Bearing witness ever more

The study of the Holocaust is expanding worldwide—for differing reasons

JPOST

ACROSS the globe, schoolchildren study the industrialised slaughter of Jews by the Nazis. Holocaust museums in America, Israel and Poland each draw more than a million visitors annually. The UN has passed two resolutions in the past decade to institutionalise memory of the Holocaust worldwide. Yad Vashem, an Israeli museum and remembrance authority, trains 10,000 domestic and foreign teachers every year. “Interest is growing immensely,” says Dorit Novak, the director-general. Membership of the Association of Holocaust Organisations (AHO) has increased from 25 in the late 1980s to over 300. Commemorative museums have opened from Germany and France to Brazil and Japan. Of the 16,000 books on the Holocaust listed in America’s Library of Congress, more than two-thirds were published in the past two decades.

In its immediate aftermath, the Holocaust went largely unacknowledged. Perpetrators and bystanders preferred to forget. Commemoration began in Israel, where many survivors had gathered. But even there it was done quietly. For the exuberant young country the slaughter of European Jews was an uncomfortable image of passivity and presumed feebleness. A 1960 study showed that barely a quarter of schools taught children about the Holocaust. Only when Israelis came to feel an existential threat during successive wars with Arab neighbours did that change. Read more…

By Giulio Meotti, INN

Maaloula is one of the last villages in Syria where locals speak the Aramaic spoken by Jesus and the early Christians. In a monastery in Maaloula there are the remains of Thecla, the disciple of Paul, who spent her life there caring for the sick. Not far from Maaloula, in a shrine in Damascus’s Great Mosque, you also find the relic believed tby the faithful to be John the Baptist’s head.

The famous village has fallen into the hands of “Syrian rebels”. First the terrorists vandalized a statue of Jesus’ mother. Then they tried to convert the local Christians to Islam. They also proclaimed: “Allahu Akbar, we have won the city of crusaders, Maloula has been cleaned up of the dogs of Bashar”.
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By Ted Belman

At 20th anniversary of the Oslo Accords held Wednesday at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University most speakers were still foccussed on acheiving a two state solution.

Gilad Sher who was chief of staff to Ehud Barak when he was prime minister from 1999-2001 and Dov Weisglass, who represented Sharon in negotiations, both said 100,000 settlers would have to be evacuated.

Sher was among a number of speakers who believed that the best outcome of the negotiations underway would be an interim agreement. Still, he said, Israel should begin preparation for a two-state solution by halting building in isolated settlements and preparing a master plan to evacuate them. This is Olmert’s convergence plan. Read more…

Lappin obviously disagrees with those, like Grrenfield and me, who think that the Islamists pose the greater danger. The reason being that the Iranian bloc is more powerful. Yes they are. Especially if Iran gets the bomb, which sooner or later, they will get. But are they more likely to get the bomb with Assad in Syria or gone from Syria. Also he believes that a nuclear armed Iran is an existential threat to Israel whereas the Islamists represent asymmetrical war which is very difficult for Israel to deal with. I am not saying Lappin is wrong. His perspective must be acknowledged. There are many imponderables that could make a difference in the outcome. Ted Belman

Why Israelis See Shi’ite Axis as a Greater Threat Than Syrian Jihadis

By Yaakov Lappin, IPT NEWS

[..]
There is not one uniform view among Israeli defense experts over what outcome would be best for Israel, in light of the fact that no one can know with certainty what will come in Assad’s place.

Most observers agree that from Israel’s perspective, the al-Qaida-affiliated organizations in Syria pose a very real and growing threat, but one which is significantly smaller in scope and more easily contained than the threat posed by a far more powerful axis: Iran, the Assad regime, and Hizballah.
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I agree with Greenfield. If we have Assad/ Iran/Rusia in Syria, the West will support us. If the MB take over supported by S. Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, the US and the EU, the US and the EU will restrain us just as they do when we confront Hamas or Fatah in J&S or Gaza. Ted Belman

Why Bombing Syria Will Not Help Israel

By Daniel Greenfield, FPM

One of the more familiar arguments for bombing Syria is that it will help Israel.

Israel doesn’t need that kind of help. Israelis successfully destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. During the Syrian Civil War, Israel has carried out a number of strikes against Syrian targets. If anything, NATO intervention will stifle Israel’s ability to operate in Syrian airspace as it is kept out of the fight for political reasons to avoid offending Muslims; the same way that it happened during the Gulf War.
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The Mission of United with Israel, the Largest Online Pro-Israel Movement

United with Israel spreads the truth about Israel to millions of people around the world, through its aggressive and creative use of social media, enabling mass audiences to take action in support of Israel.

