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My own ‘Holocaust experience’

Monday, May 11th, 2009

Last week, the Cornerstone Church in downtown Fresno presented a ‘Holocaust experience’, to try to convey the horror of the almost incomprehensible evil of that time to the uninformed.

I didn’t go, but some of those who did said it was effective, accurate and very disturbing.

It made me think a little about my own personal relationship to the Holocaust. Born in America in 1942, I was kept safe by several thousand miles and the armed forces of the USA. But there is a connection.

Here is a photo of my maternal grandmother, Milke (Mollie) Bondermann, with her siblings in Nemyriv, Ukraine around 1912, the year she emigrated to America.

Bondermann siblings, 1912

Bondermann siblings, 1912. Mollie is second from right.

Mollie was aged 16 or 17 in this picture. She already had a profession, listed as ‘dressmaker’ on the manifest of the SS Laconia which brought her to New York on November 4, 1912. One of her sisters also emigrated, settling in Canada. She looks remarkably like my daughter who is named after her, and the handsome elder brother standing next to her looks a bit like my son.

Now imagine that it is 1946. My family – with the exception of my father, who is still on his way home from naval service in the Pacific – is gathered around the radio (we will not have a TV for several years), listening to some kind of news program. I don’t understand what they are talking about, but even as a 4 year old, I know to keep my mouth shut at times like these. I hear the word “Nazis” a lot (my grandmother pronounces it “nat-sees”). The radio announcer says something, and she says, quietly, “mein Gott, mein Gott.”

The darkness of this memory is palpable more than 60 years later.

Although there is still a town of Nemyriv, the Jewish population of less than 10,000 was wiped out. Jews were hunted down and shot by German soldiers, Ukrainian paramilitaries and police. Less well-known than the gas chambers of Auschwitz, this has been called the “Holocaust by bullets”. Of the family in the photograph, only the two sisters who escaped to North America survived.

Nemyriv was already no stranger to murderous antisemitism. In 1649, Chmielnicki’s Cossacks are said to have killed 6000 Jews there in one day. My grandfather, who met and married Mollie in America, came from a tiny shtetl in the same region which – to borrow a phrase from Mr. Ahmadinejad – was simply wiped off the map by the Germans.

Today Mollie Bondermann’s  great-grandchildren and their children live in Israel, where Jews can be responsible for their own destiny.

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Ismail Khaldi and the nature of the conflict

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Ishmael Khalidi counter-demonstrates at 'Israel apartheid week'

Ismail Khaldi counter-demonstrates at Israel Apartheid Week

On Tuesday night I attended a talk at Fresno State by Ismail Khaldi, Deputy General Consul of Israel in San Francisco. Khaldi is Muslim, of Bedouin origin, a former shepherd who grew up in a tent, served in the IDF and the Border Patrol and earned an MA in International Relations at Tel Aviv University. You can read more about him here.

Khaldi talked mostly about his life and tried to avoid ‘politics’. Getting from shepherd to diplomat can’t be easy, but in addition to being a smart guy Khaldi has a quality — more rare than mere intelligence — of knowing what he wants and overcoming the obstacles in his path.

Local Palestinian activist Kamal Abu-Shamsieh asked him something like “how can you support an apartheid state in which your people have no rights?” And Khaldi responded by saying something like, “look, Israel isn’t perfect, there’s discrimination against minorities — as there is in the US — but Arab Israelis have full rights and it isn’t an apartheid state”.

Two things: first, can you imagine how much worse discrimination against Hispanics in the US would be if Mexico were controlled by a murderous terrorist gang backed by our worst international enemies and firing rockets across the border into our cities? Israel is in a similar situation, and some Israeli Arabs — including members of the Knesset — support Hamas or Hezbollah. Nevertheless, Arab Israelis do have full rights in Israel.

Second — and this is the main point I want to make in this article: Abu-Shamsieh and others want us to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a human rights issue, about the rights of both Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the territories and elsewhere. But this is really a peripheral concern.

The main dimension of the conflict is the fact that the majority of Palestinians support the effort — today financed and armed primarily by Iran, but it’s the same struggle that has been going on for close to a hundred years — to get the Jews out of the Middle East by violent ‘resistance’, even genocide (see the Hamas Covenant).

