Levitt Letter Extra News

By Shmuel Rosner– Chief U.S. Correspondent, www.Haaretz.com

(written in 2007 when Letters From Nuremberg was first published)

There are too many Jews around here, thought the prosecutor, Thomas Dodd. “Col. Kaplan is now here, as a mate I assume for Commander Kaplan. Dr. Newman has arrived… it is all a silly business.” In the prosecution team of the Nuremberg trials, in which Nazi high officials are indicted, there is no need for such number of Jews, that’s what Dodd was thinking. “One would expect that some of these people would have sense enough to put an end to this kind of parade.”

“Grace, my dearest one,” thus Dodd opens many of his letters from those stormy days to his wife. They are very personal, and let the reader peep into the nature of relationships between Thomas and Grace. But these letters also constitute a fascinating historical documentation of the many back stage events of the Nuremberg trials. Dodd was the right hand man of Judge Robert Jackson, the leading prosecutor. He later became a Congressman and a Senator. The letters he sent are now published in a new book, Letters from Nuremberg, authored by his son, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, with the help of a friend, Lary Bloom. One should assume that timing it is no mere coincidence: Dodd is now running for President.

Focusing of the too-much-Jews letter doesn’t do justice to Dodd. There’s no reason to believe that he didn’t want them around him because of personal dislike or racist prejudice. “You know how I have despised anti-Semitism,” he writes to his wife, who stayed at home, in the US, while he was spending more than a year abroad. The trials failed to make the case against the Nazi persecution of the Jews. They were blamed for war crimes, but left unspoken the truth about the nature of the war they have declared against one particular nation.

“Jews should stay away from this trial – for their own sake,” Dodd explains. He doesn’t want them to supply anti-Semites and isolationists with ammunition – afraid of a possible growing sentiment to describe the war as “war for the Jews.” His son, the Senator, added a foot note reminding readers of comment made by Charles Lindbergh, leading the anti-war movement, back in 1941. Three forces are pushing America to get involved in the war, he said: The Brits, the President, the Jews.

Senator Dodd told me that he doesn’t necessarily agree with the sentiment articulated by his father in the letter sited above. He is convinced, though, that this was an honest assessment. Thomas Dodd really thought the number of Jewish members in the team was bad for the Jews themselves. There was no doubt in the son’s mind that the letters should be published in full, not censored. While speaking to three Jewish reporters about the book, he focused more on its political implications, in the broader sense, that on the events of those long-gone times.

Much more than the content of any letter, this is the really controversial side of this book. The son is using the father’s writings to promote his beliefs regarding foreign policy, the international law, human rights. Quoting them, he is trying building a case against the Bush administration, blaming it for a “fundamental shift” in America’s policy, as far as international norms of justice and the rule of law are concerned. Dodd argues that there’s a stark difference between the way America chose to react to the crimes of the Nazis, hence, his fathers’ letters, and the path it has taken after the events of September 11. In conversation, Dodd agrees that the differences between now and then are more than cosmetic. However, the first part of the book is mostly dedicated to drawing the political lessons he sees fit.

“Civilized nations respond differently,” Dodd says, armed with the proof: these newly released letters. Civilized nations do not execute, hold people in secret prisons indefinitely, circumvent the courts – but rather prosecute. The letters show that this is what the father believed. But most of them don’t deal with politics, or philosophy, but rather describe the daily struggles of a man in a unique position. In the morning, he was questioning Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess; in the evening writing about it to his wife, “He is gone mentally and I doubt that he can answer for his offenses.” In the next letter he describes an encounter between Hess and Herman Goering, the Air-Force chief and second in command to the Fuhrer. “Don’t you recall me?” he asks Hess. “I am really very sorry,” Hess replies. “It is genuine,” writes Dodd. He really couldn’t recognize him.

In one of the most dramatic moments of this trial, Dodd was the one presenting to the world the shrunken head of a Polish prisoner. The photo depicting him holding this dreadful piece of evidence is still memorable. The head was used as a paper holder at the office of a Nazi officer. But from the letters, one learns about the personal relations that developed between Dodd and some defendants. Franz Von Papen, short-time deputy to Hitler and one of the few to be found not guilty at the end of the trial, is called “my friend Papen.”

Dodd the father died relatively young, at the age of 64. His political career ended in turmoil and he was censured by the Senate for personal usage of public funds. His son, as one expects, wants this book to serve as a tribute to the better days of the father (he had many good days and some achievements as a legislator too). He said that publishing the letters now, a decade after they were discovered, is the culmination of a long and slow process. There are many family members involved, and making decisions takes time. If he doesn’t mention the campaign as a reason, one should assume that it is only because this will be just stating the obvious.

