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When a distorted view of reality is broadcast to the world and then remains unchallenged, after a while it becomes something that ‘everybody knows’. It becomes a jumping off point for even more lies and distortions. This has been the story of the Israeli-Arab conflict from the beginning.

For years the attitude of the Israeli government has been that actions are important and words are not. Who could believe the crazy rantings of a Yasser Arafat, for example? Who would take seriously the idea that the return of the Jewish people to their historic homeland was an example of Western colonialism, and that the Palestinian Arabs, most of whose ancestors arrived in the land in the 19th and 20th centuries and whose leadership collaborated with Adolf Hitler, were an ancient, noble and oppressed indigenous people?

Everyone ‘knows’, for example that “Israeli settlements are illegal under international law” because news sources like the UK Guardian and NPR repeat it every chance they get. They also believe that eastern Jerusalem is and always was ‘Arab’, and is now being ‘Judaized’, despite the fact that the long-time Jewish population was expelled by the Jordanian army in 1948.

They are also sure that Israel committed ‘war crimes’ in Gaza, despite the fact that a well-known British military expert said that “the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in the combat zones than any other army in the history of warfare.”

I could go on. But with the exception of the last example, the government of Israel and its official representatives have done little to counteract these lies.

Unfortunately, sometimes the government even plays along with the charades of its enemies. Take the question of terrorism, which has been waged against Israel by Palestinian Arabs and others since its inception. The truth is that thousands of Israelis and Jews around the world have been murdered by terrorists. Either these terrorists are gangsters in the service of hostile regimes, or they are armed combatants who are committing the most vicious war crimes, deliberately targeting the most vulnerable civilian populations, especially including children.

What they most definitely are not are soldiers fighting bravely according to the laws of war and deserving of honors.

So what are we to make of the fact that the Israeli government just returned the bodies of 91 Arab terrorists, formerly buried in numbered graves in Israel, to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas?

These terrorists were anything but military heroes: they include suicide bombers who exploded in buses, markets and nightclubs, gunmen who took hostages and murdered them, snipers, etc.

The families of terror victims complained, just as they did when more than a thousand prisoners, many of them convicted murderers, were traded for Gilad Shalit. But as always, their protest was ignored.

This was supposedly a “humanitarian gesture,” which is intended to make the PA more likely to negotiate with Israel. But what it did was provide a photo-op for the Palestinians to pretend that the terrorists were actually soldiers, and that their actions were warfare and not murder. You can see the treatment that they received here:

The PA is not likely to drop their preconditions for negotiation — indeed, the whole “2-state solution” negotiation is a farce, based on the false premise that the PA is prepared to accept the existence of a Jewish state of any size.

So what has Israel gained? Families of terror victims were punished yet again to see the murderers of their relatives honored, and another anti-Israel myth — that terrorists are not terrorists — is given new life.

Technorati Tags: Israel, terrorism, Palestinians

Even among events of some of the darkest days in recent history, this story stands out. Not so much because so many people stood by and did nothing — that’s happening today in Syria, and seems to happen every few months somewhere in the world — but because so many ‘enlightened’ nations actively cooperated in making it happen.

No one writes like Sarah Honig, and the following isn’t easy to read, even if you are familiar with the events described. But please read it to the end. Read the last sentence. Several times. (h/t: GR)

Lessons from the floating coffin

By Sarah Honig

February 24, 2012

The Mac Michael wanted poster

Exactly 70 years ago – on February 24, 1942 – 19-year-old David Stoliar terrifyingly clung to bobbing debris in the Black Sea. At first he heard screams in the frigid waters but the voices died down. It eventually emerged that Stoliar was the sole survivor of the Struma, an un-seaworthy vessel chuck-full of frantic Jewish refugees.

World War II was already in fever pitch. Against the enormity of the then-unfolding Holocaust, the loss at sea of 768 Jewish lives (103 of them babies and children) was at most blithely overlooked as a marginal annotation.

Moreover, although these Jews fled the Nazis, in the pedantic literal sense they weren’t executed by Third Reich henchmen.

This atrocity was the coldblooded handiwork of Great Britain (committed while it combated the Germans but remarkably without compassion for their Jewish victims), supposedly neutral Turkey (whose so-called nonalignment didn’t extend to outcast Jewish refugees), by the Arabs (who were openly and unreservedly Nazism’s avid collaborators and who pressured London into denying endangered Jews asylum in the Jewish homeland) and, finally, by the Russians (who targeted the immobilized sardine can that carried Jews to whom nobody would allow a toehold on terra firma).

