who happened to be abroad, faced loss of their nationality if they didn't return within a specified time. An ancient, cultured, prosperous community had been uprooted and its people transplanted to a land dominated by East European Jews, whose culture was not only foreign but entirely hateful to them. The Ultimate Criminals Zionist Leaders: From the start they knew that in order to establish a Jewish state they had to expel the indigenous Palestinian population to the neighboring Islamic states and import Jews from these same states. * Theodor Herzl, the architect of Zionism, thought it could be done by social engineering. In his diary entry for 12 June 1885, he wrote that Zionist settlers would have to "spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country." * Vladimir Jabotinsky, Prime Minister Netanyahu's ideological progenitor, frankly admitted that such a transfer of populations could only be brought about by force. * David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, told a Zionist Conference in 1937 that any proposed Jewish state would have to "transfer Arab populations out of the area, if possible of their own free will, if not by coercion." After 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted and their lands confiscated in 1948-49, Ben Gurion had to look to the Islamic countries for Jews who could fill the resultant cheap labor market. "Emissaries" were smuggled into these countries to "convince" Jews to leave either by trickery or fear. In the case of Iraq, both methods were used: uneducated Jews were told of a Messianic Israel in which the blind see, the lame walk, and onions grow as big as melons; educated Jews had bombs thrown at them. A few years after the bombings, in the early 1950s, a book was published in Iraq, in Arabic, titled Venom of the Zionist Viper. The author was one of the Iraqi investigators of the 1950-51 bombings and, in his book, he implicates the Israelis, specifically one of the emissaries sent by Israel, Mordechai Ben-Porat. As soon as the book came out, all copies just disappeared, even from libraries. The word was that agents of the Israeli Mossad, working through the U.S. Embassy, bought up all the books and destroyed them. I tried on three different occasions to have one sent to me in Israel, but each time Israeli censors in the post office intercepted it. British Leaders: Britain always acted in its best colonial interests. For that reason Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour sent his famous 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild in exchange for Zionist support in WW I. During WW II the British were primarily concerned with keeping their client states in the Western camp, while Zionists were most concerned with the immigration of European Jews to Palestine, even if this meant cooperating with the Nazis. (In my book I document numerous instances of such dealings by Ben Gurion and the Zionist leadership.) After WW II the international chessboard pitted communists against capitalists. In many countries, including the United States and Iraq, Jews represented a large part of the Communist party. In Iraq, hundreds of Jews of the working intelligentsia occupied key positions in the hierarchy of the Communist and Socialist parties. To keep their client countries in the capitalist camp, Britain had to make sure these governments had pro-British leaders. And if, as in Iraq, these leaders were overthrown, then an anti-Jewish riot or two could prove a useful pretext to invade the capital and reinstate the "right" leaders. Moreover, if the possibility existed of removing the communist influence from Iraq by transferring the whole Jewish community to Israel, well then, why not? Particularly if the leaders of Israel and Iraq conspired in the deed. The Iraqi Leaders: Both the regent Abd al-Ilah and his prime minister Nouri el- Said took directions from London. Toward the end of 1948, el-Said, who had already met with Israel's Prime Minister Ben Gurion in Vienna, began discussing with his Iraqi and British associates the need for an exchange of populations. Iraq would send the Jews in military trucks to Israel via Jordan, and Iraq would take in some of the Palestinians Israel had been evicting. His proposal included mutual confiscation of property. London nixed the idea as too radical. El-Said then went to his back-up plan and began to create the conditions that would make the lives of Iraqi Jews so miserable they would leave for Israel. Jewish government employees were fired from their jobs; Jewish merchants were denied import/export licenses; police began to arrest Jews for trivial reasons. Still the Jews did not leave in any great numbers. In September 1949, Israel sent the spy Mordechai Ben-Porat, the one mentioned in Venom of the Zionist Viper, to Iraq. One of the first things Ben-Porat did was to approach el-Said and promise him financial incentives to have a law enacted that would lift the citizenship of Iraqi Jews. Soon after, Zionist and Iraqi representatives began formulating a rough draft of the bill, according to the model dictated by Israel through its agents in Baghdad. The bill was passed by the Iraqi parliament in March 1950. It empowered the government to issue one-time exit visas to Jews wishing to leave the country. In March, the bombings began. Sixteen years later, the Israeli magazine Haolam Hazeh, published by Uri Avnery, then a Knesset member, accused Ben-Porat of the Baghdad bombings. Ben-Porat, who would become a Knesset member himself, denied the charge, but never sued the magazine for libel. And Iraqi Jews in Israel still call him Morad Abu al-Knabel, Mordechai of the Bombs. As I said, all this went well beyond the comprehension of a teenager. I knew Jews were being killed and an organization existed that could lead us to the Promised Land. So I helped in the exodus to Israel. Later, on occasions, I would bump into some of these Iraqi Jews in Israel. Not infrequently they'd express the sentiment that they could kill me for what I had done. Opportunities for Peace After the Israeli attack on the Jordanian village of Qibya in October, 1953, Ben Gurion went into voluntary exile at the Sedeh Boker kibbutz in the Negev. The Labor party then used to organize many buses for people to go visit him there, where they would see the former prime minister working with sheep. But that was only for show. Really he was writing his diary and continuing to be active behind the scenes. I went on such a tour. We were told not to try to speak to Ben Gurion, but when I saw him, I asked why, since Israel is a democracy with a parliament, does it not have a constitution? Ben Gurion said, "Look, boy"-I was 24 at the time-"if we have a constitution, we have to write in it the border of our country. And this is not our border, my dear." I asked, "Then where is the border?" He said, "Wherever the Sahal will come, this is the border." Sahal is the Israeli army. Ben Gurion told the world that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs rejected it. Then Israel took half of the land that was promised to the Arab state. And still he was saying it was not enough. Israel needed more land. How can a country make peace with its neighbors if it wants to take their land? How can a country demand to be secure if it won't say what borders it will be satisfied with? For such a country, peace would be an inconvenience. I know now that from the beginning many Arab leaders wanted to make peace with Israel, but Israel always refused. Ben Gurion covered this up with propaganda. He said that the Arabs wanted to drive Israel into the sea and he called Gamal Abdel Nasser the Hitler of the Middle East whose foremost intent was to destroy Israel. He wanted America and Great Britain to treat Nasser like a pariah. In 1954, it seemed that America was getting less critical of Nasser. Then during a three-week period in July, several terrorist bombs were set off: at the United States Information Agency offices in Cairo and Alexandria, a British-owned theater, and the central post office in Cairo. An attempt to firebomb a cinema in Alexandria failed when the bomb went off in the pocket of one of the perpetrators. That led to the discovery that the terrorists were not anti-Western Egyptians, but were instead Israeli spies bent on souring the warming relationship between Egypt and the United States in what came to be known as the Lavon Affair. Ben Gurion was still living on his kibbutz. Moshe Sharett as prime minister was in contact with Abdel Nasser through the offices of Lord Maurice Orbach of Great Britain. Sharett asked Nasser to be lenient with the captured spies, and Nasser did all that was in his power to prevent a deterioration of the situation between the two countries. Then Ben Gurion returned as Defense Minister in February, 1955. Later that month Israeli troops attacked Egyptian military camps and Palestinian refugees in Gaza, killing 54 and injuring many more. The very night of the attack, Lord Orbach was on his way to deliver a message to Nasser, but was unable to get through because of the military action. When Orbach telephoned, Nasser's secretary told him that the attack proved that Israel did not want peace and that he was wasting his time as a mediator. In November, Ben Gurion announced in the Knesset that he was willing to meet with Abdel Nasser anywhere and at any time for the sake of peace and understanding. The next morning the Israeli military attacked an Egyptian military camp in the Sabaha region. Although Nasser felt pessimistic about achieving peace with Israel, he continued to send other mediators to try. One was through the American Friends Service Committee; another via the Prime Minister of Malta, Dom Minthoff; and still another through Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. One that looked particularly promising was through Dennis Hamilton, editor of The London Times. Nasser told Hamilton that if only he could sit and talk with Ben Gurion for two or three hours, they would be able to settle the conflict and end the state of war between the two countries. When word of this reached Ben Gurion, he arranged to meet with Hamilton. They decided to pursue the matter with the Israeli ambassador in London, Arthur Luria, as liaison. On Hamilton's third trip to Egypt, Nasser met him with the text of a Ben Gurion speech stating that Israel would not give up an inch of land and would not take back a single refugee. Hamilton knew that Ben Gurion with his mouth had undermined a peace mission and missed an opportunity to settle the Israeli-Arab conflict. Nasser even sent his friend Ibrahim Izat of the Ruz El Yusuf weekly paper to meet with Israeli leaders in order to explore the political atmosphere and find out why the attacks were taking place if Israel really wanted peace. One of the men Izat met