No dramatic revelations can be found in this book. But it is a fascinating history lesson, and a great way to learn more about the people taking part in the trial of the century. And as it is always with people, much space is dedicated to rivalries, maneuvers, egos. “The worst of [Colonel Robert] Gill, however, is his disloyalty to Jackson,” writes Dodd about one member of the team. But he also remembers that this is not the everyday trial, that he is playing a part in one great drama. “I like the assignment,” he writes. “It is an important and worthwhile one.”

www.nydailynews.com

Dare defend yourself from terrorist attacks and risk international war crimes prosecution.

That is the lesson of the October 16 action by the UN Human Rights Council, which voted 25 to 6, with 11 abstentions, to endorse the Goldstone Report, a document that brands Israelis as war criminals for trying to stop deadly rocket-fire from Gaza 10 months ago.

Ever since Israel’s 2005 pullout from Gaza, Israeli civilians were battered by thousands of mortars and rockets launched by Hamas in its war to destroy the Jewish state and kill its people.

And, straight from the terrorist textbook, Hamas was assembling and launching its rockets from civilian neighborhoods, near mosques, near schools, near hospitals.

Late last year, Israel finally launched a military offensive to stop the terror. Wherever and whenever civilians might be harmed, Israel’s military dropped leaflets to urge civilians to clear out. An innovative new technique of “knocking” on roofs with non-exploding noisemakers was employed as well, to give ordinary Palestinians every opportunity to save themselves.

Because, it was Israel’s objective to punish and disarm the terrorists, no one else.

For this, the Human Rights Council – already known for its anti-Israel bias – opened an investigation, producing a report calling the terrorists and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) equally culpable. Equally guilty of crimes against humanity.

The Council has now formally ratified this libel and urged Israeli and Palestinian authorities to demonstrate that they are investigating the alleged crimes. Or else the charges will be referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

In fact, Palestinian Authority officials recenlty visited that court to argue for its jurisdiction over these matters.

Which means Israeli commanders who set out to defend innocent people from indiscriminate attacks, with painstaking plans to protect civilians in the process, could wind up alongside the butchers of Darfur, alongside those tried at Nuremberg.

Only five nations stood with the U.S. in opposition: Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Good for them.

We have to ask, again, what’s the use of Americans sitting on the Council, spitting into its hurricane-force winds? 25 nations are party to the crime—among them: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. Shame on them. Do you see a pattern?

France and Britain were among the abstainers. Unlike the abstaining dictatorships, the democracies should have known better; so, double shame on them.

As Elie Wiesel once said, “Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor.”

By Amy Teibel, Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon on Sunday that Israel “will not hold back” when attacked and holds the Lebanese government responsible for any assault on his country.

Netanyahu delivered the warning after two rockets fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel on Friday. Israel responded immediately with artillery fire, and the exchange ratcheted up persisting tensions between the two countries.

“We view this very gravely,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet. “We will not hold back when Israeli territory comes under fire, and will not reconcile ourselves to missile fire or any other form of terror directed at Israeli citizens.”

It was not immediately known who fired the rockets Friday. But radical Palestinian factions in Lebanon have been blamed in four firings at Israel this year.

The Israel-Lebanon border has been tense since Israel mounted a monthlong war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas in the summer of 2006. More than 1,200 people in Lebanon and 160 Israelis died in that conflict, which ended in a United Nations-brokered truce.

On Sunday, Netanyahu put the onus of maintaining the cease-fire squarely on the shoulders of the Lebanese government.

“We see it responsible for all these violations and hostilities directed at our territory that originate from Lebanese soil,” he said.

Hezbollah has a large rocket arsenal, but is not believed to have used them against Israel since the 2006 fighting. It has denied involvement in previous rocket attacks on Israel.

But friction between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated as Lebanese politicians wrangle over the formation of a new government. The Hezbollah-led opposition would likely be a part of that cabinet.

In mid-July, a suspected Hezbollah arms depot exploded near the Israeli border. Israel said this was proof the group was rearming and stashing weapons in populated villages.

Lebanon’s An-Nahar newspaper reported Sunday that the U.N. force in Lebanon, which was beefed up significantly after the war to monitor the border, had been warned of a possible attack 10 days earlier.

The U.N. force relayed this information to the Lebanese army two days before the attack, the report said.

A spokesman for the U.N. force, Milos Strugar, said an investigation under way “is pointing in the direction of some extremist groups.” He did not elaborate.

By Yehuda Lahav and Nir Hasson, www.Haaretz.com  [see follow-up article posted on Sept 22, 2009]

In 1939, Sir Nicholas Winton was a 30-year-old stockbroker at a British bank planning to take a vacation in Switzerland. At the time he had no diplomatic connections, no secret contacts and was not being sent anywhere on behalf of anybody.