The entire world seemed united in signaling Jews how utterly unwanted they were anywhere.

Such apathy-cum-enmity hasn’t disappeared. Only its form and context had mutated but the essence is still ultra-relevant to the Jewish state. We’re still threatened with annihilation. Nonetheless, unmistakable harangues from Tehran notwithstanding, the international community worries about an Israeli preemptive strike – not a genocidal strike against Israel.

To put it plainly, our fate today interests other nations just about as much as the fate of the Struma’s Jews did back then, which (to resort to understatement) was hardly much.

Today’s disingenuous post-Holocaust lip-service is invariably accompanied by hand-wringing about lack of foreknowledge of Germany’s fiendish plot to systematically exterminate the defenseless Jewish people (unmistakable harangues from Berlin notwithstanding).

What sets the Struma apart and imbues it with extraordinary significance is that from December 16, 1941, until the afternoon of February 23, 1942, its ordeal was played out before the entire watching but unfeeling world. No country could deny awareness of the impending calamity and yet all countries let it happen in full view.

The Struma, then a 115-year-old Danube cattle barge, was a pitiful peanut-shell of a boat packed with nearly 800 refugees from Romania. Bound for the Land of Israel, they desperately fled Hitler’s hell and the horrors of Bucharest’s fascist regime. Pogroms and ghastly atrocities had already sullied cities like Iasi, where thousands of Jews were assembled in the market square and mowed down with machine guns. Venerable old rabbis and Jewish community leaders were impaled on meat hooks in town centers.

The Struma wasn’t struck suddenly. It was slowly tortured, accentuating with demonic deliberation how disposable Jews were, just when genocide’s monstrous machinery was switched into high gear. This 75-day shipboard melodrama underscored the total helplessness and humiliation of Jews without power.

Struma passengers gathered in the Romanian port of Constanza on December 8, 1941. For four days, Romanian customs officials “examined” their belongings. In fact, they pilfered all they saw – clothing, underwear, jewelry and most important, food. The immigrants left on the perilous journey bereft of provisions and medications. But the Struma did carry 30 doctors, 10 engineers and 15 lawyers.

On December 12, the rickety vessel chugged out to sea. After four hair-raising days (instead of the routine 14 hours) the Struma unsteadily dragged itself into Istanbul Harbor. It couldn’t continue. Its makeshift motor had sputtered its last. There was no fuel, food or water.

Several passengers held valid entry visas into pre-independent Israel. All others were “illegals.” The hope, though, was that once in Turkey, they’d all be allowed to proceed to their destination. After all, with Europe in the throes of war, thousands of Jewish immigration certificates (British Mandate permits) remained unutilized.

But the British authorities refused unequivocally. The Arabs raged and rallied against giving haven to Jewish refugees. Eager to appease pro- Nazi Arab opinion, Britain chillingly declared that under no circumstance could the Struma’s human cargo set foot in Eretz Yisrael.

Furthermore, Britain pressured Turkey not to let anyone off the crippled boat at its end either. Obligingly, the Turkish premier argued that “Turkey cannot be expected to serve as a refuge or surrogate homeland for people unwanted anywhere else.”

The only extant photo of the willfully condemned Struma

Thus hundreds were imprisoned in narrow, unventilated confines. A sign saying “Help!” was suspended over the Struma’s side. One of the visa-holders, who after weeks was allowed ashore, described the boat as a “floating coffin.”

The freezing hull below reeked, but there wasn’t sufficient room on deck. Refugees took turns to climb up for a breath of air. There was no sleeping space for all, no infirmary, no galley, no bathing or sanitary facilities. Minimal food rations, provided by local Jews, were smuggled aboard after enough Turkish palms were greased.

An official Jewish Agency appeal, forwarded to the British on January 19, 1942, stressed that the Struma transported refugees escaping the most tangible threat of massacre. The Mandatory authorities didn’t even dignify the Jewish Agency with a reply.

On the next day, the Struma’s 35th in Istanbul, the Wannsee Conference opened in suburban Berlin to formally decide on “the final solution for the Jewish problem.” Hitler surely hadn’t overlooked this latest demonstration of utter callousness toward hapless Jews.