with was Yigal Yadin, a former Chief of Staff of the army who wrote this letter to me on 14 January 1982: Dear Mr. Giladi: Your letter reminded me of an event which I nearly forgot and of which I remember only a few details. Ibrahim Izat came to me if I am not mistaken under the request of the Foreign Ministry or one of its branches; he stayed in my house and we spoke for many hours. I do not remember him saying that he came on a mission from Nasser, but I have no doubt that he let it be understood that this was with his knowledge or acquiescence.... When Nasser decided to nationalize the Suez Canal in spite of opposition from the British and the French, Radio Cairo announced in Hebrew: If the Israeli government is not influenced by the British and the French imperialists, it will eventually result in greater understanding between the two states, and Egypt will reconsider Israel's request to have access to the Suez Canal. Israel responded that it had no designs on Egypt, but at that very moment Israeli representatives were in France planning the three-way attack that was to take place in October, 1956. All the while, Ben Gurion continued to talk about the Hitler of the Middle East. This brainwashing went on until late September, 1970, when Gamal Abdel Nasser passed away. Then, miracle of miracles, David Ben Gurion told the press: A week before he died I received an envoy from Abdel Nasser who asked to meet with me urgently in order to solve the problems between Israel and the Arab world. The public was surprised because they didn't know that Abdel Nasser had wanted this all along, but Israel sabotaged it. Nasser was not the only Arab leader who wanted to make peace with Israel. There were many others. Brigadier General Abdel Karim Qasem, before he seized power in Iraq in July, 1958, headed an underground organization that sent a delegation to Israel to make a secret agreement. Ben Gurion refused even to see him. I learned about this when I was a journalist in Israel. But whenever I tried to publish even a small part of it, the censor would stamp it "Not Allowed." Now, in Netanyahu, we are witnessing another attempt by an Israeli prime minister to fake an interest in making peace. Netanyahu and the Likud are setting Arafat up by demanding that he institute more and more repressive measures in the interest of Israeli "security." Sooner or later I suspect the Palestinians will have had enough of Arafat's strong-arm methods as Israel's quisling-and he'll be killed. Then the Israeli government will say, "See, we were ready to give him everything. You can't trust those Arabs-they kill each other. Now there's no one to even talk to about peace." Conclusion Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. Certainly it has been easier for the world to accept the Zionist lie that Jews were evicted from Muslim lands because of anti-Semitism, and that Israelis, never the Arabs, were the pursuers of peace. The truth is far more discerning: bigger players on the world stage were pulling the strings. These players, I believe, should be held accountable for their crimes, particularly when they willfully terrorized, dispossessed and killed innocent people on the altar of some ideological imperative. I believe, too, that the descendants of these leaders have a moral responsibility to compensate the victims and their descendants, and to do so not just with reparations, but by setting the historical record straight. That is why I established a panel of inquiry in Israel to seek reparations for Iraqi Jews who had been forced to leave behind their property and possessions in Iraq. That is why I joined the Black Panthers in confronting the Israeli government with the grievances of the Jews in Israel who came from Islamic lands. And that is why I have written my book and this article: to set the historical record straight. We Jews from Islamic lands did not leave our ancestral homes because of any natural enmity between Jews and Muslims. And we Arabs-I say Arab because that is the language my wife and I still speak at home-we Arabs on numerous occasions have sought peace with the State of the Jews. And finally, as a U.S. citizen and taxpayer, let me say that we Americans need to stop supporting racial discrimination in Israel and the cruel expropriation of lands in the West Bank, Gaza, South Lebanon and the Golan Heights. ENDNOTES Mileshtin was quoted by the Israeli daily, Hadashot, in an article published August 13, 1993. The writer, Sarah Laybobis-Dar, interviewed a number of Israelis who had knowledge of the use of bacteriological weapons in the 1948 war. Mileshtin said bacteria was used to poison the wells of every village emptied of its Arab inhabitants. On Sept. 12, 1990, the New York State Supreme Court issued a restraining order at the request of the Israeli government to prevent publication of Ostrovsky's book, "By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer." The New York State Appeals Court lifted the ban the next day. Marion Woolfson, "Prophets in Babylon: Jews in the Arab World," p. 129 Yosef Meir, "Road in the Desert," Israeli Defense Ministry, p. 36. See my book, "Ben Gurion's Scandals," p. 105. Wilbur Crane Eveland, "Ropes of Sand: America's Failure in the Middle East," NY; Norton, 1980, pp. 48-49. T. Herzl, "The Complete Diaries," NY: Herzl Press & Thomas Yoncloff, 1960, vol. 1, p. 88. Report of the Congress of the World Council of Paole Zion, Zurich, July 29-August 7, 1937, pp. 73-74 |
Boycott Bordeaux |
Boycott Bordeaux shared a link. August 9, 2010 Wikipedia Bordeaux wine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world. 89% of wine produced in Bordeaux is red ( August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabernet_Sauvignon Cabernet Sauvignon - Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon became internationally recognized throug... Like · · August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouton_Cadet Mouton Cadet - Mouton Cadet is the brand name of a popular range of modestly priced, generic Bordeaux wines, considered Bordeaux' most successful brand.[1][2] Created by Baron Philippe de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking dynasty, the wine named after his premier cru vineyard Château Mouton Rothschild, Mouton C... · August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_wine Israeli wine - Israeli wine is produced by hundreds of wineries, ranging in size from small boutique enterprises to large companies producing over ten million bottles per year. Wine has been produced in the Land of Israel since biblical times. In 2009 Israel exports over $22 million worth of wine annually.[1] Stat... August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Clarke Château Clarke - Château Clarke is a wine property of Bordeaux of 54hectares (130 acres) based in the Listrac-Médoc AOC and classified as Cru Bourgeois. Like · · August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Lafite_Rothschild Château Lafite Rothschild - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org Château Lafite Rothschild is a wine estate in France, owned by members of the Rothschild banking family of France since the 19th century. The name Lafite comes from the Gascon term "la hite" meaning "small hill". Like · · August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Duhart-Milon Château Duhart-Milon - Château Duhart-Milon, previously also Château Duhart-Milon-Rothschild, is a winery in the Pauillac appellation of the Bordeaux region of France. The wine produced here was classified as one of ten Quatrièmes Crus Classés (Fourth Growths) in the historic Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855.... Like · · August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schloss_Rothschild_Reichenau_1.jpg File:Schloss Rothschild Reichenau 1.jpg - This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waddesdon_paterre.jpg File:Waddesdon paterre.jpg - August 9, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Mouton_Rothschild Château Mouton Rothschild - Château Mouton Rothschild is a wine estate located in the village of Pauillac in the Médoc, 50km (30mi) north-west of the city of Bordeaux, France. Its red wine of the same name is regarded as one of the world's greatest clarets. Originally known as Château Brane-Mouton it was renamed by Nathaniel d... Like · · August 8, 2010 The primary motivation for this group, is to encourage people worldwide to boycott Bordeaux Red wine, and the red wines from the surrounding regions of France, in order to boycott the produce of the Rothschild family who own these regions, ...See More rothschild bordeaux - |
PakAlertPress Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media |
The largest media conglomerate today is Walt Disney Company, whose
chairman and CEO, Michael Eisner, is a Jew. The Disney Empire, headed by
a man described by one media analyst as a “control freak”, includes
several television production companies (Walt
Disney Television, Touchstone
Television,Buena
Vista Television), its own cable network with 14 million
subscribers, and two video production companies. As for feature films,
the Walt Disney Picture Group, headed by Joe Roth (also a Jew), includes
Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures. Disney
also owns Miramax Films, run by the Weinstein brothers. When the Disney
Company was run by the Gentile Disney family prior to its takeover by
Eisner in 1984, it epitomized wholesome, family entertainment. While it
still holds the rights to Snow White, under Eisner, the company has
expanded into the production of graphic sex and violence. In addition,
it has 225 affiliated stations in the United States and is part owner of
several European TV companies. ABC’s
cable subsidiary, ESPN, is headed by president and CEO Steven Bornstein,
a Jew. This corporation also has a controlling share of Lifetime
Television and the Arts & Entertainment Network cable companies. ABC
Radio Network owns eleven AM and ten FM stations, again in major cities
such as New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and has over 3,400
affiliates. Although primarily a telecommunications company, Capital
Cities/ABC earned over $1 billion in publishing in 1994. It owns seven
daily newspapers, Fairchild Publications, Chilton Publications, and the
Diversified Publishing Group. Time Warner,
Inc, is the second of the international
media leviathans. The chairman of the board and CEO, Gerald Levin,
is a Jew. Time Warner’s subsidiary HBO is the country’s largest pay-TV
cable network. Warner Music is by far the world’s
largest record company, with 50 labels, the biggest of which is Warner
Brothers Records, headed by Danny Goldberg. Stuart Hersch is president
of Warnervision, Warner Music’s video production unit. Goldberg and
Hersch are Jews. Warner Music was an early promoter of “gangsta rap.”
