Sommige mensen vinden dat Grass' verleden los staat van zijn kritiek op Israel, en daar kan ik me wel iets bij voorstellen. Men ziet zijn aanmelding bij de Waffen-SS als een jeugdzonde, zoals anderen radikaal socialistisch of communistisch waren of anarchistisch. Er is echter wel een groot verschil tussen je vrijwillig aanmelden bij de Waffen-SS, die op dat moment vele oorlogsmisdaden op zijn naam had staan en uit naiviteit je aangetrokken voelen tot ideologieën in wiens naam ook vreselijke misdaden zijn begaan. En hoeveel naïviteit en onwetendheid kan je bij een 17jarige nog vergoelijken? Was de indoctrinatie zodanig dat dat hij werkelijk niet beter wist en dacht iets goeds voor zijn land te doen, of had hij kunnen weten wat de nazi's allemaal hadden aangericht? Hoeveel anderen deden hetzelfde als hij?  

 

Afshin Ellian trekt nog een andere parallel met de nazi's:

 

De Joden waren altijd een bedreiging voor de wereldvrede. Het was de Führer zelf die deze wereldbedreigende toestand onthulde. Hij zei telkens dat de Joden in de wereld een verschrikkelijke oorlog wilden ontketenen. Hij zei dat de verschrikkelijke oorlog door de Joden is ontketend. Zij moesten zwaar worden gestraft voor hun misdrijf tegen de wereld.

De Führer zei ooit: 'Als het de Joden weer lukt om tot een wereldoorlog aan te zetten, dan zal die eindigen met hun vernietiging.'

Na de Eerste en de Tweede zal volgens Grass ook de Derde Wereldoorlog door de Joden worden aangewakkerd. Hij weet het zeker: de 'brüchigen Weltfrieden' zal door de nucleaire Joden om zeep worden geholpen.

 

Israel een bedreiging voor de wereldvrede noemen is nog net niet hetzelfde als het van het ontketenen van de Derde Wereldoorlog te beschuldigen, maar er is overduidelijk een parallel tussen hoe de Joden in het verleden (en nog steeds overigens) van allerlei kwaad en ellende werden beschuldigd, en de beschuldigingen aan Israels adres van tegenwoordig. Die parallel wordt altijd hard en luid ontkend, wat misschien wel eerder een teken is dat men een gevoelige snaar heeft geraakt dan dat zij inderdaad onterecht zou zijn.  

 

RP

----------

 

Günter Grass' nationaal-socialistische waarheid

http://www.elsevier.nl/web/Opinie/Afshin-Ellian/335789/Gunter-Grass-nationaalsocialistische-waarheid.htm

woensdag 11 april 2012 09:49

 

 

Warum schweige ich, verschweige zu lange? Een mooie vraag: waarom zweeg Günter Grass?

De Duitse Nobelprijswinnaar zweeg lange tijd. Waarover zweeg hij? Wat verzweeg hij? Hij heeft toch zo veel boeken geschreven? Daarin kon hij van alles vertellen.

Grass schreef zijn boeken in een democratisch Duitsland: een vrije en post-totalitaire samenleving. 

 

Warum sage ich jetzt erst,
gealtert und mit letzter Tinte:
Die Atommacht Israel gefährdet
den ohnehin brüchigen Weltfrieden?
Weil gesagt werden muß 

 

Atoombommen
Günter spreekt de waarheid uit die hij decennialang heeft verzwegen: Israël heeft atoombommen. Goede Duitsers, de Joodse staat heeft atoombommen, dus de Joden hebben atoombommen.

O, dat is gevaarlijk! Wat ernstig! Hoe kan Duitsland deze waarheid nog verdragen? Hoe kan Europa leven met deze verschrikkelijke waarheid: de kernmacht Israël is een gevaar voor de broze wereldvrede.

Führer
De Joden waren altijd een bedreiging voor de wereldvrede. Het was de Führer zelf die deze wereldbedreigende toestand onthulde. Hij zei telkens dat de Joden in de wereld een verschrikkelijke oorlog wilden ontketenen. Hij zei dat de verschrikkelijke oorlog door de Joden is ontketend. Zij moesten zwaar worden gestraft voor hun misdrijf tegen de wereld.

De Führer zei ooit: 'Als het de Joden weer lukt om tot een wereldoorlog aan te zetten, dan zal die eindigen met hun vernietiging.'

Na de Eerste en de Tweede zal volgens Grass ook de Derde Wereldoorlog door de Joden worden aangewakkerd. Hij weet het zeker: de 'brüchigen Weltfrieden' zal door de nucleaire Joden om zeep worden geholpen. 

 

Beminnen
De waarheid die Günter spreekt, is een waarheid die aan een andere waarheid is gekoppeld. Ja, Duitsers zijn dol op de waarheid. Alleen waren ze minder goed in het beminnen ervan, en gingen in leugens geloven. Zelfs de grote Luther was een gewelddadige antisemiet.

De waarheid dat Israël de broze wereldvrede bedreigt, is gekoppeld aan de waarheid dat het islamitische Iran het eerste slachtoffer zou zijn van de monsterlijke wereldbedreigende staat Israël. 

des israelischen atomaren Potentials
und der iranischen Atomanlagen
durch eine internationale Instanz
von den Regierungen beider Länder zugelassen wird. 