United with Israel is a global, grassroots movement comprised of individuals who care deeply about the well-being and the future of the State of Israel. The primary mission of United with Israel is to build a massive global network of pro-Israel activists who take action in support of Israel. United with Israel educates the public about Israel via social media, distributing action alerts illustrating concrete actions the average person can take to support Israel, and organizing campaigns to support Israel, from building bomb shelters and trees in Southern Israel to calling on President Obama to draw red lines on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324094704579066774128762480.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
The President lets Putin outmaneuver him on Syrian chemical arms.

HERB KEINON, JPOST

If Assad is left standing, Iran retains a vital strategic ally.

Israel’s Good News Newsletter to 8th Sept 2013

The president may look incompetent on Syria. But his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad.

By NORMAN PODHORETZ, WSJ

It is entirely understandable that Barack Obama’s way of dealing with Syria in recent weeks should have elicited responses ranging from puzzlement to disgust. Even members of his own party are despairingly echoing in private the public denunciations of him as “incompetent,” “bungling,” “feckless,” “amateurish” and “in over his head” coming from his political opponents on the right.

For how else to characterize a president who declares war against what he calls a great evil demanding immediate extirpation and in the next breath announces that he will postpone taking action for at least 10 days—and then goes off to play golf before embarking on a trip to another part of the world? As if this were not enough, he also assures the perpetrator of that great evil that the military action he will eventually take will last a very short time and will do hardly any damage. Unless, that is, he fails to get the unnecessary permission he has sought from Congress, in which case (according to an indiscreet member of his own staff) he might not take any military action after all. Read more…

By Daniel Pipes, Israel Hayom

Here’s advice to the members of the U.S. Congress as they are asked to endorse an American-led attack on the government of Syria:

Start your consideration by establishing priorities, clarifying what matters most to the country. The Obama administration rightly points to two urgent matters: stopping the Iranian nuclear buildup and maintaining the security of Israel. To these, I add a third: re-establishing the U.S. deterrent credibility laid low by Barack Obama himself.

Note that this list conspicuously does not mention the Syrian regime’s chemical arsenal (the largest in the world) or its recent use. That’s because those pale in horror and in danger by comparison with the nuclear weapons now under construction in Iran. Also, the attack in Ghouta, Syria, on Aug. 21 was appalling, but not worse than killing a hundred times more civilians through other means, including torture. Further, that attack breached multiple international conventions, but surely no one expects “limited strikes” to restrain desperate dictators.
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Atty. Elyakim Haetzni, INN

As the Jewish year drew to a close, we were witness to President Obama’s growing weakness and to the the embarrassing contrast between his image and that of his Secretary of State, John Kerry. Obama’s hesitance caused a temporary respite for Assad, not really good news, despite the fact that both sides there are despicable murderers as well as anti-Semites.

This respite saves us – for a time – from the danger that Israel, as always, will pay for an American attack on Syria.

Kerry’s speech explaining and justifying the attack on Syria was impressive. It revealed that in contrast to the image of him created by the media, he is a strong and forceful personality, filled with an inner “fire” bordering on fanaticism.
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By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, JPOST

What is Israel’s interest in Syria and the possibility of a US-led attack? Israel’s current policy seems to be to stay out of it unless any redlines are crossed, at which point it would act covertly to deal with the threat.

A key reason for the ambivalence of Israeli experts and policy makers is that there is no clear path to take – both Syrian president Bashar Assad’s regime, which is allied with Shi’ite Iran and Hezbollah, and the Islamist-dominated opposition forces are distasteful.

Pro-Israel groups in United States scramble to save Syria strike resolution
Robert Kaplan, the chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm, wrote in a recent article that a stalemate and continuation of the conflict may be the best outcome. He cited the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) as an example of a conflict that benefited the Reagan administration.
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Yoav Zitun, YNET

A few days after reaching a plea bargain with a military court after being filmed hitting a foreign peace activist from Denmark with his M-16 rifle, Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner sent his officer friends an email for the Jewish New Year. In the email, he said, “I have no doubt that this flawed trial is giving me a lot of points in doomsday court.”

Under the plea bargain, Eisner will serve two months of community service without pay. He will not be discharged from the IDF, but will not be promoted to a new position and will retire from the army early.

In a New Year greeting sent by mail to a group of his friends, the IDF officer said that he’s “trying to continue with love and faith, serve truth and justice with the love of Israel, and it’s a search, what we are, and what our spiritual strength is.”
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Moscow says will urge Syria to place its ‘chemical weapons under international control, then have them destroyed.’ Syrian FM says welcomes Russian proposal. Israeli source notes such a solution would be in everyone’s best interest – including Israel’s

YNET

After talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem in Moscow, Sergei Lavrov called on Syria to “place the chemical weapons under international control and then have them destroyed.”

