Monday, December 1, 2014

PALESTINIANS INDIRECT VICTIMS OF HOLOCAUST” MAX BLUMENTHAL


Germany made Palestinians “indirect victims of Holocaust,” says author Max Blumenthal 

14 November 2014

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The German chancellor and the Israeli prime minister met with their respective cabinets in Jerusalem in February.
 (Saeed Qaq / APA images)
When Gaza was attacked during the summer, Angela Merkel promised to “stand by the side of Israel.” The German chancellor has done much more than offer verbal support for Israel’s crimes. Under her leadership, the Berlin government has been equippingIsrael with submarines that reportedly carry nuclear weapons.
Some German politicians have tried to muzzle debate about Israel by denouncing its critics as “anti-Semites.” The American journalist Max Blumenthal — author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel — faced such a smear on a recent speaking tour in Germany.
A number of elected politicians alleged that a scheduled talk by Blumenthal and his colleague David Sheen in a Berlin theater would serve “to promote anti-Semitic prejudice.” This was deeply ironic: both Blumenthal and Sheen are themselves Jewish. The politicians denouncing them failed to produce any evidence that they are hostile towards fellow Jews.
Blumenthal spoke to Emran Feroz in Stuttgart.
Emran Feroz: You recently witnessed the destruction caused by Israel in Gaza. What scenes had the most effect on you?
Max Blumenthal: Emergency operations had to be performed in dentist chairs, while the bodies of dead children had to be laid in ice boxes, which were originally designed for ice cream. Those were probably the most shocking testimonies I heard.
EF: Not long after your trip to Gaza, you started using the hashtag #JSIL (Jewish State of Israel in the Levant) on Twitter. Making this kind of comparison between the group Islamic State and Israel is taboo in Germany. Why did you dare to do this?
MB: It is strange that you equate, in Germany, IS with Hamas or describe the entire Palestinian national movement as “heirs of the Nazis,” while there is such an outrage regarding my comparison. It was not a direct one-to-one comparison, but I wanted to point out the hypocrisy behind supporting one religiously exclusive state that forces minorities out of its territory while attacking another.
EF: But by using this hashtag, you must be suggesting that Israel and IS are somehow similar.
MB: Sure, they are. The “Jewish state” has no internationally recognized borders. The same relates to the “Islamic State.”
Both constructs have emerged after the original indigenous population were partly expelled and ethnically cleansed. In the case of Israel it was the Palestinian indigenous population; in the case of the IS [they] are the Christians, Yazidis or Shiite Muslims. Both “countries” rely on a religious exclusivity in the Levant. And both think they represent all Muslims and Jews worldwide and thereby help inspire Islamophobic and anti-Semitic sentiments.
Both the Jewish state and the Islamic State recruit confused young men from around the world as foreign fighters to engage in atrocities. When Israel’s defenders failed to address the comparisons on their merits, they simply attempted to hijack the #JSIL hashtag by declaring it stands for the “Jewish State of Israel Lives.”
EF: IS fighters behead their victims and then spread the videos of the beheadings through YouTube and social media. Do Israeli soldiers also make such videos?
MB: During the last attack on Gaza, the Israeli army killed civilians via drones and Jewish Israeli citizens celebrated the killings on Facebook. Some Israeli citizens gathered on a hill in the border town of Sderot and celebrated the bombing of the military with chips and beer. I find that this is not less macabre and disgusting.
EF: How present is religious extremism inside the Israeli military?
MB: It is very present. A major figure of the last military operation in the Gaza Strip was commander Ofer Winter, who was celebrated as a national hero. Prior to the mission Winter said to his troops, that the Palestinians had sinned against God and therefore all must be punished.
So he declared a literal “holy war” against the Palestinian people. This is not the only way Winter has expressed the religious extremism that is rising in Israeli society. In one instance, an Israeli singer wanted to perform in front of [Winter’s] soldiers. He refused [permission] to do so and said that a woman is not allowed to do that.