But when German troops invaded Czechoslovakia in March that same year, Winton followed his heart and changed his travel destination from Switzerland to Prague.

By that time, thousands of children — many of them orphans — were already awaiting their fate in various camps in the Czechoslovakian capital.

Winton was not Jewish, but felt a responsibility to help those struggling during the war. He turned first to his own government, then to the governments of neighboring states, but was met with rejection by all. In their eyes, his fears appeared exaggerated or unfounded.

Of his own accord (and initially at his own expense), Winton founded an aid association for the children of Czechoslovakia. He was its president, treasurer and only employee.

Using the association’s name, he tried to find British foster families for Czech and Slovakian children — most of them Jewish. Their journeys to Britain were organized by Czech friends of Winton.

As he explained years later, Winton searched for foster families via notices and mail correspondence. He recalled one Scottish family who requested a 10-year-old girl, preferably blond. Winton sent the family photographs of 10 children so that the family could decide which they wanted.

Using these methods, 669 children were brought to Britain from Czechoslovakia by Kindertransport in the summer of 1939. Many of them were torn away from their parents and close relatives at the Prague train station. Nobody knew where the children were going and if the parents would ever see them again. Many of the parents were later murdered at Auschwitz.

The last group was supposed to leave Prague on September 3, but was sent back — just two days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.

After the war, Winton managed to find homes around the world for the children from that group that survived, sending the refugees everywhere from Israel to South America. Winton chose not to maintain contact with the children, as he felt that by finding them a home he had finished his good work.

On Tuesday September 1, 2009 — the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion beginning of World War II — a train will head from Prague to the Liverpool Street station in London, on the same 1,300 kilometer route taken by the 669 children in their escape from the Nazi inferno.

The steam train being used for the journey is a replica of the trains used during World War II and will include carriages from that era, obtained from several European countries for the reenactment.

One of the carriages being used on the current journey is that which was used by Tomas Masaryk, the president of Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s.

The journey, which will take four days, will leave from Prague’s central train station — the same location at which Winton’s children parted from their parents.

The train will pass through Germany and Holland before arriving at the Dutch coast, where the passengers will board a ferry that will take them to Britain. Once there, they will board another historic train that will bring them to London.

The survivors and their families number some 5,000 people today, 240 of whom will be on the train on Tuesday, accompanied by diplomats and members of the public. Waiting for the passengers at Liverpool Street station will be Sir Winston himself, who in May celebrated his 100th birthday.

‘The child is crying’

Helen Zinger escaped the Nazis with the last group to successfully leave Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of the war. Zinger, whose family arrived in Czechoslovakia from Germany for after the Nazis rose to power in 1933, does not know how Winton got in touch with her parents. But she does remember boarding the train in July 1939, at the age of 14, and told Haaretz that she didn’t know where she was being sent.

Zinger was eventually brought to a German-Jewish family in the northern English coastal city of Hull. The city suffered from German bombing during the war, and in letters she sent to her family in Czechoslovakia during the war, she wrote the words “the child is crying,” a family code for being bombed.

Her sister Chana Vislovitz, who also survived the war, recalled receiving the letters with the special code.

She told Haaretz that her mother went crazy not knowing what had happened in the months between the writing of the letters and its passage through the British censors.

Zinger survived the war and also succeeded in her studies. Four years after arriving in Britain without knowing a word of English, she was accepted to Oxford University to study philosophy, economics and politics. Her mother and sister survived the Theresienstadt ghetto, but her father was sent out of the ghetto on the last train to leave for Auschwitz before the end of the war, where he was murdered.

Following the war, Helen was reunited with her mother and sister with the aid of a British soldier Chana met in the ghetto, who organized for a search to be conducted for Helen in Britain.

According to Vislovitz, their mother wanted her sister to return to Czechoslovakia from Britain after the war, but Zinger’s adoptive father asked that she stay an extra year to finish the degree.

Zinger eventually moved to Israel together with her family in 1962. She and Vislovitz both still live there today.

Winton was awarded a knighthood in 2002, but in his own mind the work he did to save the 669 children was natural, and he never even mentioned it to his wife Garda.

In fact, his name only became known around 50 years later, when Garda came across an old briefcase filled with papers from the wartime years, including the list of the 669 children, while searching for something in the attic of their house.

Garda called historian Elizabeth Maxwell following the discovery, and the BBC organized a meeting between Winton and several of the survivors. In recent years Winton’s story has gained much attention in Britain and other countries, and a Slovakian director even made a movie about him.

In 1998, then Czech president Vaclav Havel awarded Winton the Order of Tomas Masaryk. More recently, Czech schoolchildren began collecting signatures calling for Winton be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Some 53,000 signatures have already been collected.

