A Note from Roger Waters - February 1, 2014

Mr. Roger Waters wrote a letter to Neil Young and Scarlett Johansson, asking them to boycott Israel. On this letter, he describe the "horrible situation" of Palestinians in Israel, and the "rightful reasons" to boycott Israel.

Mr. Roger, starts his letter... In the past days I have written privately to Neil Young (once) and to Scarlett Johansson (a couple of times). Those letters will remain private. Sadly, I have received no reply from either. And so I write this note on my Facebook page somewhat in bewilderment.

Mr. Waters keeps writing:
"I am not going to attempt to list, either those laws(they are on the statute book in the Knesset for all to research) or all the other grave human rights abuses of Israeli domestic and foreign policy. I would run out of space. But, to return to my friend Scarlett Johansson." Scarlett, I have read your reposts and excuses, in them you claim that the Palestinian workers in the factory have equal pay, benefits and "Equal rights". Really? Equal Rights? Do they.....?

And Last But Not Least...
Mr. Waters - Ignorance Will Kill You!
In the end of the letter, Mr. Waters comes with a list of questions, which if he knew the reality of Human Rights in Israel, he would have the right answers:

* Do they have the right to vote? * Do they have access to the roads? * Can they travel to their work place without waiting for hours to pass through the occupying forces control barriers? * Do they have clean drinking water?

* Do they have sanitation? * Do they have citizenship? * Do they have the right not to have the standard issue kicking in their door in the middle of the night and taking their children away? * Do they have the right to appeal against arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment? * Do they have the right to re-occupy the property and homes they owned before 1948? * Do they have the right to an ordinary, decent human family life?

* Do they have the right to self determination? * Do they have the right to continue to develop a cultural life that is ancient and profound? If these questions put you in a quandary I can answer them for you. The answer is, NO, they do not. The workers in The Soda Stream Factory do not have any of these rights.

Roger Waters Note on Facebook

Poster Note: No wonder why Neil Young and Scarlett Johansson didn't reply to your hypocrisy - They are bigger than you! Why do the best musicians in the world also think they are the best politicians? Who do you think you are, Mr. Waters? You are a great musician, but a little man!

Mr. Waters, if you need attention so badly, you got some, here are some replies from your fans:

* Noten Brook - Ben Red
Mr. Waters, Music is supposed to act as a bridge between people and cultures and not create a gap between them. Your attitude doesn't help to break the wall, it only makes it higher. The impression you make is that you're not really interested in bringing peace and co-existence in the Middle East and that's too bad because many of us here are… Maybe you've succeeded in convincing Pearl Jam not to come here, because you're sort of a "father figure" for them, but Neil Young is not a child and he will be here because he knows that music lovers are the same anywhere in the world.

* Dror Nahum
Roger is not building bridges towards peace either. only Hate. "Love and only love will break it down" (Neil young) i'm so sad for you Roger.

* Nimrod Goldstein
Hello Roger, I am an Israeli that loves your music and I tend to read your posts every time. I might not agree with them, but I respect your opinion. I don't think you understand the situation in Israel, but I'll leave that aside. You talk about Israel in 3 of your last 5 posts. Do you think that Israel is the source to all of the worlds problems? In the last 2 years, more than 100,000 people were killed in Syria. About 20,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in the last 3 years. I'm not sure that you're aware to this, but in the last 70 years in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 15,000 people were killed on both sides.

* Kelly Levy
Roger, your are known for very selective "Human Rights activism" (Syria, China and many other countries do not exist in your surreal map) - the true cause surfaces along with your hypocritical and uneducated stance.

Yaniv Vaydgorin
Is Israel really the biggest problem in the world right now?!? what about Syria? what about the Palestinians that live in Gaza under Hammas control? You know nothing about the conflict.

Both, Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in peace. Send your complains to Hammas, Iran and Hezbollah that funding terrorist attacks here. And if you really feel the need to criticize more, i suggest you'll criticize your own country and government that colonized half of the world and left it in a mess. Is that mean nobody should play in the U.K???

BTW: if you are wondering why there is a wall between us and them. you can call us psychos but we don't like to ride a bus and to explode. * Yoav Arden Each and every time I hear from you - you lose a bit more dignity. I, who spent 400$ to sit close and watch you take down the 'hatred' wall on stage. Now, I can go online and watch you bleed to death in order to build it up again. But it's only around yourself. You, who got spit on by a fan than wrote an album, now you spit in ours and think it's all well and good.

Do not get me wrong, you are entitled and even expected to have an opinion, and as Voltaire once said - I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. But don't force yourself on people with different opinions than yours, it's unbecoming and disrespectful. You are a Smart Englishman, I don't have to tell you that you're own country forced herself on other parts of the world.

Remember it every time you play a show in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and Ireland... (To simplify it for you - The British Empire has had Military Presence in more than 150 countries) Please, keep your thoughts to yourself, it's more honorable.

Scarlett Johansson Gives a Damn Johansson takes a bold stand against the anti-Israel BDS movement: 

"Companies do business in China, which imprisons dissidents by the thousands. Companies trade with Bangladesh, where workers in dangerous factories have died by the hundreds. Only Israel, which protects basic human and civil and economic rights, is forbidden territory."

With a strong, clear stand — calmly citing “fundamental difference of opinion” — Johansson becomes the highest-profile celebrity to buck the load of BDS bull. Ever more power to her, and to those who may follow her example.

NY Daily News




A Response to Mr. Roger Waters
Uri Silberman Roger Waters, since Scarlett Johansson has the good sense not to answer your pitiful letter to her begging her to hate Israel like you do, I will answer the questions you posed, not for your benefit (because I believe your hatred has blinded you of the real facts), but for those who are genuinely unaware of the following facts:

Q: Do they have the right to vote?
A: Yes they do, they vote for their Palestinian leadership. In the previous elections, they voted for Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization. Israeli Arabs can vote in the Israeli Knesset.

Q: Do they have access to the roads?
A: Absolutely! I drive through Samaria every single day, and trust me, it's FULL of Palestinian drivers.