EF: Many women are part of the Israeli army. This is celebrated in what are effectively promotional campaigns for Israel. How can there be misogyny in the Israeli military if it has many female members?
MB: What is not mentioned is the fact that it is more likely that these women are assaulted by their male counterparts in the army than by Palestinians. I think that only imperialist feminists argue that women can be emancipated in an army like the Israeli one.
Good examples of this type of feminism are political figures like Samantha Power or Angela Merkel or Tzipi Livni because their peculiar brand of feminism goes hand in hand with the imperialistic interests of the western powers who are so invested in majority Muslim countries, where the population is portrayed as culturally backwards and in need of “liberation.”
EF: During the last attack on Gaza, the family of Ibrahim Kilani — who are German citizens — were killed. His son Ramsis, who lives in Germany, said that up to today nobody has apologized to him. The German government has not called him a single time. How can you explain this behavior?
MB: The behavior of the German government shows not only the lack of interest in the rights of the Palestinians, but also the very lives of them. The life of these people is practically non-existent in Germany. They are the new “un-people.”
The German foreign minister issued condolences for the families of those German citizens killed on an airliner over eastern Ukraine, possibly by Russian separatists. But they’ve said nothing to the Kilani family.
The negation of Palestinian lives has been German policy since the days of Konrad Adenauer [chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963]. In those days Israel had no problem to negotiate on Holocaust reparations with the head of the chancellery, Hans Globke, who was a known Nazi in the Third Reich. This cash flow from Germany went directly to the Israeli occupation machine that has made the Palestinians indirect victims of the Holocaust.
The current bloodshed is a result of this policy and every German should ask himself: how does this policy honor the Holocaust?
EF: Your willingness to make such statements probably explains why some German politicians do not want to see you here in Germany. What happened to you exactly?
MB: Some politicians, such as Volker Beck, a parliamentarian from Germany’s Green Party, had launched a campaign to silence us — me and the journalist David Sheen. The reason for this is the fact that they do not want to know of another version of Judaism and they certainly do not want to hear about the facts on the ground.
Their attitude actually promotes anti-Semitism. It is simply anti-Semitic to equate Zionism with Judaism and to limit Jewish identity to the narrow confines of Israeli nationalism. For a gentile politician to do it is beyond disgusting.
EF: The Gaza Strip remains destroyed. And, according to some media outlets, a third intifada is going to happen in the occupied West Bank. Is this really the case or is it just scaremongering?
MB: Last year the al-Aqsa mosque [in Jerusalem] was stormed “only” eight times by Israeli soldiers. This year this happened 76 times. Radical religious elements have announced that they want to demolish the mosque to build a Jewish temple. If this happens, the situation will take on global implications that will be approach the apocalyptic.
The whole conflict is taking on a religious dimension, which is devastating for all involved, and, as I said, will promote radicalization around the globe. I think the third intifada actually is at the door.
However, I believe that this word — intifada — does not adequately describe the situation. It is not effective enough to describe what is actually going on. At that time — in the case of the first and second intifadas — this term was appropriate.
Now with so many Palestinian political leaders in prison or dead and such a complex matrix of control imposed on them, a nationwide revolt cannot take place. What we are seeing is creative resistance with limited means occurring on a national level but at sporadic moments.
And it will continue and intensify as long as the status quo is in place. It is that deadly status quo that German foreign policy protects and promotes.
Emran Feroz is a Germany-based freelance journalist, blogger and activist. He is also the founder of Drone Memorial, a website listing victims of drone attacks. His Twitter account is @Emran_Feroz

