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Lebanon’s Maronites, threatened by Sunni power, will be the bellwether of the Mideast’s Christians. Could they face the same fate as the region’s Jews?

By Lee Smith www.TabletMag.com

Being Christian in the Middle East has never been easy, but the wave of uprisings that has swept the region over the past year has made the situation for the region’s Christian minority almost unbearable. Violence against Egypt’s Coptic Christians—particularly church burnings, which have become routine—has gotten the most attention. But for the best bellwether of where things are headed, look to Lebanon’s Christians.

Lebanon’s Maronite community has long been the region’s Christian citadel. “It used to be that when Christians around the region looked at the situation in Lebanon, it cheered them,” Elie Fawaz, a Lebanese political analyst, told me this week in Beirut. “They saw that here the Christians were equal to their Muslim counterparts. They were citizens and had the same rights as Muslims.” The citadel is now tottering. If Lebanon once served as a beacon for the region’s other Christians, the dimming of this light is making Christians in unstable countries like Iraq, Syria, the Palestinian territories, and Egypt even more vulnerable.

Lebanon’s Christian community comprises up to a third of the country’s total population. It is made up largely of Maronites but also includes Greek Orthodox and a number of other sects, like Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Greek Catholic, and Roman Catholic. Christians were likely never a majority in Lebanon, and yet, says Fawaz, a Greek Orthodox, “the Christians didn’t act like a minority. They pushed their vision for an independent and sovereign Lebanese state.”

Historically, Lebanese Christians have provided some of the region’s most influential intellectual leaders, like Charles Malik, who helped write the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Michel Chiha, one of the authors of Lebanon’s 1926 Constitution. In the wake of Lebanon’s independence in 1943, the Christian vision was to build a sovereign state that would bring political and cultural modernity to the country and, eventually, to the broader Middle East.

That project stalled for a number of reasons. First, there was the relative demographic decline of the Christians in the post-independence period, due to the accelerated birth rates of Sunnis and Shiites. The French authorities that oversaw Lebanon during the mandate period created a power-sharing agreement that allotted Christians 50 percent of the parliament—the other 50 percent was split between Shia and Sunnis—and this struck Lebanon’s growing Muslim population as unfair. Most significantly, in addition to these domestic problems, the Christians were unable to protect Lebanon from the region’s furies, which culminated in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) that pitted a number of different domestic players, as well as regional and international actors, against one another.

One of the main causes of that 15-year conflagration was the support of Lebanese Sunnis for the Palestinian cause, which attached these Sunnis to a larger Arab regional identity with a shared goal of eradicating Israel. The Sunni community’s political, diplomatic, and financial support of the Palestinians set them squarely against the Maronites, who resisted turning Lebanon into a forward operating base for the P.L.O. They sought to preserve their vision of a Lebanon free from the region’s destructive political currents and to avoid the Israeli reprisals they rightly feared.

What’s instructive is that the Christians fought in the war. “In 1975, mothers sent their kids to fight the Palestinians,” says Fawaz. “They had a vision for Lebanon.”

That changed when political calculation and greed shifted Christians’ focus from their war against the P.L.O. and Yasser Arafat’s allies to each other. The Christians split into different factions that faced off during the civil war. Two decades after the end of the war, the Christians are still plagued by this fissure, and they are still represented by the same political leaders who took them to war against one another more than 20 years ago. The result, says Fawaz, “is that today the Christians have no vision. They are definitely a numerical minority and acting like one—reactive and fearful.”

The Christian community here is suffering from a number of symptoms of minority psychosis. Consider that the head of the Maronite church has spoken out in defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Patriarch Beshara Butros Rai called Assad “open-minded” in a September interview. “I am hoping Assad will be given more chances to implement the reforms he already launched,” Rai added. An unfortunately all-too-typical Christian fear and hatred of Sunnis has convinced many Lebanese Christians—as well as Syrian ones—that only Damascus’ Alawite minority regime can protect the region’s Christians from Sunni Islamists.