Q: Can they travel to their work place without waiting for hours to pass through the occupying forces control barriers?
A: The Israeli barriers have one purpose only. To prevent Palestinian terrorists from entering Israeli and Jewish towns and murdering it's citizens. A day doesn't go by without a Palestinian being caught at one of these barriers with some sort of weapon. How many lives do you think have been saved because of these barriers? Countless! So with all due respect, I think saving lives takes priority over someone having to wait while being checked at one of these barriers. Or perhaps you don't think that Jewish lives are worth as much as Palestinian time? Perhaps you think that Jews don't have rights to live?

Q: Do they have clean drinking water?
A: Yes they do. I know a lot of Palestinians, and they all have drinking water. And I'm not just referring to those Palestinians who illegally tap into the national water system.

Q: Do they have sanitation?
A: Why don't you ask the Palestinian Authority who's responsibility it is to take care of Palestinian sanitation?

Q: Do they have citizenship?
A: Yes they do, most have Palestinian citizenship, some have dual Jordanian/Palestinian, and others have yet other Arab countries' citizenship, not to mention Palestinians withIsraeli citizenship.

Q: Do they have the right not to have the standard issue kicking in their door in the middle of the night and taking their children away?
A: Anyone who deals with terrorism should and can be arrested. I assume that is who you are referring to, right? Terrorists? I can assure you that a very large majority of Palestinians have not had their doors kicked in and their children taken away. Additionally, if I, as an Israeli Jew, was to harm anyone in a violent matter as Palestinian terrorists do, my door would also get kicked in and I would be put in Jail. I think anyone in any country in the world faces these same conditions if they were to carry out violent attacks against someone.

Q: Do they have the right to appeal against arbitrary and indefinite imprisonment?
A: Of course they do. All Palestinian and Jewish prisoners are afforded an attorney, either one that they have paid for, or one that is appointed to them by the State if they can't afford one. And can we also mention at this point that Palestinian prisoners who serve jail sentences for terrorism in Israeli jails live in conditions that prisoners in Palestinian Authority jails could only dream of?

Q: Do they have the right to re-occupy the property and homes they owned before 1948?
A: Considering that Jews are the ones that were expelled from this land over around 2000 years ago, do we have this right in your opinion? The Palestinians who built homes on this land have built them on top of ancient Jewish towns and villages.

Q: Do they have the right to an ordinary, decent human family life?
A: Every human being should have this right. I wonder what their lives would have been like had the Palestinians accepted the numerous peace offers over the years that Israel has offered. It started in 1947 with their rejection of the UN Partition Plan, and continued in 1967 (Khartoum), 2000 (Camp David), 2001 (Taba), 2008 (Olmert offer), 2012 (Current negotiations).

Q: Do they have the right to self determination?
A: This is covered by the answer above. The question that needs to be asked is if that's what they really want? Don't you think that they should have accepted one of the above mentioned peace offers if they were really interested in self determination? Or perhaps they have far greater ambitions? Like ALL of Israel?

Q: Do they have the right to continue to develop a cultural life that is ancient and profound?
A: So Palestinian cultural life is ancient and profound, huh? Just how ancient is Palestinian culture in your opinion?

Here are a few more questions that you can answer:

* That might give us an idea of how ancient they are:
* When was Palestine founded and by whom?
* What were its borders?
* What was its capital?
* What were its major cities?
* What constituted the basis of its economy?
* What was its form of government?
* Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?

Uri Silverman - CEO of The Israel Network

Poster's Note:
Mr. Waters, too bad you are flashing your wonderful career down the toilet. Too bad you dirt the name of Pink Floyd Team, but no worries, Mr. Waters, we already know why David Gilmore is better musicians AND better man than you!!!

A response to Israel’s haters

By Joseph A. Klein

My article appearing in Canada Free Press last Friday entitled “Hamas apologist Norman Finkelstein attacks Israel again” (along with its publication by FrontPage Magazine under the title “Finkelstein’s Slander Against Israel”) has apparently brought the haters of the Jewish state of Israel out from under their rocks. And I mean that literally, since the terrorist organization Hamas, which they so zealously defend, still has its founding Charter in force which quotes the prophet Mohammed:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Those who take what the Hamas Charter says seriously about the goal of obliterating the Jewish state are told not to worry. Hamas has changed and wants peace, its supporters argue. It is the villainous Jewish state that refuses to negotiate a peaceful resolution of the conflict, we are told.

Yet, would any sane person trust an organization whose leaders have made statements in the last few years such as the following?

Sheik Yunus al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, in a column in the weekly newspaper Al Risalah in 2008 discussed a Koranic verse suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world and the next.” Astal concluded “Therefore we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.”

“We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity” stated Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza on Friday January 2nd 2009.

In a sermon aired on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television, cleric Yunis Al Astal stated, “Today, Rome is the capital of the Catholics, or the Crusader capital, which has declared its hostility to Islam, and has planted the brothers of apes and pigs in Palestine in order to prevent the reawakening of Islam.” He went on to say that Rome would become, “an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe.”

Hamas has repeatedly refused to recognize the right of Israel to exist, refused to disown its Charter and refused to abide by the previous commitments of the Palestinian Authority.

With that as background, let’s examine a few of the arguments that the Israel haters have thrown my way, when they weren’t engaging in their customary ad hominem attacks.

The Jewish Zionists stole the Palestinians’ land and are not entitled to have a state of their own on any portion of “Palestine.”

Hamas’ apologists love to cite international law when it suits their purposes in holding Israel to account, but then reject the international legal framework under which the Palestinians could have had their own state more than 60 years ago. They have nothing to say that would justify why the surrounding Arab states torpedoed the original UN-sponsored two-state solution in 1947-8.

All they do is whine that the land of “Palestine” was stolen from the “Palestinian” Muslim inhabitants. Aside from the long historical connection of the Jewish people to the land, including Jerusalem, that pre-dated Islam by well more than a thousand years, the region the British called the Palestine Mandate (the area that included Jordan, Israel and the “West Bank”) and out of which the British offered the two state solution adopted by the United Nations, emerged out of the pre-World War I Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire had been ruled for 400 years by the Turks who lost it when they, fighting on the German side, were defeated in World War I.