Whether Winton wins the prize is open to question, but what is known is that his rescue actions have become educational material for school children in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who are taught about the actions of a man labeled “the utmost inspiration.”

More than Czech 100 students participated recently in a literary competition named after Winton, in which they wrote, photographed and produced films with the aim of proving that even in today’s world one must stand

By Tovah Lazaroff, www.JPost.com

Shlomo Slonim, 81, lays a stone on his mother's grave, which is just one in a number of rows of graves from Hebron massacre. Photo: Tovah Lazaroff

On his freckled forehead, one can still see the scar from the knife wound Shlomo Slonim sustained 80 years ago, when an Arab stabbed him as he huddled in his mother’s arms in their Hebron home.

“It’s not the only wound I have,” Slonim told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. He opened up the palm of his hand to show scars on the insides of his fingers.

“There is one that I cannot bend,” said the 81-year-old, who was dressed in black slacks and a light blue, short-sleeved, button-down shirt.

He wore glasses and a knitted kippa and spoke calmly as he stood in the Hebron cemetery, at the end of a small ceremony marking the Hebrew anniversary of the 1929 massacre of 67 Jewish residents of that city by an Arab mob.

Slonim recounted the details of that fateful day, when he was only a year old. He has no memory of the events, of course, but he has heard the story so many times that he told it as if he were recalling his own experiences.

It was Shabbat morning when an Arab mob armed with knives filled the streets and burst into Jewish homes, Slonim said.

Dozens of Jews, he said, had gathered in his parents’ home for safety. His father, Eliezer Dan Slonim, 29, had been the director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and a representative of the Jewish community in the Hebron Municipality.

Given the good relationship he enjoyed with his Arab neighbors, local Jews believed they would be safe in his home, said Slonim.

They were wrong. As the Arabs came to the home, the people inside tried to bar the door with their bodies, but they couldn’t hold back the mob, he said.

After bursting in, the Arabs killed 24 people with knives and machetes. Among them were Slonim’s father, his mother, Hannah, 24, and her parents who were visiting for Shabbat. They also fatally wounded his older brother, who was only four. He succumbed to his wounds several days later in Jerusalem and was buried there.

The lone survivor of his immediate family, Slonim comes as often as he can to the cemetery to visit his parents’ graves, which are among the many graves of massacre victims marked by a long row of small headstones.

As is customary in Jewish tradition, he placed a small stone on each grave on Sunday.

The massacre destroyed the Hebron Jewish community, whose roots go back to biblical times, even though there were other periods when Jews were chased out of the city.

Some Jews tried to return to Hebron after the massacre, but the British removed them in 1936.

It was only in 1979 that Jews returned to live in Hebron. While those Jews who came saw themselves as the spiritual descendents of the former community, very few of the survivors or their descendents were among them.

Slonim said that he had thought about returning, but did not want to live among people who had killed his family.

“I would never know if the Arab I passed in the street had a hand in their murder,” he said.

Slonim was not the only survivor to return Sunday to the cemetery for the ceremony organized by the Jewish community of Hebron. Yankele Hillel, 81, said that an Arab neighbor had saved him and his mother.

One woman, Menuha, said that her great-grandmother, for whom she was named, had survived because she hid behind a closet.

Among those who arrived at the cemetery was Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who in 1968 brought Jews back to Hebron to celebrate Pessah. They moved into rooms in a local hotel and refused to leave until a compromise was brokered, which led to the creation of the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Levinger came to the cemetery in a wheelchair on Sunday, hours after he had been released from the hospital. He was inspired, he said, by the spirit of the holy ones who were buried there.

A national ceremony in honor of the victims will be held next month.

By Peggy Shapiro, www.americanthinker.com

Where could you hear radio talk show hosts Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, military analyst Elliot Chodoff, Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren, Senator Joe Lieberman, country music star Randy Travis, and cantor and musical theater singer Dudu Fisher on the same stage with ministers and orthodox rabbis? Where could you see over four thousand Christians waving Israeli and American flags to the singing of national anthems of Israel and the U.S. and breaking out in spontaneous dance during the playing of Havah Nagilah? Where could you witness Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Pentecostals wearing Star of David necklaces, which they had just purchased at an Israel bazaar?  That’s what I heard, saw, and witnessed at the Conference of Christians United for Israel in Washington D.C. on July 19-22 when Christian Zionists from a multitude of denominations and backgrounds took up the huge Convention Center and made over 400 lobby appointments on Capital Hill to speak up for Israel and mark a change in the Jewish-Christian relationship.