Israel’s New Basic Law: “Institutionalizing Jewish Law” By Jamal Kanj Global Research, November 30, 2014

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The Israeli cabinet voted by 14-7 majority to define Israel as an ethnocentric nation-state of the Jewish people, institutionalising Jewish law as the source of legislations.
This is the same definition Benjamin Netanyahu had maintained for years that the Palestinian Authority (PA) must accept before signing a peace agreement. In other words, Netanyahu was demanding the PA to recognise the new Basic Law long before his own government approved it.
Yet, it becomes more interesting for Netanyahu to be able to keep a government coalition with seven ministers who voted against his proposal. Especially, when he insists that a government of ministers from a foreign entity (PA) must accede to what seven members of his own government rejected.
This is not, however the reason the PA should not entertain recognising Israel as an ethnocentric Jewish state. Israelis are entitled to define their nation in any which way they want. But neither Israeli government nor Zionist-controlled media have the right to ascribe euphemistic terms for the purpose of hoodwinking others.
Such is the oxymoronic adjective: Jewish and ‘democratic’. I remember an argument made in my college days that apartheid South Africa was democratic, or better yet, it was the only democracy in all of Africa. The same assertions can be heard today from Zionist pundits, after supplanting Jewish for white.
Israel has been in effect for more than 60 years, but now it is enshrined under the new Basic Law, as a Jewish democracy. Just as apartheid South Africa was: A white democracy, never a plural egalitarian political system.
It is worth emphasising that this is not an opinion posited by Israeli antagonists. It is the view of Zionists who supported the bill and those who don’t see the need to make it official.
Contributing to the discussion, multi-billionaire and casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson was forthright when he said recently ‘(God) didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state … Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state … so what?’
Adelson’s reference for instituting the Jewish Sharia was the Bible, since it did not say ‘anything about democracy’.
Naftali Bennet, leader of a major Israeli party and Economic Minister, emulated Adelson and pointed to another added value, for the bill will ‘save the (Jewish) residents of south Tel Aviv from (African) infiltrators’.
Explaining his vote against the new proposed law, Finance Minister Yair Lapid said the bill ‘puts the Jewish state before democracy’, while Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called it anti-democratic.
About the same day the Israeli government voted on the new Basic Law, Jewish settlers who will be advantaged by the new bill, torched the home of Huda Hamaiel in Khirbet Abut Falah, leaving behind a blackened home but for fresh painted slogans on the walls ‘Death to Arabs’.
Two days earlier at a Tel Aviv soccer stadium the same wall epithets were chanted live from the bleachers against Arab ‘Israeli’ players. And then when midfielder Mahmoud Abbas was injured and removed off the pitch, ‘Jewish’ fans spat and threw bags of sunflower seeds and drinking cups at him.
I mention this incident because the football player is one of the 20 per cent non-Jewish Israeli citizens who would be relegated to lesser citizen status under the proposed Basic Law.
Irrespective of whether this bill becomes a law or not, the Netanyahu government has defined Israel and according to ardent Zionist ministers it is ‘anti-democratic.’
As Netanyahu formally advocates his bill, people must decide to either align themselves with Adelson’s Jewish anti-democratic Sharia law, or with equality.
More so, Jewish Americans are challenged to choose between their long history promoting justice and civil rights, or succumb to the herd mentality where parochial allegiance takes precedence over humanity.
Jamal Kanj (www.jamalkanj.com) writes regular newspaper column and publishes on several websites on Arab world issues. He is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America. A version of this article was first published by the Gulf Daily News newspaper.
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Otto von Bismarck’s Epistle to Angela Merkel

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Dmitriy SEDOV | 01.12.2014 | 00:00 …Angela, you know, I have always been against ladies’ presence in public affairs and I have not changed my viewpoint so far. Twice I had luck in my life. Firstly, I used to live in the days when ladies were absolutely not allowed to German’s politics. Secondly, I was …
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"Wir müssen das friedenspolitische Gebot der Stunde richtig erfassen und das Vernünftige tun!" Annette Klepzigs Medienschau