Many Jews who were living in this area had bought their homes from the absentee Turk landlords. Arab masses immigrated from outside this area along with the Jews. Most of those who were called “Palestinian Arabs” were members of families who migrated into the same region that Jews were migrating into beginning in the late 19th century. And there had been a continuous Jewish presence in the region for many centuries.

To say that European Jews had less of a right to emigrate to the ancient Jewish homeland starting in the late 19th century (and develop the land from a desolate swamp) than did Arabs who emigrated during the same period from other regions outside of the Palestine Mandate is racist, not Zionism. In any case, the majority of Jews living in Israel today are non-European – some from Africa and many expelled from their homes in surrounding Arab countries.

Jordan was created on about 75% percent of the Palestine Mandate. The majority of its population was, and still is, Palestinian. Thus, even before the two-state solution was offered with respect to the 25% remainder of the Palestine Mandate, a state made up of a majority Palestinian population was already in existence. The fact that the minority rulers of a different Arab tribe run things in Jordan is a problem for the Palestinian majority that pre-dated the creation of the state of Israel.

The 1947 UN Resolution 181 partition plan was to divide the remaining 25% of Palestine into a Jewish state and a second Arab Palestinian state (Trans-Jordan being the first) based upon population demographics. The partition was offered even though the Arab inhabitants’ leaders had sided with the Nazis in World War II.

The Jewish inhabitants accepted the partition. The Arab inhabitants rejected the partition and the rest, as they say, is history. The Palestinians could have had their own independent state more than 60 years ago but for the rejectionism of their Arab neighbors who violated international law in trying to drive “the Jews into the sea” and the refusal of the Palestinian inhabitants themselves to negotiate a two-state solution in good faith.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 1967 and “oppressed” the Palestinian people in violation of international law.

Isn’t it strange how the friends of Hamas blithely skip over 20 years of history? Why weren’t the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, while those territories were in Arab hands, provided the land to create their own independent state? Where was the outcry for justice under international law back then?

After Israel took over the territories following the June 1967 war, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242 which (i) called on Israel to withdraw its armed forces “from territories occupied in the recent conflict”; and (ii) called for “termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

The resolution deliberately omitted the word “all” before “territories” in (i) above to allow the parties to negotiate a peaceful solution that would best achieve the goals set forth in (ii) above.

Israel has since returned the Sinai to Egypt as part of a peace treaty, normalized relations with Jordan, withdrawn unilaterally from Gaza and offered to give back 90% of the West Bank and negotiate the fate of Jerusalem – all of which was rebuffed by Arafat and his successors.

There were no security fences or elaborate checkpoints in the years immediately following 1967. What has Israel received in return?

Every year Israeli civilians have been murdered by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, Hezbollah or some other terrorist group. Islamic terrorists use suicide bombers and increasingly sophisticated rockets, launched from lands relinquished by Israel to the Palestinians, to kill innocent Israeli civilians. Their killing machines of choice tomorrow will be whatever weapons of mass destruction they can get their hands on, including from their buddies in Iran whose president has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

Israel is falsely accused of ‘collective punishment’ when it strikes back to defend its citizens. Yet it is the Palestinian and other Islamic terrorists who continually violate the Israelis’ human rights under the Geneva Conventions, which state that “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.” The innocent Israeli women and children, who have been slaughtered while going about their daily lives in their homes, their schools, on buses, at shopping malls, and places of worship, have committed no wrong against the Palestinian people. They are the victims of the Islamic terrorists’ measures of intimidation and terrorism, which violate their most basic of human rights - life itself. The Islamic terrorists are pursuing nothing less than the collective annihilation of the Israeli people. Just look at the Hamas Charter and the statements of their own leaders.

When the Israeli government responded with stern but non-violent, defensive measures to protect its most vulnerable citizens from murder – for example, with border closures, security checks, economic sanctions and a separation wall which came years after the 1967 war – the terrorists’ apologists complain that it is Israel which is violating the Palestinians’ human rights under international law. Although Hamas has controlled Gaza since 2005, it is Israel’s citizens who continued to suffer intimidation and terrorism launched from Gaza in violation of their international human rights. Israel ceded the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in a good faith effort to advance peace. Gaza turned instead into hostile territory under Hamas’s control. More than 4200 rockets were launched from Gaza into Israeli residential areas after Gaza was no longer “occupied territory.”

Israel broke the cease-fire with Hamas and launched Operation Cast Lead that turned into a “massacre” of innocent Palestinian civilians. Israel’s “war crimes” are incontrovertibly documented in the Goldstone Report.

Hamas Does Not Honor Truces 


Hamas, not Israel, unilaterally decided against extending the six month ceasefire that had expired in mid-December 2008.

One fundamental problem overlooked by the Goldstone Report and other so-called “human rights” reports is that Hamas does not abide by truces or cease-fires for very long, even when it decides to enter into one. To Hamas, truces are just stalling tactics to use as lulls during which the terrorists build up their military capability. Don’t take my word for it. When asked if he could envision a 50-year hudna (cease-fire) with Israel, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan (who was since killed in an Israeli bombing attack) responded, “The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don’t need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel. Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God.”

Gaza’s fellow Arab neighbors in Egypt have witnessed first hand Hamas’s destructive ways. In the wake of the militants’ blasting of the barrier between Gaza and Egypt, more Egyptians finally realized themselves where the source of the Palestinians’ problems and of the real threat to peace lies.

For example, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies director Dr. ‘Abd Al-Mun’im Sa’id criticized Hamas’s failed policies in a column he wrote for Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party weekly Al-Watani Al-Yawm:

“Hamas’s election by the majority of the Palestinian people has invested it with the formidable responsibility of leading the Palestinian people, protecting its interests, developing its abilities, and managing its relations with the world and with Israel. Its military coup against the Palestinian Authority and its [currently] exclusive control of the Gaza Strip have forced it to assume complete responsibility over the Gazans, in financial, social, and security matters.