The attendees were African Americans, Asians, Caucasians, Hispanics, teens, octogenarians, the affluent, and the unemployed from all over the U.S. I met a Nigerian mechanical engineering student who was pursuing a Master’s Degree and supporting a wife and child, a stunningly beautiful airline hostess who brought her granddaughter, an African American grandmother who was planning her 16th trip to Israel, and a food chemist for a large corporation. I spoke to a shy woman from the southern tip of Illinois. She had never made a public speech or taken political action and called herself “a hick from the sticks.” My roommate, along with 89 others, made their way to Washington from Minnesota on a 24-hour bus ride. The crowd was diverse, but they shared one common mission, which was proclaimed on the banners which hung from every rafter: “For Zion’s sake, I will not keep silent.” They were united by their commitment to speak up on behalf of the State of Israel and for its rights to exist, to self defense, and to sovereignty.

The focus of the conference was a two-pronged message to Congress and to the Obama administration, which has recently taken Israel to task for adding housing to accommodate the natural growth in its “settlements,” while soft-peddling any criticism of Iran’s nuclear ambitions: Israel is not the obstacle to peace, and the U.S. must place crippling sanctions on Iran to stop the terror-sponsoring state from acquiring nuclear arms.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told the group, “Critics say the stumbling block [to peace in the Middle East] is settlements or Jerusalem or refugees,” “We all know the real stumbling block to peace is posed by those who vehemently deny the nation of Israel’s historical right to the land of Zion.” Democrat Shelley Berkley (D-Nev) minced no words in her criticism,  “…to pin the peace process” on the settlement issue “is absolutely foolhardy. To publicly dress down the State of Israel is a huge mistake.”  CUFI founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee forcefully summed up the message, “America is singling out Israel…Despite all of the risks Israel has taken for peace, our government is pressuring Israel to take more risks. Hello Congress, we’re putting pressure on the wrong people here. You want to get tough, get tough with the terrorists, not the only democracy in the Middle East.” The crowd responded with a thunderous ovation.

Speaker after speaker pointed to the refusal of Palestinians and Arabs to accept a Jewish state in any part of the Middle East as the cause of the sixty-one year conflict, and to Iran for escalating the terror through its proxies of Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. They urged the administration not to underestimate Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the existential threat they pose to Israel and to the entire region. U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who accepted CUFI’s Defender of Israel Award at the Tuesday Night to Honor Israel, evening, said, “The chief obstacle to peace in the Middle East is not Israelis living on the West Bank but the regime in Tehran.”

After an extravagant Night to Honor Israel, on Wednesday, CUFI delegates took the message to Capitol Hill to tell their members of Congress not pressure the Jewish state but to respect the democratic nation and work with it as a friend. Representatives were also asked to co-sponsor legislation that could strengthen the President’s hand in the event that negotiations do not prove fruitful. One bill is the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would impose sanctions on companies that help Iran import or produce refined petroleum. The other bill, The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, which authorizes state and local governments to divest from companies investing in Iran’s energy sector, never made it to the floor when it was introduced last year.

The CUFI conference sent a message not only to Congress and to the President, but also to Jews. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed the conference via satellite, acknowledged that the conference marked the changing relationship of Christians and Jews. “For centuries, the relationship between Christians and Jews was marked by conflict rather than partnership and friendship, but this is changing. A new chapter in the relationship between us is now being written.” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in a passionate speech proclaimed that the threats Jews face today from a regime that is determined to wipe Israel off the map are fundamentally different from the threats Jews faced in 1939 because now there are “tens of millions of Christians who will not be silent and stand with the State of Israel.”

In the breakout sessions to fellow Christians, pastors addressed the skepticism of some in the Jewish community about allying with Christian Zionists because of a history of Church anti-Semitism and replacement theology (which teaches that Christians replaced Jews as the “Chosen People”). In a number of meetings, clergy warned that some Evangelicals, such as former President Jimmy Carter, are spewing anti-Semitism when they profess Replacement Theology. The pastors gave the biblical foundation for the support of Israel. It is not the conversion of Jews nor hastening the end of days, but the strongly held belief that God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses those who curse the Jews. (Genesis 12:13)

C.U.F.I., established only four years ago, now has 150,000 members who are living their belief and who have aspirations for growing to millions of voices which “are silent no more” when Jews or the Jewish State are in danger.

Ilan Halimi in captivity

Ilan Halimi in happier days

Tender French Justice for the Gang of Barbarians

By Nidra Poller

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com

In a show of disrespect for the family of Ilan Halimi, victim of the most atrocious anti-Semitic crime committed in France since World War II, the court announced the verdict after 10 PM on Friday night—the Sabbath—on the eve of the July 4th holiday weekend. Emma, the young lady who lured 23 year-old Halimi into the cruel trap was sentenced to nine years in prison. Youssouf Fofana, the “Brain of the Barbarians,” who admits he finished off his Jewish victim, after 24 days of torture, stabbing him five times and setting him aflame, gets “life” in prison (with a possibility of parole after 22 years). The other 25 accomplices or accessories were given jail terms ranging from acquittal to 18 years. The motive of anti-Semitism was retained for some of the defendants, but did not incur the corresponding ten-year increase in jail terms. Two men who played a key role in the Halimi kidnapping are on the loose because the police couldn’t persuade any of the defendants to cough up their names.