Through its involvement with Interscope Records, it helped popularize a
genre whose graphic lyrics explicitly urge Blacks to commit acts of
violence against Whites. In addition to cable and music, Time Warner is
heavily involved in the production of feature films (Warner Brothers
Studio) and publishing. Time Warner’s publishing division
(editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine, a Jew) is the largest magazine
publisher in the country (Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune).
When Ted Turner, a Gentile, made a bid to buy CBS in 1985, there was
panic in media boardrooms across the nation. Turner made a fortune in
advertising and then had built a successful cable-TV news network, CNN.
Although Turner employed a number of Jews in key executive positions in
CNN and had never taken public positions contrary to Jewish interests,
he is a man with a large ego and a strong personality and was regarded
by Chairman William Paley (real name Palinsky, a Jew) and the other Jews
at CBS as uncontrollable: a loose cannon who might at some time in the
future turn against them. Furthermore, Jewish newsman Daniel Schorr, who
had worked for Turner, publicly charged that his former boss held a
personal dislike for Jews. To block Turner’s bid,
CBS executives invited billionaire Jewish
theater, hotel, insurance, and cigarette magnate Laurence Tisch to
launch a “friendly” takeover of the company, and from 1986 till 1995
Tisch was the chairman and CEO of CBS, removing any threat of non-Jewish
influence there. Subsequent efforts by Turner to acquire a major network
have been obstructed by Levin’s Time Warner, which owns nearly 20
percent of CBS stock and has veto power over major deals. Viacom, Inc,
headed by Sumner Redstone (born Murray Rothstein), a Jew, is the third
largest megamedia corporation in the country, with revenues of over $10
billion a year. Viacom, which produces and distributes TV programs for
the three largest networks, owns 12 television stations and 12 radio
stations. It produces feature films through
Paramount Pictures, headed by Jewess Sherry
Lansing. Its publishing division includes Prentice Hall, Simon &
Schuster, and Pocket Books. It distributes videos through
over 4,000 Blockbuster stores. Viacom’s chief claim to fame, however, is
as the world’s largest provider of cable programming, through its
Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, and other networks. Since 1989,
MTV and Nickelodeon have
acquired larger and larger shares of the younger television audience.
With the top three, and by far the largest, media companies in the hand
of Jews, it is difficult to believe that such an overwhelming degree of
control came about without a deliberate, concerted effort on their part.
What about the other big media companies? Number four on the list is
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation,
which owns Fox Television and 20th Century Fox Films. Murdoch is a
Gentile, but Peter Chermin, who heads Murdoch’s film studio and also
oversees his TV production, is a Jew. Number five is the Japanese
Sony Corporation, whose
U.S. subsidiary, Sony Corporation of America, is run by Michael Schulhof,
a Jew. Alan Levine, another Jew, heads the Sony Pictures division. Most
of the television and movie production companies that are not owned by
the largest corporations are also controlled by Jews. For example,
New World Entertainment,
proclaimed by one media analyst as “the premiere independent TV program
producer in the United States,” is owned by Ronald Perelman, a Jew. The
best known of the smaller media companies, Dreamworks SKG, is a strictly
kosher affair. Dream Works
was formed in 1994 amid great media hype by recording industry mogul
David Geffen, former Disney Pictures chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg,
and film director Steven Spielberg, all three of whom are Jews. The
company produces movies, animated films, television programs, and
recorded music. Two other large production companies,
MCA and Universal Pictures,
are both owned by Seagram Company, Ltd. The president and CEO of
Seagram, the liquor giant,
is Edgar Bronfman Jr., who is also president of the World Jewish
Congress. It is well known that Jews have controlled the production and
distribution of films since the inception of the movie industry in the
early decades of the 20th century. This is still the case
today. Films produced by just the five largest motion picture companies
mentioned above-Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Paramount (Viacom),
and Universal (Seagram)-accounted for 74 per cent of the total
box-office receipts for the first eight months of 1995. The big three in
television network broadcasting used to be
ABC, CBS, and NBC. With the consolidation of the media
empires, these three are no longer independent entities. While they were
independent, however, each was controlled by a Jew since its inception:
ABC by Leonard Goldenson, CBS first by William Paley and then by
Lawrence Tisch, and NBC first by David Sarnoff and then by his son
Robert. Over periods of several decades, these networks were staffed
from top to bottom with Jews, and the essential Jewishness of network
television did not change when the networks were absorbed by other
corporations. The Jewish presence in television news remains
particularly strong. As noted, ABC is part of Eisner’s Disney Company,
and the executive producers of ABC’s news programs are all Jews: Victor
Neufeld (20-20), Bob Reichbloom (Good Morning America), and Rick Kaplan
(World News Tonight). CBS was recently purchased by Westinghouse
Electric Corporation. Nevertheless, the man appointed by Lawrence Tisch,
Eric Ober, remains president of CBS News, and Ober is a Jew. At NBC, now
owned by General Electric, NBC News president Andrew Lack is a Jew, as
are executive producers Jeff Zucker (Today), Jeff Gralnick (NBC Nightly
News), and Neal Shapiro (Dateline). The Print Media After television
news, daily newspapers are the most influential information medium in
America. Sixty million of them are sold (and presumably read) each day.
These millions are divided among some 1,500 different publications. One
might conclude that the sheer number of different newspapers across
America would provide a safeguard against Jewish control and distortion.
However, this is not the case. There is less independence, less
competition, and much less representation of our interests than a casual
observer would think. The days when most cities and even towns had
several independently owned newspapers published by local people with
close ties to the community are gone. Today, most “local” newspapers are
owned by a rather small number of large companies controlled by
executives who live and work hundreds or ever thousands of miles away.