However, Hamas has failed to fulfill this responsibility, both after it was elected and following its [Gaza] coup. In fact, it has done nothing but publicly condemn Israel and the PA, on television and in daily communiqués to the world, and to the Islamic Arab countries…

The rockets, [which are being used] as a means of opposing the peace process and applying pressure [on it], are not for pressuring Israel, but for gaining popularity among the Palestinians…”

The editor of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya and Egyptian MP Muhammad ‘Ali Ibrahim was even blunter in his column:

“The Hamas fighters are not satisfied with Abu Mazen’s [i.e. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s] way of reaching a permanent and definitive solution with the Hebrew state that will ensure the establishment and continuity of the Palestinian state. This is because the only aim of [Hamas Political Bureau head] Khaled Mash’al and his men is to keep this issue hot, so that regional [forces] such as Iran and Syria can continue playing the card of the Palestinian problem to promote their private interests – that is, Iran’s nuclear dossier, the liberation of the Golan Heights, etc…

The Egyptians know their Gazan neighbors very well. They blame Hamas for sabotaging any prospects for peace with Israel and for the Gazan residents’ current suffering. Egypt wants to be left alone from Hamas’s aggression and interference with its sovereignty. So does Israel. And don’t tell me that Egypt is in cahoots with Israel. They have what is called a cold peace. They are barely on speaking terms.

Hamas uses its own civilians as human shields

This is not some wild charge of Israeli propagandists. It is based on the boasts of Hamas officials themselves. 

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008: 


Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: “We desire death like you desire life.” (Emphasis added)

The Goldstone Report

The Goldstone fact-finding panel, commissioned by the anti-Israel United Nations Human Rights Council, concluded that Israel “may” be guilty of war crimes based on the assumption that the country’s military forces and leaders deliberately targeted civilians. Israel’s enemies have seized on this conclusion to brand Israel’s military operation a “massacre,” to use Norman Finkelstein’s term. It is worth noting that not once in its 575 page report did the Goldstone panel actually use the term “massacre” to describe Israel’s actions during the Gaza conflict.

One of the most serious charges leveled against Israel’s operation during Project Cast Lead was its use of white phosphorous. Yet while the Goldstone Report concluded that Israel was reckless in its use in built-up areas it also noted that “white phosphorous is not at this stage proscribed under international law.” The report cited one specific example of a family in which children were alleged to have died as a result of injuries from white phosphorous. This is tragic to be sure, but it hardly demonstrates a widespread pattern of deliberate and indiscriminate burning to death of Palestinian children by Israel’s military that Norman Finkelstein and his followers try to portray.

It is curious why Israel’s enemies felt they had to exaggerate the Goldstone Report’s findings since the Goldstone panel was biased against Israel in the first place. It consisted of four members, three of whom considered Israel guilty before their investigation began. Judge Goldstone was outnumbered 3-1, even giving him all the credit in the world for his own objective judicial temperament.

Here are just a few examples of the Goldstone Report’s distortions of the facts as compiled and written up by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America: 



REPORT:
There is no evidence of Palestinian fighters using civilian clothes. 


FACT:
Journalists and eyewitnesses repeatedly noted the use of civilian clothes by Hamas fighters. 



REPORT:
There is no evidence of armed groups directing civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forcing them to remain in the vicinity of attacks. 


FACT:
Palestinian witnesses and video evidence reveal that fighters did direct civilians to areas where attacks were being launched.

REPORT:
There is no evidence that hospitals or ambulances were used for military activities.

FACT:
Eyewitnesses describe Palestinian firing from hospitals and using ambulances. Why, for example, did the Goldstone fact-finding mission choose not to visit the al-Shifa Hospital or investigate allegations that Hamas leaders and fighters used this hospital as a base, especially given the testimony by a captured Islamic Jihad fighter to this effect?

REPORT:
The mission could not determine whether mosques were used for military purposes.

FACT:
There is video evidence of weaponry stored in a mosque, and of secondary explosions of mosques consistent with the storage of explosives. While the Report refers to allegations of mosques being used for military purposes and notes that it cannot rule out the inappropriate use of other mosques by Palestinians, the Mission nevertheless chose not to fuhrther investigate these possible war crimes by Palestinians and dismissed or ignored the readily available pictorial and testimonial evidence indicating that this was indeed the case.

CONCLUSION

I could go on and on, but one thing is clear. There can be no real peace so long as the Palestinian terrorists and their state sponsors such as Iran want more innocent Jews to die for death’s sake and will settle for nothing short of Israel’s extermination. As long as they allow Hamas and other extremists to rule them, the Palestinians will remain their own worst enemies.



Canada Press

Why Don't the Israel Haters Boycott Syria?

By Arsen Ostrovsky

This week begins an annual part of the global campaign to delegitimize and vilify the Jewish state, as anti-Israel activists and student groups on campuses around the world, including United States and Canada, mark the eighth annual Israel Apartheid Week [IAW].

According to organizers of the IAW, the purpose of the movement is to "to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns."

First, let's make one thing crystal clear -- attempts to brand Israel as an "apartheid" state or compare it to white South Africa are at best uninformed; and at worst, maliciously dishonest and anti-Semitic. It also does a great injustice to the real victims, who had to endure institutionalized segregation and apartheid in South Africa.

The irony is that, despite problems in Israel (as in any democracy), Arab citizens still enjoy more rights, freedoms, and liberties than do their neighbors in any number of Middle East countries currently fighting and dying for these very same privileges.

As the Muslim Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh says: "Israel is not an apartheid state...[it] is a free and open democratic country. The law of Israel does not distinguish between a Jew and an Arab... I would rather live as a second class citizen in Israel, even though I'm not, than a first class citizen in any Arab country."

Notably, those using the IAW to demonize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and which respects the rights of women, minorities, homosexuals, and people of other faiths, are holding no such events for Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has already butchered some 7,500 pro-democracy protestors.

Nor are they holding similar events against Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is a crime, in Egypt, where the Copts continue to be persecuted both pre- and post-Mubarak, or Iran, where women and the Baha'i are repeatedly tortured and executed.

Of course, other great bastions of human rights and democracy, like Russia and China, which recently vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for the ousting of al-Assad, get a free pass too.

So why is Israel the only country singled out for special opprobrium?