 

Analyse
O, het zielige Iraanse regime. Iran werkt volledig mee en hun nucleaire faciliteiten staan onder controle van de buitenlandse toezichthouders.

De Joodse staat daarentegen beschikt op illegale wijze over echte kernwapens. Zo bedreigen de Joden een zielig regime - en de wereldvrede.

De Führer had gelijk met zijn scherpe analyse van de Joodse bedreiging voor de wereldvrede, zal Günter hebben gedacht. Günter spreekt de waarheid: de nationaal-socialistische waarheid.

Testament
Toen ze nog geen staat hadden, ontwrichtten de Joden de wereldvrede, volgens de Führer in zijn testament: 'Het is niet waar dat ik of iemand anders in Duitsland de oorlog in 1939 heeft gewild. Hij werd uitsluitend en alleen veroorzaakt door die internationale staatslieden die of van Joodse afkomst waren, of in dienst stonden van de Joodse belangen.'

En nu willen de Joden Iran van de kaart vegen om de wereld in een oorlog te storten, leert Günter Grass ons. De wil om te liegen is een effectieve omkering van de werkelijkheid waarop de waarheid berust.

Executie
De timing van Günter is een voorbeeld van Duitse 'Gründlichkeit'. Precies een week na de standrechtelijke executie van een paar Joodse kinderen in Toulouse.

Ach, Günter Grass heeft een breekbaar hart - nee, hartje. Hij leeft mee met Ahmadinejad, Kahmenei en de andere onschuldige leiders van Iran. Günter Grass is, in navolging van de Europese intelligentsia, erg gevoelig voor onderdrukte leiders als Mao, Stalin, Castro en nu Khamenei.

Het blijft vreemd dat Günters hart niet breekt als hij het Journaal aanzet: een bomaanslag in Bagdad, een bomaanslag in Jemen, een bomaanslag in Afghanistan, een bomaanslag in Mogadishu, een bomaanslag in Nigeria, massale executies in Homs, etcetera.

Dat vindt Günter Grass allemaal normaal. Maar Israël bedreigt de wereldvrede.

Nihilisme
In het ondraaglijke licht van het bestaan hoor ik Günter, denkend aan de Joodse staat, mompelen: Einmal ist Keinmal.

De grootste bedreiging voor Europa is het nihilisme dat diep is verankerd in het Europese intellectualisme. De potentiële onmacht van Europese intellectuelen om de politiek te begrijpen, is een reële bedreiging voor de Europese geestelijke gezondheid, die volgens Nietzsche continu in gevaar is.

Günter Grass zegt eigenlijk dat de Joodse staat een bedreiging is voor de menselijkheid. Of, markanter gezegd: de Joodse staat is de vijand van de menselijkheid. Welke historische betekenis heeft de constatering dat de Joodse staat een ernstige bedreiging is voor de wereldvrede? Wat zou daarop het antwoord moeten zijn?

Nogmaals Günter: Einmal ist Keinmal  

 

Afshin Ellian

 

Lees het commentaar van Wierd Duk:
Voor aanwakkeren jodenhaat is weinig nodig

 

Paasfeest in Latijns-Amerika met "Joden verbranden"

 

Toen ik geboren werd (1964) was de katholieke kerk nog aan het vergaderen over onder meer de kwestie of de joden collectief schuldig waren aan de moord op Jezus Christus, zoals tot dan de officiële kerkleer was. Bijna 2000 jaar waren de joden de grote zondebok voor de christelijke kerk.

 

Wouter

___________

 

Latin Americans celebrating Easter with "The Burning of the Jews"

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/04/latin-americans-celebrating-easter-with.html  

 

From The Times of Israel:

The world is full of charming Easter traditions, but this isn't one of them.

A newspaper in Mexico is detailing Sunday's "burning of the Jews," an annual tradition in Coita, a small town in the state of Chiapas [Mexico.] As part of the custom, locals spend the middle of their Holy Week making Jewish effigies — a reference to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus before his crucifixion.

The fake Jews are then displayed for three days in different parts of the town, serving as an example of poor conduct.

They're ultimately paraded through the streets on Easter Sunday, with local children assigned to stand in front of them and collect money for flammable materials.

The article notes that the tradition differs in Coita, where locals set fire to the effigies on Easter itself, rather than the day before, as in other towns. The burning is followed by a dance, where locals eat a corn treat made with cocoa. The article says the custom "strengthens" the culture of the Zoque, an indigenous people in southern Mexico who were converted to Catholicism.

The ceremony seems to echo, to some extent, the "Running of the Jew" event depicted in Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 movie "Borat" — a work of fiction.

The Chiapas Herald takes an uncritical view of the ritual, reporting that it "fosters unity and respect" and "purifies the soul."

This is not isolated to only Coita or even Mexico. 

I see it mentioned as also occurring annually in Quidbo, Colombia. 

Ecuador had a similar time-honored tradition, but this webpage laments that "The [Burning of the Jews] in Guayaquil continued well into the twentieth century until the practice of burning stopped because of European migration, which did not properly appreciate this show of our religious folklore."


Burning crosses is also a treasured piece of folksy tradition, isn't it?

 

Bedrijf in Israel test vaccin tegen kanker

 

Goed nieuws uit Israel! Hopelijk komt dit nieuwe vaccin snel op de markt en kan het doodsoorzaak nummer een (in Nederland gaan meen ik een op de vier mensen dood aan kanker) beter bestrijden. 