The fact is that only about 25 per cent of the country’s 1,500 papers
are independently owned; the rest belong to multi-newspaper chains. Only
a handful are large enough to maintain independent reporting staffs
outside their own communities; the rest depend on these few for all of
their national and international news. The Newhouse empire of Jewish
brothers Samuel and Donald Newhouse provides an example of more than the
lack of real competition among America’s daily newspapers: it also
illustrates the insatiable appetite Jews have shown for all the organs
of opinion control on which they could fasten their grip. The
Newhouses own 26 daily
newspapers, including several large and important ones, such as the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans
Times-Picayune; the nation’s largest trade book publishing conglomerate,
Random House, with all its subsidiaries; Newhouse Broadcasting,
consisting of 12 television broadcasting stations and 87 cable-TV
systems, including some of the country’s largest cable networks; the
Sunday supplement Parade, with a circulation of more than 22 million
copies per week; some two dozen major magazines, including the New
Yorker, Vogue, Madmoiselle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Bride’s, Gentlemen’s
Quarterly, Self, House & Garden, and all the other magazines of the
wholly owned Conde Nast group. This Jewish media empire was founded by
the late Samuel Newhouse, an immigrant from Russia. The gobbling up of
so many newspapers by the Newhouse family was in large degree made
possible by the fact that newspapers are not supported by their
subscribers, but by their advertisers. It is advertising revenue–not the
small change collected from a newspaper’s readers–that largely pays the
editor’s salary and yields the owner’s profit. Whenever the large
advertisers in a city choose to favor one newspaper over another with
their business, the favored newspaper will flourish while its competitor
dies. Since the beginning of the 20th century, when Jewish mercantile
power in America became a dominant economic force, there has been a
steady rise in the number o f American newspapers in Jewish hands,
accompanied by a steady decline in the number of competing Gentile
newspapers–primarily as a result of selective advertising policies by
Jewish merchants. Furthermore, even those newspapers still under Gentile
ownership and management are so thoroughly dependent upon Jewish
advertising revenue that their editorial and news reporting policies are
largely constrained by Jewish likes and dislikes. It holds true in the
newspaper business as elsewhere that he who pays the piper calls the
tune. See: Mainstream
Pakistani media and their links with NeoCon Zionists Three Jewish
Newspapers The suppression of competition and the establishment of
local monopolies on the dissemination of news and opinion have
characterized the rise of Jewish control over America’s newspapers. The
resulting ability of the Jews to use the press as an unopposed
instrument of Jewish policy could hardly be better illustrated than by
the examples of the nation’s three most prestigious and influential
newspapers: the New York Times, the Wall
Street Journal, and the Washington Post. These three, dominating
America’s financial and political capitals, are the newspapers which set
the trends and the guidelines for nearly all the others. They are the
ones which decide what is news and what isn’t, at the national and
international levels. They originate the news; the others merely copy
it, and all three newspapers are in Jewish hands. The New York Times was
founded in 1851 by two Gentiles, Henry Raymond and George Jones. After
their deaths, it was purchased in 1896 from Jones’s estate by a wealthy
Jewish publisher, Adolph Ochs. His great-grandson, Arthur Ochs
Sulzberger, Jr., is the paper’s current publisher and CEO. The executive
editor is Max Frankel, and the managing editor is Joseph Lelyveld. Both
of the latter are also Jews. The Sulzberger family also owns, through
the New York Times Co., 33 other newspapers, including the Boston Globe;
twelve magazines, including McCall’s and Family Circle with circulations
of more than 5 million each; seven radio and TV broadcasting stations; a
cable-TV system; and three book publishing companies. The New York Times
News Service transmits news stories, features, and photographs from the
New York Times by wire to 506 other newspapers, news agencies, and
magazines. Of similar national importance is the Washington Post, which,
by establishing its “leaks” throughout government
agencies in Washington, has an inside track on news involving the Federal
government. The Washington Post, like the New York Times, had a
non-Jewish origin. It was established in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins,
purchased from him in 1905 by John McLean, and later inherited by Edward
McLean. In June 1933, however, at the height of the Great Depression,
the newspaper was forced into bankruptcy. It was purchased at a
bankruptcy auction by Eugene Meyer, a Jewish financier. The Washington
Post is now run by Katherine Meyer Graham, Eugene Meyer’s daughter. She
is the principal stockholder and the board chairman of the Washington
Post Co. In 1979, she appointed her son Donald publisher of the paper.
He now also holds the posts of president and CEO of the Washington Post
Co. The Washington Post Co. has a number of other media holdings in
newspapers, television, and magazines, most notably the nation’s
number-two weekly newsmagazine, Newsweek. The
Wall Street Journal,
which sells 1.8 million copies each weekday, is the nation’s
largest-circulation daily newspaper. It is owned by Dow Jones & Company,
Inc., a New York corporation which also publishes 24 other daily
newspapers and the weekly financial tabloid Barron’s, among other
things. The chairman and CEO of Dow Jones is Peter Kann, who is a Jew.
Kann also holds the posts of chairman and publisher of the Wall Street
Journal. Most of New York’s other major newspapers are in no better
hands than the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The New York
Daily News is owned by Jewish real-estate developer Mortimer B.
Zuckerman. The Village Voice
is the personal property of Leonard Stern, the billionaire Jewish owner
of the Hartz Mountain pet supply firm. Other Mass Media The story is
pretty much the same for other media as it is for television, radio, and
newspapers. Consider, for example, newsmagazines. There are only three
of any note published in the United States:
Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Time,
with a weekly circulation of 4.1 million, is published by a susidiary of
Time Warner Communications. The CEO of Time Warner Communications, as
mentioned above, is Gerald Levin, a Jew. Newsweek, as mentioned above,
is published by the Washington Post
Company, under the Jewess Katherine Meyer Graham. Its weekly circulation
is 3.2 million. U.S. News & World Report, with a weekly circulation of
2.3 million, is owned and published by Mortimer Zuckerman, a Jew.
Zuckerman also owns the Atlantic Monthly and New York’s tabloid
newspaper, the Daily News, which is the sixth-largest paper in the
country. Among the giant book-publishing conglomerates, the situation is
also Jewish. Three of the six largest book publishers in the U.S.,
according to Publisher’s Weekly, are owned or controlled by Jews. The
three are first-place Random House (with its many subsidiaries,
including Crown Publishing Group), third-place Simon & Schuster, and
sixth-place Time Warner Trade Group (including Warner Books and Little,
Brown). Another publisher of special significance is Western Publishing.
Although it ranks only 13th in size among all U.S. publishers, it ranks
first among publishers of children’s books, with more than 50 percent of
the market. Its chairman and CEO is Richard Snyder, a Jew, who just
replaced Richard Bernstein, also a Jew. The Effect of Jewish Control of
the Media These are the facts of Jewish
media control in America. Anyone willing to spend several hours in a
large library can verify their accuracy. I hope that these facts are
disturbing to you, to say the least. Should any minority be allowed to
wield such awesome power? Certainly, not and allowing a people with
beliefs such as expressed in the Talmud, to determine what we get to
read or watch in effect gives this small minority the power to mold our
minds to suit their own Talmudic interests, interests which as we have
demonstrated are diametrically opposed to the interests of our people.
By permitting the Jews to control our news and entertainment media, we
are doing more than merely giving them a decisive influence on our
political system and virtual control of our government; we also are
giving them control of the minds and souls of our children, whose
attitudes and ideas are shaped more by Jewish television and Jewish
films than by their parents, their schools, or any other influence. |
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Wikipedia Tony Blair |
Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975. During the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" of the party. He put himself forward as a candidate for the Hackney council elections of 1982 in Queensbridge ward (a safe Labour area), but was not selected.[25] In 1982 Blair was selected as the Labour candidate in the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where there was a forthcoming by-election. Although Blair lost the Beaconsfield by-election (the only election he lost in his 25-year political career) and he lost 10% of the vote, he acquired a profile within the party. In contrast to his later centrism, Blair made it clear in a letter he wrote to Labour leader Michael Foot in July 1982, that he had "come to Socialism through Marxism" and considered himself on the left. The letter was eventually published in June 2006.[26] With a general election due, Blair had not been selected as a candidate anywhere. He was invited to stand again in Beaconsfield, and was initially inclined to agree but was advised by his head of chambers Derry Irvine to find somewhere else which might be winnable.[27] The situation was complicated by the fact that Labour was fighting a legal action against planned boundary changes, and had selected candidates on the basis of previous boundaries. When the legal challenge failed, the party had to rerun all selections on the new boundaries; most were based on existing seats, but unusually in County Durham a new Sedgefield constituency had been created out of Labour-voting areas which had no obvious predecessor seat.[28] The selection for Sedgefield did not begin until after the 1983 election was called. Blair's initial inquiries discovered that the left was trying to arrange the selection for Les Huckfield, sitting MP for Nuneaton who was trying elsewhere; several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were also interested in it. When he discovered the Trimdon branch had not yet made a nomination, Blair visited them and won the support of the branch secretary John Burton, and with Burton's help was nominated by the branch. At the last minute, he was added to the shortlist and won the selection over Les Huckfield. It was the last candidate selection made by Labour before the election, and was made after the Labour Party had issued biographies of all its candidates ("Labour's Election Who's Who").