Obviously, a regime that has slaughtered protesters for almost a year hardly embodies the sort of values promoted in the gospel, or warrants the faith of a cleric. But more to the point: This is the same Syrian regime that waged an open-ended campaign of terror against Lebanon’s Christians starting in 2005. Christian politicians and journalists were assassinated; bombs detonated in Christian regions of the country. And the official head of Lebanon’s Christian community is now appealing to Assad for protection?

The Maronites had always distinguished themselves as among the region’s most stubbornly independent of confessional sects. But fear, resentment, and short-sighted political calculation have led them today to seek protection and patronage from the Middle East’s most dangerous and retrograde elements: Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah. Recently, Fawaz explains, senior church officials came out in favor of the arms of Hezbollah’s Islamic resistance. “The Maronite church,” Fawaz says, “has taken a position defending the party that stands accused of killing the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.” Fear has compelled the Christians to abandon logic as well as moral scruple.

In the aftermath of the February 2005 assassination of Hariri, Damascus withdrew its troops from Lebanon after almost 30 years. That represented a golden opportunity for the country’s Christians. “They’d been resisting Syrian hegemony in order to regain a free and independent Lebanon,” Fawaz says. “With Syria out, the Christians had what they always said they wanted: Sunni leadership that had a Lebanon-first policy.” Some Christian parties did ally themselves with the largest Sunni party, led by the late Hariri’s son Saad. But the majority, under the leadership of Michel Aoun, the former head of the Lebanese army, partnered with Hezbollah instead.

In other words, today’s Christians seem less motivated by their vision of an independent Lebanon than by their hatred of the Sunnis. It’s true that Lebanese Christians, like other minority groups here, including the Shiites, suffered terrible persecution at the hands of the Sunnis, who for centuries treated them as second-class citizens (at best). But Lebanon’s current Sunni leaders are not Ottomans, never mind jihadists. Like the Christians themselves, the Sunni leadership here promotes liberal values and a liberalized economy.

By openly siding against the Sunnis and allying with Hezbollah—and by extension Iran—the Christians have let identity politics and ideology, rather than interests and values, drive policy. The Sunnis are the regional majority, and no matter what sort of revolutionary project Iran has in store for the Middle East, the Sunnis aren’t going anywhere.

The question for the Christians is how to respond to the upheavals that have reshaped the region over the last year. Lebanon’s Christian population has the power to set the agenda for the rest of their regional co-religionists. Either they can identify and work with those Sunnis who share their same vision for Lebanon and the rest of the region, or they can let ancient wounds dictate a strategy of resentment that will ensure their demise.

Those inclined to discount the possibility of a Christian-free Middle East would do well to remember that Jews, in the recent past, had a significant place in the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Were it not for the birth of a sovereign Jewish state that took in Jewish refugees thrown out by countries that turned against them, this regional minority might well have disappeared half a century ago. Without an Israel of their own, if the Christians don’t get it right their era in the Middle East may be coming to an end.

By Elizabeth Samson www.TheJewishWeek.com (New York)

In a stunning about-face, and after decades of violence justified by excuses of being under occupation, this week Hamas has admitted that Gaza is not occupied by Israel. And yet, the United Nations, which has long been reluctant to acknowledge Gaza’s change in status, is still silent on the issue.

In response to a statement by Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal that Hamas will hold mass demonstrations against Israel inside Gaza to parallel those organized by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar declared such a protest to be irrelevant. Al-Zahar stated that while the West Bank is “still under occupation” and that all forms of resistance, including armed resistance, should be used in that territory, “popular resistance is inappropriate for the Gaza Strip.” “Against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip?,” al-Zahar asked. “When Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable.”

