From slepokuo@cadvision.com Tue Dec  5 08:27:59 PST 1995
Article: 15048 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!math.ohio-state.edu!news.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!chi-news.cic.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadb84.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Secretly Burning Books in Absurdistan
Date: 5 Dec 1995 04:59:49 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 130
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: cadb84.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

Doug Collins was born in the United Kingdom. In 1939 he volunteered for
the British army, and while serving as an infantry sergeant was captured
at Dunkirk in 1940. He escaped from German and Hungarian prisoner of war
camps. After release from Romania in 1944, he served again with British
forces in Europe until the end of the war. He served as a political
intelligence officer with the British control commission in Germany,
1946-1950. He migrated to Canada in 1952. 

Collins' career in journalism has included work in newspaper, television
and radio, both as a reporter and commentator. He has worked for several
Canadian daily newspapers, including the Calgary Herald, the Vancouver
Province and the Vancouver Sun.

For a time he hosted an open-line radio talk show. Since 1983, he has
written a popular and controversial column for the North Shore News (North
Vancouver, British Columbia), from which the article below is derived.
Collins has been honored with Canada's National Newspaper Award (1953),
and the MacMillian Bloedel Award (1975). 

He is also the author of several books, including the memoir, POW: A
Soldier's Story of His Ten Escapes from Nazi Prison Camps (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1968), Immigration: Parliament versus the People (1986) and The
Best and Worst of Doug Collins (1988). 

He was and remains a fearless advocate of free speech; of which, alas,
there are very few in Canada.   




                               Books for burning

In a democracy, people are supposed to be able to read what they want to
read and say what they want to say, provided they are not inciting
violence.

In fact, it is dangerous to deal with issues that powerful pressure groups
do not want discussed.

That's why we have the hate laws and the human rights Gestapos, plus
book-bannings that in essence are no different from the Nazi book-burnings
of the 1930s.

There was one thing to be said for the Nazis, though. They did their
book-burning in public. We do it secretly.

Thus, a well-researched book about a man whom Jewish organizations love to
hate has been banned from our sacred shores on the grounds that it is
"hate literature."

The Case For David Irving, written by Nigel Jackson, an Australian
teacher, should be read by everyone who is interested in freedom of speech
and the cowardice of politicians.

The research is meticulous and the "hate" in it is the story of what
Irving's opponents have been able to do.

I have a copy. But if you want one you will have to have it smuggled in.
To such depths have we sunk, 50 years after winning a war for "freedom."

Irving is, of course, the most controversial living historian and the gutsiest.

My emotions tell me to pick holes in some of his stuff, especially where
his views on Winston Churchill are concerned. But he is a great writer who
has written some brilliant books, like the one on Hermann Goering.

And there is nothing "pro-Nazi" about it. You get Goering, warts and all.

As Jackson puts it, Irving "is indefatigable in his pursuit of primary
sources."  True. When I met him a few years ago in Washington, D.C., he
was burrowing in the archives for new material, as usual.

He condemned himself to a sort of Siberia, however, when he challenged the
six million story and the alleged mass gassing program of the Nazis.

Not that he denies that atrocities took place. On the contrary.

It also didn't help that he testified for the defence in the second Zundel
trial. So the lobbies went after him.

But whenever his critics dare to challenge him face to face he makes
mincemeat of them. David Frost and a crew of hostile academics once tried
it on TV and were swallowed whole.

Such people now know better and will not take him on. But in trying to
silence him they confirm that he has a case.

Here is a short list of the actions taken against him.

He was arrested while making a speech in Victoria, put in handcuffs, and
tossed out of Canada on an immigration pretext. Gangsters get to stay,
though.

The Australians denied him a visa. The Australian Federal Court found in
his favor and awarded  costs against the government. But he still hasn't
got a visa. 

He was denied entry to South Africa, fined 30,000 marks in Germany for
"defaming the memory of the dead", and prevented from speaking in
Argentina.

He was arrested in Austria and illegally deported. Later an Austrian court
found in his favor.

His expertise is formidable. In 1982, he was the first to denounce the
so-called Hitler diaries as forgeries, even though Lord Dacre, the Regius
Professor of History at Cambridge and an expert on the Nazi period, had
said they were genuine. He was also one one of only two men who could
transcribe Goebbels' diaries when they were found in Moscow.

He has been libelled and turned into a hate figure by lickspittle media
folk and by those who have something to lose if their version of history
is challenged.

Author Jackson compares Irving to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who also ran up
against an Establishment. And he quotes the famous German playwright Rolf
Hochhuth as saying:

"We may not like what he (Irving) writes. But historians a hundred years
hence will find it impossible to ignore the works of David Irving."

Pity you are not allowed to read this book. But the Director of Prohibited
Importations says it wouldn't be good for you.

Did you know we have such an Orwellian department?  We do.


May 3, 1995 - North Shore News

[end of article]


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Tue Dec  5 10:01:21 PST 1995
Article: 17177 of soc.culture.jewish
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!skypoint.com!umn.edu!spool.mu.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!hamblin.math.byu.edu!news.byu.edu!nntp.et.byu.edu!gatech!psuvax1!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!cadvision.com!cad158.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Yitzhak Shamir on Jewish Supremacy
Date: 30 Nov 1995 14:11:43 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 11
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: cad158.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30


Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, at the opening of a West Bank
tourist site, on rioting Palestinians:

"We say to them from the heights of this mountain and from the perspective
of thousands of years of history that they are like grasshoppers compared
to us."

                                           NEWSWEEK: April 11, 1988 [p. 21]

*****************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Tue Dec  5 14:16:44 PST 1995
Article: 21358 of alt.conspiracy
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!van-bc!news.mindlink.net!agate!news.ossi.com!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!galaxy.ucr.edu!library.ucla.edu!info.ucla.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadb84.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Secretly Burning Books in Absurdistan
Date: 5 Dec 1995 05:01:48 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 130
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: cadb84.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

Doug Collins was born in the United Kingdom. In 1939 he volunteered for
the British army, and while serving as an infantry sergeant was captured
at Dunkirk in 1940. He escaped from German and Hungarian prisoner of war
camps. After release from Romania in 1944, he served again with British
forces in Europe until the end of the war. He served as a political
intelligence officer with the British control commission in Germany,
1946-1950. He migrated to Canada in 1952. 

Collins' career in journalism has included work in newspaper, television
and radio, both as a reporter and commentator. He has worked for several
Canadian daily newspapers, including the Calgary Herald, the Vancouver
Province and the Vancouver Sun.

For a time he hosted an open-line radio talk show. Since 1983, he has
written a popular and controversial column for the North Shore News (North
Vancouver, British Columbia), from which the article below is derived.
Collins has been honored with Canada's National Newspaper Award (1953),
and the MacMillian Bloedel Award (1975). 

He is also the author of several books, including the memoir, POW: A
Soldier's Story of His Ten Escapes from Nazi Prison Camps (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1968), Immigration: Parliament versus the People (1986) and The
Best and Worst of Doug Collins (1988). 

He was and remains a fearless advocate of free speech; of which, alas,
there are very few in Canada.   




                               Books for burning

In a democracy, people are supposed to be able to read what they want to
read and say what they want to say, provided they are not inciting
violence.

In fact, it is dangerous to deal with issues that powerful pressure groups
do not want discussed.

That's why we have the hate laws and the human rights Gestapos, plus
book-bannings that in essence are no different from the Nazi book-burnings
of the 1930s.

There was one thing to be said for the Nazis, though. They did their
book-burning in public. We do it secretly.

Thus, a well-researched book about a man whom Jewish organizations love to
hate has been banned from our sacred shores on the grounds that it is
"hate literature."

The Case For David Irving, written by Nigel Jackson, an Australian
teacher, should be read by everyone who is interested in freedom of speech
and the cowardice of politicians.

The research is meticulous and the "hate" in it is the story of what
Irving's opponents have been able to do.

I have a copy. But if you want one you will have to have it smuggled in.
To such depths have we sunk, 50 years after winning a war for "freedom."

Irving is, of course, the most controversial living historian and the gutsiest.

My emotions tell me to pick holes in some of his stuff, especially where
his views on Winston Churchill are concerned. But he is a great writer who
has written some brilliant books, like the one on Hermann Goering.

And there is nothing "pro-Nazi" about it. You get Goering, warts and all.

As Jackson puts it, Irving "is indefatigable in his pursuit of primary
sources."  True. When I met him a few years ago in Washington, D.C., he
was burrowing in the archives for new material, as usual.

He condemned himself to a sort of Siberia, however, when he challenged the
six million story and the alleged mass gassing program of the Nazis.

Not that he denies that atrocities took place. On the contrary.

It also didn't help that he testified for the defence in the second Zundel
trial. So the lobbies went after him.

But whenever his critics dare to challenge him face to face he makes
mincemeat of them. David Frost and a crew of hostile academics once tried
it on TV and were swallowed whole.

Such people now know better and will not take him on. But in trying to
silence him they confirm that he has a case.

Here is a short list of the actions taken against him.

He was arrested while making a speech in Victoria, put in handcuffs, and
tossed out of Canada on an immigration pretext. Gangsters get to stay,
though.

The Australians denied him a visa. The Australian Federal Court found in
his favor and awarded  costs against the government. But he still hasn't
got a visa. 

He was denied entry to South Africa, fined 30,000 marks in Germany for
"defaming the memory of the dead", and prevented from speaking in
Argentina.

He was arrested in Austria and illegally deported. Later an Austrian court
found in his favor.

His expertise is formidable. In 1982, he was the first to denounce the
so-called Hitler diaries as forgeries, even though Lord Dacre, the Regius
Professor of History at Cambridge and an expert on the Nazi period, had
said they were genuine. He was also one one of only two men who could
transcribe Goebbels' diaries when they were found in Moscow.

He has been libelled and turned into a hate figure by lickspittle media
folk and by those who have something to lose if their version of history
is challenged.

Author Jackson compares Irving to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who also ran up
against an Establishment. And he quotes the famous German playwright Rolf
Hochhuth as saying:

"We may not like what he (Irving) writes. But historians a hundred years
hence will find it impossible to ignore the works of David Irving."

Pity you are not allowed to read this book. But the Director of Prohibited
Importations says it wouldn't be good for you.

Did you know we have such an Orwellian department?  We do.


May 3, 1995 - North Shore News

[end of article]


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Thu Dec  7 22:40:16 PST 1995
Article: 66956 of talk.politics.mideast
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!skypoint.com!umn.edu!spool.mu.edu!news.sol.net!news.moneng.mei.com!news.ecn.bgu.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!cadvision.com!cad158.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Yitzhak Shamir on Jewish Supremacy
Date: 30 Nov 1995 14:12:32 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 11
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: cad158.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30


Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, at the opening of a West Bank
tourist site, on rioting Palestinians:

"We say to them from the heights of this mountain and from the perspective
of thousands of years of history that they are like grasshoppers compared
to us."

                                           NEWSWEEK: April 11, 1988 [p. 21]

*****************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Fri Dec  8 20:51:12 PST 1995
Article: 15516 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: So, you think Jews can't stand Nazis, eh?
Date: 9 Dec 1995 00:52:38 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 76
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.229.130
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

From: Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi's The Israeli Connection [Random House:
Toronto, 1987, pp. ix-xi]

                      PROLOGUE: Vorster in Jerusalem, 1976

...I was sitting in my apartment in Haifa, watching the evening news on
Israeli television. There were no particularly noteworthy events that day,
and viewers were being treated to a series of segments from here and there
showing a variety of fairly routine happenings. I don't remember any of
the others, but there was one segment I immediately responded to, and that
became, to me at least, an important event. In it Balthazar Johannes
(John) Vorster, the prime minister of the Republic of South Africa, was
shown on the first day of his official visit in Israel. And what Israeli
television broadcast to its viewers that night were images of Mr. Vorster
as he visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

A visit to Yad Vashem is the opening ritual of every state visit to
Israel--usually the first stop en route from the airport to a hotel in
Jerusalem. The aim of this ritual is to express Israel's relation to the
Holocaust, to present the country as the haven for survivors and as the
answer to the insecurity of Jewish existence in the Diaspora. A second aim
is to induce the appropriate feelings of guilt in the visitor. So, when
John Vorster was taken to the Yad Vashem memorial hall, he was being
treated just like any other visitor.

What struck me as I watched Vorster on television was the surreal nature
of the scene. The tactlessness of the Israeli Foreign Office, which had
invited a known Nazi collaborator to a memorial to the victims of Nazism,
and then subjected him to a lecture on the Nazis was astounding. It was
obvious that Vorster could have given a better lecture himself, but his
reaction was proper and diplomatic. He listened patiently and nodded in
all the right places, and then signed his name in the visitors' book.

What was the purpose of showing this on television? Why was that scene
chosen to illustrate the first day of the Vorster visit? Why not something
else? I started thinking, and I could not escape the conclusion that this
bizarre incident was telling me something about Israel. It wasn't just its
insensitivity. It was a wild sense of staging thatb turned the strange
into the familiar. The scene was indeed strange, but its truth was
haunting. And then I got the message: Vorster in the Holocaust memorial!
What an image of Israel! Maybe it was the true image of Israel, staged for
our benefit by a director of rare comic genius. Here was an old Nazi
sympathizer showing more tact than his hosts, and at the same time
exposing them to ridicule and criticism. Even if the manifold meanings of
this work of art were lost on most of the viewers, no real film director
searching for an anti-Israel scene could have come up with a better one
than this.