The British didn’t bother to answer ensuing emotional Jewish Agency entreaties on January 30 and February 10. Then they acquiesced to the entry of four visa-holders, who only at this point were permitted to disembark. More news of the dreadful conditions on the Struma now came out.

The new British line was that the Struma’s refugees were suspect Nazi agents because they came from enemy territory. The assertion that the Germans’ most hideously persecuted victims were their tormenters’ spies was labeled “Satanic” in embryonic Israel.

In a very long February 13 communication to the Mandatory government, the Agency noted that Britain was helping with much fanfare to resettle in the Mideast thousands of non-Jews – Greeks, Yugoslavs, Poles and Czechs – all of whom came from German-controlled areas. More than any of them, Jews had reason to be loyal to the Allies.

On February 15, the British announced they’d make an exception in the case of Struma children aged 11 to 16. Wartime rationing was cited as the pretext for barring younger or older kids. The Jewish Agency guaranteed maintenance for all 103 underage Struma captives. In the end no child was freed.

Meanwhile, Turkey, egged on and emboldened by Britain, threatened to tow the floundering deathtrap beyond its territorial waters. The Jewish Agency warned that “the boat is in total state of disrepair and without life-saving equipment. Any sea-journey for this vessel cannot but end in disaster.”

The Turkish government, however, pitilessly ordered the condemned Struma tugged out to the Black Sea. Hundreds of truncheon-wielding Turkish policemen were dispatched to the Struma on February 23. They viciously clubbed passengers below deck. Despite resistance from the refugees, the anchor was cut, the Struma was towed out and was left paralyzed, to drift precariously without supplies or a drop of fuel.

On February 24, an explosion ripped it apart.

A Soviet submarine, Shchuka-213, patrolled northeast of the Bosporus. Stalking Axis craft, it torpedoed the wobbly barge, which sank in minutes. It’s estimated that as many as 500 were killed outright by the blast. The rest flapped feebly in the waves, till they expired of wounds, fatigue and hypothermia. Stoliar alone hung on, semi-conscious.

In pre-state Israel there was shock and grief. Demonstrations were mounted. For one day all work and commerce were halted and the population imposed a voluntary protest curfew on itself. Posters appeared on exterior walls everywhere bearing British High Commissioner Harold Mac Michael’s photo and announcing that he was “Wanted for Murder.”

The Struma’s heartrending end marked the effective end to most attempts to break Britain’s anti-Jewish blockade until the conclusion of WWII. A few fishing and sporting sailboats briefly tried to ferry handfuls of refugees. Some of them were sunk. Europe’s Jews had no escape left. Embattled Britain took time out from the war to make sure of it.

Stoliar was imprisoned by the Turks for six weeks for the crime of not drowning. He was finally allowed into Mandated Palestine despite Mac Michael’s warnings that “this would open the floodgates” and “completely undermine our whole policy regarding illegal immigrants.”

Today, to most Israelis, Struma is a curious street name in a few towns. Israeli school children barely encounter its esoteric story. Politically correct authors and trendy leftwing filmmakers shun the subject, preferring postmodern portrayals of Arab terrorists as Zionism’s prey.

Oblivion is perhaps the greatest sin against the Struma but also against ourselves. If we forget the Struma, we forget why this country exists, why we struggle for its survival. We forget the justice of our cause.

Dimmed memory and self-destructive perverse morality hinder our ability to protect ourselves from the offspring and torchbearers of the very Arabs who doomed the Struma. They haven’t amended their hostile agenda. We just don’t care to be reminded.

The state the Jews created is threatened with destruction and its population with obliteration. Yet there’s negligible sympathy for Israel and even less practical support to avert tragedy. The Struma’s story is seminal in understanding why the Holocaust was possible and why a second Holocaust cannot be ruled out. More than anything, the Struma powerfully illustrates what happens when Jews rely on others’ goodwill.

Technorati Tags: Struma, Holocaust, Israel, Sarah Honig

Most American Jews are still supporting Obama

Most of my Jewish friends plan to vote for Barack Obama. This is because they simply cannot bring themselves to betray their long-term ideological commitment to ‘liberal’ principles of fairness, caring for the disadvantaged, reducing income inequality, etc., believing that a Republican represents the opposite of these things.

Even though many of them are affluent and very few of them are what one might call ‘workers’, they believe that Obama stands for the little guy and Mitt Romney for Wall Street and viciously amoral corporations.