»Beenden Sie dieses Spiel mit dem Feuer«doc: Haushaltsdebatte des Bundestages: Mindestlohn, Millionärssteuer, TTIP, Russland-Sanktionen und die Ukraine-Politik: Sahra Wagenknecht gibt Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel Kontra. 27.11.2014     http://www.sahra-wagenknecht.de/
Junge Welt dokumentiert auszugsweise die Rede von Sahra Wagenknecht, Erste Stellvertretende Vorsitzende der Fraktion Die Linke im Bundestag, in der Haushaltsdebatte am Mittwoch:
 Haushaltsdebatte über den Kanzleretat 2015 - Ihre Politik spaltet Deutschland und versündigt sich an der Zukunft, weil Sie nicht den Mut haben, sich den organisierten Interessen von Banken und Konzernen entgegenzustellen. Sie haben das Erbe der Entspannungspolitik verspielt und Europa in einen neuen Kalten Krieg und an den Rand eines Flächenbrands geführt, weil Sie nicht den Mut haben, der US-Regierung Paroli zu bieten. Das ist keine Bilanz, auf die Sie stolz sein sollten. Die Bürgerinnen und Bürger dieses Landes jedenfalls haben eine bessere Politik verdient....
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Der Kanzlerin Mut machen für eine Aufhebung der Sanktionspolitik gegen Russland!   Irene Eckert, AKF
Wir müssen das friedenspolitische  Gebot der  Stunde richtig erfassen und das Vernünftige tun!
Es  ist ein verhängnisvoller  und weitreichender politischer Irrtum anzunehmen, dass Frau Merkel zu den Hauptkriegstreibern gegen Russland gehöre. Dazu bekommt sie viel zu viel Gegenwind aus der eigenen Bevölkerung und von relevanten Kreisen der deutschen Wirtschaft. 20 führende Unternehmer-Vertreter haben  am Mittwoch im Kreml  vorgesprochen unter anderem dabei waren Winterschall und Siemens. Sie wurden unter anderem von Außenminister Lawrow empfangen. Kurz zuvor war Außenminister Steinmeier beim russischen Präsidenten zu Gast  und gar zum Abendessen geladen worden. Ohne Absprache mit der Kanzlerin sind solche politisch außerordentlich wichtigen Demarchen kaum denkbar. Frau Merkel selber hat in Brisbane, Australien anlässlich des G20 Gipfels vier stundenlang “geheim” mit Vladimir Putin konferiert. Warum hätte sie das tun sollen, wenn sie  auf Krieg  aus ist.  Sie ist wohl kaum so naiv, zu glauben, dass sie  die Russische Föderation mit ihrem Charme bezwingen  könnte und damit den Abzug Russlands von der Krim erzwingen.   -    Unstrittig ist, dass ihre aggressive Wortwahl gleich nach dieser wichtigen Aussprache, die gegen Russland zielte, nicht gerade friedenspolitisch zu begrüßen ist....
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Wiederholungstäter Geschichte. Lutz Herden
Mobilmachung Die Kanzlerin pflegt neuerdings einen aggressiven Sound gegenüber Russland. Ihre rhetorische Aufrüstung wirkt einigermaßen erinnerungsschwach 
Es wird in Zeitungskolumnen, Politikerreden und Talkshows am großen Rad gedreht und mit Pharisäer-Blick vom deutschen Balkon nach Osten gesehen. Es wächst das Bedürfnis, Wladimir Putin eine Lektion zu erteilen, und zwar eine, die sich gewaschen hat. Die geistige Mobilmachung ist weit fortgeschritten, was sie an Humus braucht, liefert eine aggressive Rhetorik, deren kriegerischer Sound höchste Fürsprache findet. So hat es das seit Ausbruch des Ukraine-Konflikts vor einem Jahr nicht gegeben. Es herrscht gegenüber Russland ein kategorischer Imperativ, der an Schärfe nichts mehr zu wünschen übrig lässt.   -    Nie wieder Krieg?......Angenommen, dieses Kalkül bewahrheitet sich, was höchst zweifelhaft erscheint – welchen Gewinn an Sicherheit in Europa brächte ein gedemütigtes Russland?
 Merkel habe das Erbe der Entspannungspolitik verspielt, so Sahra Wagenknecht gerade im Bundestag. Das ist richtig und greift zu kurz, Merkel läuft Gefahr, dass sich durch ihre Russland-Politik die Geschichte als Wiederholungstäter erweist. Es gibt aus historischer Schuld nicht nur eine deutsche Veranwortung gegenüber Israel, sie gilt auch gegenüber Russland