 

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

 

Vaccine has victim's own body attack cancer cells

 

Human tests underway

 

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Vaccine+victim+body+attack+cancer+cells/6429607/story.html

BY RICHARD GRAY, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH APRIL 9, 2012

 

 

Early human test results suggest a vaccine can train cancer patients' bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells.

The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of cancers, eventually could provide an injection that would allow patients' immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer.

The first results of trials in people, at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, suggest the vaccine can reduce levels of disease. The human work is so preliminary it has yet to be published in a scientific journal.

The scientists behind the vaccine hope to conduct more extensive trials to prove it can be effective against a range of cancers. They believe it could be used to fight small tumours if they are detected early or to help prevent the return and spread of disease in patients who have undergone conventional treatment.

In the safety trial at Hadassah, 10 patients with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, received the vaccine. Seven have finished the treatment and the developer, drug company Vaxil Biotherapeutics, reported all had greater immunity against cancer cells compared with before they were given the vaccine. Vaxil added that three patients were free of detectable cancer following the treatment.

Cancer cells usually evade a patient's immune system because they are not recognized as a threat. While the immune system usually attacks foreign cells such as bacteria, tumours are formed of the patient's own cells that have malfunctioned.

Scientists have discovered that a molecule called MUC1, which is found on the surface of cancer cells, can be used to help the immune sys-tem detect tumours. The new vaccine, ImMucin, developed by Vaxil and researchers at Tel Aviv University, uses a section of the molecule to prime the immune system so it can identify and thus destroy cancer cells.

Vaxil suggested that if large-scale trials prove as successful, the vaccine could be available within six years.

Initial research on the vaccine, in mice, was published in the journal Vaccine, and suggested the treatment induced "potent" immunity in mice and increased their survival from cancer.

Cancer charities gave the vaccine a cautious welcome. Dr. Kat Arney, at Cancer Research UK, said: "These are very early results that are yet to be fully published, so there's a lot more work to be done to prove that this particular vaccine is safe and effective in cancer patients."

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Read more:http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Vaccine+victim+body+attack+cancer+cells/6429607/story.html#ixzz1rfvYF5YY

Fatah en Hamas eens over doel Israel te vernietigen

 

Het zal Rolf Bos en Leonie van Nierop evenals andere correspondenten in Israel zijn ontgaan, maar een minister van de gematigde Palestijnse Autoriteit onder leiding van Machmoud Abbas zegt weer eens dat het doel van de Palestijnse strijd de bevrijding van geheel Palestina is. Dit zegt men vaker als men tegen de eigen bevolking spreekt en niet tegen westerse diplomaten, politici en journalisten.  

 

RP

----------    

 

Fatah and Hamas agree - the goal is to destroy Israel

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/04/fatah-and-hamas-agree-goal-is-to.html

 

From Palestinian Media Watch:

 

A Palestinian Authority minister stated last month that the Palestinians should unite in order to focus on the destruction of Israel.

At an event with the participation of three PA ministers, Minister of Social Affairs Majida Al-Masri called for Palestinian unity and reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas in order "to turn to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine - all of Palestine.'" 

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that when the Palestinian Authority uses the expression "all of Palestine," they include all of Israel.

The following is the report on the event in the official PA daily:

"The women of Palestine marked March 8 with a central rally, attended by a group of released female prisoners from the various districts of the West Bank. Participating in the events were Minister for Women's Affairs, Rabiha Dhiab; Minister of Prisoners' Affairs, Issa Karake; Minister of Social Affairs, Majida Al-Masri... and representatives from the territories occupied in 1948 (e.g., Palestinian euphemism for "Israel")...

Al-Masri sharply condemned the Israel Prison Services for its violations against the [hunger striking] prisoner Shalabi... We demand of everyone to push ahead with reconciliation [between Fatah and Hamas] and to end the state of division, so that we will be able to stand against the occupation, to halt its activities against our prisoners, and to turn to the struggle for the liberation of Palestine - all of Palestine.'"
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 9, 2012]

 

Which makes Fatah just about as explicit as Hamas in their desire to destroy Israel.

On Saturday, First Deputy Chairman of the [Hamas] Palestinian Legislative Council Ahmad Bahr spoke to a group of internationals who had arrived one of those "Miles of Smiles" convoys that inexplicably manage to easily break the supposed Israeli siege of Gaza every couple of months. He cheerfully told these smiling "human rights activists" that "the Palestinian people will not give up its rights and will continue its resistance and jihad until the liberation of all Palestine."

Of course, none of these peaceful British or South Africans in the audience objected to Hamas' stated goal of a jihad to destroy the Jewish state. None stood up and said that they supported a two-state solution. None came home and wrote an anguished op-ed about how they didn't realize that Hamas really wants to violently replace a democratic state with another Islamist state.

 

Terrorist Toulouse was 'een van ons'

 

Ongeloof en solidariteit met (tenminste) de familie van de jonge terrorist vindt men in de moslimgemeenschap van Toulouse. Zoals meestal gaan er ook de nodige complottheorieën rond: een verkiezingstruc van Sarkozy, en sommige gekken heb ik al zien beweren dat de Mossad erachter zat.