For most Israelis, the Vorster visit was just another state visit by a
foreign leader. It did not draw much attention. Most Israelis did not even
remember his name, and did not see anything unusual, much less surreal, in
the scene: Vorster was just another visiting dignitary being treated to
the usual routine. He was described by most of the Israeli press as a
deeply religious man on a personal pilgrimage to the Holy Land, as well as
a sincere friend of Israel. Both characterizations might have been true,
but they hardly gave readers a well-rounded picture of John Vorster as a
political leader. It took a letter to the editor of Haaretz, Israel's New
York Times, to inform the public that Vorster had been a Nazi collaborator
who, according to Israeli law, should have been arrested and put on trial
the minute he set foot on Israeli soil. Instead, he landed at the Tel-Aviv
airport, the red carpet was rolled out, and Israel's prime minister,
Yitzhak Rabin, greeted him with a warm hug. There were plenty of welcoming
articles in the Israeli press. The only exceptions to the chorus were two
of Israel's distinguished radical journalists, Yuri Avneri and Amnon
Kapeliouk.

As I watched the passing shadows on the television screen, I felt I had
stumbled upon a deeply symbolic image expressive of the nature of the
State of Israel. Some may find this an unjustified exaggeration or a
groundless accusation: the scene by itself, some would say, might have
been mere coincidence. But was it, really? Was this surreal image only a
fleeting cloud in the blue skies of Zionist history, or was it bone of its
bone, flesh of its flesh?  Was it an aberration, a detour from the main
road, or was it a symptom of something deeper and more significant?... 

[end of excerpt]


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Mon Dec 11 22:14:43 PST 1995
Article: 15694 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!skypoint.com!news.mr.net!mr.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: The Handwriting on the Wall
Date: 11 Dec 1995 13:43:22 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 51
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.229.183
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

 

What many Jews see and celebrate as a triumph of Jewish nationalism in the
Middle East, many other Jews regard with deep anxiety as an explosive
disintegration of Judaism as a faith and a way of life, and as a
manifestation of nationalist imperialism that could end even more
disastrously than that of Nazi Germany. 

Even Dr. Nahum Goldmann, for many years president of both the World Jewish
Congress and the World Zionist Organization, who devoted his life to
serving the interests of the Jewish people, later adopted a decidedly
negative attitude toward the state of Israel and its rulers. 

While not a "practicing" Jew, as he admits, Goldmann in his book The
Jewish Paradox [Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London, 1978] reveals his
misgivings about the progress Jews have made in the third quarter of the
20th Century: 

"Today the exterior front has all the marks of prosperity: we have equal
rights,anti-semitism is waning, and we are pretty well off... But the
interior front is looking terribly bad." 

Goldmann continues: "A people may reckon to be stronger outside than
inside, but in the long run that does not work. If the facade is sound and
the interior rotten, the whole thing will perish." 

Dr. Goldmann admits he advised against the publication of the results of
an opinion poll among America's young Jewish intellectual elite, "because
they were too discouraging for the future of American Jewry." 

And for many Jews today it is a somewhat frightening part of what Nahum
Goldmann calls "the Jewish paradox" that it is now the Jews themselves,
seeing their old religion being tampered with, who more than many others
are finding the courage to challenge their own rabid nationalism. 

It is possible that only a few of the 100,000 protesters who gathered in
Tel Aviv, waving their banners, the night Prime Minister Rabin was gunned
down, fully understood what had been happening, but most of them, we may
be sure, were instinctively aware of the danger into which they and
millions of their co-religionists around the world are being drawn. 

A Judaism which offered the individual a religious interpretation of
existence provided the Jewish people as a whole with a fim base to which
they could return again and again down the ages from their adventures and
misadventures, and which served as an indelible badge of identity. 

But when an expansionist nationalism like modern Zionism has finally
worked its own overthrow, as inevitably it must, and all who call
themselvs Jews find themselves everywhere dismayed and in disarray, there
will be no firm base to which the individual can claw his way back. Jewish
destiny will at last have been fulfilled.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Tue Dec 12 11:25:49 PST 1995
Article: 15734 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!van-bc!news.mindlink.net!agate!bwra.mcs.csuhayward.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!enews.sgi.com!sgigate.sgi.com!swrinde!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Secretly Burning Books in Absurdistan
Date: 12 Dec 1995 05:41:03 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 44
Message-ID: 
References:  
NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.229.140
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30


> Orest, you can't borrow Doug Collins' balls.  What do YOU think of all this?
>

Simple. I'd like to be free to read books like Jackson's on Irving and
decide for myself whether they have merit or not.  

For a couple days back in February 1989, Canada Customs was ordered to
detain copies of Salman Rushdie's The Stanic Verses coming into the
country; two days later, the order was rescinded for being politically
incorrect. 

Had the Muslim community enjoyed the same influence as the Jewish
community, then I've no doubt Rushdie's book would've been banned. As it
is, there's no principle of free speech is Canada. Or, rather how free we
are just depends on what's safely and poltically correct. 

In '89 our intellectual elites reacted with fury that the Rushdie novel
had been banned for even 48 hours; editorials denounced the ban and
accused the Canadian government of coming "within centimetres of a nasty
blunder" and of "quivering" in the face of an assault "on the freedom of
expression that Western democracies cherish" ["Ayatolah speaks, Ottawa
quivers," The Toronto Star, Feb. 21, 1989; "The Rushdie affair," The Globe
& Mail, Feb. 21, 1989]. 

In fact, many books and other items have been banned by Canada Customs
without the media taking the least notice of it. 

If a book is considered politically incorrect by one special-interest
group or other, it gets the heave-ho; but in a quiet way, without any
fanfare. The average Joe gets to learn of it only by happening on an
article like the one by Doug Collins.  

That's why Collins ends his piece with a question--"Did you know we have
such an Orwellian department?"

Most Canadians don't. It seems even many professors, journalists, and
other cultural workers are hardly aware of what is happening at Canada
Customs.

Canadians could stand to be a lot more aware of the censorship that
routinely goes on. To me, it often seems old Doug Collins is the only one
out there seeking to inform them of how their freedom is being quietly
stolen from them.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Tue Dec 12 17:53:39 PST 1995
Article: 67080 of talk.politics.mideast
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!news.cyberstore.ca!skypoint.com!news.mr.net!mr.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: The Handwriting on the Wall
Date: 11 Dec 1995 13:40:58 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 51
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.229.183
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

 

What many Jews see and celebrate as a triumph of Jewish nationalism in the
Middle East, many other Jews regard with deep anxiety as an explosive
disintegration of Judaism as a faith and a way of life, and as a
manifestation of nationalist imperialism that could end even more
disastrously than that of Nazi Germany. 

Even Dr. Nahum Goldmann, for many years president of both the World Jewish
Congress and the World Zionist Organization, who devoted his life to
serving the interests of the Jewish people, later adopted a decidedly
negative attitude toward the state of Israel and its rulers. 

While not a "practicing" Jew, as he admits, Goldmann in his book The
Jewish Paradox [Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London, 1978] reveals his
misgivings about the progress Jews have made in the third quarter of the
20th Century: 

"Today the exterior front has all the marks of prosperity: we have equal
rights,anti-semitism is waning, and we are pretty well off... But the
interior front is looking terribly bad." 

Goldmann continues: "A people may reckon to be stronger outside than
inside, but in the long run that does not work. If the facade is sound and
the interior rotten, the whole thing will perish." 

Dr. Goldmann admits he advised against the publication of the results of
an opinion poll among America's young Jewish intellectual elite, "because
they were too discouraging for the future of American Jewry." 

And for many Jews today it is a somewhat frightening part of what Nahum
Goldmann calls "the Jewish paradox" that it is now the Jews themselves,
seeing their old religion being tampered with, who more than many others
are finding the courage to challenge their own rabid nationalism. 

It is possible that only a few of the 100,000 protesters who gathered in
Tel Aviv, waving their banners, the night Prime Minister Rabin was gunned
down, fully understood what had been happening, but most of them, we may
be sure, were instinctively aware of the danger into which they and
millions of their co-religionists around the world are being drawn. 

A Judaism which offered the individual a religious interpretation of
existence provided the Jewish people as a whole with a fim base to which
they could return again and again down the ages from their adventures and
misadventures, and which served as an indelible badge of identity. 

But when an expansionist nationalism like modern Zionism has finally
worked its own overthrow, as inevitably it must, and all who call
themselvs Jews find themselves everywhere dismayed and in disarray, there
will be no firm base to which the individual can claw his way back. Jewish
destiny will at last have been fulfilled.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Wed Dec 13 02:59:47 PST 1995
Article: 15832 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: survivors
Date: 13 Dec 1995 05:59:14 GMT
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From: cjf@buffnet.net (Clifford Falk)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Survivors
Date: 29 Nov 1995 23:13:31 GMT
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From: cjf@buffnet.net (Clifford Falk)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish,soc.culture.jewish.holocaust,uk.religion.jewish
Subject: "Survivors" by Gerhard Falk
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Survivors
by

Gerhard Falk

It has now been fifty years or more since we, the Holocaust survivors,
came to the United States. At that time, a half a century ago, we 
believed that some day, some way, somehow, we would escape the 
legacy of our dreadful past and lead a normal life, here in America.
None of us are ungrateful for the opportunity we have had to live again 
and to be given a chance to reach that state of normalcy in which 
people worry whether their son or daughter will get into an Ivy League
college, whether they will marry a respectable person or not or whether
business will pick up " in the second Wall street quarter."

For us, all that seems foolishness. We don't understand it. We keep
thinking of the important issues of life and destruction; of
persecution and Nazis; of the horrors of the camps and the unimaginable
suffering of our brethren who were gassed there. We think of medical
experiments made on fully conscious victims by sadistic doctors; we
think of piles of corpses and gross and horrible deaths.  

Many years ago, we were once invited to dinner by a wealthy, native
born, American doctor. One of his other dinner guests was a rich
stock broker who complained about the choice of a college his daughter
had made. He recalled his own college days and asked me to agree that
those were the days when we were foolish and inexperienced and altogether
interested in drinking beer and chasing girls.
 
I said nothing. I only thought how mindless this man seemed to me. He
ranted on about spending his father's money and I thought how we,
the survivors, had no fathers whose money we could have spent had 
we wanted to do so. But it was no use. It is no use. For in addition
to the nightmare we experienced in Europe we have had to live, for
fifty years, with an uncomprehending world who would not and could not 
ever accept us. 

After all this time it is finally obvious that nothing whatever can
compensate us for our losses and that we will never belong anywhere.
We will never belong to the American community, we will never belong to 
the Jewish community and least of all will we ever again belong to the
community whence we came. The buildings in which we lived, the schools
we attended and the streets we walked are still there. Or rebuilt 
after the 2nd World War. But all the people are dead or dispersed 
and the community is no more. 

Now every human being needs to live in a human community or not live
at all. Therefore it had always been the hope of the survivors to be
accepted into the Jewish community in America. Unlike other immigrants,
holocaust survivors have no relatives in "the old country." We have no
one to whom we can go back. We meet no one who knew us as children. We
cannot ever see anyone who knew our family nor can we get together with
relatives or friends who went to school with us. All met a violent 
death or are scattered throughout the world. 

Therefore we wanted to join the American Jewish community and be a part
of it. We wanted more than only a roof over our head or an income from
work or business. We wanted to belong. That, however, has been denied
us these fifty years.

There are Holocaust survivors who made a great deal of money in business.
Others entered the academic world and became professors and artists and
scientists.  Most did none of these things. Most worked in menial
occupations all of their remaining days and retired relatively poor
during the last few years.

Few, however, have ever achieved that one ambition all shared alike. To
be at home again, to be part of a community once more, to belong and be
accepted. 

There are Jews who gave the refugees of fifty years ago some money,
jobs, apartments, food. There are many others who gave nothing.
Therefore, holocaust survivors need to be grateful to those who helped 
them on first arriving in the U.S.A. 

Many, however, remember something else about their "welcome" in the U.S.
It happened to us and it happened to many others. 

Having arrived on the docks of Hoboken, N.J., we were told by one
representative of our distant "family" that they had decided we were
not to contact them in any way. They wanted no 'phone calls, no letters,
no visits, no dealings of any kind. 

Now, no one was more grateful than we were that these relatives had 
filed an "affidavit of support" with the U.S. government and thereby
made it possible for us to come to the U.S. in the first place. 
Nevertheless, the rejection we experienced on the docks of Hoboken
struck us like a brickbat. We had lived in the illusion that we were
welcome; that all Jews are brethren and that we had at least some claim
on the Jewish community in America because we had suffered so much, we
thought, for all Jews.

Yet, here we were, cut off directly. So we turned to the great Jewish 
philanthropic agencies for help. There too, we were not welcome. No
one understood our internal horror. We were just another gang of 
"schnorrers" to the Jewish social workers and "do gooders." Yes, one
agency gave us a month's rent.  Indeed, someone gave us food for two
weeks. One agency even tried, but did not succeed, in getting us a 
job with another Jew. 

Nevertheless, we were on our own. Our own efforts maintained us until
we entered the U.S. armed services. Our own efforts permitted us to
learn the English language. Our own efforts made it possible to 
use the largess of the government towards all veterans and gain a
college education and more. Our own efforts permitted us to become
professionals in our own rights. Our own efforts led to gaining a good 
income and raising our children as Americans. 

Yet, throughout all those years the Jewish community never relented. 
They would not let us in. First we thought we were not wanted because 
we spoke a badly accented English for which we were incessantly 
ridiculed. So we learned English until we could not only speak it, 
but write it. We wrote in English and native born Americans read our 
books. Nevertheless, the Jewish community would not accept us. 

We earned good money and made sizable contributions to Jewish causes.
No matter. The Jewish community would not have us. We raised our
children in this country and now even they were rejected by 
the Jewish community. 

Synagogues rejected us. Never will I forget how I came to the door
of a Philadelphia synagogue on Yom Kippur. Penniless and utterly alone
I sought to enter. A fat lady, sitting behind a table placed across the
door, demanded my ticket. I said I had none. "If you want to get into
a theater you need a ticket," said she, "and if you want to get in here
you need a ticket also." With that she kicked me out of the "shul." I 
spent Yom Kippur sitting on a park bench. 