The international law of occupation requires that a hostile army have “effective control” over a territory in an area where its authority can be exercised, and to the exclusion of the territory’s established government. As foreign minister speaking on behalf of the Hamas government, al-Zahar is giving public credence to what has been a fact since September 2005 – that Israel is no longer in Gaza and that the Israeli government does not displace Hamas’s authority. The assertion that Gaza is no longer occupied is strongly supported by international law derived from the Geneva Conventions and legal precedent. For Hamas to state otherwise would undermine its own power and would be a profound display of the weakness of its government.

For decades, the notion that Israel is an occupier has been the rallying cry of the Palestinian people, seemingly an almost greater raison d’etre for them than an actual pursuit of self-determination, as evidenced by the consistent rejection of every peace offer presented to the Palestinians and the unyielding rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. While renouncing the language of occupation with respect to Gaza may be perceived as a concession to Israel, al-Zahar is actually demonstrating the strength of his government and boldness in the face of detractors in Gaza who are desperate for an excuse to continue to fight Israel.

There has been no official Israeli military or civilian presence in Gaza since September 12, 2005, when the last Israeli soldier left the territory and the government declared its specific intent to no longer occupy Gaza and withdrew all of its military and civilian installations. However, UN Watch, an NGO that monitors the actions of the United Nations, has brought further attention to the fact that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has refused to declare Gaza to be anything other than occupied. As recently as September 22, roughly six years since the Israeli disengagement, the U.N. authorized a mission to visit the “occupied Palestinian territory, specifically the Gaza Strip.” In addition, an official U.N. fact sheet on the “Occupied Palestinian Territories” includes the map of Gaza.

While it is not legally necessary for the U.N. to acknowledge the absence of occupation in Gaza – application of the Geneva Conventions and legal precedent have satisfied those requirements – it is politically important for there to be a recognized change in status so that Israel will no longer be held to the more stringent legal requirements of an occupier and to lend greater legitimacy to Israel’s acts of self-defense. Gaza should have the intermediate status of a “sui generis” territory – unique, of its own kind or class – under the control of its own governing authority for the period between the end of occupation and until the finalization of permanent status negotiations. And, considering that the law, the facts, and the leadership of Hamas all indicate that Gaza is not occupied, there is no legitimate reason to continue to deem Gaza to be under occupation, a legally and factually inaccurate status.

The purpose of the United Nations is “to bring about by peaceful means … adjustment or settlement of … situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.” However, continually declaring that Gaza is still occupied territory and not allowing for an intermediate status may only encourage violence because the Palestinian people in Gaza will feel that their voices are not being heard. Furthermore, by denying a change of status the U.N. is doing the people of Gaza a great disservice — it is denying their autonomy as they struggle to prove their worthiness as a nation among nations.

In light of the groundbreaking proclamation by Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, Secretary Ban should abandon the outdated and inaccurate rhetoric of occupation employed by the U.N. for so long. The United Nations should now seize the opportunity to have the words and actions of the organization reflect its stated determination “to promote social progress” and extend “better standards of life in larger freedom” to the Palestinian people of Gaza.

By Ryan Jones www.IsraelToday.co.il

A columnist for the Saudi Arabian daily newspaper Al-Riyadh has finally uncovered the cornerstone of the Jewish plot for world domination. It is Switzerland. Yes, the entire nation of Switzerland is apparently a Jewish plot.

Writing on September 4, Fahd ‘Amr Al-Ahmadi pointed out that over the past four centuries, Europe has experienced numerous major wars, and yet Switzerland sat there right in the middle completely unscathed. At the same time, Switzerland refused to join any major international alliances or organizations. (It only became a UN member in 2002.)

The conclusion for Al-Ahmadi is simple: Switzerland must be the “safe haven where the [Jews'] wealth can be guarded against the wars they themselves spark,” a safe haven spoken of in the czarist blood libel The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

For those in the West who naively believe that Holocaust-inducing anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, blood libels such as The Protocols are actually an increasingly prominent part of political discourse in the Middle East. So much so that major Arab newspapers reference The Protocols as though it were a commonly acknowledged fact that the Jews are planning a global takeover. And to them, it is.