[29] John Burton became Blair's election agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies. Blair's election literature in the 1983 UK general election endorsed left-wing policies that Labour advocated in the early 1980s. He called for Britain to leave the EEC, though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing membership. He also supported unilateral nuclear disarmament as a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Blair was helped on the campaign trail by soap opera actress Pat Phoenix, his father-in-law's girlfriend. Blair was elected as MP for Sedgefield despite the party's landslide defeat in the general election. In his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 6 July 1983, Blair stated, "I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for cooperation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality."[30][31] The Labour Party is declared in its constitution to be a democratic socialist party[32] rather than a social democratic party; Blair himself organised this declaration of Labour to be a socialist party when he dealt with the change to the party's Clause IV in their constitution. Once elected, Blair's political ascent was rapid. He received his first front-bench appointment in 1984 as assistant Treasury spokesman. In May 1985, he appeared on BBC's Question Time, arguing that the Conservative Government's Public Order White Paper was a threat to civil liberties.[33] Blair demanded an inquiry into the Bank of England's decision to rescue the collapsed Johnson Matthey Bank in October 1985. By this time, Blair was aligned with the reforming tendencies in the party (headed by leader Neil Kinnock) and was promoted after the 1987 election to the shadow Trade and Industry team as spokesman on the City of London. In 1987, he stood for election to the Shadow Cabinet, receiving 71 votes.[34] When Kinnock resigned after a Conservative victory in the 1992 election, Blair became Shadow Home Secretary under John Smith. Leader of the Opposition John Smith died suddenly in 1994 of a heart attack. Blair beat John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in the subsequent leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition.[35] As is customary for the holder of that office, Blair was appointed a Privy Councillor.[36] Blair announced at the end of his speech at the 1994 Labour Party conference that he intended to replace Clause IV of the party's constitution with a new statement of aims and values.[35] This involved the deletion of the party's stated commitment to "the common ownership of the means of production and exchange", which was widely interpreted as referring to wholesale nationalisation.[35][37] At a special conference in April 1995, the clause was replaced by a statement that the party is 'democratic socialist'.[37] He inherited the Labour leadership at a time when the party was ascendant over the Tories in the opinion polls since the Tory government's reputation for monetary excellence was left in tatters by the Black Wednesday economic disaster of September 1992. Blair's election as leader saw Labour support surge higher still[38] in spite of the continuing economic recovery and fall in unemployment that the Conservative government (led by John Major) had overseen since the end of the 1990–92 recession.[38] At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to office were "education, education, and education".[39] Aided by the unpopularity of John Major's Conservative government (itself deeply divided over the European Union), "New Labour" won a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years of Conservative Party government, with the heaviest Conservative defeat since 1832.[40] During Smith's leadership of the Labour Party, there were discussions with Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, about forming a coalition government if the next general election resulted in a hung parliament. After Blair became leader, these talks continued – despite virtually every opinion poll since late 1992 having shown Labour with enough support to form a majority. However, the scale of the Labour victory meant that there was ultimately never any need for a coalition.[41] Prime Minister Main article: Premiership of Tony Blair Blair became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 2 May 1997, serving concurrently as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Labour Party. The 43-year old Blair became the youngest person to become Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister at the age of 42 in 1812.[42] With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories. Northern Ireland Blair addressing a crowd in Armagh in 1998 His contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process by helping to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement (after 30 years of conflict) was widely recognised.[43][44] Following the Omagh Bombing on 15 August 1998, by members of the Real IRA opposed to the peace process, which killed 29 people and wounded hundreds, Blair visited the County Tyrone town and met with victims at Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.[45] Military intervention and the War on Terror In his first six years in office Blair ordered British troops into battle five times, more than any other prime minister in British history. This included Iraq in both 1998 and 2003, Kosovo (1999), Sierra Leone (2000) and Afghanistan (2001).[46] The Kosovo War, which Blair had advocated on moral grounds, was initially a failure when it relied solely on air strikes; the threat of a ground offensive would convince Serbia's Slobodan Milošević to withdraw. Blair had been a major advocate for a ground offensive, which Bill Clinton was reluctant to do, and would order that 50,000 soldiers – most of the available British Army – should be made ready for action.[47] The following year, the limited Operation Palliser in Sierra Leone would swiftly swing the tide against the rebel forces; before deployment, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone had been on the verge of collapse.[48] Palliser had been intended as an evacuation mission but Brigadier David Richards (now General Sir) was able to convince Blair to allow him to expand the role; at the time, Richards' action was not known and Blair was assumed to be behind it.[49] Blair also ordered Operation Barras, a highly successful SAS/Parachute Regiment strike to rescue hostages from a Sierra Leone rebel group.[50] Historian Andrew Marr has argued that the success of ground attacks, real and threatened, over air strikes alone would be influential on how Blair planned the Iraq War, and that the success of the first three wars Blair fought "played to his sense of himself as a moral war leader".[51] When asked in 2010 if the success of Palliser may have "embolden[ed] British politicians" to think of military action as a policy option, General Sir David Richards would admit there "might be something in that".[49] Tony Blair and George W. Bush shake hands after their press conference in the East Room of the White House on 12 November 2004. From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of George W. Bush, participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was particularly controversial, as it attracted widespread public opposition and 139 of Blair's MPs opposed it.[52] As a result, he faced criticism over the policy itself and the circumstances in which it was decided upon. Alastair Campbell described Blair's statement that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" as his "assessment of the assessment that was given to him."[53] In 2009, Blair stated that he would have supported removing Saddam Hussein from power even in the face of proof that he had no such weapons.[54] Playwright Harold Pinter and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad accused Blair of war crimes.[55][56] Testifying before the Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010, Blair said Saddam was a "monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world."[57] Blair said that British and American attitude towards Saddam Hussein had "changed dramatically" after 11 September attacks. Blair denied that he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he had thought Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. He said he believed the world was safer as a result of the invasion.[58] He also said that there was "no real difference between wanting regime change and wanting Iraq to disarm: regime change was US policy because Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations."[59] Relationship with Parliament One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to replace the then twice-weekly 15-minute sessions of Prime minister's questions held on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays. In addition to PMQs, Blair held monthly press conferences at which he fielded questions from journalists[60][61] and – from 2002 – broke precedent by agreeing to give evidence twice yearly before the most senior Commons select committee, the Liaison Committee.[62] Blair was sometimes perceived as paying insufficient attention both to the views of his own Cabinet colleagues and to those of the House of Commons.[63] His style was sometimes criticised as not that of a prime minister and head of government, which he was, but of a president and head of state—which he was not.[64] Blair was accused of excessive reliance on spin.[65][66] He is the first British Prime Minister to have been formally questioned by police, though not under caution, while still in office.[67] Events before resignation As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament,[68][69] and his popularity dropped dramatically.[70][71] The Labour party's overall majority in the 2005 general election was reduced to 66. As a combined result of the Blair-Brown pact, Iraq war and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour party for Blair to resign.[72][73] On 7 September 2006, Blair publicly stated he would step down as party leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference held 10–13 September 2007,[74] having promised to serve a full term during the previous general election campaign. On 10 May 2007, during a speech at the Trimdon Labour Club, Blair announced his intention to resign as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister. At a special party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, he formally handed over the leadership of the Labour Party to Gordon Brown, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer.[9] Blair tendered his resignation on 27 June 2007 and Brown assumed office the same afternoon. Blair also resigned his seat in the House of Commons in the traditional form of accepting the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, to which he was appointed by Gordon Brown in one of the latter's last acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer.[75] The resulting Sedgefield by-election was won by Labour's candidate, Phil Wilson. Blair decided not to issue a list of Resignation Honours, making him the first Prime Minister of the modern era not to do so.[76] Policies Further information: Premiership of Tony Blair Social reforms In 2001, Blair said, "We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and not as opposites".[77] Blair has rarely applied such labels to himself, but he promised before the 1997 election that New Labour would govern "from the radical centre", and according to one lifelong Labour Party member, has always described himself as a social democrat.