I asked a rabbi for food. That rabbi was running a kosher kitchen and
dining room on the campus of a large, wealthy university. He refused
to give me any food because I could not pay. I hungered for days 
until I found some work. 

But now, when my income is good and I drive a large car and live in a 
house with a swimming pool the same people and their successors who 
rejected me when I was poor want my contribution to their causes. 
Now they want to know me once or twice a year for the sake of my money. 

We still feel unwanted in any synagogue. We still feel not wanted in 
any Jewish organization. We are still feel rejected by every Jewish 
group.  It seems that even the Holocaust commemorations have been 
closed to us. Rich, uncaring, ignorant people give eloquent speeches 
at such commemorations. Yet, they who speak never saw a Nazi; never 
saw a death camp; never starved; never faced the daily horrors of our 
persecution. They know, however, that publicity and social honor can 
be derived by clothing themselves in the role of martyrs while keeping 
the actual holocaust survivors on the outside and as spectators to their
own lives.

Thus, the survivors are brutalized twice. First, because we cannot 
forget the Nazi tyranny and second, because we were never able to 
enter the Jewish community in America whose slogan We Are One is 
remembered only when it comes to collecting money for large salaries 
paid to those who don't care and don't want to understand. We are out 
and we can never come in.  

------------------

Gerhard Falk is the author of over fifty publications, including
  American Judaism in Transition:  The Secularization of a Religious 
  Community (University Press of America, 1995) and The Jew in Christian
  Theology (McFarland, 1992)


Interesting.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 08:40:58 PST 1995
Article: 16245 of alt.revisionism
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Recriminations run riot in Israel
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:04:35 GMT
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Lines: 115
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         From: The Toronto Globe & Mail, December 11, 1995, p. A8
         Title: Recriminations run riot in Israel
         Author: Reuben Loewy (Special to The G & M, Jerusalem)

The shots that killed Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin last month
triggered a search for understanding that the right-wing opposition says
has turned into an indiscriminate witch hunt.

Instead of achieving reconciliation between the right and the left and
between the religious and secular communities, the soul-searching has
degenerated into ugly scenes of recrimination between supporters and
opponents of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Before he was arrested in the assassination, Yigal Amir and his
co-conspirators had set out to sabotage this peace process by killing the
two key Israeli policy makers, Mr. Rabin and foreign minister Shimon
Peres, and by attacking Palestinians.

Initial attention focused on the role of the main opposition party, Likud,
accused by the Labour-led government of having created an atmosphere of
violence in the Israeli society by conducting a relentless and vicious
campaign against the so-called Oslo accord with the Palestinians.

That rapidly developed into a wider campaign by the peace camp against the
nationalist-religious camp at large, which was accused of having fostered
the extreme ideology of Mr. Amir and his associates.

Within this camp, home to many Jewish settlers and their supporters, are a
number of fundamentalist rabbis suspected of having given sanction to the
assassination.

Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz, who last year proposed sowing land mines to
prevent the forced removal of Jewish settlers from the occupied
territories, and Rabbi Dov Lior have been questioned by the police amid
much media attention.

If they are found guilty of having issued a _din rodef_, the Jewish
equivalent to a _fatwa_ or religious decree against Mr. Rabin, they may
face charges of sedition.

Last week, Israel's minister of religious affairs, Shimon Shetreet, was
forced to withdraw his call for the resignation of Rabbi Yaakov Ariel of
Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb, who wrote a newspaper article two years ago
that the minister said sanctioned the killing of the prime minister.

The incident was threatening to scupper an attempt by Labour to gain the
crucial political support of the National Religious Party in the Knesset,
Israel's parliament. It was partly defused by a statement by two former
chief rabbis stating that a _din rodef_ could not be issued against an
Israeli government "acting in good faith."

Israel's state prosecutor has brought sedition charges against a settler
rabbi and two other Jewish members of the Zui Artzenu (This is Our Land)
organization  for staging demonstrations against the government over its
peace accord with the Palestinians.

Police have also threatened  to charge peeple who are alleged to have
expressed satisfaction at the murder of Mr. Rabin. One such person
promptly found his fast food outlet in the hard line Jewish settlement of
Kiryat Arba declared off-limits to members of Israel's armed forces.

It is in Kiryat Arba that an elaborate tomb was erected for Baruch
Goldstein, the U.S.-born extremist settler who shot dead 29 Palestinian
Muslims at prayer last year before he himself was clubbed to death.

Now a proposal has been tabled in the Knesset for the tomb to be
dismantled, together with that of a memorial erected in gaza by the family
of a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Public outcry forced the Israeli army to reconsider a proposed ban on its
officers studying at Bar Ilan University, the Orthodox institution where
Mr. Amir studied law.

But the same university expelled a student for posting a message on the
Internet that was supportive of the Rabin assassination.

It is not surprising that the Israeli right wing complains it is taking a
lot of flak these days. It still feels its freedom to strike back is
somewhat constrained by the groundswell of public support for the peace
process in the wake of Mr. Rabin's assassination.

However, when word was leaked that Avishai Raviv, a radical Jewish settler
suspected of involvement in the assassination plot, had been a paid
informer of Israel's General Security Service, the right wing launched a
counterattack, saying that the government had used the security service as
a political tool by approving the operation of an _agent provocateur_.

And in an attempt to turn the tables on the left wing, attorney-general
Michael Ben-Yair was asked to investigate Moshe Zimmerman, a professor of
German history at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who earlier this year
compared the children of the Jewish settlers in Hebron to Hitler Jugend,
the Nazi youth movement. The attorney-general rejected the request.

Politicians on both sides of the spectrum received death threats last week
and a Knesset reporter was sent a scullcap adorned with a swastika.

Protection of politicians and public figures, already tightened
considerably since Mr. Rabin's assassination, has been increased.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is now accompanied constantly by
three bodyguards, and several politicians have complained of a hysterical
overreaction by the security service because of its failure to protect Mr.
Rabin.

Despite attempts by both sides to relieve the tension, the atmosphere of
fear and recrimination continues to prevail.

Avraham Burg, a former Labour politician, said: "Israel is going through a
period of craziness. It is time for the rabbis to return to their studies,
for politicians to return to politics, and for the police to deal with
crime again."

[end of article]


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:27:58 PST 1995
Article: 63909 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: "Mindless cheerleaders for Israel?"
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:30:12 GMT
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Gerald Caplan is former national secretary of the New Democratic Party of
Canada. He is a public affairs consultant, with major reports on public
broadcasting and public education to his credit. He is also a frequent
television commentator and newspaper columnist. 

The following article--"Mindless cheerleaders for Israel?"--is taken from
Gerald Caplan's column in the May 13 1990 issue of The Toronto Star,
Canada's biggest daily newspaper. Here is it verbatim:

                     MINDLESS CHEERLEADERS FOR ISRAEL?

"Leaders of Canada's Jewish community are doing a profound disservice to
Canadian Jewry and the state of Israel. By either blessing, or justifying,
or remaining silent about every reprhensible actvity of both the Israeli
government and Israeli extremists, they undermine their own credibility in
the eyes of many thoughtful Canadians, Jews included.

"Their behaviour is not only immoral; it is counter-productive.

"Never mind the routine beatings, torture, killings and harassment of
Palestinians by Jews. Take the recent move of 150 Israeli fundamentalists,
surreptitiously subsidized by the Shamir government, into the old
Christian quarter of Jerusalem. The mayor of Jerusalem [Teddy Kollek], a
Jew, calls it 'stupid and ignorant.' The American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the principal pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., warns that American
Jews may now cut back their financial support of Israel. The director of
the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai Brith in the U.S. calls the
settlement 'provocative and insensitive,' while the president of the
American Jewish Congress is 'appalled' by the move.

"Then, there's Canada. The Canadian Jewish Congress issues a statement
reaffirming its belief that Jews have a right to live in any part of
Israel. The Canada-Israel Committee affirms this same right but with the
mealy-mouthed qualification that 'the manner in which recent events have
unfolded is disquieting.'

"And worst of all: The Canadian B'nai Brith. A B'nai Brith delegation of
20 Jewish leaders from across Canada, in Israel when the Jerusalem issue
explodes, are ready, aye ready, to perform as mindless cheerleaders. 'We
support,' a spokesperson says, 'what the duly elected government of Israel
does' - a peculiarly witless and uninformed principle.

"And to demonstrate the boundless nature of their irresponsibility, the
delegation then visits and pays homage at a Jewish settlement in the
occupied West Bank that had been founded by Rabbi Moshe Levinger.
Levinger, a fanatical leader of Israel's Jewish settler movement and a
bigot who calls Arabs 'dogs,' was just convicted of killing an unarmed,
unthreatening Palestinian shopkeeper.

"Is there no limit to what Canadian Jewish leaders will tolerate from
Israel? Wrong question. Is there any level of iniquity they'll fail to
celebrate? Is there a more monstrous Israeli figure than Ari Sharon,
chauvinist, ultra-hawk, architect of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon who
failed, an Israeli commission of enquiry found, to prevent the bloody
massacre by Israel's Lebanese allies of more than 700 helpless
Palestinians in the Shatilla and Sabra refugee camps?

"Not ghastly enough, it seems, for the Canadian Friends of the Jerusalem
College of Technology, whose board has chosen to invite Sharon to speak at
a Toronto fund raising event. What kind of message does this invitation
send to Canadians, I asked their official spokesperson. 'We're not
politically naive or stupid,' he replied. 'The board weighed all the
considerations before deciding. There were lots of considerations involved
here.'

"So the question remains: Is there any act of 'the duly elected government
of Israel' that will shame the leaders of Canadian Jewry into saying, with
Jewish leaders in America and in Israel itself: 'Enough is enough. You are
despoiling every great historic tradition of Judaisim [sic]?'

"When Israel renewed diplomatic relations with Ethiopia earlier this year,
it was revealed they would also be sending military advisers and arms,
including cluster bombs, to Menghistu's demented, murderous regime. Was
there a peep of concern, let alone dissent, from the Canadian Jewish
establishment for this heinous act? Has there been even an eyebrow raised
at the inimate 15-year collaboration between Israel and [pre-Mandella]
South Africa, actively promoted by the leaders of both major Israeli
parties, involving not only commercial trade but weapons development,
military co-operation and joint nuclear research, very possibly the joint
testing of a nuclear bomb.

"'Because of their historic experience,' writes Irving Abella in A Coat of
Many Colors, his new history of Canadian Jewry, 'Jews have tended to be
sensitive to oppression and to threats to religious and political
freedom.' Except, it appears, in Canada and Israel.

"Yet, those of us who dare speak out for traditional Jewish values are
rewarded with menacing and abusive midnight phone calls. Why pick on us?
Why not harass instead those 780 American Jewish leaders who, according to
a recent poll by the Israel-Diaspora Institute, are overwhelmingly opposed
to the most fundamental Israeli policies of recent years?"

No further comment.

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:27:59 PST 1995
Article: 63910 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: "A life ruined by Nazi hunt"
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:30:44 GMT
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When Simon Wiesenthal accused Chicago resident Frank Walus, a retired
factory worker, of being a brutal Gestapo officer in World War II Poland,
everyone assumed another Nazi war criminal had been nabbed.

Walus subsequently stood in a U.S. denaturalization court to hear twelve
(12) professional "eyewitnesses" identify him as "the Beast of Kielce," a
notorious mass-murderer who, among other savage acts, allegedly stomped a
young, pregnant Jewess to death. The ensuing court battle cost Walus
$60,000, with his name and even possibly his life at stake. As it
happened, Walus lost the first round and was stripped of his U.S.
citizenship and ordered deported.

There was just one problem. Simon Wiesenthal, the twelve Holocaust
survivors, Israeli Police, the U.S. Justice Department and the news media
were dead wrong.

"Simon Wiesenthal fabricated the whole story," Walus said bitterly."Nine
of the twelve witnesses who said they had been born in Poland and lived
there, never did."

There were numerous glaring discrepancies in Wiesenthal's case against
Walus. For one, Walus would have been only 17-years-old when he was "a
Gestapo officer."  He had been described as being 6 feet tall; when he was
only 5 feet and 4 inches tall. Walus, moreover, was Polish; hence, the
Nazis would never have allowed him to join the Gestapo.

The U.S. Justice Department dropped its suit and paid Walus $34,000 in
legal costs. Wiesenthal, however, paid Walus nothing, and even sued Walus
and the Cleveland Plain Dealer for having had the temerity to complain
about the kind of shotgun tactics Wiesenthal had employed. Wiesenthal's
suit alleged that the comments they made about him had caused Wiesenthal
to fall into "discredit with those persons with whom he has had contact
and has been held in public contempt, hatred and ridicule." An exact
description, of course, of what the ludicrous charges Wiesenthal levelled
against him had done to Frank Walus.

Reproduced below is an April 13, 1983, article by Dick Chapman of The
Toronto Star, relative to the Frank Walus affair:


******************************************************************************
                            A life ruined by Nazi hunt

As the RCMP steps up its hunt for alleged Nazi war criminals hiding in
Canada, a sombre warning comes from a retired Chicago factory worker.

Frank Walus is the warning.

He personifies a valuable lesson to mark today's start of a Holocaust
Remembrance Week, a worldwide commemoration for nearly seven million
victims murdered by Nazi Germany's Third Reich under Adolph Hitler during
World War II. 

Vienna-based Simon Wiesenthal,famed Nazi hunter, had fingered Walus, 61,
in 1974 as a former Gestapo collaborator.

By the time the allegation reached Israeli police, Walus had been
"promoted" to Gestapo member.