Of course, Al-Ahmadi’s reasoning ignores the subhuman treatment of the Jews throughout all those wars during which their wealth was supposedly piling up and being guarded in Switzerland. A sane person may wonder why such powerful and wealthy Jews, capable of turning a whole nation into their private assistant, did not use some of that money and power to protect themselves from expulsion, forced conversion, pogroms, and genocide.

But anti-Semites rarely allow the facts of history to get in the way of a good Jew-bashing story.

******* ******** **********
[Translation of Al-Riyadh article provided by MEMRI]

Saudi Columnist: Switzerland’s Neutrality Is Part Of Jewish Plot To Control World’s Wealth – As In ‘Protocols Of the Elders of Zion’The Middle East Media Research Institute www.MEMRI.org

In his column in the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, titled “The Swiss Secret,” Fahd ‘Amr Al-Ahmadi claimed that Switzerland’s traditional neutrality was part of a Jewish plot to incite wars and control the world’s wealth by means of the country’s banks. He noted that this was in accordance with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Following are excerpts from his column: [1]
“In Europe, there have been dozens of brutal wars. Napoleon and Hitler invaded most of the continent, and two world wars burned up most of the countries. Nevertheless, no one attacked Switzerland, which for 500 years has remained an oasis of peace in the heart of a burning hell.

“These days, the world is uniting under economic, political, and military alliances. Nevertheless, Switzerland refuses to join any international alliance or organization, including the EU and the UN [sic].”[2]

“This isolation and absolute neutrality immediately bring to mind The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which discuss a ‘safe haven’ where the [Jews'] wealth [can] be guarded against the wars they themselves spark. They will work to concentrate the world’s wealth [in this 'safe haven'] so that it becomes their delicious slice [of the world's wealth], for when they touch off the world revolution [that they are planning].

“In his book Pawns in the Game, William Guy Carr discusses the Jews’ role in the rise of Napoleon and Hitler and their efforts to prevent an attack on Switzerland. In his book Secret World Government, Cherep[-Spiridovich] explains how world Jewry removed Switzerland from its plans to wreak anarchy and wars, so as to protect their money there. Thus, Switzerland gained a reputation as a safe haven in which to hoard the wealth of the goyim…

“Though I know this hypothesis seems fanciful, reality consistently supports it. Switzerland is the preferred destination for smuggled wealth, and has been since the 16th century. For 400 years, riches have been piling up there, including anonymous accounts, stolen funds, and capital which no one claims any longer. The main attraction of Switzerland is [its] neutrality and secrecy. The Swiss adopted the principle of neutrality in 1515, following their crushing defeat at the hands the French army… They are against any deviation from this principle, and even oppose the expression of any opinion or any solidarity with [a given cause].

“For example, have you ever heard a Swiss position on the invasion of Iraq, the siege on Gaza, or the bombings in New York? Even now, Switzerland refuses to join the UN, the EU, or NATO. Nor has it signed any extradition agreements or security information exchange agreements with any country (making it a paradise for third world tyrants). But the strangest thing of all is that Switzerland doesn’t even have an army capable of initiating conflict with other [countries] – only a civilian defense force and a multitude of ‘non-aggression’ pacts!!

“As for the economic advantage that has contributed to building Switzerland’s reputation as a safe haven, it is a matter of [the country's] strict bank secrecy law. Swiss law prohibits the uncovering or revealing of any banking information for any reason. Likewise, for over 200 years, Swiss banks have been using an encoding system which prevents even the bank’s own clerks from knowing the identity of the account holders. Most importantly, the client is free to deposit his wealth under a pseudonym or under a secret number known to no one but himself. If we add to this five centuries of bank dependability and professionalism, we can understand how Switzerland became a refuge for rich people, tyrants, and thieves from all over the world.