They have heard that Obama is anti-Israel, but the President and his surrogates have gone to great length to argue that the opposite is true, and that my friends are hearing Republican propaganda. Because they want to support Obama for other reasons, they want to believe this.

Some of them, truth be told, don’t think much about Israel and don’t know very much about it. What they often hear from their Reform rabbis or read in the Forward is that Israel is really not so democratic and behaves immorally toward the Palestinians. Anyway, they believe that Israel is a mighty military power which has existed for as long as they remember, and is in little danger.

To a great extent, my friends are wrong about all of these things.

But Obama (finally) came out for gay marriage and tried to solve the ongoing healthcare train-wreck, they tell me, knowing that I share their liberal views on these issues.

The reality is that the President’s personal feelings about marriage are irrelevant. He does not have the power to overthrow the federal Defense of Marriage Act or California’s Proposition 8. That will be done (or not) by the sitting Supreme Court. And it will be up to individual state legislatures to permit (or not) gay marriage in their states.

Healthcare? Don’t make me laugh. Obama’s great ‘success’ was to get a bill passed that included a few small reforms but tiptoed around the great vested interests of the insurance and drug companies. Yes, it was opposed by Republicans. Maybe if it had promised a true revolutionary change in our broken healthcare system, it would have gotten enough enthusiastic popular support to swamp the opposition.

Wall Street? Obama is tight with the bankers and they are among his biggest contributors.

Did he inherit the financial mess? Yes. Does he appear to have a clue about how to solve it? No.

There are some other very disturbing things about the President and his administration. This is the administration that expunged the words jihad and Muslim from FBI training materials and references to Jerusalem being in Israel from official websites, and the president that compared the Holocaust to the “Palestinian quest for a homeland.” Sometimes he “misspeaks” in ways that are bizarre, as his recent gaffe about “Polish death camps” illustrates.

Unlike gay marriage, in foreign affairs the President is by far the most powerful determinant of US policy. And here is where my Jewish friends should be the most wary, if they retain even a little feeling about the Jewish state.

Israel’s existence is not guaranteed. Probably a majority of the inhabitants of the earth would answer ‘no’ if they were asked whether there should be a Jewish state of Israel. Israel’s small size makes it vulnerable despite its military capability. I think it is probably correct that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, Israel’s chance of survival for another 10 years will be less than 50% (whether or not the nukes are used against it).

Don’t kid yourself. If Israel’s enemies succeed, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Jews will die and the others will scatter throughout the world in a third Diaspora. That is what is at stake.

American Jews should not allow themselves to rationalize away the facts: at a critical point in history, Barack Obama is the least friendly US president toward Israel since its beginning. And so that you will be prepared for the rationalizations that are coming thick and fast from Obama and his surrogates, I am going to quote Barry Rubin’s powerful refutation at length:

1. Obama says he likes Israel.

That’s nice but so what? Of course it is good when he says nice things (by coincidence, no doubt, usually to Jewish audiences) but one can also find a lot of nasty remarks by him, his advisors, and various officials appointed by him. Every president for the last half-century has said similar nice things; not all the presidents put together during this period have said or done so many hostile things. While it is a great exaggeration to say that Obama hates Israel or wants to destroy it, I think it is fair to say that no president (including Jimmy Carter when in office) has been so cold toward Israel and basically failed to understand its nature and interests.

2. Israeli leaders say Obama is great.

Yes, that’s nice but it’s not what they say in private. I can tell you authoritatively that not a single Israeli leader in any party has a high opinion of Obama with regard to Israel and its interests. But it is their job to lavish praise on America’s president. Their task is not to defeat Obama or to critique him but to get along with him as well as possible in order to protect Israel’s long-term alliance with the United States  without sacrificing any of Israel’s vital interests. They’ve done it well. The one moment the truth emerged was when Obama betrayed Israel, on the diplomatic level, by announcing, without consultation, a new policy on peace terms while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was flying to Washington. You think Israeli leaders (and this is not ideological, not a matter of left or right) have a high regard for Obama? Read Netanyahu’s speech to the joint session of Congress.

Perhaps the equation can be summarized as follows:  Obama just gave Israeli President Shimon Peres a presidential medal of freedom. He also has just helped give Israel a second Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime next door and insists that this is a good thing.