Walus later stood in a U.S. denaturalization court to hear 12
"eyewitnesses" identify him as a notorious mass-murderer who allegedly
stomped to death a young pregnant Jew.

Walus had to find $60,000 for his defence and to bring witnesses from
Poland. But he lost the case, was stripped of his U.S. citizenship  and
ordered deported.

There was just one horrendous flaw.

Wiesenthal, Israeli police, the U.S. justice system and the media had the
wrong man.

U.S. prosecutors later agreed Walus had never been at the Nazis'
concentration camp at Kielce, Poland where "eyewitnesses" 40 years later
had placed him.

"Nine of the 12 witnesses who said they had been born in Poland and lived
there, never  did," Walus said in a recent interview.

The U.S. justice department dropped the case, apologized and paid Walus
$34,000 in legal costs. But Walus figures he's spent $120,000 trying to
clear his name.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:28:00 PST 1995
Article: 63911 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: A Killer's Deed, A People's Hatred
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:31:29 GMT
Organization: CADVision
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  JERUSALEM: THE SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH 6, 1994, by YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM

               Palestinians See a People's Hatred in a Killer's Deed

If Yitzhak Rabin and other Israeli leaders have been hoping that their
denunciations of the massacre of Muslims in Hebron will persuade
Palestinians that this was the work of an isolated and deranged zealot
whom Israelis want to spit out of their society, they can expect to be
disappointed.

The rage being expressed by Palestinians is not just at Baruch Goldstein,
or at the settlers' movement alone. In it is woven a conviction most
Israelis would reject: that Israel--all of it--was responsible for the
acts of Dr. Goldstein when he opened fire in an ancient mosque on Feb. 26
[1994], killing dozens of Arabs at prayer. Israelis, these Palestinians
feel, have routinely shown or tolerated bigoted attitudes toward Arabs,
and have let cruelty go unpunished. And the talks between Israel and the
Palestine Liberation Organization have done little to dispel the sense of
grievance and of powerlessness before Israel's strength.

Last week, Prime Minister Rabin repudiated Dr. Goldstein in the harshest
terms. But the words did not resound half as loud in Arab villages as did
Mr. Rabin's offer of a cabinet post to Gen. Rafael Eitan, whose party he
wants in his coalition. Arabs remember the general's prediction, in a 1983
parliamentary question and answer session, that Palestinians would react
to Israeli settlements by scurrying around like "drugged cockroaches in a
bottle."

Long memory is a key to understanding the Palestinian conviction that Dr.
Goldstein acted on impulses born in the heart of Israel, not in some alien
splinter group. For all his recent efforts to come to terms with Yasir
Arafat, Mr. Rabin himself is still remembered as the Defence Minister who,
in 1988, called for crushing the then-new Palestinian uprising with
"forcce, might, beatings."  Many soldiers took him literally, breaking
Palestinians' bones until the policy was rescinded in the face of
international revulsion.

Over the years of occupation, Palestinians have focused on what they see
as the deeply demeaning attitude many Israeli Jews hold toward them.
Israeli officials like General Eitan, and militant rightists, use
derogatory, even racist, language about Palestinans, and most Israelis
have ignored Arab objections. In the last week, though, public
introspection has begun in Israel. Many Jews now say they cannot both
foster contempt for Arabs and make peace with them.

In an article titled "Confessions of a Co-conspirator" in the Jerusalem
Post on Friday, Naftali Greenwood said everyday injustices toward Arabs
are hardly noticed in Israeli society. The writer is from Kiryat Arba,
where Dr. Goldstein lived. He denounced "ordained rabbis and respected
professionals" who, he wrote, "routinely characterize Arabs, Americans and
secular or left-leaning Israeli Jews as demons or subhumans." A
Palestinian in Jericho also made the point: "Why when they kill us they
are crazy, and when we kill them we are terrorists?"

The language of hate and prejudice has long characterized Arab-Israeli
relations on both sides. Some Arab schools teach that Jews are dishonest
and murderous. Preachers in many Islamic lands routinely call for the
murder of Jews and Christians. And after 45 years of conflict, a great
many Israelis grow up seeing Arabs as stereotypes from their worst
nightmares--dirty, lying and treacherous.

Can this be changed? Most Israelis would cringe at the notion that Dr.
Goldstein's viewpoint is akin to their own. But Palestinians say there are
few signs of encouragement in Israel's actions--notably the military rule,
curfew, arbitrary arrests and neglect of social services in the occupied
territories. Israeli Arabs say they too encounter humiliation.

"The Jewish population not only deprives Israeli Arabs of resources  and
benefits, but has come to regard them as second-class citizens, a
community to which the accepted codes of Israeli democracy do not apply,"
wrote Walid Sadek, a Deputy Health Minister who is one of the few Arabs in
the Israeli Government, in another article in the Jerusalem Post.

The security measures slapped on the nearly two million Arabs in the
occupied territories after rioting broke out in the wake of the massacre
are a new sore point. Palestinians hear this message: that the victims of
the massacre, not the perpetrators, are being punished. Even though a few
Jewish settlers were deprived of their guns, most settlers remained free
to roam about armed. Israel did release some Arab prisoners. It did not
yield to P.L.O. demands to bargain now on the fate of the settlements.

Even an ofer of compensation to families of the massacre victims--the
first such gesture toward Arab victims of Jewish violence--left
Palestinians with a sour feeling. Israeli officials noted that living
standards of Arabs in the territories are below those of Jews, and
therefore they will be paid less than Jews  who are victims of Arab
terror.

As corrosive as anything, at least 25 Palestinians have been shot dead by
Israeli army soldiers during unreest since the massacre took place Feb.
25.

"Nothing has changed," said Ezzedin Jihad al-Yassini, a day worker from
Jerusalem whose 15-year-old son was one of 21 Palestinians killed by
Israeli police gunfire during unrest on the sacred Haram al Sharif in
October 1990. Sitting beneath a picture of his son and a nephew who was
killed in 1989 in a clash with Israeli soldiers, Mr. Yassini dismissed all
talk of Jewish anguish over the treatment of Palestinians.

"That so-called Jewish debate is a conversation among Jews, not about
Palestinians," he said. "Those who died could have been dogs, birds,
chickens, or anything. It is not our lives or our right to live they are
concerned about. It is what the violence is doing to them and their image
which concerns them."


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:28:01 PST 1995
Article: 63912 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Agents Provocateurs and the Blame Game
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:32:00 GMT
Organization: CADVision
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X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

In 1990 in Haifa, Israel, a couple Jewish men, David Goldner, 41, and
Gershon Tannenbaum, 32, were arrested following the desecration of two
Jewish graveyards, an episode that got worldwide attention.

Slogans in perfect Hebrew calling for the destruction of Judaism and for
the founding of a Palestinian state were found on more than 300
headstones.

One inscription read: "Arabs will kill the Jews."

Israeli Religious Affairs Minister, Zevolon Hammer, said that there might
have been a connection with this incident and the desecration of Jewish
graves in France, the so-called Carpentras incident, which was widely
blamed on right-wing hate groups.

One of the smear artists, David Goldner, said he had hoped Arabs would be
blamed for the incident.

******************************************************************************

               Israeli is Given 3 Years For Desecrating Graves

HAIFA, Israel, May 27 [1990] (AP) - A court today sentenced a Jew to three
years in prison after he confessed to desecrating more than 300 Jewish
graves in the hope that Arabs would be blamed.

The spray-painting of the Jewish gravestones with anti-Israeli slogans
received widepread publicity, coming just after the discovery of the
desecration of a Jewish cemetary in Carpentras, France, on May 10.

In the Carpentras incident, a recently buried body was dug up and impaled
on the pole of an umbrella. It provoked outrage in France.

The Israeli, 41-year-old David Goldner, said he regretted his action. He
declared that at that time he had hoped it would unite Jews against Arabs.

Also charged in the incident in this coastal city was Gershon Tannenbaum,
32, who also confessed. His sentencing has been put off pending a
psychiatric examination.

[end of article]

*****************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:28:02 PST 1995
Article: 63913 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: David Rubitsky: A Legend in His Own Mind
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:32:58 GMT
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As a veteran of World War Two, David Rubitsky claimed that all alone he
managed to kill 500 Japanese soldiers in the battle for New Guinea on
December 1, 1942.

Rubitsky, an American Jew, also claimed he was denied a Congressional
Medal of Honour because of anti-Semitism. 

Assisted by the Anti-Defamation League and a largely sympathetic media
[see the newspaper articles at the end], Rubitsky sought the recognition
he said he had earned by his wartime valour and heroism.

Because of the lobbying efforts of the ADL, including a resolution signed
by 92 members of Congress, in 1987 the U.S. Army undertook a two-year
review of David Rubitsky's story.

On December 8, 1989, after obtaining evidence from forensic specialists
and taking statements from Rubitsky and 20 others who served alongside
him,the U.S. Army concluded that Rubitsky's claim was unfounded.

Quite apart from his wild story, Rubitsky's claim was marred by
controversy from the beginning. The headline bannered in the Madison, WI,
Capitol Times said it all: "WW II Soldier Started Anti-Semitism Battle
Early In Life." Newspaper and magazine articles, with references to
"anti-Semitism," appeared in such prestige publications as TIME and the
New York Times. The storyline was simple: Rubitsky, a war hero, was not
being rightly celebrated as one because of "anti-Semitism."

But members of Rubitsky's old World War II unit disputed his claim and
called it a hoax. George Hess, a member of Rubitsky's infantry regiment
said, "It is the biggest fairy tale anybody has ever told the U.S. Army to
get a medal."

Claire O. Ehle said the claim was "one big hoax" and that Rubitsky was
"hiding behind a smokescreen of anti-Semitism to cover up his flimsy,
unsubstantiated fairy tale."

On February 9, 1990, two months after the U.S. Army report,Jewish Week reported
that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had finally conceded the Army's position.

After that, the story faded.

But its cautionary value remains.

*******************************************************************************

Here is John Patrick Hunter's piece in the Madison (WI) Capital-Times for
November 29, 1989:

              WWII solder started anti-Semitism battle early in life
 
The alleged anti-Semitism that may have deprived David Rubitsky of a Medal
of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, has dogged Milton's
Jewish infantry veteran since he was a child in small town Wisconsin.

"Once again, I am taking suffering from these people who crucified me as a
kid," Rubitsky said.

The Army is conducting a 22-month review of a claim by Rubitsky and two of
his wartime commanders that he killed more than 500 Japanese soldiers in a
World War II encounter in New Guinea, but that he was denied the medal
because he was a Jew.

Rubitsky,in a visit to The Capitol-Times, said he was subjected to racist
taunts even as a youngster growing up in Edgerton.

He was one of a family of nine children, seven boys and two girls, of a
Russian Jewish immigrant family. "They used to put white crosses on our
lawn," he said.

Rubitsky said his family was the only Jewish family in that Rock County
comunity.

Efforts to discredit Rubitsky's wartime exploits have been mounted by a
small group of men who were also in the Red Arrow division.Two of them
recently told The Capitol Hill Times that Rubitsky's claim is a hoax.

"If medals were given for fairy tales, Rubitsky richly deserved one,"
Claire Ehle of Evansville said in a letter. He said his protest is being
supported by Rolland McIntyre, Elgin Faye, Robert Burdick and Clifford
Mason, Rock County veterans who also served in New Guinea in 1942-43.

Ehle and McIntyre brought their complaints against the Rubitsky claim to
The Capitol Times last week.Both men strongly denied their efforts against
awarding
of the medal are based on any feeling of anti-Semitism.

Efforts to gain the Medal of Honor began anew two years ago when Rubitsky
learned during the course of a Janesville reunion of veterans of
Wisconsin's 32nd Infantry Division that he had been recommended for the
Medal of Honor in 1942 after the New Guinea skirmish. He said he had been
told that the recommendation had not been sent up the chain of command
because a superior officer did not think a Medal of Honour should go to a
Jew.

Some of the same verterans who served with him in the Pacific and grew up
with him in the Edgerton area, "were among those who used to taunt me with
anti-Semitic remarks," Rubitsky said.

*******************************************************************************

The denouement to the Rubitsky affair appeared in this small item in the
January 31, 1990, issue of The Janesville (WI) Gazette:

                 Study rejects Rubitsky's claim of anti-Semitism

MILWAUKEE--The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith said it doubts a
Milton man was denied a Congressional Medal of Honor because of
anti-Semitism in World War II.

David S. Rubitsky, 72, has petitioned unsuccessfully for the medal,
submitting letters from supporters that say he earned the honor while with
the 128th Infantry during the Buna campaign on New Guinea in 1942.

A Defense Department review panel said last year it found no evidence in
U.S. or Japanese military records to support the claim that Rubitsky
killed 500 enemy soldiers single-handedly.

Abraham H. Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, said this month
in a letter to lt. Col. Terrence Adkins, chief of the Army's military
awards office, that a league investigation could not substantiate the
claim.

"Based on all the evidence presented to us, we are convinced beyond any
reasonable doubt that Mr. Rubitsky's account of his actions at Buna and
his allegations that anti-Semitism prevented him from receiving a
Congressional Medal of Honor are unfounded."

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:28:02 PST 1995
Article: 63914 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Evidence of Israeli atrocities
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:33:39 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 90
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X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

                             OPENING GRAVE WOUNDS

              Evidence of Israeli atrocities during the 1967 war
               with Egypt threatens the countries' fragile ties

Despite a historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, the heritage of
two wars in two decades still leaves unexpected and bitter traces. Last
week new disclosures that Israeli soldiers massacred Egyptian POWS during
the 1967 war added to a growing wave of anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt.
The sequence of events leading to the unearthing of two mass graves
outside the Sinai city of El Arish last week began a month ago with
admissions by Israeli war verterans that unarmed Egyptian civilians and
POWS were murdered in the 1956 and 1967 wars.