During the IAW, you will hear all sorts of lofty humanitarian labels like "justice," "equal rights," and "peace." But don't be fooled. It is all a charade. They have no such interest. The sole purpose of the BDS movement is the vilification, delegitimization, and destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
Just listen to what their leaders say.

Omar Barghouti, one the founders of the BDS Movement (and ironically, also a PhD student of ethics at Tel Aviv University), has said that the Palestinian refugees "Right of Return" is the "litmus test of morality for anyone suggesting a just and enduring solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

To put it a little more bluntly, he added: "I clearly do not buy into the two-state solution...[I]f the refugees were to return, you would not have a two-state solution, you would have a Palestine next to Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel."

Other BDS leaders are equally forthright.

Ali Abunimah is the executive director of the anti-Zionist website, Electronic Intifada, and one of the leading proponents of the one-state solution as a supposedly "just" and "non-violent" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He sees the BDS as key to achieving this. But only last month, he tweeted: "Isn't it the time for a popular Palestinian revolution in the form of a third intifada?" Is that because the first and second intifadas were so "non-violent" also?

And then only two week ago, in what came as a major blow to the legions of Israel haters, anti-Zionist poster-boy Norman Finkelstein said the BDS Movement's call for the "Right of Return" was just "a cover for its desire to see the destruction of Israel," calling the movement "disingenuous" and a "cult."

Granted, Finkelstein made these comments not out of a new found Zionism or desire to advance peace in the Middle East, but rather he believes there are other "more efficient" means for anti-Israel activists to achieve the goals.

But undoubtedly the most illuminating of all the statements by BDS leaders came from Ahmed Koor (another proponent of the Palestinian "Right of Return'", who wrote in April 2010: "Ending the occupation doesn't mean anything if it doesn't mean upending the Jewish state itself...BDS is not another step on the way to the final showdown; BDS is The Final Showdown."

The similarity between Koor's "Final Showdown" and Hitler's "Final Solution" is as unmistakable as it is chillingly revealing about the BDS Movement's true motives.

Whereas Hitler's "Final Solution" sought to bring about the end of the Jewish people, the BDS Movement's "Final Showdown" seeks to bring about the end of Israel as the Jewish state, by endorsing a one-state solution and flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians.

The BDS movement is nothing short of racist, insidious, and anti-Semitic. Its goal is not to advance Palestinian rights, but to deny and strip Israel of its rights, with the ultimate objective being the destruction of the Jewish state.

The most unfortunate thing is that supporters of IAW and BDS do nothing to advance the cause of peace or well-being of Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. But then again, that has never been their goal in the first place. They only breed further hate and extremism at a time when peace and cooperation is needed most.



Huffington Post

Jewslamists

By Rachel Raskin-Zrihen

Along with the fact that periodically some portion of the world seeks to destroy the Jews, is the reality that in every case, some portion of the Jews seeks to help them.
I don’t know how to explain the phenomenon, but I’ve read historical accounts of it in which the anomily has been given a name – conversos, kapos – and I’ve run into it in our own day.

I think the fact that there are Jews here and in Israel who align themselves with those who would just as soon see them killed or kill them themselves, tells us several things about the human psyche and the time of man.

The first and most important thing it revelas is that we are engaged in another sweeping anti-Semitic episode that will eventually rival and possibly surpass in ferocity and geography, any that has come before.

I’m not sure if the majority of the modern-day kapos think that by “showing” their enemieis they’re on their side, they will be spared, or if they just are unable to recognize an enemy when they encounter one.

I am sure some believe they are nobly standing up for “what’s right,” having swallowed whole the entire Arab revisionist historical narative, but it doesn’t matter. The outcome is the same.

Historians may one day come up with a name for the Jews who stood with the Islamo-Fascists and anti-Semites in these days. Jewslamists, maybe.

I’ll bet the Jews who converted or faked conversion to satisfy the Inquisitors found ways to justify doing that. And the ones who turned in their neighbors or collected their hair or eyeglasses or otherwise collaborated with their neighbor’s and familie’s executioners with the hope the Nazis would spare them – or even in the twisted belief that somehow the Nazis were right – justified that behavior, as well.

And today’s counterparts also feel justified in turning on their own people and aiding and abetting their own people’s sworn enemies, mostly by providing propaganda material.

To find a gentile anti-Semite who prefers the Arab lies to the truth, while unfortunate, is common and unsurprising.

To run into a Jewish one, while not surprising, is still shocking and terribly sad.
And, I’m not sure how to approach such a person, which is why I avoid the subject with anyone I wish to have in my life whose own predilictions on the issue are unknown to me.
It’s a cowardly approach, I know.

But sometimes, broaching the issue is unavoidable.

I have such a case now.
When I knew this woman, I was 10 and she was my 16-year-old guitar teacher, and I thought she was the coolest thing ever.

We “bumped into” each other on Facebook the other day, and she noticed some of what I’ve written on Israel and noted we may disagree on the subject.
Eventually, she told me that if I think Israel is anything but an apartheid state seeking to do harm to its Arab residents then I have my head “buried deep in the sand.”

She knows this because she reads Ha’aretz occasionally.

My response was this:

“I follow the news very carefully, and the news of Israel most religiously (so-to-speak), and am very familiar with its faults and foibles, which are no less or greater than any other collection of human beings. Though held to a higher standard of behavior than any other country, Israel is, in fact, similar to some and better than many – and immeasurably better than most of its closest neighbors. It is in the unique position of having to decide if its constitution is to become a suicide pact or if it can find a way to survive as the world’s only Jewish country and maintain its humanity. (The U.S. faces similar questions, BTW).
But, in any case, it is the last bastion of protection for world Jewry, and is surrounded by homicidal neighbors bent on the destruction of the nation and the people. It’s a position the Jews have been in before, only this time, we’re armed, which is a good thing.

And, like all those other times before – the Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust – there are Jews who, for whatever reason, are unwilling or unable to recognize their own enemy or understand that their enemy knows them whether they see it or not. So, history shows us that those of us who take the side of the anti-Semites, and there always are some, wind up in the same ovens as the rest of us, every time.”

I expect to be “unfriended,” but what can you do?



Political Mavens

Lebanon War Distortions

Study shows NGOs issued baseless, fabricated accusations against Israel.