The two-month trial was held behind closed doors in juvenile court because two of the defendants were just under 18 when the crime was committed. Ruth Halimi, the victim’s mother, pleaded in vain for an open hearing. In January 2006 she had vainly entreated investigators to recognize the anti-Semitic motive of her son’s jailers. For 24 days the police followed false trails, overlooked clues, missed chances to nab the mastermind, and bungled negotiations for unrealistic ransom demands that were little more than a pretext for the torture inflicted on Ilan Halimi. The photo sent to the family the day after his disappearance tells it all: Ilan’s face is totally plastered with thick silver duct tape. His eyes and mouth are sealed shut, leaving a small hole for his broken nose.

He was kept naked—first in an unheated apartment, then in a boiler room—fed liquids through a straw, forced to eliminate in a plastic bag, beaten, kicked, pummeled… No one will ever know the extent of his ordeal. Playing on the nuances of French law that supposedly establishes the exact degree of participation of each individual in a collective crime, defense lawyers portrayed their clients as lost sheep haplessly involved in a seemingly normal short-term business enterprise…even when it became obvious that the whole thing was bungled and only the torture was real.

Late Friday afternoon, the press, alerted by rumors that the verdict would be pronounced before nightfall, stood for hours in the halls of the Palais de Justice before being admitted into the antiquated courtroom. The atmosphere was weirdly festive, as defense lawyers chatted with each other and fussed over their clients, half-hidden from our view behind a glassed-in cubicle. It was after 10 PM when the presiding judge finally announced—in a barely audible voice— prison terms for the 27 defendants, from life to 18 years, to 15, 13, 11 and by even increments all the way to six months suspended sentence and, for two of them, acquittal. Most prisoners are released in France after serving half their terms.

The whole thing has been hushed up and tucked away under front page stories about holiday traffic jams and the Tour de France bicycle race. Last week Maître Francis Szpiner, representing the Halimi family, expressed his misgivings about the indulgent recommendations to the jury of the Avocat Général—a sort of voice of the people and the Bench. Interviewed Friday night after the lenient verdict was announced, Szpiner called upon the Minister of Justice to appeal (the plaintiffs do not have the right to appeal). Several Jewish organizations have called for a gathering Monday night in front of the Justice Ministry at Place Vendôme…at the same place where enraged Islamists shouting “Death to Israel, Death to the Jews” made a show of force in January.

Background:

France’s Private Concentration Camp

By Jamie Glazov, www.FrontPageMagazine.com, Friday, June 26, 2009

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog Atlas Shrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Front Page Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications.

FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Geller: Thank you for having me Jamie.

You’ve been following the trial of the torture and murder of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in Paris. Tell us about the case and the trial.

Geller: The death of Ilan Halimi can only be described as an unspeakable horror, and yet typical of the increasing Islamic Jew-hatred and violence against the Jews. A group calling itself the Muslim Barbarians targeted Jewish men for torture and murder. Their first attempts to kidnap a Jew were unsuccessful, despite the lure of a beautiful girl. Ilan Halimi was not so lucky. He did not escape the Islamic homemade concentration camp the Muslim Barbarians had set up.

The banality of evil lived in that apartment building. Apartment dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan’s screams and cries of torture over a period of three weeks, and yet did not call the cops. The screams must have been loud because the torture was especially atrocious: the thugs cut bits of flesh off the young man. They cut his fingers and ears. They burned him with acid. They poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Not only did those in the building not go to the police — they did nothing at all. Worse, many took part in the tortures.

So systemic is the Jew hatred in France that it impeded rescuing Ilan or securing his release. Halimi’s family said that throughout Ilan’s entire captivity, the French police refused to move on any of the evidence that pointed to an anti-Semitic motive. Instead, the police conducted a routine kidnap investigation (which invariably involves ransom, not death). The police refused to pursue the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that, according to newspaper accounts, “in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan’s family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background”.

The family begged the police to listen to torturous phone calls from the kidnappers and acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish. Clearly, had the police not acted in judeophobic fashion, they would have recognized that Ilan’s life was in terrible danger and taken urgent action. But law enforcement was not the only guilty party. The government refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic motives behind the torture and killing a full week after the Halimi turned up mutilated and dead.