The expedition that discovered the shallow burial sites was organized by
the semiofficial Al-Ahram nesspaper and guided by Abdel Salam Moussa, 55,
a former air force officer who was taken prisoner by the Israelis during
the 1967 war. The searchers found human bones and estimated that the first
grave contained the remains of approximately 90 people. Recalling the
killings, Moussa told Al-Ahram, "I saw a line of prisoners, civilians and
military, and they [Israeli troops] opened fire at them all at once. When
they were dead, they told us to bury them." Another witness to such
shootings, a local Bedouin named Soliman Salama, identified a second grave
27 km away where he said he saw Israelis kill about 30 Egyptian soldiers
after they had surrendered.

The fury aroused in Egypt by the apparent proof of massacres was fueled by
the press, which matched wartime photos with imaginative illustrations
showing Egyptian soldiers surrendering, being ordered to dig their graves,
then being executed. Opposition parties and newspapers are pressing
President Mubarak to suspend diplomatic ties with Israel until a full
investigation into the executions is conducted. Director of Egypt's State
Information Service Nabil Osman responded, "This is a very serious issue.
The truth has to be made clear. Such crimes are against humanity, and they
just don't fade away."

The sudden revival of old resentments threatened to poison relations
between Cairo and Tel Aviv, and worse, to undermine a diplomatic alliance
that is essential to the process of reaching a broader Middle East
settlement. The controversy led Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to
veto Cairo as the site for current talks with the Palestinians over
self-rule in the West Bank, explaining that he would have to answer
questions about the mass graves.

For the Israelis, who take pride in the morality of their armed forces,
the revelations were deeply troubling. Prompted, he said, by conscience,
retired Israeli General Arieh Biro admitted last month that he had
executed 49 Egyptian POWS with submachine gunfire in the 1956 Sinai
campaign. The disclosure touched off a bout of soul-searching and prompted
Israelis who had witnessed other executions to come forward. The newspaper
Yediot Aharonot urged a government investigation, not only to satisfy
Egyptians but also "for our own sake, our conscience, our beliefs and our
principles."  Biro, 69, said he had been ordered to advance but lacked the
means to take along his Egyptian captives; he could not leave them for
fear that they would lead their advancing comrades to Israeli psotions. So
he killed them. He has "ached over" his actions, he said, but "under the
same circumstances, I think I would do it again."

While Egyptian anger was on the rise, the reaction in Israel grew more
muted. Foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said, "We know that Israeli
prisoners were killed many times in the past. Without accepting them,
atrocities are part and parcel of war. The Egyptians cannot claim the
moral superiority to criticize us, while ignoring whatever their own side
did."

The Egyptians are demanding that Israel officially apologize, launch an
investigation into the incidents, punish those found guilty and compensate
the families of every prisoner of war killed by the Israelis. Israel's
Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair ruled last month that there was no basis
for prosecuting soldiers for offences in 1956 and 1967 because of a
20-year statute of limitations on homicide charges. Israel's only
war-crimes law, Ben-Yair noted, related to crimes of genocide or crimes
committed by the Nazis during World War II. While the shootings of the
POWS were "unlawful and intolerable acts," he said, they were not the kind
of crime covered by the law on genocide.

That reasoning has rankled many Egyptians, who point out that Israel has
set a precedent in such matters by relentlessly tracking down Nazi war
criminals all over the globe. "This is not just a political issue," said
retired Major General Ahmed Fakhr, director of the National Center for
Middle East Studies in Cairo and a veteran of all three wars, "This is an
issue of families who were told that their men were missing in action.
Now, after 20 years, they learn they were slaughtered in cold blood by the
Israelis." Concludes Fakhr: "The Israelis opened that file, now they have
to close it. And peace means justice."

[end of article]

                                                       Frederick Painton
                                                       TIME, Oct. 2, 1995


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:28:03 PST 1995
Article: 63917 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Survivor never saw actual gassing deaths
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:42:43 GMT
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X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

     Book 'An Artistic Picture': Survivor never saw actual gassing deaths

A concentration camp survivor yesterday admitted he never witnessed
anybody being gassed to death and his book about Auschwitz-Birkenau in
only "an artistic picture...not a document for a court."

Rudolf Vrba, now an assistant professor at the University of B.C., told
the Ernst Zundel trial that his written and pictorial descriptions of the
Auschwitz crematoria and gas chambers are based on "what I heard it might
look like."

Zundel is charged with knowingly publishing false information about the
Holocaust that harmed or was likely to harm racial or social tolerance. 

Defence attorney Doug Christie, of Victoria, challenged Vrba's earlier
testimony that he saw a Nazi SS soldier in a gasmask pouring poison gas
into a low bunker conected to a Birkenau crematorium.

Vrba yesterday admitted he was never inside that particular bunker, after
Christie suggested it was the roof of a mortuary Vrba had seen, not a gas
chamber.

Vrba also admitted some of the thousands of women, elderly and children he
claimed were marched directly to gas chambers upon arrival might have been
going to the camp's bathhouse.

"Yes. Some of them actually went there (bathhouse) and more went to the
gas chambers," said Vrba, who claimed many babies were gassed to death.

Vrba said his 1944 drawings of the Auschwitz camp layout were inexect and
Christie suggested Vrba didn't even know where the bathhouse was located.
 
Christie said new arrivals had to march between two crematoria to get to
the bathhouse, but Vrba insisted the area ended in a "closed road" and
"nobody ever came out of there except smoke."

Vrba, who escaped the camp in Poland in 1944 with a mission to warn one
million Hungarian Jews of their impending slaughter, insisted he'd made
accurate ("within 10%) estimates of 1,765,000 mass-murder victims up to
that point.

He said some narrative passages in his book I Cannot Forgive are based on
accounts from others.

One Vrba acount says it took 90 minutes to burn a corpse, another said it
took 20 minutes.

"I also include things I heard from reliable sources," Vrba said,
exlaining the changes in his later report.

Vrba's 1961 affadavit quotes a Nuremberg War Crimes Trial document as
relating to Auschwitz gas chambers and claims it backs up Vrba's account.

When Christie pointed out that ("Nazi government") documents say nothing
about gas chambers, Vrba replied: "It might be a typing error [sic]."

Vrba, whose book states the total Auschwitz death toll was 2.5 million,
testified Holocaust historians Raul Hilberg and Gerald Rietlinger were
limited by "historical discipline" when they made lower estimates - 1
million and about 850,000 respectively - and did not have the benefit of
Vrba's eyewitness experiences.

Vrba also said increasing estimates of the Auschwitz death toll in the
decades after World War II [for years it was "officially" held to be 4
million; now, again, "officially," is held to be a number between 1.1 and
1.5 million] "just shows that better scholars with better methods are
constantly improving [sic] the information."

He defended "errors in good faith" in his 1944 Auschwitz accounts, which
he made two weeks after escaping, as due to "great urgency" to warn Jews.

                                       Dick Chapman, Staff Writer
                                       The Toronto Sun, January 24, 1985

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:28:04 PST 1995
Article: 63918 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: The Politics of Torture in Israel
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:43:37 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 311
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                The Trauma of Palestine and The Search for Peace

"Those days they transported captured Jews in train cars, like the ones
used for cattle," said my driver. She went on telling me the story of her
mother: "My mother was captured in Yugoslavia during the war [World War
II]. The trip to Germany was long and there was no food. They arrived in
bad shape, then were made to walk to the concentration camp. There was one
particular moment that stuck in my mother's memory that affected her
profoundly: during their long march, two German women riding bicycles
stopped and gazed at them. They watched the row of living skeletons,
exhausted and debilitated, walking slowly, then rode away." My driver
turned and looked at me: "That's why I have come to Gaza. I decided long
ago not to be a cyclist who only looks on. I try to tell the people of
Israel what is going on in Gaza."

My driver was a journalist working for an Israeli newspaper as a Gaza
correspondent. She had kindly offered me a ride from Gaza to Tel Aviv, and
she was responding to to my question as to why she had decided to work in
Gaza.

Crossing from Gaza to Isral is like moving to a different world
altogether: Gaza's battered roads are full of potholes, some parts of them
flooded with sewage water, lined by the graffiti-covered walls of rundown
buildings and crowded with people, lots of people, everywhere (Gaza is one
of the most densely populated areas in the world, with more than 1,800
inhabitants per square mile). After crossing the border, you see Israel's
orderly roads and well-regulated environment, with people mostly waiting
at bus stops looking patiently at the trafic moving north, hoping to catch
a ride.

I asked the Israeli journalist whether the general public knew about their
government's policies and practices in Gaza. She replied that the Hebrew
press reportedly extensively on the Occupied Territories, and that all the
relevant facts were published. I wanted to make sure we were talking about
the same facts, so I briefly reviewed some of what I knew. "Yes, that has
all been reported," she replied. I asked whether there was any public
pressure to stop these human rights abuses. She explained how the public
was mostly concerned about security issues, and how polarization between
the two communities had made it difficult for the general public to focus
on the human rights aspects of Israeli policy.

My visit to the Palestinian territories was part of a Canadian aid project
managed by the Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation of Canada
(NECEF) and funded by Health and Welfare Canada. As a child psychiatrist,
my role was primarily to provide mental health training and consulatations
in Gaza and Jerusalem. I conducted training courses in clinical
assessment, play therapy and family therapy under the Gaza Community
Mental Health Program (GCMPH) and at the Palestinian Counselling Centre
(PCC) in Jerusalem. This was my third visit to Gaza and the West Bank. My
earlier visits had been funded by the Canadian International Development
Agency, and had focused on mental health training for Palestinian
front-line community workers. During my three visits I interviewed and/or
was consulted on more than one hundred and twenty cases.

Not wishing to be a "cyclist who only looks on" myself, I am obliged to
report what I saw in Gaza: the people are severely traumatized, and this
is felt at every level of society--the individual, the family and the
community. The effects of traumatization run so deep that it has become a
significant factor in the social and political dynamic process. Three
cases I assessed illustrate the severity of the trauma in Gazan society:

*The case of a six year old boy, Ali. Ali's mother told me what had
happened: "Around two years ago the [Israeli] soliders broke into our home
in the middle of the night. After breaking and destroying the furniture,
they ordered all of us to gather, stripped Abu Khalid (Ali's father) naked
and severely beat him in front of everyone. Then, they ordered him to act
like a donkey." (In Arab culture the donkey is characterized by
inferiority and stupidity.) Ever since, Ali has wet his bed and he does
not listen to us."

*The case of a five year old girl, Leila. Leila's home was blown up by the
Israeli army following allegations that her older brother had been active
in confronting the [Israeli] army on the streets. After that, the family
lived in a makeshift tent near their destroyed house. Every night Leila
could not go to sleep in the tent. Her family had to take her the ruins of
the house where she would fall asleep in the remains of her room.

*The case of a forty five year old father, Abu Amjad. As an ex-prisoner,
Abu Amjad compared his detention experience in the mid nineteen-seventies
with his detention in the early nineteen-nineties thus: "In my first
imprisonment they whipped us with metal whipcords. I remember the walls of
the prison stained with blood all over. After the Intifada I was
imprisoned again and they used the "refigerator." I could not sleep in it
for ten days at a time. I was losing my mind...I am prepared to be whipped
every day for the rest of my life, rather than endure the refrigerator for
a few days. It is an experience that makes you wish for death." (The
"refigerator," known to some as the "coffin," is a small size container
which is cooled to a low temperature that prevents a person from sleeping.
Some accounts mention "spikes" on the inner walls that force prolonged
periods of motionless and painful confinement.)

Ibtihaj, Abu Amjad's nineteen year old daughter, complained that her
father's "personality" had changed after he was released from prison (the
second time): "He used to be a patient man. Now he has a bad temper. He is
confused. He does not want to do anything. He does not talk like he used
to. Everyone (in the family) is afraid of him. It's a difficult problem
for us."

These examples, I discovered within days of working in Gaza, were not
isolated incidents; rather, they represent common practices, along with
others, inflicted upon the community.

How common were these practices? I have not done research on this question
myself, but others have. Here are some results of their research: CCMHP
conducted a survey in 1992 in violence-related trauma among child aged
eight to fifteen. It revealed the following grim picture: 85% of the
children interviewed had experienced night raids and 55% had witnessed the
beating of a family member; 42% of the children had been beaten by
soldiers (5% had suffered bone fractures as a result); 24% had been hit by
ammunition, including rubber-coated bullets; 92% had suffered the effects
of tear gas; 50% had been subjected to humiliation; 19% had been detained
for short periods; 2% had been imprisoned and 2% had had their homes
demolished. These numbers are staggering, especially when it is taken into
account that this was a randomized sample of more than 1,500 children from
the community at large. With an estimated 160,000 Gazan children between
the ages of eight and fifteen (another estimated 160,000 were under the
age of eight), the actual number of children subjected to these practices
is very high.

Other studies reported comparable findings: the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that from December 1987 to April 1994,
83,000 Palestinians had been treated medically for injuries inflicted by
the Israeli army or by settlers. 37% of these casualties were children
under the age of fifteen. Over half were the result of beatings, and a
quarter resulted from gunfire. This does not include injuries treated at
home or those sustained under Israeli detention.

Not all of the children survived this violence: The Save the Children Fund
and the Jerusalem-based Palestine Human Rights Information Centre (PHRIC)
in a joint study reported that more than three hundred children aged
sixteen or under had been fatally injured by gunfire between December 1987
and January 1994. Another thirty-eight children, almost all of whom three
years and younger, had been asphyxiated by super-toxic tear gas.