Ergens las ik dat hij inderdaad in het verleden naar Israel geweest zou zijn, maar het is toch iets aannemelijker dat hij zijn schietvaardigheid tijdens zijn reizen naar Pakistan en Afghanistan heeft opgedaan. Overigens was hij een maand voor zijn terreurdaden ook nog op ski-vakantie in Zwitserland geweest, een land dat wij mijden omdat het zo duur is; hij schijnt dus niet bepaald uit een arme familie te stammen.

 

Wouter

______________

In Toulouse suburb, shooter is 'one of us'

http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=264479

By REUTERS

04/02/2012 14:59

Neighbors continue to defend the man who killed three Jewish children, a rabbi and three soldiers last month.

 

In the neighborhood where Mohamed Merah grew up, and was last seen joking with friends days after he had killed three French soldiers in a pair of shootings, the message to outsiders is clear: he was one of our own, no matter what he did.

The self-styled Islamist militant tore a wound in France's fragile sense of community when he gunned down the soldiers, sons of North African immigrant families like his own, and then a rabbi and three Jewish children - all in the name of al-Qaida.

For days, Toulouse lived in fear of the "scooter killer."

France reeled at the worst such attacks since a bombing campaign involving another young son of Algerian parents from another rough provincial suburb, Khaled Kelkal from Lyon, killed eight people in 1995. French President Nicolas Sarkozy put his re-election campaign on hold to call for unity. Tens of thousands of people marched silently in memory of the victims.

But in Les Izards, the 1960s housing project where Merah, 23, felt most at home, the reaction to his rampage has been one of anxious defiance of outsiders trying to peer into what seems like a closed world, cut off from elegant downtown Toulouse by its poverty, by crime and, locals say, by racial discrimination.

"I'm going to tell you one thing: he was a kid from this neighborhood and we support his family no matter what people say on TV," said one middle-aged mother of Algerian origin who said she had known Merah when he was a child in Les Izards.

Typical of others in the area of low-rise blocks and tidy squares a 15-minute metro ride north of the city center, she did not want to be named when speaking up for the man who was, briefly, public enemy No. 1: "He was one of ours," she said. "And we will never be sure of what really happened."

A sense of alienation

Dozens of conversations with neighbors reveal a portrait of Merah as a "fragile," "emotional" young man who spoke constantly of his absent father and had withdrawn into a state of anxiety in his final weeks. They left question marks over his own claims to belong to an identifiable international movement, despite recent travels to the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

They also show a powerful sense of alienation from the rest of French society in Les Izards, a community of 5,000, mostly families who arrived from France's North African former colonies a generation or two ago. Merah spent much of his youth living there with his mother, two brothers and two sisters.

Officially labeled a "sensitive urban zone" due to high rates of poverty, joblessness and criminality, Les Izards offers a window into the urban enclaves where French academics say exclusion is deepening and more grandchildren of North African immigrants are turning to Islam as a form of social protest.

The fear is, there may be more Mohamed Merahs in waiting among Europe's largest Muslim community, of some five million people in France - a worry that may partly explain Friday's roundup of 19 suspected militant Islamists as Sarkozy's government asserts a firm grip on security ahead of a series of presidential and parliamentary elections starting on April 22.

In Les Izards, there is evidence of earlier failures in policy, however, notably of Sarkozy's efforts to assuage the rage and resentment that fueled an explosion of rioting across France in 2005 - and still simmers below the surface.

By one local account of a confrontation between youths and the authorities in the neighborhood, after Merah was killed trying to escape a siege of his apartment, one young man was arrested after yelling at the police ranks: "My friend Mohamed is a real man - too bad he wasn't able to finish the job!"

Hatem Ben Ismail, who runs several community centers in the area and describes himself as the "go-to guy on Les Izards", says he simply hesitates to discuss in public the mood among the youngsters he tries to help: "The situation with the young people," he concluded, "is just too explosive."

The older brother

By the bakery where Les Izards residents said they last saw Merah hanging out, two days before his last attack, on a Jewish primary school on March 19, a group of surly young men in tracksuits and dark glasses glowered at oncoming cars.

When, on a reporting assignment this week, a Reuters photographer approached the youths, all in their late teens and early 20s, she was warned, with a stream of expletives, to leave - or have her car smashed up.

Merah's acts have brought unwanted scrutiny to a neighborhood known to police as a hub for trade in cocaine and heroin, as global media lay siege and police seek to discover whether Merah had help in planning and carrying out his attacks.

Abdelkader Merah, 29, the gunman's older brother, has been charged with complicity in murder and theft and involvement in terrorism. An austere figure and a more overtly devout Muslim than his sibling, who rarely prayed at the mosque, officials suspect Abdelkader may have exerted a strong influence on Mohamed since their father returned to Algeria in 2006 or 2007.

"He was difficult to approach, much more austere and distant than Merah - the sort who did not look women in the eye," said Patricia, a mother of Italian and Algerian background who had known Mohamed Merah since he was 14 and said she was close to his brother's wife.

Police also suspect that a third man may also have been involved. But in Les Izards, where a movement is under way to mount a demonstration in support of the imprisoned Abdelkader Merah, many simply find the idea of an organized plot by the Merahs and others absurd. Some mutter of official conspiracy.

'A playful boy'

Mohamed Merah was a playful teenager, zooming between Les Izards' apartment blocks on his motor scooter, no different from many others. A lover of cars and soccer, he went to nightclubs with friends and left school at 16 to work as a panel-beater. Though his travels heightened his interest in Islam, he prayed only infrequently and rarely went to mosque.