BY: Abraham Bell, Gerald M. Steinberg

This summer marks the five-year anniversary of the Lebanon war between Israel and the Lebanese-Iranian terrorist organization Hezbollah. The Second Lebanon War traumatized Israel politically as well as militarily. Militarily, Israel failed to dislodge the terrorist organization from its southern Lebanese foothold; politically, Israeli leaders found themselves overwhelmed by a flood of false accusations of “war crimes,” “indiscriminate and disproportionate” force, and “violations of international law.”

International non-governmental organizations played a critical role in the political warfare against Israel. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – ostensibly neutral watchdogs – led the campaign. In 35 days, they issued over 40 press releases, statements and pseudo fact-finding reports, comprising hundreds of pages, largely ignoring the war crimes committed by the terrorist organization and instead focusing overwhelmingly and negatively on alleged Israeli crimes.

The HRW and Amnesty allegations were immediately accepted, at face value, by the world’s media. Politicians and diplomats then echoed the war crimes accusations, without any fact-checking.

We are now completing a multi-year study of all the HRW and Amnesty allegations regarding the 2006 Lebanon war, and the results so far are shocking. In our systematic and detailed research, supported by the Israel Science Foundation, we found major contradictions as well as numerous unsupported charges, double standards and false or invented “evidence.”

In some reports, such as on incidents in the Shiite towns of Srifa and Qana - Hezbollah strongholds from which numerous rocket attacks were launched - the NGOs published wildly inconsistent civilian casualty claims within a few days of each other. Errors were overwhelmingly in one direction; almost without fail, errors consisted of exaggerated Lebanese casualties or unfounded accusations against Israel.

In many incidents, HRW and Amnesty reports initially relied both on Lebanese witnesses and the personal observations of its own “researchers” to deny any Hezbollah military presence in the area of an Israeli strike, while later publications acknowledged that Hezbollah had been present, meaning the witnesses had lied and the NGO researchers were incompetent. Regarding Srifa, even after reducing the number of reported Lebanese casualties from “at least 42” to 26 to 19 before finally settling on 22, HRW found itself forced by critics and the evidence to eventually acknowledge that most of the “civilian” casualties it had “documented” were, in fact, Hezbollah combatants.

Hold NGOs accountable

Indeed, in all of the incidents, the lack of reliable sources of information for the HRW and Amnesty accusations against Israel stands out. In each case, it is clear that when HRW and Amnesty issued their initial condemnations of Israel, usually within a few hours of the incident, the organizations had little or no information about the central issues of military necessity and the nature of casualties. And later reports with altered condemnations were based more on conjecture than substantive research.

The most blatant example was the incident in Qana, where Israel responded to heavy Hezbollah rocket attacks with an air raid. One of the buildings was hit and collapsed, causing a number of deaths and injuries. Within hours, HRW blasted a press release in which Executive Director Ken Roth claimed that the "Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone, relating to the strike on Qana, killing at least 54 civilians, more than half of them children." HRW then launched a campaign charging Israel with war crimes, with nine separate “reports” and op-eds, as well as press conferences.

HRW’s campaign was echoed in media headlines, creating intense international pressure, and leading Prime Minister Olmert to declare a “48-hour suspension of aerial activity pending an investigation...” A unilateral halt in military action due to unverified NGO allegations was unprecedented, allowed Hezbollah forces to regroup, prolonging the war, and probably costing many lives.

Yet, as our research reveals, HRW had no credible evidence for its claims. Roth, HRW researcher Lucy Mair (who had written propaganda for Electronic Intifada before joining HRW) and others far from the battleground, had inflated civilian casualty claims and erased the Hezbollah attacks that constituted the real war crimes as well as legal justification for Israeli actions. To create the façade of “fact finding”, the initial HRW statement referred to “researchers” in Lebanon, but they provided no names or means to verify HRW’s claims. Later reports either provided no sources or attributed allegations to “witnesses” who could well have been Hezbollah allies or operatives. The allegations that Israel had criminally and deliberately bombed Lebanese civilians were unsourced and false.

As the contradictions emerged, HRW’s Mair admitted that the Lebanese Red Cross had reported 28 dead, including Hezbollah “martyrs,” but HRW chose to continue its false accusations against Israel.

The catch-22 in which the NGOs placed Israel is illustrated by their “proof” that Israel knew that civilians were in the building, near the Hezbollah targets. On August 3, 2006, Amnesty International “proved” that an Israeli investigation showing that the Israeli military had not known of the civilians was a “whitewash” because “survivors of the attack … stated that they had been in the building for some two weeks and that their presence must have been known to Israeli forces.” On the same day, August 3, 2006, Human Rights Watch “proved” that the Israeli claim that the “civilians were not seen because they had been hiding in the building for some days” could not be believed because a “survivor” of the attack stated that the civilians only entered the building “around 6 pm on July 29,” i.e., only seven hours before the bombing.

Two opposite and contradictory accounts of the facts, but the same result: the NGOs pronounced that the facts prove Israeli guilt.

Sadly, observers - even Israeli officials - have tended to give the NGOs a free pass for their fabrications. And the model of making up the facts to “prove” an Israel guilt presumed from the start has been repeated in subsequent conflicts, most prominently by the Goldstone Mission’s now discredited 2009 report on the Gaza conflict.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claim to be promoting universal values by prosecuting their political war against the State of Israel. But justice will only truly be served when the NGOs are held accountable for their distortions.

Abraham Bell is professor of law at Bar Ilan University. Gerald Steinberg is professor of political studies at Bar Ilan University



Ynet News

I Hate Israel

Great series of short videos about Israel, Palestine and the Middle East Conflict. Debunking the lies of the so called 'Palestinian' and the entire Muslim world. To the Jew haters, you might get the facts straight and stop making fool of yourself. Enjoy watching!

1) I Hate Israel - Zionism

A Jewish nation is unique in being Jewish. A review of the dozens of christian and Muslim countries in the world and the history of Zionism



2) I Hate Israel - Murderer

A review of capital punishment around the Middle East



3) I Hate Israel - Racism

Double standards for Israel



4) I Hate Israel - Gaza Blockade

The Gaza blockade compared to the blockade of Cuba



5) I Hate Israel - The UN Told Me So

The UN track record on reviewing world abuses really only focuses on Israel.