3. US-Israel bilateral relations are good especially with regard to military aid

That’s true but only a small part of that relates to Obama’s benevolence. Why?

a. Congress supports Israel. There was more pushback against Obama from Democratic members on this issue than on any other, foreign or domestic. Thus, Israel is the only “target” of Obama whose constituency has vocal defenders within his own party that raise the cost of his actions against it, at least during his first term. (Note that last phrase.)

b. The same applies to public opinion, which is strongly pro-Israel. This factor also inhibits Obama, at least during his first term. (Note that last phrase.)

c. Regarding military relations, the U.S. armed forces are generally quite pro-Israel and want these programs. Many of them are based on previous commitments which Obama merely continues.

An especially important reason why Obama’s Administration hasn’t been far more hostile to Israel in practice is that the Arabs and Iran shafted it. Remember that Obama offered to support the Palestinians, pressure Israel, and accelerate talks if only the Arab states and Palestinian Authority showed some flexibility. They repeatedly rejected his efforts—refusing even to talk–giving him no opportunity or incentive to press Israel for concessions. Note, too, though, that the repeated humiliations handed him by the Arabs never made him criticize them publicly, change his general line, or back Israel more enthusiastically.

The same point applies to Iran. While Obama has intensified sanctions on Iran he did so:

-Only after a long delay.

-Did less than Congress wanted.

-Exempted in effect China, Russia, and Turkey from observing the sanctions.

Obama has been visibly eager to make a deal with Tehran, even on bad terms. Only Iran’s hard line has prevented some kind of arrangement that favored Iran. Instead, though, Tehran has used Obama’s slowness and desire for some compromise in order to buy time for its nuclear program to progress.

Finally, there’s the most important factor of all. The damage Obama has done to Israeli security is not on bilateral relations or the peace process but regarding his regional policy. This includes his:

–Soft line toward antisemitic, anti-Israel, and also anti-American Islamism.

–Support for overturning the Mubarak regime and encouragement for a Muslim Brotherhood takeover there. During the 2011 crisis, Obama never even consulted Israel. The outspoken antisemitism, calls for genocide against Israel’s citizens, and support for anti-Israel terrorism by the Muslim Brotherhood have had no effect on Obama’s policy and brought no criticism by the U.S. government of that movement.

This point must be underlined. Do not forget for one moment that the Brotherhood is an explicitly antisemitic movement that calls for genocide against Jews in and often outside of Israel. It has never to the tiniest degree criticized or repented for its strong support for Nazi Germany. It is in fact that most important antisemitic movement in the world today. Anyone who claims that this movement is in fact moderate, denying its antisemitism and genocidal intentions, and helps it to achieve power is acting profoundly against the interests of Israel and of the Jewish people. Period.

–His soft line toward Hizballah in Lebanon, including breaking promises made to Israel to keep terrorists out of south Lebanon.

–Pressure on Israel to reduce sanctions on the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip greatly empowered that radical antisemitic movement.

–The Obama Administration has been passive about the Fatah-Hamas merger and has virtually never criticized or pressured the Palestinin Authority.

–By distancing himself from Israel (something that everyone in the world knows except about 60 percent of American Jews) he has encouraged Israel’s enemies to be bolder and bystanders to themselves move away from Israel.

–One of his worst actions has been to come close to worshipping Turkey’s Islamist regime despite its tremendous hostility toward Israel. Obama’s passivity has helped turn the Turkish-Israel alliance into something verging on cold war. Since the Turkish regime continues to be rewarded by Obama despite doing things like getting Israel barred from the NATO meeting and indicting Israeli officers over the Gaza flotilla confrontation, Ankara has no incentive to stop or reduce its enmity.

–In Syria he has supported the installation of an Islamist leadership for the opposition movement, posing a tremendous potential future danger for Israel.

–Regarding Iran, Obama was very slow to take up the battle against the nuclear weapons campaign. Despite the relatively high level of sanctions (for which Congress deserves a lot of the credit) one can well doubt his future determination to battle Tehran. He also failed to support the Iranian opposition.

–And by weakening American credibility and alliances, Obama has undermined the U.S. ability to protect its own interests which, in turn, hurts Israel’s security.

There’s a lot more and each of the factors above can be amplified with lots of examples and documentation. All of this far overwhelms the very short  “pro-Obama” list.

Did I mention that during a second term he won’t need to worry about fundraising or running for election again?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama, Barry Rubin