“Now, let us consider the result of all this over the [last] 500 years:
“Neutrality and secrecy [not only] make the Swiss regime unique, they also ensure that wealth remains in Switzerland forever. When a client or tyrant dies, like Saddam Hussein or the Shah of Iran, [Switzerland's] bank secrecy and willful neutrality prevent the account from being returned to [the rightful heirs of] its original owner… For instance, to this day, the forgotten wealth of German officers killed in World War II remains in Switzerland. To this day, the same Swiss uniqueness [of neutrality and secrecy] obstructs the return of the millions stolen by Philippines [president Ferdinand] Marcos, by Zaire [president Mobutu] Sese Seko, by Nigerian [president Sani] Abacha, and by the leaders of the military coups in the Arab world and South America.

“In conclusion, this anonymous and forgotten capital now constitutes a large part of Switzerland’s economic wealth, as a result of which the Swiss citizen enjoys a high standard of living, [with] comfort and ease.

“All that is left is to point out one uncommon event that can shed light on the ties between the Zionist organizations and the Swiss banking apparatus. Under pressure from the American-Jewish lobby, Switzerland acknowledged, for the first time, the existence of anonymous accounts belonging to Jews killed in World War II. Ten years ago, it agreed not only to restore the money [to the rightful heirs] but also to [pay] accrued interest from 1940. [This begs] a parallel question: [How much] wealth belonging to non-Jews lays forgotten in Swiss banks, and how much interest has accrued on it?
“The answers can be found in the sixth and 15th protocols of [The Protocols of] the Elders of Zion.”

Endnotes:
[1] Al-Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), September 4, 2011.
[2] Switzerland joined the U.N. in 2002.

Simon Wiesenthal Center www.JewishJournal.com

For each of the last two years, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights NGO, compiled a list of the top ten anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slurs. The list continues to reflect the growing global anti-Semitism and de-legitimization of Israel coming from mainstream voices. It does not include statements by terrorist organizations, the lunatic fringe, or the government of Iran.

These citations should serve as a wake-up call to those who believe that such rants are the exclusive domain of Neo-Nazis and crackpots.

1. “I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people…”
– Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his UN General Assembly address, September 23, 2011. Speaking to the world, Abbas omitted any reference to the Jewish people’s connection to the Holy Land. No reference to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or King David, King Solomon, or Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel.

source www.gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/66/PS_en.pdf

2. “I would like to see accurate statistics of how many Israelis have been killed by the bombs thrown by Palestinians or with the rockets that were launched by them?…. we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed… neither Turkey nor the Muslims in the region have exerted such cruelty on Israel… Israel is inexplicably cruel against innocent Palestinians, hiding behind the Nazi Holocaust and seeking victimhood…. Everybody knows what Israel is about.”
– Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during CNN Interview with Fareed Zakaria, September 25, 2011.

source http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1109/25/fzgps.01.html

3. “Everything that happens today in the world has to do with the Zionists… American Jews are behind the world economic crisis that has hit Greece also.”
– Zorba The Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, winner of the International Music Council-UNESCO International Music Prize, also told Greek TV that he was “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic,” February 15, 2011.

source http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=208291

 

4. “I love Hitler…People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed.”
– The renowned Christian Dior fashion designer John Galliano was fired and later convicted in a French court for his anti-Semitic rants screamed at Jews in a Paris bar. Galliano later apologized.

source http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-02-28/news/28656549_1_semitic-designer-john-galliano-ugly-people

 

5. “I understand Hitler… He’s not what you would call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War, and I’m not against Jews… I am of course, very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass… I’m very much for Speer. Albert Speer [Hitler’s Architect]… He was also maybe one of God’s best children… Okay, I’m a Nazi.”
– Director Lars Von Trier was thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival after this rant, May 18, 2011. He later apologized.

source www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/18/lars-von-trier-im-a-nazi-_n_863512.html