6) I Hate Israel - Right of Return

A description of the Law of Return in global context



7) I Hate Israel - Security Wall

The security border has been a big step forward for those parties seeking a two-state solution



8) I Hate Israel - Persecuting Christians

A review of the current state of Christian persecution in the Middle East



9) I Hate Israel - Displacing People

A comparison of the population of arabs and jews in the middle east with global trends

The Thomas Friedman Myth

Columnist's application of globalization theory to Arab-Israeli conflict is delusional.

by Giulio Meotti

Thomas Friedman is one of journalism's greatest celebrities, the single most famous US interpreter of the Middle East and the liberal columnist who has the most influence on the way Americans understand Israel. His 1989 book “From Beirut to Jerusalem” has been a best-seller, as was “The world is flat.”

Friedman also plays a major role in shaping Obama’s rhetoric about Israel’s return to the pre-1967 armistice line, which the late Abba Eban dubbed the “Auschwitz borders.”

For the first time now, the four digits (1967) have become formal American policy. It was also a Friedman victory. It was he, after all, who invented the so-called “Saudi plan for peace in the Middle East.” And it was Friedman who wrote that the White House is “disgusted” with Israeli interlocutors.

In Manhattan, Friedman is an elegant and wealthy Jewish intellectual. But what are the consequences of his ideas for Israel, the only UN member surrounded by neighbors willing to kill themselves to destroy the Jews, and the nation globally elected to be an emblem of evil?

Friedman has created a myth of personal disillusionment with Israel that is designed to lend credibility to his indictment against the Jewish State. His method is simple and delusional: Applying the globalization theory to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Mutual respect, money, education, computers, Internet, hedonism and modernity are Friedman’s solutions to the nationalistic bloodbath. Economics trumps politics in his technocracy.

As a Jewish reporter in Beirut and Jerusalem, Friedman confessed, he was unable to remain objective because of the “tribal” nature of the conflict. He has described his personal biography as the story of “a Jew who was raised on . . . all the myths about Israel, who goes to Jerusalem in the 1980s and discovers that it isn’t the summer camp of his youth.”

The famous columnist has always been a militant of the Palestinian cause. By the time he graduated from Brandeis University, he was identifying with “Breira”, a pariah group within the American Jewish community. He belonged to the steering committee of a self-styled “Middle East Peace Group” that vigorously opposed the mounting storm of protest among American Jews over Yasser Arafat’s appearance before the United Nations in a time when the Palestinian leader proudly claimed Jewish lives.

In 1985, after the Shiite hijacking of a TWA airliner, Friedman attacked Israel for not releasing the 700 terrorists whose freedom the hijackers were demanding. Israel’s refusal, he claimed, “certainly contributed” to the hijacking.

Friedman has always defended Yasser Arafat and failed to draw attention to his evident connections to terrorism. Friedman then demonized Ariel Sharon, while praising Arab dictators such as Saudi Prince Abdullah. Friedman also “criticized” the Israeli settlers, an entire population group that loyally serves in the army, pays its taxes and defends the state, demonizing them in global columns.

According to the US columnist, Israeli settlers are a “cancer for the Jewish people” and those who “collaborate” in the building of settlements are “enemies of peace” and “enemies of America’s national interest,” no less. Friedman has compared Islamist fanatics who want to destroy Israel to the “lunatics of the Likud” and Arab dictators whose endorsement of suicide bombings threatens Islam to the “collaborators” whose support for a “colonial Israeli occupation” threatens coexistence.

Friedman has always been diligently undermining Israel’s claim to the moral high ground by placing victims of terrorism on the same plain as their barbaric perpetrators. “What Israeli settlers and Palestinian suicide bombers have in common is that they are each pushing for the maximum use of force against the other side,” he wrote after the killing of Kobi Mandell.

For Friedman, building a home on disputed territory is apparently the moral equivalent of stoning Jews to death. To equate the two, as Friedman always does, is to create moral mush. At age fourteen, Kobi was immobilized and stoned to death, his body hidden in a cave. The terrorists soaked their hands in the boy’s blood and smeared the walls of the cave with it.

Friedman also compared terrorist militias in Iraq, who butchered Americans and Iraqis alike, to the Jewish inhabitants of Judea and Samaria. One of Friedman’s columns in 2004 was particularly shocking: “...Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah, and he’s had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates.”

Friedman’s language resembled that of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His incredible words, coming at a time when anti-Semitism is skyrocketing globally, were repulsive. From Friedman’s mansion in the Maryland’s woods the Middle East maybe looks really flat. But that’s not an excuse for pushing what can be called Zionicide.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism



Ynet News

The Secret History of Neturei Karta

By Mordechai Levy

Recently a major scandal broke over a group of religious-looking Jews belonging to the Neturei Karta sect speaking at a "Holocaust is a Hoax" conference sponsored by the anti-Semitic President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. After it came out that top neo- Nazi leaders and the former KKK leader David Duke would be in attendance, many Jews, especially in the Orthodox community, were truly angered at Jewish attendees. Many Chassidic groups blasted the Neturei Karta in public.

In the past, we've seen them picket with various Islamic terrorist groups, chanting "Death to Israel" at rallies. Few, if any, however, knew that the full extent of Neturei Karta’s connections to neo-Nazis and Moslem terrorists.

Neturei Karta has an actual office in Monsey, N.Y. In recent month, they honored top Lieutenants of Louis Farrakhan, a long time Jew-hating Black racist who runs the violently anti-Semitic and anti-White "Nation of Islam".

Neturei Karta has shared podiums with Farrakhan in Washington, D.C. at his Million Families March four years ago. They also came out with banner claiming that "Farrakhan is a Friend of the Jews!"

On other occasions NK would lie on TV, denying that Farrakhan has ever made anti-Semitic remarks.

Many may ask, "when did NK start helping various Jew-hating groups and why?"

We will now list briefly the real history of NK, which most reporters simply don’t know. It’s is sordid and very scandaloud, but has to be told.