Lavrov said Monday that if such a move would help avert a possible US strike on Syria, Russia will start work “immediately” to persuade Syria to relinquish control over its chemical arsenals.

According to him such a plan would help “avoid military strikes” that are being considered by the United States and its allies. Lavrov said he had already passed the proposal to al-Moallem in Moscow and hoped for a “quick and positive answer” from Syria.
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In remarkable address, Moshe Ya’alon decries attempts to establish Palestinian state, says flatly that Assad used nerve gas, warns Syria not to cross Israel’s red lines

By Mitch Ginsburg, The Times of Israel’s military correspondent.

In a remarkably candid speech in which he ridiculed the notion of democracy dawning in the Middle East, and denounced efforts toward Palestinian statehood, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Sunday also emphasized that Israel would respond forcefully to any Syrian attack and asserted that Syrian President Bashar Assad was behind a recent lethal chemical strike on civilians outside Damascus.

Israel will stay out of the conflict in Syria “unless the red lines we’ve set down are transgressed,” Ya’alon said. “Our neighbors in Syria realize that if they challenge us, they’ll meet the force of the IDF.”
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See introduction, Obama policy, the second term: “”Second-Term Obama Agenda: Part 1: –  Why U.S. Policy Betrayed the Moderates”

Manufacturing and Exploiting Compassion:

No. 597    September-October 2013

• Israel, a liberal democracy caught between tyrannies and sectarian violence, is increasingly perceived as uniquely evil.

• In the struggle for hearts and minds, feelings trump facts. Imagery and accusations that automatically trigger public compassion are incomparably more compelling than dry, defensive argumentation. We are “wired” by evolution to support those we perceive as innocent victims in distress, even when the facts do not mandate such support.

• The portrayal of Palestinians as innocent victims in distress has been the key to Palestinian propaganda’s popular success. Through the mass-production of heartrending imagery centered on children, staged “news,” manipulative rhetoric, and rigid censorship, Palestinian propaganda has successfully used the media to recast Palestinians as entirely blameless victims. Read more…

There is no question that energy and profits weigh heavily on everyone’s mind. But this articles leaves out an alternative. If the war ends with Assad remaining in power and the “Islamic pipeline” being built from Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia could always build their pipeline through Jordan and Israel. Israel would send this energy to Cypress as she now expects to do with her own energy.  Ted Belman

Amos Gilad: Strong Arab Sunni bloc doesn’t see Israel as enemy

By Aaron Klien, WND

PHILADELPHIA – Is the reported willingness of Arab Gulf states to fund a U.S. military campaign in Syria really about major oil and gas interests that run through the country?

The potential for trillions of dollars of energy revenue in deals that snake through Syrian territory may be a motivating factor for the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Arab states in the current Syria crisis.

Syria is a key energy transit route to Europe. A number of countries appear to be seeking dominance of the energy market that runs through Syria.
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Langfan believes that Assad must be defeated even it it means getting in bed with the Islamists. “Assad’s demise would be an essential element to the permanent destruction of Iran’s nuclear adventure to control all of the Persian Gulf’s oil reserves it doesn’t presently control”. He goes so far as to say “I believe Assad-equals-Iranian nukes, no Assad-equals-no Iranian nukes.”. He equally doesn’t want Israel to be be Syria’s protagonist. He wants Israel to stay out of it. If Obama intended to take down Assad as he desires, would he likewise want Israel to stay out of it or want them to join in?

Our Syrian border has been quiet under Assad and his father for 40 years. Their alternative is an Islamist government perhaps run by the MB and or Turkey both good friends of the Obama US. I tend to believe that we will have more US support if we face a Syria run by Assad and Iran then if we face the alternative. The west won’t allow us to deal adequately with Hamas or the Palestinians and they can’t be expected to have a different policy should the Islamists take over with S. Arabia and Qatar in the background. Ted Belman

Seven reasons that a limited US strike in Syria – and AIPAC’s lobbying for it – are an egregious error.

Mark Langfan, INN

As a Jewish security-essayist who for 18 months has vigorously argued for US lethal support for the Syrian Rebels, I say AIPAC is courting disaster in actively lobbying for the Congressional resolution for a US Syria attack. What’s worse, I believe AIPAC is writing Israel’s death warrant.

At the outset, I want to make clear that I have consistently publicly opined that the US must support the Syrian rebels. I have argued then, and now, that Assad must be toppled because it is in the supreme national security interest of the United States.
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