 “Militärisch ist dieser Konflikt nicht zu lösen” Merkel im Hinblick auf die Ukraine
"Das würde in eine militärische Auseinandersetzung mit Russland führen, die mit Sicherheit keine lokale wäre. Auf der anderen Seite kann man nicht sagen: Weil wir das militärisch nicht lösen können, können wir es überhaupt nicht lösen."
Kanzlerin Merkel in der Fragerunde nach ihrer Lowy-Institut-Rede in Sydney. Nehmen wir sie doch bei diesem Wort und fragen wir weiter nach konkreten Lösungsvorstellungen von ihrer Seite.  Unterstützen wir den Vorstoß von Steinmeier und die vernunftgetragene  Positionierung von Matthias Platzeck. Vor allem aber müssen wir Sahra Wagenknechts Haltung unterstützen und auch die vernünftigen Stimmen aus den Spitzen der deutschen Wirtschaft, die auf politischen Lösungen   bestehen. Die deutsche Politik muss sich aus ihrer unheilvollen Verklammerung mit der US-amerikanischen Konfrontations-Politik lösen,.....

  3 ) Krieg macht Ukraine zum Fass ohne BodenRalf Streck
Der Internationale Währungsfonds (IWF) schätzt, dass das Land weitere 19 Milliarden benötigt
Dass die Ukraine ein ausgewiesener Pleitestaat ist, ist keine Neuigkeit mehr. Das Winterpaket, in dessem Rahmen die Ukraine begonnen hat, ihre Gasschulden bei Russland zu zahlen, hat die Lage weiter verschärft. Denn in zwei Tranchen fließen 3,1 Milliarden Dollar und zunächst wird die EU, anders als geplant, nicht dafür bürgen. Der bisherige EU-Energiekommissar Günther Oettinger hatte bei der Vorstellung der Verhandlungsergebnisse erklärt, die Ukraine sei in der Lage, ihre Gasrechnungen selbst zu begleichen. Doch möglich werde dies, weil das Land am Tropf des IWF hängt und damit ist die EU über einen Umweg doch wieder dabei.   -    Und der IWF macht nun eine neue Rechnung auf. Er geht davon aus, dass....http://www.globalresearch.ca/all-out-war-in-ukraine-natos-final-offensive/5415354



 All-Out War in Ukraine: NATO’s ‘Final Offensive’. By Prof. James Petras
There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine:  A war actively promoted by the NATO regimes and supported by their allies and clients in Asia (Japan) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia).  The war over Ukraine will essentially run along the lines of a full-scale military offensive against the southeast Donbas region, targeting the breakaway ethnic Ukraine- Russian Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the intention of deposing the democratically elected government, disarming the popular militias, killing the guerrilla resistance partisans and their mass base, dismantling the popular representative organizations and engaging in ethnic cleansing of millions of bilingual Ukraino-Russian citizens.  NATO’s forthcoming military seizure of the Donbas region is a continuation and extension of its original violent putsch in Kiev, which overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in February 2014.  -    The Kiev junta and its newly ‘elected’ client rulers, and its NATO sponsors are intent on a major


Western Attacks on Russian Media Merely Prove That It Is Telling Truth.Alexander Mercouris
 Western attacks on Russian media vary from the abusive to the merely sarcastic, but what all of them have in common is the attempt to define the English language Russian media as a “propaganda instrument” of the Russian government.
LONDON, November 30 (Sputnik) — The Ukrainian crisis has triggered an extraordinary series of attacks on the English language Russian media by the Western media. Here in Britain, where I write, hardly a day has passed in the past few weeks without the Russian media coming in for some sort of attack.  -   These attacks vary from the abusive to the merely sarcastic, but what all of them have in common is the attempt to define.....