As for the maltreatment of prisoners, B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights
organization, issued a report on torture in which it listed the methods
used: sleep deprivation; food deprivation; "hooding," that is, covering
the head with a sac (often fouled with nauseating odours, sometimes wet)
for several hours on end; being tied-up for long periods (as long as 36
hours) in deliberately painful positions (for example, the "banana" tie
where the body is bent backwards, with ones [sic] hands tied to his legs)
or--the standard technique for nearly all detainees--"alshbah" (being
tied, with the hands bound over the head, sometimes to a wall attachment,
for hours or even days); cold showers and enforced sitting on wet floor
for prolonged periods; the use of violence, such as severe beatings with
the fists on all parts of the body, sticks and other instruments (as a
direct result of the beatings many lost consciousness and/or had to be
treated in hospitals); verbal insults and abuses; threats of harm to the
detainee or his family members. B'Tselem goes on to say that these
techniques are "usually used in combination."

Al-Haq and the Palestinian Human Rights Information Centre (PHRIC), both
of which are Palestinian human rights organizations, reported the use of
electric shock, sexual assaults and threats of rape of the victim and his
or her mother or sister, as techniques used during interrogations. Females
reported threats of sexual more frequently than boys or men.

Human rights organizations estimate that tens of thousands of adults and
children under the age of fifteen have been imprisoned and tortured. The
reports indicate that fourteen to eighteen days of imprisonment often pass
before a relative is notified or a representative from the Red Cross or a
lawyer is allowed to visit the detainee. It is also worth noting that none
of the ex-detainees interviewed by B'Tselem had been charged with a
serious crime, a quarter never charged at all.

In addition to reciting human rights organizations findings, the Hebrew
Press has had its own reporting on the issue of human rights abuses in the
Palestinian Territories. For example, in February 1992, Israeli journalist
Doron Meeri reported in 'Hadashot' a re-examination of testimonies from
eight Palestinians about the use of electric shock during interrogation.
Later Meeri reported about the "plain horror" of the practices carried out
by an [Israeli] interrogation squad in Hebron.

B'Tselem, Al-Haq, PHRIC, Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights and the
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel have amply documented the
nature of the methods used by Israeli authorities during interogations and
described those methods as standard or routine. Amnesty International, in
a July 1991 report,stated: "Torture or ill treatment seem to be virtually
institutionalized
during the arrest and interrogation procedures preceding the detainees'
appearance before a milityary court. The practices relating in particular
to interrogation procedures have been officially endorsed and are
generally condoned, and therefore effectively encouraged by the
authorities." Other sources of trauma include assassinations (of
Palestinian activists by Israeli undercover units, and of alleged
Palestinian "collaborators" by Palestinians), land confiscations, house
demolitions, deportations and economic barriers.

Another important question, especially from functional and prognostic
standspoints, is the effects such trauamatic circumstances have on the
individual, the family and the community. In psychiatry (on an individual
level) this is referred to as "post traumatic stress disorder," and is
regarded as a diagnosable mental condition. In my clinical work in Gaza I
found methods of maltreatment in prisons and detention centres of
particular importance. What emerged from listening to the histories of the
ex-prisoners I interviwed was a remarkable consistency in their
descriptions of what was done to them, and, the effects this had on them,
and, from interviews with their families, the effects it had on the family
unit.

A closer examination of what a prisoner goes through--whether it is food
or sleep deprivation, chronic pain or discomfort, suffocation (the use of
"hooding"), violence, humiliation or other psychological
maltreatment--reveals a common characteristic in the methods used. They
all contribute to an inner breakdown in the person's ability to cope,
tolerate frustrating emotions and maintain the ability to function as a
self-reliant person. Basically, these methods take away esteem and plant
in its place terror and frustration. The result is the loss of ability to
work productively; sudden violent rages; (yes, there has been a serious
rise in family violence since the Intifada began); loss of ability to
socialize; sudden, frightening flashbacks and nightmares, and chronic
depression.

As for teenagers, the effects are more damaging: five detainees I
examined, who had been tortured during their adolescence, developed a
psychotic schizophrenia-like illness (this is basically loss of touch with
reality and usually a serious disintegration in the personality
structure). It is possible that these individuals would have developed
this illness anyway (after all, 1% of any population is expected to have
this disorder).However, from the clinical
histories I gathered, there was evidence that suggests that these
individuals'illnesses were closely related to the extreme experiences they
had gone through during detention. It may well be that the Israeli
interrogators have created the "right" circumstances for schizophrenia to
develop. Maybe some researchers would find this interesting from an
academic standpoint.

Nor suprisingly, the effects of traumatic circumstances on children's
mental health, functional abilities and overall development are serious.
Research carried out suggests that about 50% of the children of Gaza
suffer anxiety problems, and 25% suffer from depression. Behavioral,
academic, social and medical dificulties are widespread; some, such as
bed-wetting, are at an epidemic level.

What complicates the picture further is that the Palestian family is in
deep crisis. Stressed-out mothers, poor resources and conflicting,
frustrated and often violent interactions within the family, and more
broadly within the community , have all diminished the family's ability to
provide support and attention that are necessary for healing. This has
happened in a culture that traditionally values child rearing and family
building.

Friends of Israel may find it hard to accept the wrongs described in this
article. But, if peace is to be realized, both adversaries in this
conflict will have to translate their desire for peace into a sensible
scrutiny of their of their traditional positions. From the Israeli side of
this equation, reactions to Palestinian violence against Israel will
hopefully not stop at shock, bereavement and anger, but be extended to a
recognition of an underlying causality that may facilitate reconciliation
between the two communities. On the Palestinian side, there needs to be a
chanelling of anger into constructive energy that can provide from within
an attempt at making peace, not only with the Israelis, but also with
their painful past. The fact is that real peace in the Middle East
requires a search for effective solutions to serious problems. This
entails looking to the origins of these problems. Only then can there be
peace that is not only portrayed through signed agreements, but, more
importantly, peace that includes non-violent conexistence as a basic
ingredient.

The fact is that the Palestinian comunity is severely traumatized,
individual by individual--hundreds of thousands of individuals. This
traumatization is multi-faceted, multi-layered, chronic and severe. Ali,
Leila and Abu Amjad all carry scars that will be a powerful influence in
their lives and their futures. Their healing is essential for peace, but
how can healing be achieved for them, and for Palestine?

My view is that this will require persistent efforts and favourable
conditions, and that it will be a challenge, not only for Palestinians
themselves, but also for their partners in the peace process.

To begin with, Ali, Leila and Abu Amjad will have to feel secure in their
homes and community, proud of belonging to their Palestinian nation. That
is where the process of change will have to start: in effect, they must
feel that they belong to a nation with a unique experience, a nation of
victims that struggles to obtain its basic sense of pride and well-being.
It must be recognized that the problem with pride stems from the loss of
land, and that the lack of well-being comes from the community's inability
to protect itself or its individual members. This, in my opinion, is the
first requirement for healing: to regain a collective group identity that
includes pride, security and hope. Structurally speaking, this means
independent statehood, with democratic institutions that can protect Ali,
Leila and Abu Amjad and their rights, and facilitate their productive and
healthy growth through a rehabilitation and rebuilding process.

Achieving national rights will give them a sense of pride. Ensuring human
rights will allow them to feel secure and valued. Democracy will give them
confidence, esteem and empowerment through participation. Rehabilitation
and rebuilding, and the economic prosperity that may follow, will give
them hope for a better life. These, I believe, are the requirements for
their healing, and Palestine's healing. But all this cannot be
accomplished without the partners in peace having an agenda with these
clear objectives in mind.

Within this context, they, like other individuals anywhere, will have
specific needs that have to be met through civic planning and social and
economic policy. Health (including mental health), education, employment
and housing are areas that can benefit from technical and financial
support from Western democracies, including Canada. Needless to say,
meeting these needs will also be important to the healing process.

In a way, we can not afford to fail. The alternative to healing is the
continuation, and possibly the growth, of a culture of despair, a fertile
ground for extremism. The cycle of violence that may result would be
tragic for all.

[end of article]

                                      Dr. Sameh Hassan, The NECEF Report
                                      Fall 1995, pp. 7 - 11

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 12:47:41 PST 1995
Article: 19240 of soc.culture.jewish
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadc114.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Recriminations run riot in Israel
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:06:01 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 115
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NNTP-Posting-Host: cadc114.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

                           

         From: The Toronto Globe & Mail, December 11, 1995, p. A8
         Title: Recriminations run riot in Israel
         Author: Reuben Loewy (Special to The G & M, Jerusalem)

The shots that killed Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin last month
triggered a search for understanding that the right-wing opposition says
has turned into an indiscriminate witch hunt.

Instead of achieving reconciliation between the right and the left and
between the religious and secular communities, the soul-searching has
degenerated into ugly scenes of recrimination between supporters and
opponents of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Before he was arrested in the assassination, Yigal Amir and his
co-conspirators had set out to sabotage this peace process by killing the
two key Israeli policy makers, Mr. Rabin and foreign minister Shimon
Peres, and by attacking Palestinians.

Initial attention focused on the role of the main opposition party, Likud,
accused by the Labour-led government of having created an atmosphere of
violence in the Israeli society by conducting a relentless and vicious
campaign against the so-called Oslo accord with the Palestinians.

That rapidly developed into a wider campaign by the peace camp against the
nationalist-religious camp at large, which was accused of having fostered
the extreme ideology of Mr. Amir and his associates.

Within this camp, home to many Jewish settlers and their supporters, are a
number of fundamentalist rabbis suspected of having given sanction to the
assassination.

Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz, who last year proposed sowing land mines to
prevent the forced removal of Jewish settlers from the occupied
territories, and Rabbi Dov Lior have been questioned by the police amid
much media attention.

If they are found guilty of having issued a _din rodef_, the Jewish
equivalent to a _fatwa_ or religious decree against Mr. Rabin, they may
face charges of sedition.

Last week, Israel's minister of religious affairs, Shimon Shetreet, was
forced to withdraw his call for the resignation of Rabbi Yaakov Ariel of
Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb, who wrote a newspaper article two years ago
that the minister said sanctioned the killing of the prime minister.

The incident was threatening to scupper an attempt by Labour to gain the
crucial political support of the National Religious Party in the Knesset,
Israel's parliament. It was partly defused by a statement by two former
chief rabbis stating that a _din rodef_ could not be issued against an
Israeli government "acting in good faith."

Israel's state prosecutor has brought sedition charges against a settler
rabbi and two other Jewish members of the Zui Artzenu (This is Our Land)
organization  for staging demonstrations against the government over its
peace accord with the Palestinians.

Police have also threatened  to charge peeple who are alleged to have
expressed satisfaction at the murder of Mr. Rabin. One such person
promptly found his fast food outlet in the hard line Jewish settlement of
Kiryat Arba declared off-limits to members of Israel's armed forces.

It is in Kiryat Arba that an elaborate tomb was erected for Baruch
Goldstein, the U.S.-born extremist settler who shot dead 29 Palestinian
Muslims at prayer last year before he himself was clubbed to death.

Now a proposal has been tabled in the Knesset for the tomb to be
dismantled, together with that of a memorial erected in gaza by the family
of a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Public outcry forced the Israeli army to reconsider a proposed ban on its
officers studying at Bar Ilan University, the Orthodox institution where
Mr. Amir studied law.

But the same university expelled a student for posting a message on the
Internet that was supportive of the Rabin assassination.

It is not surprising that the Israeli right wing complains it is taking a
lot of flak these days. It still feels its freedom to strike back is
somewhat constrained by the groundswell of public support for the peace
process in the wake of Mr. Rabin's assassination.

However, when word was leaked that Avishai Raviv, a radical Jewish settler
suspected of involvement in the assassination plot, had been a paid
informer of Israel's General Security Service, the right wing launched a
counterattack, saying that the government had used the security service as
a political tool by approving the operation of an _agent provocateur_.

And in an attempt to turn the tables on the left wing, attorney-general
Michael Ben-Yair was asked to investigate Moshe Zimmerman, a professor of
German history at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who earlier this year
compared the children of the Jewish settlers in Hebron to Hitler Jugend,
the Nazi youth movement. The attorney-general rejected the request.

Politicians on both sides of the spectrum received death threats last week
and a Knesset reporter was sent a scullcap adorned with a swastika.

Protection of politicians and public figures, already tightened
considerably since Mr. Rabin's assassination, has been increased.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is now accompanied constantly by
three bodyguards, and several politicians have complained of a hysterical
overreaction by the security service because of its failure to protect Mr.
Rabin.

Despite attempts by both sides to relieve the tension, the atmosphere of
fear and recrimination continues to prevail.

Avraham Burg, a former Labour politician, said: "Israel is going through a
period of craziness. It is time for the rabbis to return to their studies,
for politicians to return to politics, and for the police to deal with
crime again."

[end of article]


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sat Dec 16 15:09:08 PST 1995
Article: 67282 of talk.politics.mideast
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadc114.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Recriminations run riot in Israel
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:08:31 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 115
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: cadc114.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

                           

         From: The Toronto Globe & Mail, December 11, 1995, p. A8
         Title: Recriminations run riot in Israel
         Author: Reuben Loewy (Special to The G & M, Jerusalem)

The shots that killed Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin last month
triggered a search for understanding that the right-wing opposition says
has turned into an indiscriminate witch hunt.

Instead of achieving reconciliation between the right and the left and
between the religious and secular communities, the soul-searching has
degenerated into ugly scenes of recrimination between supporters and
opponents of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Before he was arrested in the assassination, Yigal Amir and his
co-conspirators had set out to sabotage this peace process by killing the
two key Israeli policy makers, Mr. Rabin and foreign minister Shimon
Peres, and by attacking Palestinians.

Initial attention focused on the role of the main opposition party, Likud,
accused by the Labour-led government of having created an atmosphere of
violence in the Israeli society by conducting a relentless and vicious
campaign against the so-called Oslo accord with the Palestinians.