6. “[Jews] want that sucker of Syrian blood to remain and continue to prey and suck blood. They not only want their security, but also to enjoy the sight of Syrian blood being spilled…. Asking myself why Jewish support of Bashar [Assad] increased after they saw the rivers of Syrian blood this mass-murderer spilled in Syrian towns, an old image leapt to my mind, of Jews bleeding people and using their blood to prepare matzos. Logic does not accept this, but the facts prove it.”
– Syrian writer Osama Al-Malouhi, an opponent of President Bashar Assad, posted on an opposition website, October 26, 2011, The Middle East Media Research Institute.

source http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/5769.htm

7. “Not all the Jews in the world are evil….The ratio is 60-40. Sixty percent are evil to varying degrees, all the way to a level that words cannot describe, while 40 percent are not evil.”
– Tawfiq Okasha, a presidential candidate in post-Mubarak Egypt, added that among the 40% of ‘non-evil’ Jews, only one in a million is blameless and that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is “one of those Jews who adhere to the Zionist ideology…one of the worst ideologies,” Al-Faraeen TV, October 31, 2011.

source www.nmen.org/egyptian-presidential-candidate-tawfiq-okasha-jews-run-u-s-economic-policy-to-subordinate-it-to-global-freemasonry-they-created-the-various-christian-denominations-only-60-of-jews-are-evil

#6 and #7 originally reported in “Praise Arab Spring, Except for Anti-Semitism” by Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 28, 2011

8. “The source that finances and incites all these international organizations… especially in the Arab world… they are led by a single, evil organization, known as Zionism. It is behind all these movements, all these civil wars, and all these evils… Jesus Christ healed the sick among the Jews… and resurrected their dead. [How did they repay him?] They strived to crucify him until he died…”
“Do the people of the opposition [today]… belong to Christianity or to Islam? No. They are deeply rooted in Judaism and in Zionism… Any intelligent person who reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion will see the extent of its influence on the politics of our region and the world.”
– George Saliba, Bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Lebanon, Al-Dunya TV, July 24, 2011. The Middle East Media Research Institute.

source http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/3047.htm

9. “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! [“Arbeit macht Frei!”]Truth makes free!”
– Hermann Dierkes, leader of the Left Party in Duisburg, Germany, April 2011. Dierkes posted a flyer on the website with a swastika morphing into a Star of David and called for a boycott of Israeli products, labeling Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger.” “Arbeit macht Frei!” is inscribed on the gates of Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz and Dachau.

source http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=646

 

10. “The state of Israel is an illegal, genocidal place… to equate Judaism with the state of Israel is to equate Christianity with [rapper] Flavor Flav.”
– Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a speech to thousands of people, June 14, 2011, Baltimore, Maryland.

source http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-06-21/news/bs-ed-mossburg-wright-20110621_1_african-history-american-revolution-barack-obama

(As posted on aish.com, mid-eastplus.blogspot.com, israpundit.com, and elsewhere.)

By Denis MacEoin

The following letter was written to the Edinburgh University Student Association (EUSA) after they voted to boycott Israel because of its “apartheid.”

Dr. Denis MacEoin is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Here is his letter to those students:

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic, and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain’s great Middle East experts in their day.

I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a “Nazi” state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The Einsatzgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things or anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on Earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).

In Iran, the Baha’is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews – something no blacks were able to do in South Africa.

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theaters.

In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it’s clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha’is…. Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930′s (which, sadly, there was not), don’t you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence. It’s up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,
Denis MacEoin

Send this to those who say that Israel is an apartheid state.

The event that this video promotes has already occurred, but the video’s history lesson is timeless.
Watch and Learn.

also on www.durban3nyc.com

By Aron Heller Associated Press

JERUSALEM–With tears in his eyes, Michael Sidko laid a wreath of flowers at Israel’s official Holocaust memorial during a solemn ceremony Thursday, October 6, marking 70 years since a World War II massacre he barely escaped.