This was not new, of course. In 2003, Sebastian Sellam, a popular disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club called Queen known as DJ Lam C (a reverse play on his surname) was on his way to work when in an underground parking lot, a Muslim neighbor slit Sellam’s throat twice. His face was completely mutilated with a carving fork. Even his eyes were gouged out.

It has taken three years to bring this case to trial and even now, they are hiding their dirty little secrets behind closed doors.

FP: How come this trial is not receiving any attention or coverage?

Geller: The French would like this ugly little business to go away. Like Al Dura. Like

their sordid national behavior when the Nazis occupied France.

The latest outrage in the closed (more like hidden) trial of the “Muslim barbarian” ringleader Fofana and his 26 accomplices (it was more like 50) in the savage torture and murder of Ilan Halimi is suspension of the trial, with no indication of when it will begin again. Why isn’t Youssouf Fofana, in a glass box like Eichmann at Nuremberg, chained like the wild animal that he is?

In a shocking display of proud Islamic Jew hatred (consistent with the most sacred teachings of the Koran), the brutal Halimi murder trial was suspended after the defendant spewed vile invectives and threw his “Arab shoes” across the courtroom at the jury. Throwing shoes at someone is a powerful insult in the Arab world.

According to a prosecution lawyer, Fofana’s shoe throwing occurred during the presentation of evidence by doctors who examined Halimi’s body.

It is not clear when the hearing would be resumed. The trial is being conducted behind closed doors, with no press or public allowed, at the request of two of the defendants who were minors at the time of the killing. The trial is closed at the request of barbarians so evil, so savage that it defies the normal mind. And yet the vichy French acquiesced to the Muslim nazis and are hiding their pathetic attempt at justice behind closed doors.

The silence in the media and across the world is a crime against humanity. Imagine, if you will, the unthinkable, the impossible — if Ilan had been a Muslim and his attackers had been Jews. Stop laughing — I know it is impossible, but that’s not my point. This is damning proof of the Jew hatred that is running wild across the world. Israel shuts a light off in Gaza and the world wants to eliminate her. Imagine if Ilan had been black and his attackers had been white. Stop and think about it.

FP: So let’s dig a bit deeper here: why did the police turn a blind eye to the evidence indicating that Islamic anti-Semitism was behind the kidnapping? Why is the French government, law enforcement and the media now covering up why this horrifying crime was committed? Better to let a Jew get tortured and killed than to point to the truth about what Islam teaches and what many Muslims believe and are ready to act upon, yes? This is Jew-Hate and a surrender to Islam simultaneously, yes?

Geller: Yes, exactly. This is a strain of anti-Semitism in Europe that has never been eradicated. There is never any discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism, and it is fundamental to Islamic teachings. This refusal to acknowledge the obvious gives tacit approval to incitement to violence. It is unsafe to walk about many European cities with any identifying Jewish apparel or accessories on. Is that what Europe learned from World War II? Is that the lesson that Europe took away from the holocaust?

The lesson that Europe had decided to avail itself of in the aftermath of Auschwitz was not that evil is bad and that they behaved like monsters, but rather that everything was caused by nationalism — and therefore, what they really needed to do was have a European Union that would obviate their need for nationalism, so that they could become this transnational gobbletygook. They’d all get together and therefore they wouldn’t have another Auschwitz.
But really the lesson should have been that they were evil and they had to be good. And that is the lesson they still have to learn. You have to be able and willing to make moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil, and that is something the Europeans refuse to do.

They are constantly having memorials to dead Jews, while condemning Israel for every act of self defense, no matter how benign it is, in the defense of innocent Jewish citizens.

Ilan Halimi best demonstrates the horror of this lack of humanity. But certainly the “death to Jews” rallies that spread like a cancer across the Europe (and major US cities) during the Gaza defensive in January is certainly a gross demonstration of this evil.

FP: What are your own personal thoughts on this case?

Geller: It is an indescribable horror. Unimaginable. It demonstrates the free hand Jew hatred is given. It was not just the Muslims that reveled in the torture of this young Jewish man; it was law enforcement’s response (or lack of it), and the circus-like atmosphere of the trial. It is a stunning indictment of French society. Flagrant and unabashed hatred.

FP: What can ordinary citizens do to try to bring some kind of justice to this horrifying crime and to expose the shameless, hateful and cowardly behavior of French authorities and the media etc?

Geller: Speak up! Write, call, email, fax media and elected officials. Burke was right when he said all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Speak up! Evil is made possible by thesanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (channeling Ayn Rand here).

FP: What do we get from the reality that this happened, as you relate, in an apartment building where myriad dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan’s screams and cries of torture and did not only did nothing but came to participate? This wasn’t a secret between three people. Dozens and dozens of people knew about this, and supported and engaged in it. What does it tell us?