The first known contact with Arab terrorists was in 1974 when Yassir Arafat was at the UN with a gun on his hip threatening to destroy Israel. Arafat mentioned NK in his speech.

NK ran an ad in the NY Times welcoming Arafat to New York and praising him, and made it clear that NK hoped the PLO would succeed in their efforts to destroy the Jews in Israel.

Now, NK used code word for Jews is "Zionists." At the time, the new head of NK in Israel was Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, who later served as Palestinian Authority's Minister for Jewish Affair. At the time when NK would run actual ads a number of times each year, many wondered where the NK got the $50,000 per ad that the NK types simply did not have.

Many Jewish activists had come across rumors that NK was getting big money from Arab terrorist groups. In the meantime NK in the US had several main persons behind it. One was a mysterious Rabbi Beck, the other Mordechai Weberman, the third was "Rabbi" Yisroel David Weiss of Monsey, who later would be the spokesman of the group.

The main contributor to the group was G. Neuberger a businessman from NY. Neuberger assigned his secretary Hariet Karchmer to work full time for the group. Karchmer, Jewish but not Orthodox, would open the incoming mail that NK was sent from various Arab terror groups and neo-Nazis from across the US. At one point after reading all these anti-Jewish screeds put out by the assorted anti-Semitic groups she came to the opinion that both the Jews as a race were evil and that the Holocaust was a Hoax.

At the time, NK traveled to Libya to meet teror-sponsor Muammar Quadaffi and attend a conference against Israel and Zionism. It was Neuberger that led the "Jewish Delegation" to top Moslem terrorist money-man Quadaffi. At the time without a doubt NK took money secretly from Libya.

In the early 1980’s, NK follower Betzalel Chaim submitted an article in the Holocaust-denying magazine "Journal of Historical Review" and not only blasted the Zionists and the state of Israel, but even claiming just like Weiss would last week in Iran that the Holocaust numbers of Jews murdered was a "big Zionist invention." A year ago, members of NK went to a Holocaust Hoax meeting made by neo-Nazis in America saying the same thing. Mr Chaim owned a bookstore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where many Chassidim live. Most Jews there had no idea that NK had made contact with hardcore neo-Nazis.

From that point on NK started corresponding and meeting with numerous neo-nazis secretly. They tried helping assorted neo-nazis in England. NK in the late 1980’s and the 1990’s appeared at more and more Islamic groups various Jew-Hating "Death to Israel" rallies.

Now an open attendance at a "Holocaust is a Hoax" conference in Iran run by the man who wants to destroy Israel. In fact a month ago NK showed up at the hotel where Ahmedinejad was staying at in New York they gave him a clay pot of flowers.

Further NK made a public statement that its alright for Iran to have nuclear weapons as it will only be used against Israel. In one interview for some radical Islamic pro-terror magazine they are asked by the interviewer if Islamic groups are allowed in NK’s opinon to use terror attacks against Jews in Israel. NK representative answered, "absolutely yes!"

At all meetings with both Arab terror groups, NK has asked that when the "legitimate" uprising against Jews be it Israel or America that NK will be spared! They believe that any Jew who does not work to physically destroy Israel has no reason to be " saved" but deserves to be killed by Arab terrorists. In fact one New York NK member, Joseph Friemann, thought he had "every right" to hate, torture, and kill his own mother.

JDO and the Vaad Harrabonim of Flatbush are organizing a loud-legal-lawful rally at the Headquarters of the Neturei Karta traitors in Monsey on Sunday January 7 at 1 PM at 102 Saddle River Road Monsey. To learn more, visit www.jdo.org and read about "Operation Screwball".

Mordechai Levy is the National Director of the Jewish Defense Organization (JDO).

Nazism VS. Islam

Nazism:
1) Extermination of non-Aryan ethnic groups.
2) Extermination of Jews and homosexuals
3) Dictatorship of the Aryan race over all other races.
4) Installation of totalitary in all aspects of life and policy.

Islam
1) Extermination of so called unbelievers subjugation of the "people of the book"
2) Extermination of Jews and homosexuals
3) Dictatorship of Muslims over all + Men over women (inc. Pedophilia)
4) Installation of totalitary in all aspects of life and policy.

Nazism or National Socialism refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler and the policies adopted by the government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, a period also known as the Third Reich.

The official name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party, (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP). Nazism was the main form of National Socialism that emerged after World War I, and is generally considered a form of fascism.

Nazi Rules:
Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, bringing an end to German democracy. Guided by racist and authoritarian ideas, the Nazis abolished basic freedoms and sought to create a "Volk" community. In theory, a "Volk" community united all social classes and regions of Germany behind Hitler. In reality, the Third Reich quickly became a police state, where individuals were subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.

In the first months of his chancellorship, Hitler began a concerted policy of "synchronization," forcing organizations, political parties, and state governments into line with Nazi goals and placing them under Nazi leadership. Culture, the economy, education, and law came under greater Nazi control. Trade unions

were abolished and workers, employees, and employers were forced into Nazi organizations. By mid-July 1933, the Nazi party was the only political party permitted in Germany. The Reichstag (German parliament) became a rubber stamp for Hitler's dictatorship. The Fuehrer's will became the foundation for government policy.

The appointment of Nazi party members to government positions increased Hitler's authority over state officials. According to the Nazi party's leadership principle, authority flowed down from above and absolute obedience towards one's superior was expected at each level of the Nazi hierarchy. Hitler was master of the Third Reich.

The Nazis managed to recruit some Moslems directly. Several Moslem SS divisions were raised: the Skanderbeg Division from Albania, the Handschar Division from Bosnia, and smaller units from throughout the Moslem world from Chechnya to Uzbekistan were incorporated into the German armed forces in one capacity or another. This was only taking the first step in Heinrich Himmler’s planned grand alliance between Nazi Germany and the Islamic world. One of his closest aides, Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, boasted that "a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North, and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East."

What an image: a Nazi-Moslem alliance to conquer the world! Naturally, totalitarian ideology (as shown by the Sino-Soviet and Iran-Taliban splits, for example) is a notoriously weak glue, so it is questionable how far this could have prospered. But the thought is chilling enough.