Sidko was six when he was taken with his family to the Babi Yar ravine outside Kiev, Ukraine — then part of the Soviet Union — to be murdered along with the rest of that city’s Jews. In the two-day killing spree in September 1941, Nazi troops gunned down more than 33,000 Jews and buried them in mounds of dirt.

Among those murdered were Sidko’s mother and two of his siblings. He and his older brother, Grisha, were among the few who managed to escape the killing fields.

“How is it that everyone was killed and only we survived?” he asked, hands quivering. “I still can’t believe what happened there and how I managed to get away. I thank God I am here today.”

At 76, he is one of the only living survivors of an atrocity that has become one of the defining events of the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews.

The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked a turning point in the German plan to “solve the Jewish problem.” Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads were sent out to follow the German armies. Babi Yar was one of the first mass killing sites.

Of the 160,000 Jews in Kiev prior to the Nazi invasion, some 100,000 managed to flee. The rest were ordered to be murdered.

At Babi Yar, the Jews were forced to hand over valuables, strip and line up on the edge of the ravine. They were then shot with automatic fire and covered by dirt. The Nazis gunned down 33,771 Jews over two days.

Similar mass murders took place throughout the former Soviet Union.

After the war, a 1961 poem about the massacre by Yevgeni Yevtushenko was turned into music, and Babi Yar became a symbol of Nazi evil.

“At that area, the mass murder systematically started and for many years it was denied,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. “That very famous piece of poetry started a new process and immediately it caught the minds and hearts of so many people in the world.”

Babi Yar also served as a slaughterhouse for non-Jews, such as Gypsies and Soviet prisoners of war. According to a Soviet estimate, 100,000 people were murdered there.

Sidko said he was gathered along with a small group of children while the adults were being slaughtered. For some inexplicable reason, a German guard allowed him and his 13-year-old brother to break off from the group, and then they fled.

They returned home, but a Ukrainian neighbor reported them to the Gestapo and they were sent to a concentration camp. The brothers escaped that as well and were on the run for two more years, until the end of the war. Michael Sidko’s brother Grisha is no longer alive.

At Thursday’s ceremony, Sidko rekindled the eternal flame at Yad Vashem alongside Ukrainian Minister of Culture Mykhailo Kulynyak.

“It was hard,” he said, in Russian. “I saw my whole life before my eyes.”

Despite Israel’s troubled history with Ukraine, Yad Vashem is set to sign a breakthrough agreement with the country’s national archives that it hopes will shed more light on the massacres and help the Holocaust memorial in its project of collecting the names of all 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Among the material in the Ukrainian archives is documentation from village, city and regional administrations, from which it is expected that details about the daily life of Jews before and after the Nazi invasion can be drawn.

“This is a significant achievement,” Shalev said.

By Elwood McQuaid Israel My Glory

Seventeen Jewish skeletons found in the UK allegedly share DNA with the Fogel family of Itamar, creating an inextricable link between Christian anti-Semitic sentiment of medieval times and that of today.

A grisly discovery was made in Norwich, England, recently. Seventeen Jewish skeletons, apparently from the same family, were found at the bottom of a medieval well. Archaeologists theorize they were forced down the well by pogromists because they refused to convert to Christianity.

Ironically, according to a report by Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, the skeletons’ DNA was linked to the five members of the Udi Fogel family of Itamar, Israel, who were savagely stabbed to death in their beds by Palestinian jihadists on March 11. Ten centuries have passed between the atrocities, but the “plague” is still with us—the attempt to find a “final solution to the Jewish problem;” but now it focuses on the destruction of Israel.

As a Christian who fully supports the Jewish people’s legitimate right to their homeland of Eretz Yisrael, I was appalled to read that well-known Italian priest Mario Cornioli flippantly declared, “What is Itamar? An illegal Israeli colony built on stolen land.”

Why would anyone under any circumstances brush off the unspeakably horrific slaughter of an innocent family because he disagrees with where they lived?