Could it possibly have something to do with the Islamic theological teaching about not only the importance of hating and killing Jews, but also that a Muslim will go to heaven if he kills a Jew?

Hmmm I wonder.

The liberal and leftist milieus cannot accept what it tells us of course, but they know there would never be a reverse situation (i.e. an apartment building full of Jews who hear a Muslim screaming from being tortured and they support it and participate in it, etc.). And if this did happen, which it wouldn’t, imagine the media being completely silent about it.

Geller: This is the terrible truth about Islam, well documented in Dr. Andrew Bostom’s encyclopedic tome,The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. The Islamic dehumanization of the Jews mirrors what the Nazis did during the Hlocaust. I find it troubling in all of my research and personal dealings it is difficult to find devout Muslims (any Muslims that are not apostates) who are not hostile to Israel. It speaks volumes. And of course, none of this would be possible if the Left were not aligning itself with political Islam. But this is consistent with the modus operandi of the left. Historically they align themselves with the totalitarian ideology du jour.

FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com

The Chavista (follower of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez) red shirt onslaught seems to be sharpening its pitch. After all, weeks and weeks of attacks, fanned by “Globovision (a 24-hour television news network in Venezuela) as the source of all evil,” have a way to self-generate excessive stimulation in those quarters.

Yesterday (Wednesday, June 17), we saw many concerted attacks of the sort, worthy of any self-respecting totalitarian regime. I chose to show only one, the attack on Miranda State’s Governor Radonski ’s office by the mayor of Los Teques, Alirio Mendoza. The pictures say it all. My only question is how come nothing will happen to this mayor promoting violence and using public employees for that purpose DURING working hours, while Globovision will be closed any time soon just because Rafael Poleo did not control his big mouth for a few seconds? Does chavismo ignore that these things do go around the world? The shirts might be red, but this is Fascism and the language is clear: those who wear the swastika in their heart are those covering the walls with it.

By the way, just for the record, the grandparents of governor Capriles Radonski died in the Holocaust. So we can mark that down as yet more chavista anti-Semitism.

Chavismo will not stop at anything to weaken those opposition officials elected last November. Rosales, Maracaibo mayor is in exile; Ledezma, Caracas mayor, has been stripped of any function; Governors Perez of Zulia, Navarro of Nueva Esparta, and Salas Feo of Carabobo have lost control of ports, airports, and highways; and now it is the turn of the two last-remaining governors with still some authority. The attack on Capriles Radonski in Miranda has restarted and in the most ignominious way one can think of.

www.IsraelToday.co.il 

Even before Ahmadinejad could start speaking, a man wearing a colorful clown wig stood up and and began jeering the Iranian leader. After the man had been removed by security, Ahmadinejad called him “ignorant.”

The Iranian leader then went on to accuse Western powers of having brought great death and destruction to the whole world during two world wars, and then using the conclusion of those conflicts as an opportunity to impose oppressive and racist restrictions on the rest of the world.

As evidence he pointed out that a mere five nations have veto power in the UN Security Council, the most important decision-making body in the world.

Ahmadinejad then turned to Israel, which he insists European powers established out of guilt over the Nazi Holocaust.

“Under the pretext of compensating for the evil done in the name of xenophobia, they in fact set up the most violent xenophobes, in Palestine,” stated Ahmadinejad.

It was then that the delegates from those European nations who had not boycotted the event all together rose from their seats and filed out of the room right in front of Ahmadinejad’s podium.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama on Sunday defended his decision to boycott the anti-racism summit, calling its open criticism of Israel “hypocritical and counterproductive.”

Reuters

An umbrella group of Jewish groups sought assurances recently from French President Nicolas Sarkozy that authorities would do more to stem a rise in anti-Jewish crime, which has increased following the war in the Gaza strip.

Some 100 acts targeting Jews were reported in France since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza’s Hamas Islamist rulers in late December, said the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France. “We expressed our worries to the president,” Richard Prasquier, who heads the body, told reporters. “The president assured us of the attention he was giving to these acts. He told us that he would do more to find a solution to this problem.”

The group said aggression against Jews had picked up markedly over the past month compared with 2007, when some 250 acts targeting Jews were recorded.

“These acts are the manifestation of very deeply engrained anti-Semitism in a portion of the population and particularly among the youth in our country,” said Prasquier.

Photo (AP): French synagogue attacked

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie recently met leaders of France’s Jewish and Muslim communities and security chiefs to deliver a message that the Gaza conflict – which ended in a shaky ceasefire – should not lead to violent acts in France.

In recent years, flare-ups between Israel and the Palestinians have been followed by acts of violence against Jewish people or buildings in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities.

Earlier in January, attackers launched two cars packed with petrol bombs at a synagogue in France’s southwestern city of Toulouse, causing damage but no casualties.