That rapidly developed into a wider campaign by the peace camp against the
nationalist-religious camp at large, which was accused of having fostered
the extreme ideology of Mr. Amir and his associates.

Within this camp, home to many Jewish settlers and their supporters, are a
number of fundamentalist rabbis suspected of having given sanction to the
assassination.

Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz, who last year proposed sowing land mines to
prevent the forced removal of Jewish settlers from the occupied
territories, and Rabbi Dov Lior have been questioned by the police amid
much media attention.

If they are found guilty of having issued a _din rodef_, the Jewish
equivalent to a _fatwa_ or religious decree against Mr. Rabin, they may
face charges of sedition.

Last week, Israel's minister of religious affairs, Shimon Shetreet, was
forced to withdraw his call for the resignation of Rabbi Yaakov Ariel of
Ramat Gan, a Tel Aviv suburb, who wrote a newspaper article two years ago
that the minister said sanctioned the killing of the prime minister.

The incident was threatening to scupper an attempt by Labour to gain the
crucial political support of the National Religious Party in the Knesset,
Israel's parliament. It was partly defused by a statement by two former
chief rabbis stating that a _din rodef_ could not be issued against an
Israeli government "acting in good faith."

Israel's state prosecutor has brought sedition charges against a settler
rabbi and two other Jewish members of the Zui Artzenu (This is Our Land)
organization  for staging demonstrations against the government over its
peace accord with the Palestinians.

Police have also threatened  to charge peeple who are alleged to have
expressed satisfaction at the murder of Mr. Rabin. One such person
promptly found his fast food outlet in the hard line Jewish settlement of
Kiryat Arba declared off-limits to members of Israel's armed forces.

It is in Kiryat Arba that an elaborate tomb was erected for Baruch
Goldstein, the U.S.-born extremist settler who shot dead 29 Palestinian
Muslims at prayer last year before he himself was clubbed to death.

Now a proposal has been tabled in the Knesset for the tomb to be
dismantled, together with that of a memorial erected in gaza by the family
of a Palestinian suicide bomber.

Public outcry forced the Israeli army to reconsider a proposed ban on its
officers studying at Bar Ilan University, the Orthodox institution where
Mr. Amir studied law.

But the same university expelled a student for posting a message on the
Internet that was supportive of the Rabin assassination.

It is not surprising that the Israeli right wing complains it is taking a
lot of flak these days. It still feels its freedom to strike back is
somewhat constrained by the groundswell of public support for the peace
process in the wake of Mr. Rabin's assassination.

However, when word was leaked that Avishai Raviv, a radical Jewish settler
suspected of involvement in the assassination plot, had been a paid
informer of Israel's General Security Service, the right wing launched a
counterattack, saying that the government had used the security service as
a political tool by approving the operation of an _agent provocateur_.

And in an attempt to turn the tables on the left wing, attorney-general
Michael Ben-Yair was asked to investigate Moshe Zimmerman, a professor of
German history at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who earlier this year
compared the children of the Jewish settlers in Hebron to Hitler Jugend,
the Nazi youth movement. The attorney-general rejected the request.

Politicians on both sides of the spectrum received death threats last week
and a Knesset reporter was sent a scullcap adorned with a swastika.

Protection of politicians and public figures, already tightened
considerably since Mr. Rabin's assassination, has been increased.

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu is now accompanied constantly by
three bodyguards, and several politicians have complained of a hysterical
overreaction by the security service because of its failure to protect Mr.
Rabin.

Despite attempts by both sides to relieve the tension, the atmosphere of
fear and recrimination continues to prevail.

Avraham Burg, a former Labour politician, said: "Israel is going through a
period of craziness. It is time for the rabbis to return to their studies,
for politicians to return to politics, and for the police to deal with
crime again."

[end of article]


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:09 PST 1995
Article: 63936 of soc.culture.german
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadc114.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Fear and Loathing in Kiryat Arba
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:34:56 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 116
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: cadc114.cadvision.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

  

                         Settlers express fear, defiance
                                  _______________

  Tirades against the 'traitors and cowards' of Rabin's government escalate
                                  
"Mark my words: I'll never in my life ever stop at a Palestinian
roadblock. And if they try, I'll shoot them," a defiant resident of this
Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Hebron says as he pats his .357
magnum revolver reassuringly.

David, a 33-year-old Orthodox (he would not give his last name--"you can
write whatever surname you want"), had just been reciting psalms at the
ornate tomb of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler who massacred 29
Palestinian Muslims at prayer in Hebron last year.

"I often go to the grave of Goldstein--blessed be his memory--to think and
pray when times are difficult," David explains.

When French-born David came to live in Israel as an 18-year-old
high-school graduate, he says, he was full of idealism and hope. "I came
here to be a true Jew, to live in the land of my forefathers, to be
amongst other Jews.

"But today I don't recognize my own country. We are being torn to pieces,"
he says, pounding his right fist hard into his left hand.

"The government of the traitor [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin is cutting
the heart out of Eretz Yisrael, our Biblical homeland, and feeding it to
the Palestinian dogs."

The tirade against the "traitors and cowards" of the Rabin government
escalates, and by the time we reach David's apartment, a mere 15-minute
stroll from the Goldstein tomb, the settler is accusing the Israeli Prime
Minister of not being Jewish.

"I hope that he is, really, but how can a Jew act the way that he does?
This so-called peace process is a declaration of war against the Jewish
people," he says. "You know that according to Jewish law it is permissible
to kill someone who threatens Jewish people the way that Rabin does."

Does this mean some rabbis would sanction the Prime Minister's
assassination, like the Iranian fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie?

"Some do say that it would be a great mitzvah, a holy duty, to get rid of
Rabin," he answers.

But would he perform this mitzvah himself if he had the opportunity?

"Where did you say you were from again?" he responds, and slinks off into
the dark.

Needless to say, no one in Kiryat Arba was celebrating the signinging
yesterday [Sept. 28] of the interim agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians in Washington. 

Many of the estimated 8,000 residents of this hard-line settlement had
gone to downtown Hebron to demonstrate their solidarity with the even more
extreme Jewish settlers, who defiantly  live in the heart of this radical
Palestinian city.

Despite the tough rhetoric, though, there is also evidence of geunine
fear. Rina Cohen, a recent immigrant from Russia, is still struggling to
follow the Hebrew news on television. However, the 28-year-old nurse
understands enough about the agreement to know that it is bad news for
settlers like her.

For Ms. Cohen and most of the other 140,000 Jewish settlers who inhabit
about 150 settlements on the West Bank (not including about 140,000 who
live in East Jerusalem), the major point of concern is security.

"What is going to happen when the Israeli army pulls out of Palestinian
cities and the Palestinian police begin to take over?" she asks.

"The government wouldn't dare touch us," she continues. "Instead they are
just going to expose us to danger, hoping that we will gradually leave on
our own accord."

That is Ms. Cohen's theory anyway. Everyone here has their own version of
events and their own interpretation of the interim agreement. But all are
unanimous in their condemnation.

Even a couple children, no more than three or four years of age [sic],
have been injected with hatred. When PLO chairman Yasser Arafat gets up to
deliver his speech at the White House signing, they rush to hit his face
on the television screen. "Murderer, terrorist," they shriek.

"With this person Rabin has made peace," Ms. Cohen's friend, Maya, says
with disdain. 

"You're a journalist. You must have heard his speeches calling for jihad,
holy war, against the Jews. Didn't you hear him say that the Palestinians
will sacrifice their last boy and girl until their flag is flying over
Jerusalem?"

The atmosphere in Kiryat Arba is an odd mixture of fear and defiance.

Fear of what the new West Bank order will bring--armed Palestinian police,
a withdrawal of the settler's great protector, the Israeli army, and a
government that is turning its back on them. defiance, as in "We'll show
them we won't let ourselves be run out of our own land here."

Some settlers, such as Ms. Cohen and Maya, say they will protest in the
streets of Israel and try and mobolize the nation against the Rabin
government. "When the Likud returns to power next autumn, they will teach
the PLO how tough we can be in negotiations. No more handing everything
over to them on a silver platter," Maya says.

[end of article]

                                                         Reuben Loewy
                                                         The Globe and Mail
                                                         Sept. 29, 1995

****************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:10 PST 1995
Article: 63937 of soc.culture.german
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadc114.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Holocaust scholar quoted 'madman'...
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:36:27 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 106
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X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0b30

           Holocaust scholar quoted 'madman,' publishing trial told

One of the world's leading authorities on the Holocaust has quoted
selectively and extensively a German SS officer who was obviously a
madman, the defence at the Ernst Zundel trial has alleged.

Among the claims sworn to by the Nazi, who ultimately hanged himself while
awaiting trial for war crimes, was a statement that 25 million Jews were
killed in two small extermination camps and that 700 to 800 people could
be crammed into a 25-square metre gas chamber.

"Don't you think it reflects on an author that some statements are
absolutely ridiculous?" defence counsel Douglas Christie asked Raul
Hilberg, a professor at the University of Vermont who has spent more than
35 years studying the Holocaust.

Mr. Zundel is charged with two counts of publishing false news which
caused or was likely to cause racial or social intolerance. His articles
question the Holocaust and postulate an international conspiracy of
Communists, Zionists, bankers and secret societies. The Crown must prove
Mr. Zundel knew the information was false.

Professor Hilberg agreed that Obersturmbanfuehrer Kurt Gerstein, the SS
officer, was most unreliable on some topics covered in sworn affidavits.
But Prof. Hilberg defended his decision to quote the officer on other
subjects in a book he wrote on the Holocaust.

Obersturmbanfuehrer Gerstein was one of the few people who could provide
information about gas chambers at the Treblinka and Belzec camps in
Poland, Prof. Hilberg explained.

The officer said he was responsible for dispensing poison to several camps
in Poland to be used to kill internees.

"Beyond that, I realized, of course, what kind of person he was and I did
not rely on any statements I regarded as imaginative or incredible," the
witness said. "I think he was given to great excitability. What can you
say?"

"You could say he was crazy," Mr. Christie said crisply. The lawyer
accused Prof. Hilberg of quoting only those statements from the "madman"
which bolstered conventional ideas on the Holocaust.

"I'm not making diagnoses here," Prof. Hilberg replied. "I would not
characterize him as totlally rational, but I'm not here making those kinds
of judgments."

Prof. Hilberg has been accepted as an expert witness. He has testified
that about five million [sic] Jews were exterminated by the Nazis.

Yesterday, he said some of the SS officer's claims were outrageous, while
others, such as the number of people who could fit into a chamber
warranted skepticism.

He said it was intellectually sound to use the portions which withstood
scrutiny or seemed plausible, while making no mention of the outlandish
statements. "For my purposes, it sufficed that there were gas chambers,"
he said.

Mr. Christie maintained that if Prof. Hilberg can quote selectively with
impunity, then his client is not guilty of any sin either.

For most of the morning session, Mr. Christie engaged in a grim battle
over what really tok place during the last days of the Warsaw ghetto
uprising and whether documents exist to show Adolf Hitler actually ordered
the extermination of the Jews.

Prof. Hilberg said nobody has to believe or try to verify there was such
an order just because he concludes in his book there was.

Mr. Christie then asked if that statement could not also apply to the
articles Mr. Zundel is charged with publishing.

"No, it is not the same," Prof. Hilberg said.

The argument was typical of the strenuous going-over Prof. Hilberg's
writings and previous testimony are getting at the hands of Mr. Christie.
The lawyer demands precise sources for everything and then frequently
criticizes those.

One protracted argument concerned the use of the word "resettle" in Nazi
reports and whether it was a euphemism for annihilate, as Prof. Hilberg
fiercely maintained.

The word used was relocate," Mr. Christie said at one point. "To me that
doesn't mean annihilate."

"That's the difference between you and me," the witness replied hotly.
"I've read thousands of documents. I know what it means in the context."

"You alone understand, right?" Mr. Christie asked sarcastically.

Later, Mr. Christie questioned whether crematoria Prof. Hilberg saw on a
recent trip to Poland were really as the Germans left them.

"They were as you've been told the Germans left them, right?" he asked.

"I was not present when these buildings were blown up," Prof. Hilberg said
in exasperation.



                                           Kirk Makin
                              The Globe and Mail, January 17, 1985

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:11 PST 1995
Article: 63938 of soc.culture.german
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!imci2!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!huey.cadvision.com!cadc114.cadvision.com!user
From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Lawyer challenges crematoria theory
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:37:08 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 55
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           Witness indecisive: Lawyer challenges crematoria theory

Ernst Zundel's lawyer challenged the testimony of a Holocaust survivor
yesterday, telling the man he couldn't have seen concentration camp
chimneys belch smoke and flames from exterminated Jews because crematoria
don't emit anything.

"I suggest it is quite impossible for smoke  to come from a crematoria
>from  human beings," said Doug Christie, whose client is charged with
spreading false news. "What do you say about that, sir?"

"Nothing," Arnold Friedman, prisoner number B14515, initially replied. "If
you're talking of crematoria in Toronto and crematoria in Auschwitz, those
are two different things. In Birkenau (part of Auschwitz complex), smoke
came out of the chimney."

"I put it to you that you don't really understand anything about
crematoria, to say: 'Aha, that is a crematorium,' because that is quite
wrong, sir," Mr. Christie said. 

Many observers in the packed  courtroom were left shaking their heads or
fidgeting uncomfortably as Mr. Friedman, 56, then agreed that perhaps Jews
were not being burnt in the chimneyed buildings.

Over a two-day span, Mr. Friedman has testified  repeatedly to seeing
thousands of boys herded toward the crematoria, and of seeing trainloads
of people unloaded near the ominous buildings.

He told of how he and other internees even thought they could tell 
whether fat or skinny people, Ukrainians or Poles, were being cremated by
looking at the color of the smoke.