Unfortunately, the priest’s attitude is not limited to a few bigots operating on the fringe. A whole range of vaunted Christian organizations have taken to the idea that Israel must be squeezed until it either disappears or is so emasculated that it survives only as a disheveled, discredited clan of Jews forced back into ghettos by emissaries of pseudo-Christian love and/or Muslim “humanitarianism.”

Here is a sampling of those who have come to the fore as next of kin to the Presbyterian Church USA and other mainline denominations that tout divestiture as a means of posturing Israel as an apartheid, pariah state worthy of being hauled into the economic woodshed and whipped into shape.

Lutherans from the United States, Catholics and Protestants from Bethlehem and Nazareth, Orthodox Christians from Greece and Russia, lecturers from Lebanon, and Copts from Egypt gathered at a conference recently to declare the Jewish state “a sin” and occupying power that dehumanizes Palestinians; they called for resistance (jihad) as “a Christian duty.”

An influential, international Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, promotes boycotting Israeli goods “in the name of love.” Even Christian groups funded by the European Union, the Dutch Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, and the Irish-Catholic group Troicaré are reportedly campaigning for divestiture. They are going so far as to include the popular Ahava cosmetics company as a collaborating offender. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu added his influence by convincing the University of Johannesburg to severe all ties with Israeli fellows.

This discriminatory hostility is morphing into increasingly militant rhetoric and incitement. A popular Vatican magazine recently declared that “ethnic cleaning” by Israel created the Palestinian refugees and that “the Zionists were cleverly able to exploit the Western sense of guilt for the Shoah [Holocaust] to lay the foundations for their own state.” Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros added his bit by saying, “We Christians cannot speak about the Promised Land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a chosen people.” Furthermore, an important papal envoy called Israel an illegitimate “foreign implant,” unscrupulously Judaizing Jerusalem and illegally occupying Arab land.

This radical denunciation of Israel’s legitimacy paves the way for the next step: physical intervention to remove the “foreign” object. Joining the ranks of Muslim jihadists who have long sought the opportunity to attack and destroy Israel are hordes of idealistic, but uninformed, Europeans and Western zealots who are volunteering for flotillas and flytillas and are serving as foot soldiers seeking to invade Israel as champions of the downtrodden. With mobs screaming for change in the region and the West supporting that scream, one can almost predict an upturn in violence in the near future.

We must ask ourselves, Why are professing Christians who are in the vanguard of such a phenomenon so clearly unchristian in every respect? The answer is Replacement Theology. It was the excuse for viciously throwing a Jewish family down a well in medieval times, and it is at the heart of the excuses used today to demonize and delegitimize Israel. Archbishop Bustros spoke for all who see themselves as the “new Israel” when he said, “We Christians cannot speak about the Promised Land for the Jewish people. There is no longer a [Jewish] chosen people.”

His statement is a pristine definition of the theology that confiscates what God created (the Jewish people) and despises those whom God loves. It also explains the lamentable religious arrogance that would work to dismantle a nation and persecute its people.

The Associated Press

LONDON – Protesters disrupted a performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in one of Britain’s most venerable concert series and forced the BBC to pull the concert off the air, the broadcaster said.

Pro-Palestinian group The Palestine Solidarity Campaign had called for the BBC to cancel the concert and urged people to boycott the event in protest.

The orchestra was due to perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Thursday, Sept 1, as part of BBC Proms, an annual summer concert series dating back to 1941 broadcast live on the radio.

Shouting and booing erupted just as conductor Zubin Mehta was about to lead the orchestra in Bruch’s violin concerto.

“We regret that as a result of sustained audience disruption within the concert hall which affected the ability to hear the music, tonight’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Prom was taken off air,” the BBC said in a statement.

It said protesters interrupted the concert four times and that 30 people were removed by secruity throughout the event.

The BBC said that extra security – including bag searches – had been put in place in anticipation of protests.