"I don't condone what he did, but I can only talk about the Mohamed I knew, who was a kid like all those over there," said Patricia, who like many found it simply hard to compute the crimes to which police said Merah confessed before being killed.

"When I last saw him he was with his friends by the tobacco shop," she said. "He played with my boy and gave him two euros to buy candy at the bakery."

Few of the young men of the neighborhood would open up to outsiders. Among those who did, some found conspiracy theories more convincing than that one of their own could be a killer who amassed an arsenal of guns and targeted his victims carefully:

"All of this is a setup to get people to vote for Sarkozy," said Hamed, a boy in his late teens riding a bicycle through the village-like warren of apartment blocks.

Among people who knew Merah and who do accept the police version of events, including his lawyer, the most common explanation is not a calculated militant operation but a fit of rage brought on by a mix of trauma over "horrible" things seen during his travels and disappointment over his breakup with a girl to whom he was engaged in a religious ceremony in December.

Patricia said that Merah may have been upset about the breakup with his fiancee, a woman from a nearby neighborhood, which coincided with his serving a month in jail in February for driving without a license.

First arrested at 17, Merah had a number of run-ins with police as a teenager for stone-throwing and shoplifting, before being sentenced to 18 months in jail in 2007 for a robbery.

Lawyer Christian Etelin, who had represented Merah since he was 16, described the week-long series of gun attacks as entirely the product of an internal mental disturbance: "It was an episode of paranoid schizophrenia during which he completely disconnected from reality," Etelin said. "He was a fragile kid."

"I don't believe he was an Islamist."

Merah's troubles may have built up recently, with some friends also saying that he had even tried to join the army and was depressed by rejection - adding a further speculative angle to attempts to understand his shooting at soldiers. In 2009, a clinical psychologist, Alain Penin, examined Merah after a suicide attempt in prison and found the then 20 year old "anxious" and "introverted" but not "psychologically disturbed."

At the root of problems, Penin told French media, Merah had dealt poorly with his parents' divorce when he was five years old and developed a withdrawn personality after his father, Benalel Merah, left France for Algeria in 2006 or 2007.

His departure after serving a prison sentence in France for cannabis trafficking had an impact on Mohamed, who often referred to his father in conversation and came to rely more on his older brother for emotional support in his absence.

'Us against them' mentality

As shock over Merah's killing spree gives way to soul-searching, concern for many in France is shifting to how the gritty, impoverished suburbs provide a breeding ground for angry and fragile youths like Merah to turn to radical Islam.

In 2008, Sarkozy's conservative government unveiled a billion-euro plan to revive the depressed urban areas and avoid a repeat of riots that lasted for months in 2005 after the deaths of two teenagers of immigrant origin near Paris.

The program, which aimed to create 45,000 jobs and invest heavily in education, never got off the ground as public finances were squeezed by the global economic crisis.

Meanwhile, dismal job prospects have worsened feelings of exclusion among second- and third-generation immigrants, bolstering the appeal of radical Islam and discrediting the liberal values of a France many feel has rejected them.

"They are translating social discontent into a religious vocabulary," Gilles Kepel, a professor at Paris's Sciences Po university, told the Arte television channel, warning that while many were content to adopt moderate Islamic ideas, a minority were drawn to more fundamentalist forms of their religion.

Toulouse city officials say an 'us against them' mentality deepened in the wake of the 2005 riots as rising unemployment has taken a disproportionate toll. Jobless rates for under-30s in "sensitive urban zones" like Les Izards can hit 30 percent - a level some in the area put down to racial discrimination.

"Young people in this neighborhood have degrees but when they go looking for work they are told: sorry sir, there's nothing we can offer you," said Belkouassa Bebel, head of Egalite, a group that lobbies for funding and activities in another poor Toulouse suburb, Empalot.

Finger-pointing at Islam by Sarkozy, whose five-year term has seen the full-face veil banned in France, and by his far-right rival Marine Le Pen, has not helped calm tensions, said Jean-Paul Makongo, who works for the Toulouse local authorities on promoting diversity. Instead, some of France's leaders have challenged the youth of Les Izards to confrontation.

"The thought process is this: since you have discriminated against me, I'm going to do the same to you," Makongo said of the way the youngsters in the suburbs were reacting.

Several residents of Les Izards, in illustrating that sense of confrontation with the French state, alleged that on the day Merah was killed, police cars drove through the neighborhood honking car horns in the manner of jubilant sports fans.

"If we don't want to produce more Mohamed Merahs," Makongo warned, "We are going to have to work a lot harder to reach these kids through dialogue - and find them jobs."

 

Hamas leider: "Helft Palestijnen zijn Egyptisch, andere helft Saoedisch"

 

Het is een van de taboes van de ‘andere kant’: de Palestijnse nationale identiteit is van recente datum, en ook voor een flink deel een reactie op het zionisme en volgens sommigen ook geconstrueerd om Israel en het zionisme te bestrijden. En zoals critici van Israel vaak Israelische leiders aanhalen (en soms hun woorden verdraaien of nog wat extra aandikken) zo zijn er ook verschillende uitspraken van Palestijnse en Arabische leiders die deze visie ondersteunen. In onderstaand voorbeeld benadrukt een Hamas leider de Egyptische wortels van veel Palestijnen omdat hij meer solidariteit van Egypte verwacht.