[78] However, at least one left-wing commentator has said that Blair is to the right of centre.[79] A YouGov opinion poll in 2005 also found that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, place Blair on the right of the political spectrum.[80][81] The Financial Times on the other hand has argued that Blair is not conservative, but instead a populist.[82] Critics and admirers tend to agree that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to occupy the centre ground and appeal to voters across the political spectrum, to the extent that he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional Labour Party values.[83] Some left-wing critics have argued that Blair has overseen the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to the right, and that very little now remains of a Labour Left.[84][85] There is also evidence that Blair's long term dominance of the centre has forced his Conservative opponents to shift a long distance to the left, in order to challenge his hegemony there.[86][87] During his time as prime minister, Blair raised taxes; introduced a National Minimum Wage and some new employment rights (while keeping Margaret Thatcher's anti-trade union legislation[88] ); introduced significant constitutional reforms; promoted new rights for gay people in the Civil Partnership Act 2004; and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced student tuition fees; sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments, and introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation. Under Blair's government the amount of new legislation increased[89] which attracted criticism.[90] Blair increased police powers by adding to the number of arrestable offences, compulsory DNA recording and the use of dispersal orders.[91] Environmental record Blair has criticised other governments for not doing enough to solve global climate change. In a 1997 visit to the United States, he made a comment on "great industrialised nations" that fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Again in 2003, Blair went before the United States Congress and said that climate change "cannot be ignored", insisting "we need to go beyond even Kyoto."[92] Blair and his party promised a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide.[93] The Labour Party also claimed that by 2010 10% of the energy would come from renewable resources; however, only 3% currently does.[94] In 2000 Blair "flagged up" 100 million euros for green policies and urged environmentalists and businesses to work together.[95] Foreign policy Jacques Chirac, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi during the G8 Summit in Évian, June 2003 Blair built his foreign policy on basic principles (close ties with US and EU) and added a new activist philosophy of 'interventionism'.[96] In 2001 Britain joined the US in the global war on terror.[97] Blair forged friendships with several conservative European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi of Italy,[98] Angela Merkel of Germany[99] and later Nicolas Sarkozy of France.[100] Blair meets with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, March 2005. Along with enjoying a close relationship with Bill Clinton, Blair formed a strong political alliance with George W. Bush, particularly in the area of foreign policy. For his part, Bush lauded Blair and the UK. In his post-9/11 speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend than Great Britain".[101] The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of Britons angry at American influence.[102] Blair argued it is in Britain's interest to "protect and strengthen the bond" with the United States regardless of who is in the White House.[103] However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to serious discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of the UK government and Prime Minister with the US White House and President.[104] A revealing conversation between Bush and Blair, with the former addressing the latter as "Yo [or Yeah], Blair" was recorded when they did not know a microphone was live at the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in 2006.[105] Middle East policy and links with Israel Blair showed a deep feeling for Israel, born in part from his faith.[106] Blair has been a longtime member of the pro-Israel lobby group Labour Friends of Israel.[107] In 1994, Blair forged close ties with Michael Levy, a leader of the Jewish Leadership Council.[108] Levy ran the Labour Leader's Office Fund to finance Blair's campaign before the 1997 election and raised £12 million towards Labour’s landslide victory, Levy was rewarded with a peerage, and in 2002, Blair appointed Lord Levy as his personal envoy to the Middle East. Levy praised Blair for his "solid and committed support of the State of Israel".[109] Tam Dalyell, while Father of the House of Commons, suggested in 2003 that Blair's foreign policy decisions were unduly influenced by a 'cabal' of Jewish advisers, including Levy, Peter Mandelson and Jack Straw (the last two are not Jewish but have some Jewish ancestry).[110] Blair, on coming to office, had been "cool towards the right-wing Netanyahu government".[111] During his first visit to Israel, Blair thought the Israelis bugged him in his car. He also went on to claim that prime minister Netanyahu was merely an "armour-plated bullshitter".[112] After the election in 1999 of Ehud Barak, with whom Blair forged a close relationship, he became much more sympathetic to Israel.[111] From 2001 Blair also built up a relationship with Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, and responded positively to Arafat, whom he had met thirteen times since becoming prime minister and regarded as essential to future negotiations.[111] In 2004, 50 former diplomats, including ambassadors to Baghdad and Tel Aviv, stated they had 'watched with deepening concern' at Britain following the US into war in Iraq in 2003. They criticised Blair's support for the road map for peace which included the retaining of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.[113] In 2006 Blair was criticised for his failure to immediately call for a ceasefire in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The Observer newspaper claimed that at a cabinet meeting before Blair left for a summit with Bush on 28 July 2006, a significant number of ministers pressured Blair to publicly criticise Israel over the scale of deaths and destruction in Lebanon.[114] Blair was criticised for his solid stance alongside US President George W. Bush on Middle East policy.[115] Syria and Libya A Freedom of Information request by The Sunday Times in 2012 revealed that Blair's government considered knighting Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. The documents also showed that Blair was willing to appear alongside Assad at a joint press conference even though the Syrians would probably have settled for a farewell handshake for the cameras; British officials sought to manipulate the media to portray Assad in a favourable light; and Blair's aides tried to help Assad's "photogenic" wife boost her profile. The newspaper noted: The Arab leader was granted audiences with the Queen and the Prince of Wales, lunch with Blair at Downing Street, a platform in parliament and many other privileges. . . . The red carpet treatment he and his entourage received is embarrassing given the bloodbath that has since taken place under his rule in Syria. . . . The courtship has parallels with Blair's friendly relations with Muammar Gaddafi.[116] Blair had been on friendly terms with Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, when sanctions imposed on the country were lifted by United States and United Kingdom.[117][118] Even after the Libyan Civil War in 2011, he said he had no regrets about his close relationship with the late Libyan leader.[119] During Blair's premiership, MI6 rendered Abdel Hakim Belhaj to the Gaddafi regime in 2004, though Blair later claimed he had "no recollection" of the incident.[120] Relationship with media Rupert Murdoch Blair was reported to have been supported by Rupert Murdoch, the founder of the News Corporation organisation.[121] In 1995, while leader of the Opposition, Blair disclosed in the Commons register of interests that he was a guest of Murdoch when he flew to meet him in Hayman Island.[122] In 2011 Blair became Godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch's children. Apparently Blair was 'robed in white for the ceremony'.[123] However, Murdoch later ended his long-standing relationship with Blair in 2014, after suspecting him of having an affair with his then wife Wendi Deng.[124] Contacts with UK media proprietors A Cabinet Office freedom of information response, released the day after Blair handed over power to Gordon Brown, documents Blair having various official phone calls and meetings with Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Richard Desmond of Northern and Shell Media.[125] The response includes contacts "clearly of an official nature" in the specified period, but excludes contacts "not clearly of an official nature."[126] No details were given of the subjects discussed. In the period between September 2002 and April 2005, Blair and Murdoch are documented speaking 6 times; three times in the 9 days before the Iraq war, including the eve of 20 March US and UK invasion, and on 29 January 25 April and 3 October 2004. Between January 2003 and February 2004, Blair had three meetings with Richard Desmond; on 29 January and 3 September 2003 and 23 February 2004.[127][128] The information was disclosed after a three and a half year battle by the Liberal Democrats' Lord Avebury.[125] Lord Avebury's initial October 2003 information request was dismissed by then leader of the Lords, Baroness Amos.[125] A following complaint was rejected, with Downing Street claiming the information compromised free and frank discussions, while Cabinet Office claimed releasing the timing of the PM's contacts with individuals is undesirable, as it might lead to the content of the discussions being disclosed.[125] While awaiting a following appeal from Lord Avebury, the cabinet office announced that it would release the information. Lord Avebury said: "The public can now scrutinise the timing of his (Murdoch's) contacts with the former Prime Minister, to see whether they can be linked to events in the outside world."[125] Blair appeared before the Leveson Inquiry on Monday 28 May 2012.[129] During his appearance, a protester, later named as David Lawley-Wakelin, got into the court-room and claimed he was guilty of war crimes before being dragged out.[130] Media portrayal Blair has been noted as a charismatic, articulate speaker with an informal style.[35] Film and theatre director Richard Eyre opined that "Blair had a very considerable skill as a performer".[131] A few months after becoming Prime Minister Blair gave a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, on the morning of her death in August 1997, in which he famously described her as "the People's Princess".[132][133] After taking office in 1997, Blair gave particular prominence to his press secretary, who became known as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (the two roles have since been separated). Blair's first PMOS was Alastair Campbell, who served in that role from May 1997 to 8 June 2001, after which he served as the Prime Minister's Director of Communications and Strategy until his resignation on 29 August 2003 in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry.[134] Relationship with Labour Party Blair's apparent refusal to set a date for his departure was criticised by the British press and Members of Parliament. It has been reported that a number of cabinet ministers believed that Blair's timely departure from office would be required to be able to win a fourth election.[135] Some ministers viewed Blair's announcement of policy initiatives in September 2006 as an attempt to draw attention away from these issues.[135] Gordon Brown See also: Blair–Brown deal Gordon Brown (pictured in 2002) was Chancellor under Blair, with whom he made a pact to succeed as prime minister. After the death of John Smith in 1994, Blair and his close colleague Gordon Brown (they shared an office at the House of Commons)[35] were both seen as possible candidates for the party leadership. They agreed not to stand against each other, it is said, as part of a supposed Blair–Brown pact. Brown, who considered himself the senior of the two, understood that Blair would give way to him: opinion polls soon indicated, however, that Blair appeared to enjoy greater support among voters.[136] Their relationship in power became so turbulent that (it was reported) the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, often had to act as "marriage guidance counsellor".[137] During the 2010 election campaign Blair publicly endorsed Gordon Brown's leadership, praising the way he had handled the financial crisis.[138] Post-Prime Ministerial career Diplomacy On 27 June 2007, Blair officially resigned as Prime Minister after ten years in office, and he was officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia.[139] Blair originally indicated that he would retain his parliamentary seat after his resignation as Prime Minister came into effect; however, on being confirmed for the Middle East role he resigned from the Commons by taking up an office of profit.[75] President George W. Bush had preliminary talks with Blair to ask him to take up the envoy role. White House sources stated that "both Israel and the Palestinians had signed up to the proposal".[140][141] In May 2008, Blair announced a new plan for peace and for Palestinian rights, based heavily on the ideas of the Peace Valley plan.[142] Private sector In January 2008, it was confirmed that Blair would be joining investment bank JPMorgan Chase in a "senior advisory capacity"[143] and that he would advise Zurich Financial Services on climate change. His salary for this work is unknown, although it has been claimed it may be in excess of £500,000 per year.[143] Blair also gives lectures, earning up to US$250,000 for a 90-minute speech, and in 2008 he was said to be the highest paid speaker in the world.[144][145] Yale University announced on 7 March 2008 that Blair will teach a course on issues of faith and globalisation at the Yale Schools of Management and Divinity as a Howland distinguished fellow during the 2008–09 academic year.[146] Blair's links with, and receipt of an undisclosed sum from, UI Energy Corporation, have also been subject to media comment in the UK.[147] In July 2010 it was reported that his personal security guards claimed £250,000 a year in expenses from the tax payer, Foreign Secretary William Hague said; "we have to make sure that [Blair's security] is as cost-effective as possible, that it doesn't cost any more to the taxpayer than is absolutely necessary".[148] Tony Blair Associates Former rebel leader Hashim Thaçi and Tony Blair with Declaration of Independence of Kosovo Blair has established Tony Blair Associates to "allow him to provide, in partnership with others, strategic advice on a commercial and pro bono basis, on political and economic trends and governmental reform".[149] The profits from the firm go towards supporting Blair's "work on faith, Africa and climate change".[150] Blair has been subject to criticism for potential conflicts of interest between his diplomatic role as a Middle East envoy, and his work with Tony Blair Associates,[151][152][153] and a number of prominent critics have even called for him to be sacked.[154] Blair has used his Quartet Tony Blair Associates works with the Khazakstan government, advising the regime on judicial, economic and political reforms, but has been subject to criticism after accusations of "whitewashing" the image and human rights record of the regime.[155] In particular, opposition activists have published an open letter in a Kazak newspaper, Respublika, claiming Blair would have "blood on his hands" if did not stop assisting President Nursultan Nazarbayev.[citation needed] Blair has responded to such criticism by saying his choice to advise the country is an example of how he can "nudge controversial figures on a progressive path of reform", and has stated that he receives no personal profit from this advisory role.[156] The Kazakhstan foreign minister said that the country was "honoured and privileged" to be receiving advice from Blair.[157][158] A letter obtained by The Daily Telegraph in August 2014 revealed Blair had given damage-limitation advice to Nazarbayev after the December 2011 Zhanaozen massacre.[159] Blair was reported to be have accepted a business advisory role with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, a situation deemed incompatible with his role as Middle East envoy;[160] the former prime minister described the report as "nonsense".[161] European Council president speculation In October 2007, there was speculation in the media that Blair was open to the idea of becoming the first President of the European Council, a post created in the Treaty of Lisbon that would come into force in 2009, if successfully ratified. Gordon Brown added his support, but noted that it was premature to discuss candidates before the treaty was approved. A spokesman for Blair did not rule out him accepting the post, but said that he was concentrating on his current role in the Middle East.[162] Blair was later invited to speak on European issues at a rally of President Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Movement, on 12 January 2008, which fuelled speculation further.[163][164] There was opposition to Blair's potential candidacy for the job. In the UK, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats both said they would oppose Blair. In Germany, the leader of the Free Democrats, Guido Westerwelle, said that he preferred a candidate from a smaller European country.[165] In November 2009, the Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy was named President of the European Council.[166][167] Charity On 14 November 2007, Blair launched the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which aims to "increase childhood participation in sports activities, especially in the North East of England, where a larger proportion of children are socially excluded, and to promote overall health and prevent childhood obesity."[168] On 30 May 2008, Blair launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as a vehicle for encouraging different faiths to join together in promoting respect and understanding, as well as working to tackle poverty. Reflecting Blair's own faith but not dedicated to any particular religion, the Foundation aims to "show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world".[169] "The Foundation will use its profile and resources to encourage people of faith to work together more closely to tackle global poverty and conflict," says its mission statement.[170] In February 2009, he applied to set up a charity called the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative: the application was approved in November 2009.[171] In October 2012 Blair's foundation hit controversy when it emerged they were taking on unpaid interns.[172] Memoirs Main article: A Journey In March 2010, it was reported that Blair's memoirs, titled The Journey, would be published in September 2010.[173] In July 2010 it was announced the memoirs would be retitled A Journey.[174] The memoirs were seen by many as controversial and a further attempt to profit from his office and from acts related to overseas wars that were widely seen as wrongful,[175][176][177] leading to anger and suspicion prior to launch.[176] On 16 August 2010 it was announced that Blair would give the £4.6 million advance and all royalties from his memoirs to a sports centre for badly injured soldiers - the charity's largest ever single donation.[175][178][179] Media analysis of the sudden announcement was wide-ranging, describing it as an act of "desperation"[179] to obtain a better launch reception of a humiliating "publishing flop" [179] that had languished in the ratings,[175][179] "blood money" for the lives lost in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,[175][177] an act with a "hidden motive" or an expression of "guilt",[175][176] a "genius move" to address the problem that "Tony Blair ha[d] one of the most toxic brands around" from a PR perspective,[176] and a "cynical stunt to wipe the slate",[179] but also as an attempt to make amends.[179] Friends had said that the act was partly motivated by the wish to "repair his reputation".[175] The book was published on 1 September and within hours of its launch had become the fastest-selling autobiography of all time.[180] On 3 September Blair gave his first live interview since publication on The Late Late Show in Ireland, with protesters lying in wait there for him.[181][182] On 4 September Blair was confronted by 200 anti-war and hardline Irish nationalist demonstrators before the first book signing of his memoirs at Eason's bookstore on O'Connell Street in Dublin, with angry activists chanting "war criminal" and that he had "blood on his hands", and clashing with Irish Police (Garda Síochána) as they tried to break through a security cordon outside the Eason's store. Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes, and encountered an attempted citizen's arrest for war crimes.[183] Accusations of war crimes Since the Iraq War, Blair has been the subject of accusations of war crimes. Critics of his actions, including Bishop Desmond Tutu,[184] Harold Pinter[185] and Arundhati Roy[186] have called for his trial at the International Criminal Court. In 2010 George Monbiot launched a campaign for people to make a citizen's arrest of Blair as a war criminal and by 2012 four unsuccessful attempts had been made.[187] On November 2011, a mock war-crimes tribunal put together by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission reached a unanimous conclusion that Blair and George W. Bush are guilty of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and genocide as a result of their roles in the 2003 Iraq War. The mock trial, which lasted four days, consisting of five judges of judicial and academic backgrounds, a court-appointed defence team in lieu of the defendants or representatives, and a prosecution team including international law professor Francis Boyle.[188] The mock tribunal's finding received mixed responses, being labelled a "circus" by former UN Special Rapporteur Param Cumaraswamy. In September 2012, Desmond Tutu suggested that Blair should follow the path of former African leaders who had been brought before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.[184] The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, interviewed on BBC radio, concurred with Tutu's suggestion that there should be a war crimes trial.[189] In a statement made in response to Tutu's comments, Blair defended his actions.[184] He was supported by Lord Falconer, who stated that the war had been properly authorised by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441.[189] |