Mr. Friedman's sudden indecision in the face of Mr. Christie's forceful
questioning touched off an almost-perceptible shockwave in the courtroom.
"Couldn't there have been other explanations (for the smoke and flames)?"
Mr. Christie asked, pressing home his advantage.

"Yes, there could have," Mr. Friedman replied. "If I had listened to you
at the time when I was listening to other people (in the camp), I might 
have listened to you. But at the time I listened to them."

The dramatic testimony took place at the trial of Ernst Zundel, who has
pleaded not guilty to two charges of knowingly publishing false news which
caused or was to cause damage to social and racial tolerance.

In one of two articles  forming the subject of the charges, the author
maintains information on the Holocaust has been grossly exaggerated or
faked.  One of the Crown's tasks is to prove Mr. Zundel knew the articles
were false.

                             Kirk Makin, The Toronto Globe and Mail
                                   Saturday, January 12, 1985

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:11 PST 1995
Article: 63939 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Jonathan Pollard and Mordechai Vanunu: Fates Contrasted
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:38:32 GMT
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Here's an excerpt from an Eric Margolis article ["A traitor by any other
name"] published in the Toronto Sun [Dec. 2, 1993]. It contrasts the fate
of two men, both spies, both Jewish:

"The damage [ Israeli spy Jonathan] Pollard inflicted on U.S. strategic
interests was enormous, and still gravely hurts the U.S. today. Israel and
the KGB may have turned or compromised most of the CIA's and DIA's
networks in the Mideast and the southern USSR. Pollard's treachery left
the U.S. nearly blind in the Mideast.

"There is, however, a real Jewish prisoner of conscience. His name is
Mordechai Vanunu. He ws the technician who fled Israel and revealed to the
British press that Israel had secretly built some 200 nuclear weapons.
Vanunu was kidnapped from Rome by Israeli agents, tried in secret, and
sentenced by Israel to 18 years

"As Vanunu's brother told me [i.e., Sun columnist, Eric Margolis],
Mordechai Vanunu is in permanent solitary confinement, in a tiny cell
measuring only six by nine feet, in which a light shines 24-hours a day

"Why hasn't the Jewish community raised its voice about the shocking
psychological torture of Vanunu instead of protesting the well-deserved
fate of Polard, whose treason brought shame and danger on Jews
everywhere?"

Good question.

What rankled Margolis was the fact a thousand Jewish rabbis and Jewish
organizations in the U.S. had gone to bat for Jonathan Pollard, hoping to
secure his early release from prison.

Lest anyone be tempted to dismiss Margolis as an anti-Semite--surely among
the most shopworn of political swearwords--understand that Margolis is
Jewish.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:12 PST 1995
Article: 63940 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Lawyer challenges crematoria theory
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:41:07 GMT
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           Witness indecisive: Lawyer challenges crematoria theory

Ernst Zundel's lawyer challenged the testimony of a Holocaust survivor
yesterday, telling the man he couldn't have seen concentration camp
chimneys belch smoke and flames from exterminated Jews because crematoria
don't emit anything.

"I suggest it is quite impossible for smoke  to come from a crematoria
>from  human beings," said Doug Christie, whose client is charged with
spreading false news. "What do you say about that, sir?"

"Nothing," Arnold Friedman, prisoner number B14515, initially replied. "If
you're talking of crematoria in Toronto and crematoria in Auschwitz, those
are two different things. In Birkenau (part of Auschwitz complex), smoke
came out of the chimney."

"I put it to you that you don't really understand anything about
crematoria, to say: 'Aha, that is a crematorium,' because that is quite
wrong, sir," Mr. Christie said. 

Many observers in the packed  courtroom were left shaking their heads or
fidgeting uncomfortably as Mr. Friedman, 56, then agreed that perhaps Jews
were not being burnt in the chimneyed buildings.

Over a two-day span, Mr. Friedman has testified  repeatedly to seeing
thousands of boys herded toward the crematoria, and of seeing trainloads
of people unloaded near the ominous buildings.

He told of how he and other internees even thought they could tell 
whether fat or skinny people, Ukrainians or Poles, were being cremated by
looking at the color of the smoke.

Mr. Friedman's sudden indecision in the face of Mr. Christie's forceful
questioning touched off an almost-perceptible shockwave in the courtroom.
"Couldn't there have been other explanations (for the smoke and flames)?"
Mr. Christie asked, pressing home his advantage.

"Yes, there could have," Mr. Friedman replied. "If I had listened to you
at the time when I was listening to other people (in the camp), I might 
have listened to you. But at the time I listened to them."

The dramatic testimony took place at the trial of Ernst Zundel, who has
pleaded not guilty to two charges of knowingly publishing false news which
caused or was to cause damage to social and racial tolerance.

In one of two articles  forming the subject of the charges, the author
maintains information on the Holocaust has been grossly exaggerated or
faked.  One of the Crown's tasks is to prove Mr. Zundel knew the articles
were false.

                             Kirk Makin, The Toronto Globe and Mail
                                   Saturday, January 12, 1985

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:13 PST 1995
Article: 63941 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Scientific evidence of Holocaust missing
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:42:08 GMT
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                   Scientific evidence of Holocaust missing

TORONTO (CP) - No scientific reports prove Jews were exterminated in Nazi
gas chambers, a Holocaust scholar conceded Thursday at the trial of Ernst
Zundel.

But numerous historical documents show that Jews were killed during the
Second World War, said Raul Hilberg, a University of Vermont political
science professor.

And even though German war documents contain no mention of killing Jews,
euphemisms for such death such as 'resettlement' and 'special treatment'
were used so commonly that Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo,
requested substitute phrases, Hilberg added.

Hilberg, who has spent 36 years studying the Holocaust and the subsequent
Nuremberg trials of war criminals, testified earlier for the Crown that
five million [sic] Jews were killed during the war.

Zundel, 46, a West German citizen living in Toronto, is charged with two
counts of publishing statements that are known to be false and likely to
cause injury or mischief to the public interest of maintaining social and
religious tolerance.

Two of his publications--one called Did Six Million Really Die?--postulate
that the Holocaust was a hoax to vilify Germans and exact compensation
payments from them.

"Can you give me one scientific report that shows the existence of gas
chambers anywhere in Nazi-occupied territory?" defence counsel Doug
Christie asked Hilberg in a day-long rapid fire of cross-examination.

"I am at a loss," Hilberg replied.

"You are (at a loss) because you can't," Christie said.

The witness countered that there are aerial photographs of concentration
camps, examples of ruined or reconstructed gas chambers, German industrial
documents describing the lethal nature of various gases and filters for
gas masks were found at the camps.

Hilberg agreed with Christie there are no autopsy reports indicating even
a single person died from exposure to poisonous gas in chambers.

He has uncovered, however, a written request by a German scientist for
some human subjects he wanted to kill by gassing in order to cut off their
heads for anatomical research.

"In tens of thousands of [Nazi] documents, people were 'resettled' or 'the
Jewish problem was solved' but the word killing was used only for dogs,
not in reference to annihilation of Jews," Hilberg said.

Hilberg quoted from his book The Destruction of European Jews a message to
Himmler from a Nazi official named Greiser stating that the "special
treatment" of 100,000 Jews at a concentration camp would be complete in
two to three months. Greiser then asked permission to have 35,000
tubercular Poles transferred to the camp for special treatment so they
wouldn't infect Germans.

When Christie questioned Hilberg's interpretation of the last request, an
exasperated Hilberg replied: "This was not a hospital."

Zundel, a balding, heavy-set man, took extensive notes from the prisoner's
box during the day.

Hilberg told the district court jury of eight men and two women that
Zundel's published account of some details of the Nuremberg war trials,
which lasted from 1946 to 1949, was "fanciful."

His exhaustive research has not uncovered any evidence to support Zundel's
supposition that Nazi officials were tortured to exact untrue statements
implicating German war criminals, he said.

Christie introduced numerous accounts by German officers and a report by
two American judges sent to invstigate allegations of torture of German
prisoners to back Zundel's claim that in one case, 139 prisoners were
flogged until they bled and their genitals were trampled upon.

[end of article]
                                        The Sault Star, p. A11
                                           January 18, 1985

*******************************************************************************


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:14 PST 1995
Article: 63944 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Vorster: a Nazi at Yad Vashem
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:45:49 GMT
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When the South African prime minister, John Vorster, paid an official
visit to Israel in April, 1976, it naturally included a tour of Yad
Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial, where Jewish officials invited the
onetime Nazi collaborator and implacable White supremacist to pay homage
to victims of the Holocaust.  

Compared, say, to the vociferous Jewish protest that erupted in November,
1979, when word leaked out that America's UN ambassador, Andrew Young, had
spoken privately to the PLO's UN observer, no less remarkable was the calm
equanimity both Israeli and diaspora Jews displayed toward the Vorster
visit.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi tells us [The Israeli Connection, Random
House:Toronto, 1987, p.x]: "For most Israelis, the Vorster visit was just
another state visit by a foreign leader.  It did not draw much attention. 
Most Israelis did not even remember his name, and did not see anything
unusual, much less surreal in the scene: Vorster was just another visiting
dignitary being treated to the usual routine."

So, what are we looking at here? The "banality of evil"?  How about:the
evil of banality?  A bit of oldfashioned realpolitik? surrealpolitik,
maybe?

Andrew and Leslie Cockburn recall that a few of the dignitaries and others
present did experience a touch of moral nausea on seeing an old, unabashed
Nazi collaborator paying homage to victims of the Holocaust [Dangerous
Liaison, Stoddart: Toronto, 1991, p. 299]:

"When Vorster laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the
Holocaust, it made some observers exceptionally queasy. Vorster had served
nearly two years in jail during World War II for his Nazi collaboration.
This leader of an extreme racist regime had never acknowledged that the
Nazi doctrine was in any way distasteful."

Vorster left Israel four days later, but not before he signed some
treaties and brokered a few deals between the Jewish state and South
Africa's old apartheid regime.  

At the very least we're looking at a telltale episode of double standards,
of a deep cynicism. A diplomatic episode that occurred, moreover, against
a backdrop of silent complicity. Speaking  for myself, it's the silence I
hear.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:14 PST 1995
Article: 63945 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: Rabin: Israeli war crimes "...aberrations..."
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:46:21 GMT
Organization: CADVision
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The Globe & Mail, August 21, 1995: "Rabin rejects probe":

"JERSALEM - Prime Minister Yitzhak rejected calls yesterday to investigate
reports of Israeli war crimes against Egyptian prisoners of war, saying
both sides were guilty of 'aberrations'.

"Israel is reeling from revelations that its soldiers killed prisoners and
civilians in at least three Mideast wars..."

To be sure, so long as there are wars, there will be war crimes committed.
And, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a war crime is a war crime is a war
crime. Save, of course, when committed by Israeli Jews. Then they become
mere "aberrations," something to be overlooked or looked past.  An
accidental lapse in an otherwise eternally pure essence. 

Oh, well. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.


From slepokuo@cadvision.com Sun Dec 17 21:11:15 PST 1995
Article: 63973 of soc.culture.german
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From: slepokuo@cadvision.com (Orest Slepokura)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.german
Subject: "...elbowing in on the Holocaust business..."
Date: 16 Dec 1995 03:28:48 GMT
Organization: CADVision
Lines: 51
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In 1992, New Star Books of Vancouver published Chronicles of Dissent,
David Barsamian's book of interviews with Noam Chomsky. Chapter 13, titled
"World Orders: Old and New", contains the following exchange between
Barsamian and Chomsky, which, according to the chronology, occurred on
November 18, 1990 [p. 217]:

"BARSAMIAN: In a conversation I had with you a couple of years ago at UCLA
you said something that I've always wanted to ask you about. We were
talking about the Armenian genocide and you made the observation that
Israel 'didn't want anyone elbowing in on the Holocaust business.'

"CHOMSKY: Israel has been very strongly opposed to efforts to bring the
Armenian genocide into consideration. The extent of this is really
astonishing. I keep learning new things about it all the time. For
example, in 1982 there was a  conference on genocide in Israel... The 
conference was dealing with all kinds of genocide. The Israeli government
put pressure upon it to drop the Armenian genocide. They allowed the
others, but not the Armenian one. The honorary chairman was to have been
Elie Wiesel, and he was pressured by the government to withdraw, and being
a loyal commissar as he is, he withdrew from the conference because the
Israeli government had said they didn't want Armenian genocide brought up.

Just recently, a well-known Holocaust historian in Israel, Yehuda Bauer,
told the Israeli press that Wiesel had called him from New York at that
time pleading with him to drop out of the conference because the Israeli
government didn't want it because it was dealing with the Armenians, and
he agreed to that and felt very bad about it in retrospect. That gives an
indication of the extent to which people like Elie Wiesel were carrying
out their usual function of serving Israeli state interests, even to the
extent of denying a holocaust [sic], which he does regularly.

"Why are they [the Israelis] so fixated on denying the Armenian holocaust?
That's very simple. Part of it is that they want to monopolize the image
for their own purposes, but the other part of it is that this is the
Armenians. They were massacred by the Turks. The Turks are allies, and you
don't want to alienate allies, because that's much too important. So if
they happened to carry out a genocide, that's not our business. They're
our allies. Therefore you don't talk about the Armenian holocaust."

If I understand correctly, what Noam Chomsky is saying is, a lot of the
Jewish Holocaust promoters, including Elie Wiesel, are to be taxed with
engaging in a practice they themselves routinely vociferously denounce:
namely, holocaust denial. In essence they are holocaust deniers enraged at
holocaust deniers of another stripe; they are holocaust chauvinists
anxious that their competition should not get to share a little of the
historical limelight with them; they are the promoters and merchandisers
of their own painful tragedy, which they've turned into a game of
monopoly.

George Orwell thou shouldst be living at this hour!

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