Elder merkt op:

 

The logical conclusion from Hammad's statements is that Palestinian Arabs should be allowed, if they want to, to become citizens of any Arab country they desire - just as other Arabs can. Human rights groups should be in the forefront of that movement. The Arab nations who refuse to do so are engaging in worse discrimination against Palestinian Arabs than anyone else.

 

Dat is misschien een iets te grote stap, maar het is natuurlijk opvallend dat Palestijnen die in Arabische staten wonen daar vaak nog geen gelijke rechten hebben en niet de nationaliteit van dat land krijgen, omdat men hun verlangen naar Israel ‘terug’ te keren wil warmhouden. Er is echter ook tussen verschillende Arabische staten onderling veel strijd, haat en nijd ondanks de gemeenschappelijke taal, cultuur en religie en de vaak beleden broederschap.

 

RP

--------- 

 

Hamas leader: "Half of Palestinians are Egyptian, the other half Saudi"

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/04/hamas-leader-half-of-palestinians-are.html  

 

Oh, this is too good. From MEMRI:

 

 

Following are excerpts from an address by Hamas Minister of the Interior and of National Security Fathi Hammad, aired by Al-Hekma TV on March 23, 2012.

Fathi Hammad : Is Egypt incapable of supplying fuel for 1.5 to 2 million people in the Gaza Strip?
[...]
If you do not point your compass toward Palestine, Al-Aqsa, and Jerusalem, in order to uproot the Zionist enemy, the US will trample you underfoot. It will besiege you with its conspiracies and will finish you off. Therefore, you must hoist the banner of Jihad, the banner of "there is no god but Allah."
[...]
Brothers, there are 1.8 million of us in Gaza. In Egypt, there are about 90 million people. We equal merely two percent of the Egyptian population. [Supplying us with fuel] would not burden you at all.
[...]
At Al-Aqsa and on the land of Palestine, all the conspiracies, throughout history, have been shattered - the conspiracies of the Crusaders, and the conspiracies of the Tatars. At Al-Aqsa and on the land of Palestine, the Battle of Hattin was waged. The [West] does not want this noble history to repeat itself, because the Jews and their allies would be annihilated - the Zionists, the Americans, and the imperialists.

Thus, the conspiracy is very clear. Al-Aqsa and the land of Palestine represent the spearhead for Islam and for the Muslims. Therefore, when we seek the help of our Arab brothers, we are not seeking their help in order to eat, to live, to drink, to dress, or to live a life of luxury. No. When we seek their help, it is in order to continue to wage Jihad.
[...]
Allah be praised, we all have Arab roots, and every Palestinian, in Gaza and throughout Palestine, can prove his Arab roots - whether from Saudi Arabia, from Yemen, or anywhere. We have blood ties. So where is your affection and mercy?
[...]
Personally, half my family is Egyptian. We are all like that. More than 30 families in the Gaza Strip are called Al-Masri ["Egyptian"]. Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.

Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called Al-Masri, whose roots are Egyptian.Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Dumietta, from the North, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians. We are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are a part of you.

Allah Akbar. All praise to Allah. Allah Akbar. How can you keep silent, oh Muslims, when the people of Gaza are dying? You watch from the sidelines without providing them with the simplest thing, which you give to the West for the most meager price.
[...]

 

Ah, but when it comes to becoming citizens of those Arab countries that they came from, then they are all "Palestinian" and must be treated like lepers - in order to protect their own nation, of course.

Palestinian Arab nationalism does not reflect any inherent peoplehood but rather it is a political fiction created only in the twentieth century, and only to destroy Zionism. And Fathi Hammad knows the truth, as do many other Arabs. They just won't be caught dead saying it to Westerners. 

The logical conclusion from Hammad's statements is that Palestinian Arabs should be allowed, if they want to, to become citizens of any Arab country they desire - just as other Arabs can. Human rights groups should be in the forefront of that movement. The Arab nations who refuse to do so are engaging in worse discrimination against Palestinian Arabs than anyone else.

Yet Human Rights Watch is against this simple human right, and for that reason alone it deserves to be exposed as a hypocritical sham. Not to mention the Arab states who self-righteously pretend to support Palestinian Arab while they are in the forefront of keeping them stateless and miserable.

 

Palestijnse Autoriteit spendeerde $7 miljard in Gaza sinds machtsovername Hamas

 

Volgens Elder gaat meer dan 60% van het budget van de Palestijnse Autoriteit naar de Gazastrook:

 

I have noted for years that over 60% of the PA's budget goes towards Gaza - on a per-capita basis, Gazans get more than twice what West Bank residents get from the PA. 

 

Dit budget komt vervolgens voor een groot deel van donorlanden waaronder de EU en Nederland. De boycot van Hamas, voor zover die nog bestond, is daarmee definitief om zeep geholpen. Wanneer de PA immers voor onderwijs, gezondheidszorg en andere diensten betaalt, houdt Hamas dat geld over om er andere dingen mee te doen, zoals wapens kopen en fabriceren en mensen trainen voor de Al Qassam brigades. 

 

RP

----------

  

The PA has spent $7 billion in Gaza since Hamas took over

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/03/pa-has-spent-7-billion-in-gaza-since.html

 

Yesterday there was a protest in Gaza against the Palestinian Authority:

 

Protesters on Wednesday held a rally in Gaza City against Mahmoud Abbas, accusing the president of neglecting his responsibilities to the Gaza Strip. 