Independent Tony Blair takes on new role fighting anti-Semitism as chairman of European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation |
Tony Blair was due to announce today his new role in tackling anti-Semitism in Europe, little more than a week after stepping down as envoy for The Quartet group of Middle East mediators. The former prime minister has been appointed chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, an organisation campaigning for more stringent laws against extremism to be adopted across the continent. The organisation, set up by Russian-born businessman Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress, and former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, campaigns for European countries to pass laws to criminalise Holocaust denial and to provide clear definitions of anti-Semitism and racism. It also looks to persuade governments to offer funding for security at sites including synagogues and Jewish schools. Mr Blair announced last month announced he was resigning from his role as envoy for The Quartet – a position which he had held for eight years. Moshe Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress (MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images) Moshe Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress (MICHAL CIZEK/AFP/Getty Images) He had hinted in March that he was preparing to stand down in a speech which questioned the "efficacy" of democracy in the region. In an article in The Times today, Mr Blair and Mr Kantor set out the organisation's role in combating extremism across Europe as they warn anti-Semitism is a problem "infecting the whole of society". In pictures: Extremists in the EU 1 of 6 France: Marine le Pen Next France: Marine le PenGermany: Udo VoigtDenmark: Morten MesserschmidtHungary: Krisztina Morvai Italy: Mario BorghezioGreece: Eleftherios Synadinos They write: "Globalisation is pushing us closer together so the effects of racism and discrimination increasingly undermine the fabric of society as a whole. "Our individual success depends on that of the collective, which is why states, international organisations and other actors must join together to tackle hate and intolerance. If we wait for our armies to act, it will be too late." READ MORE TONY BLAIR RESIGNS FROM POST AS ENVOY FOR THE QUARTET GROUP COMMENT: 'TONY BLAIR NOW HAS A CHANCE TO RESTORE HIS LEGACY' TONY BLAIR SAYS DEMOCRACY ISN'T EVERYTHING BLAIR LABELLED A 'STANDING JOKE' IN MIDDLE EAST PEACE TALKS In the article, Mr Blair and Mr Kantor highlight a report by the Kantor Centre at Tel Aviv University, which recorded a total of 766 violent anti-Semitic acts in 2014 – a 38 per cent rise on the previous year. The report said last year was one of the worst for anti-Semitic incidents in the past decade. Mr Blair insisted he was to remain involved with the peace process after stepping down from his position with the Quartet last month. His role was thought to have become increasingly difficult as his relationship with senior Palestinian Authority figures deteriorated. |
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is prejudice against, hatred of, or discrimination against Jews as an ethnic, religious, or racial group.[1][2] A person who holds such positions is called an "antisemite". Antisemitism is widely considered to be a form of racism.[3][4] While the conjunction of the units anti, Semite, and ism indicates antisemitism as being directed against all Semitic people, the term was popularized in Germany in 1873 as a scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred"),[5][6] although it had been used for at least two decades prior,[7] and that has been its normal use since then.[8] For the purposes of a 2005 U.S. governmental report, antisemitism was considered "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."[9] Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized violent attacks by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Although the term did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is now also applied to historic anti-Jewish incidents. Notable instances of persecution include the pogroms which preceded the First Crusade in 1096, the expulsion from England in 1290, the massacres of Spanish Jews in 1391, the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Cossack massacres in Ukraine of 1648–1657, various pogroms in Imperial Russia between 1821 and 1906, the 1894–1906 Dreyfus affair in France, the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe, official Soviet anti-Jewish policies and Arab and Muslim involvement in the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries.Though the general definition of antisemitism is hostility or prejudice against Jews, and, according to Olaf Blaschke, has become an "umbrella term for negative stereotypes about Jews",[24] a number of authorities have developed more formal definitions. Holocaust scholar and City University of New York professor Helen Fein defines it as "a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews." Elaborating on Fein's definition, Dietz Bering of the University of Cologne writes that, to antisemites, "Jews are not only partially but totally bad by nature, that is, their bad traits are incorrigible. Because of this bad nature: (1) Jews have to be seen not as individuals but as a collective. (2) Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies. (3) Jews bring disaster on their 'host societies' or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character."[25] For Sonja Weinberg, as distinct from economic and religious anti-Judaism, antisemitism in its modern form shows conceptual innovation, a resort to 'science' to defend itself, new functional forms and organisational differences. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist. It promoted the myth that Jews conspired to 'judaise' the world; it served to consolidate social identity; it channeled dissatisfactions among victims of the capitalist system; and it was used as a conservative cultural code to fight emancipation and liberalism.[26] Antisemitic caricature by C.Léandre (France, 1898) showing Rothschild with the world in his hands Bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest. According to Lewis, antisemitism is marked by two distinct features: Jews are judged according to a standard different from that applied to others, and they are accused of "cosmic evil." Thus, "it is perfectly possible to hate and even to persecute Jews without necessarily being anti-Semitic" unless this hatred or persecution displays one of the two features specific to antisemitism.[27] There have been a number of efforts by international and governmental bodies to define antisemitism formally. The U.S. Department of State states that "while there is no universally accepted definition, there is a generally clear understanding of what the term encompasses." For the purposes of its 2005 Report on Global Anti-Semitism, the term was considered to mean "hatred toward Jews—individually and as a group—that can be attributed to the Jewish religion and/or ethnicity."[9] In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now Fundamental Rights Agency), then an agency of the European Union, developed a more detailed working definition, which states: "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities." It adds "such manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity." It provides contemporary examples of ways in which antisemitism may manifest itself, including: promoting the harming of Jews in the name of an ideology or religion; promoting negative stereotypes of Jews; holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of an individual Jewish person or group; denying the Holocaust or accusing Jews or Israel of exaggerating it; and accusing Jews of dual loyalty or a greater allegiance to Israel than their own country. It also lists ways in which attacking Israel could be antisemitic, and states that denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor, can be a manifestation of antisemitism—as can applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel.[28] Late in 2013, the definition was removed from the website of the Fundamental Rights Agency. A spokesperson said that it had never been regarded as official and that the agency did not intend to develop its own definition.[29] 1889 Paris, France elections poster for self-described "candidat antisémite" Adolphe Willette: "The Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!" (see file for complete translation) Evolution of usage In 1879, Wilhelm Marr founded the Antisemiten-Liga (Anti-Semitic League).[30] Identification with antisemitism and as an antisemite was politically advantageous in Europe in the latter 19th century. For example, Karl Lueger, the popular mayor of fin de siècle Vienna, skillfully exploited antisemitism as a way of channeling public discontent to his political advantage.[31] In its 1910 obituary of Lueger, The New York Times notes that Lueger was "Chairman of the Christian Social Union of the Parliament and of the Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria.[32] In 1895 A. C. Cuza organized the Alliance Anti-semitique Universelle in Bucharest. In the period before World War II, when animosity towards Jews was far more commonplace, it was not uncommon for a person, organization, or political party to self-identify as an antisemite or antisemitic. In 1882, the early Zionist pioneer Judah Leib Pinsker wrote that antisemitism was a psychological response rooted in fear and was an inherited predisposition. He named the condition Judeophobia.[33] Judeophobia is a variety of demonopathy with the distinction that it is not peculiar to particular races but is common to the whole of mankind.'...'Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration it is hereditary, and as a disease transmitted for two thousand years it is incurable.'... 'In this way have Judaism and Anti-Semitism passed for centuries through history as inseparable companions.'......'Having analyzed Judeophobia as an hereditary form of demonopathy, peculiar to the human race, and having represented Anti-Semitism as proceeding from an inherited aberration of the human mind, we must draw the important conclusion that we must give' up contending against these hostile impulses as we must against every other inherited predisposition. (translation from German)[34] In the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, German propaganda minister Goebbels announced: "The German people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."[35] After the 1945 victory of the Allies over Nazi Germany, and particularly after the extent of the Nazi genocide of Jews became known, the term "anti-Semitism" acquired pejorative connotations. This marked a full circle shift in usage, from an era just decades earlier when "Jew" was used as a pejorative term.[36][37] Yehuda Bauer wrote in 1984: "There are no anti-Semites in the world... Nobody says, |
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