They carried posters urging the president to resign if he could not fulfill his duties, and reminding Abbas that he presides over all Palestinian people and not just the West Bank.

The PA, thin-skinned as ever, responded with all it supposedly does in Gaza - and unintentionally damning itself. 

 

The Palestinian Authority has spent over $7 billion in Gaza since 2007, Fatah spokesman Ahmad Assaf said Wednesday.

The Fatah-led government in Ramallah has continued to meet its obligations in Gaza even though Fatah was ousted from the coastal enclave by Hamas in 2007, Assaf said in a statement.

The PA spends around $120 million each month on the Gaza Strip, paying the salaries of around 80,000 civil servants, the Fatah official said.

The Ramallah government pays for all health and education needs in Gaza, including teachers' salaries, books and school maintenance. It also pays Israel around 50 million shekels ($13.37 million) for 120 Megawatts of electricity for Gaza.

Meanwhile, Hamas charges residents for electricity and collects the payments for itself, he said.

Gaza's Hamas rulers now have billions of dollars because the administration has not had to spend any money, Assaf said, adding that there were now over 2,100 "Hamas millionaires."

Assaf also blamed the Hamas government for the ongoing fuel crisis in Gaza, saying Hamas was demanding a discount on fuel from Egypt. 

The Egyptian government buys diesel for $1 a liter, but Hamas wants to pay 0.5 shekels a liter ($0.13) and to charge residents 4 or 5 shekels a liter, he said.

The Fatah official said Hamas has stolen privately-owned land in Gaza to build malls for trade, yet has failed to build schools or hospitals.

 

All this is true. I have noted for years that over 60% of the PA's budget goes towards Gaza - on a per-capita basis, Gazans get more than twice what West Bank residents get from the PA.

But what Fatah is not telling you is that those 80,000 workers (which used to be 77,000, by the way) are sitting at home doing nothing. They are literally being paid not to work.

And it is also not saying directly that the PA's paying for Gaza infrastructure has left Hamas able to purchase weapons and build terrorist tunnels with all that cash it doesn't have to spend on running Gaza. All that cash from Iran is going straight to terror, being indirectly subsidized by the PA - and Western donor funds. Every Grad rocket is being partially paid for, indirectly, by the West.

It is interesting that the PA could have used these billions of dollars as leverage to bring Hamas to its knees, and chose not to. Probably because they are more frightened of a backlash because of Hamas' influence in the mainstream Palestinian Arab population, something that gets downplayed in the West.

 

Sharon stuurde Danny Ayalon om Saudisch Vredesplan te bespreken

 

De normale lezing in de media is dat Israel het Saudische vredesinitaitief direct afwees en daarmee een mooie kans op vrede zomaar liet liggen, waaruit blijkt dat het land helemaal niet op vrede uit is en slechts excuses zoekt om door te kunnen bouwen en de Westbank verder in te pikken. In werkelijkheid was de Israelische houding naar dit vredesplan veel genuanceerder. Men ervoer het terecht als dictaat en als iets dat ver lag van wat voor Israel acceptabel is – geen enkele uitruil van land, veel vluchtelingen die ‘terug’ zouden moeten kunnen keren, heel Oost Jeruzalem inclusief alle voor Joden zo belangrijke historische en religieuze plaatsen naar de Palestijnen. Maar men zag er ook een breuk in met de traditionele Arabische houding waarin vrede en onderhandelingen met Israel vieze woorden waren en van de ‘zionistische entiteit’ werd gesproken. Nu blijkt dat Sharon minister voor buitenlandse zaken Danny Ayalon opdroeg om het plan met Saudische politici te bespreken, maar men weigerde hem te ontvangen. Waaruit blijkt dat de weigering om te onderhandelen en te praten nog steeds aan Arabische zijde ligt. 

 

RP

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

 

'Sharon sent me for Saudi Peace Initiative meeting'

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=264627

By HERB KEINON

04/03/2012 14:54

Deputy Foreign Minister Ayalon reveals secret mission during ministry conference promoting rights of Jewish refugees.

 

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Tuesday that former prime minister Ariel Sharon sent him on a secret mission ten years ago following the publication of the Saudi Peace Initiative to meet with Saudi representatives to discuss it, but they refused to meet him.

Ayalon's comments came at a conference at the Foreign Ministry to announce a new ministry initiative to put the issue of Jewish refugees high on the international agenda.

Ayalon, who was Sharon's foreign policy advisor at the time, said he was sent to meet his Saudi counterpart Adel Al-Jubeir, who today is the Kingdom's ambassador to Washington. Al-Jubeir refused to meet him, Ayalon said.

The deputy foreign minister angrily dismissed comments from someone in the crowd who said Israel never gave the Saudi initiative a chance. Ayalon said the problem with the initiative was that it was a dictate and not something that could be negotiated.

During the conference, Ayalon said that the Foreign Ministry had directed its ambassadors and representatives abroad to raise with governments abroad the issue of some-850,000 Jewish refugees who were forced to flee Arab and Middle Easter countries. Of those refugees, some 650,000 were absorbed in Israel.

Ayalon said that raising the issue serves a number of purposes. Firstly, he said, it attempts to redress a historic wrong. Secondly, it will make sure that Israel documents claims from the first generation of refugees, who are dying off. Another of the goals, he said, is that when the refugee issue comes up in any final negotiations, all immigrants, Arab, Jewish and Muslims alike, will be treated equally.

 

Günter Grass en de veranderende Duitse houding tegenover Israel

 

Ik weet niet precies hoe het debat in Duitsland verloopt en zaken liggen daar zeker gevoeliger dan hier, maar de laatste tijd is daar ook steeds meer kritiek op Israel te horen, vooral van linkse politici. Het taboe dat Grass zegt te doorbreken was dus ook daar al eerder doorbroken, al kun je in Dutisland op nog wat fellere kritiek rekenen dan hier wanneer je idiote vergelijkingen maakt en je totaal ongevoelig toont voor terechte en begrijpelijke angsten van Israel over de aard en bedoelingen van haar vijanden.

 

A military strike would prompt another competition in Germany between the two principles of "Never again war" and "Never again Auschwitz", like the one that took place during the Kosovo war in 1999. At that time, Germans seemed to choose "Never again Auschwitz". But my instinct is that, a decade later, they would choose "Never again war".

Ondanks alle speculaties over een Israelische aanval op Iran zie ik het nog niet gebeuren, maar mocht het gebeuren dan is dat niet omdat Israel even wat nieuw wapenspul wil testen of omdat Netanjahoe aan een vervolgingscomplex lijdt. Daarvoor zijn de risico's toch echt te groot, nog los van de felle internationale kritiek en gevolgen. Hopelijk kiezen niet alleen de Duitsers, maar ook andere Europeanen in dat geval voor 'nooit meer Auschwitz', ook als daar zo'n aanval voor nodig is. 

 

RP

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

 

Günter Grass and changing German attitudes towards Israel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/05/gunter-grass-german-anger-at-israel

The poet hopes his latest work, What Must Be Said, will prompt others to break their silence on Israel's nuclear weapons 

 

Hans Kundnani

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 April 2012 15.02 BST

 

The anti-war poem published by Günter Grass is a subtle but straightforward example of a tendency in Germany that the historian Dan Diner has called "exonerating projection": the relativisation of the Holocaust through the implicit equation of Israel with Nazi Germany. In the poem, What Must Be Said, the 84 year-old Nobel prize-winner who was a member of the Waffen SS as a teenager imagines himself as a "survivor" of an Israeli nuclear strike on Iran. 

 

What must be said, according to Grass, is that "the nuclear power Israel" – rather than Iran – "endangers an already fragile world peace". Grass says he had not spoken out previously because his nationality "forbade" it: any German breaking the silence on the Israel nuclear programme may be accused of antisemitism. 

 

But, Grass goes on, the recent agreement to sell a sixth German Dolphin submarine to Israel meant Germany would now be partly responsible for "a crime that can be foreseen". It could not therefore make "any of the usual excuses" – presumably a reference to excuses made by Germans about the Holocaust. Grass thus felt he must break his silence "with my last drop of ink" – suggesting that this is the writer's last word. He says he hopes the poem will prompt others to "liberate themselves from silence" about Israel's nuclear weapons. 

 

The publication of the poem in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and other European newspapers has already prompted furious reactions in Germany and Israel. Josef Joffe writes in Die Zeit that Grass's poem was more about self-exoneration than about submarines. In an interview with Der Spiegel, the Israeli historian Tom Segev says that the poem seems to be more about Grass's long silence about his own Nazi past than about German silence about Israel's nuclear programme.

However, what makes the publication of the poem significant is that it expresses a sense of anger against Israel that – justified or not – many Germans seem increasingly to share. This anger is partly a response to Israel's rightward shift during the past decade. But it seems also to be a product of developments in Germany and in particular the way that the Holocaust has receded in significance during the last decade. Increasingly, Germans seem to see themselves as victims rather than perpetrators.

A poll in January 2009 – during the Gaza war – suggested that German attitudes to Israel were in flux. Nearly half of respondents said they saw Israel as an "aggressive country" and only around a third of respondents said they felt Germany had a special responsibility towards Israel. Sixty per cent said Germany had no special responsibility (the figure was even higher among younger Germans and among those living in the former East Germany).

This anger against Israel is exacerbated by the sense some Germans have of not being able to say what they really think – as Grass suggests in the poem. This has created a pent-up resentment towards Israel that could at some point explode. It will be interesting to see whether Grass's poem leads in the next few weeks and months to the debate about Germany's "special relationship" with Israel that he seems to hope it would.

Angela Merkel – who has declined to comment on Grass's poem – is personally committed to the Jewish state but is under increasing pressure on this issue, on which she is unusually out of step with German public opinion.

Last year, Germany voted in favour of a UN resolution demanding a halt to Israeli settlement expansion – an unusual break with Israel. Later in the year, Germany opposed the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN. But according to one poll, 84% of Germans supported Palestinian statehood and 76% believed Germany should act to recognise it – an even higher proportion in each case than in France or the UK.

An Israeli military strike on Iran could create a sudden rupture between Germany and Israel in the way that the Iraq war did between Germany and the US. My sense is that were Israel to launch a military strike on Iran, what remaining sympathy there is in Germany for Israel would evaporate almost overnight.

A military strike would prompt another competition in Germany between the two principles of "Never again war" and "Never again Auschwitz", like the one that took place during the Kosovo war in 1999. At that time, Germans seemed to choose "Never again Auschwitz". But my instinct is that, a decade later, they would choose "Never again war".