Framing the conflict as being about the rights of Arab Israelis or Palestinians completely misses the context: that the Palestinians, the Arab nations and Iran still don’t recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the Mideast and keep its destruction their top priority.

You can look at Khaldi as a token, a cynical attempt by Israel to pretend that Arabs can have rights in a Jewish state. Or you can see him as proof that the real issue isn’t ethnicity but rather support for an enlightened democratic state like Israel compared to racist, feudal Arab kingdoms and dictatorships.

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Our friends the media

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

A couple of things.

On Sunday the Fresno Bee published an op-ed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Thomas L. Friedman  (“Don’t try this at home“). It wasn’t the best thing Friedman ever wrote and it wasn’t the worst. But here is the illustration that went with it, by Mike Miner of the Chicago Tribune:

Tribune-McClatchy illustration from the Fresno Bee, Sunday February 8, 2009

Tribune-McClatchy illustration from the Fresno Bee, Sunday February 8, 2009

Illustrations tell a story, so what story does this one tell? That Israel imprisons Palestinians? That the occupied territories, or Gaza, are like concentration camps? Friedman’s article didn’t say anything like that. So what does this illustration illustrate except the prejudices of the editor that chose it? I asked Bee Editorial page editor Jim Boren, but he didn’t reply.

***

Honest Reporting has come out with their annual “Dishonest Reporting Awards” for 2008. And look who took home the gold for “Dishonest Reporter of the Year”, my favorite ‘activist’, Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth.

Lauren Booth shops in concentration-camp-like Gaza

Lauren Booth shops in concentration-camp-like Gaza

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The Two Hour Hate

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

Part of a description of the daily “two-minute hate” from George Orwell’s 1984:

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were – in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State….

In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen….In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic…

Do you have a sense of déja vu, as if you’ve recently experienced something similar? Probably you have, if you live in Fresno, where Amy Goodman’s radio program Democracy Now is heard every weekday morning for two hours on local station KFCF — rebroadcasting from KPFA in Berkeley — and the TV version is seen for an hour five days a week on KNXT, the TV station of the Catholic Diocese of Fresno.

Just for an almost-random example (h/t Charles Johnson, LGF),  the January 23 program featured an interview with the deranged linguist and extreme Israel-hater Noam Chomsky, today’s Jewish version of Julius Streicher. Asked about President Obama’s statement that “we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself”, he said:

[Obama] began by saying that Israel, like any democracy, has a right to defend itself. That’s true, but there’s a gap in the reasoning. It has a right to defend itself. It doesn’t follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. So we might agree, say, that, you know, the British army in the United States in the colonies in 1776 had a right to defend itself from the terror of George Washington’s armies, which was quite real, but it didn’t follow they had a right to defend themselves by force, because they had no right to be here. So, yes, they had a right to defend themselves, and they had a way to do it—namely, leave.

Interesting, I didn’t know Washington was firing rockets across the pond at innocent Brits living in Plymouth or Exeter. Too bad Chomsky wasn’t around in 1941; the decision to defend the US by force could have been avoided (we could have started by leaving Hawaii).

OK, what do you expect from Chomsky? But let’s look at how Democracy Now and Amy Goodman have covered the war during the past month:

  • January 27, 2009: Worse than an Earthquake: Peace Activist Kathy Kelly on the Destruction in Gaza
  • January 23, 2009: Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Stance on Gaza Crisis ‘Approximately the Bush Position’
  • January 22, 2009: Part II: Palestinian US College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Blocked Ambulances
  • January 22, 2009: Ex-Carter Admin Official: Israel Ignored Hamas Offer Days Before Attacking Gaza; Violated Ceasefire With Attacks, Blockade
  • January 21, 2009: Palestinian U.S. College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Bar Ambulances
  • January 16, 2009: Palestinian Astrophysicist in US Recounts How His 11-Year-Old Son Died When Israeli Warplanes Bombed His Family’s House
  • January 16, 2009: Bloody Israeli Assault on Gaza Enters Fourth Week, Palestinian Death Toll Tops 1,100
  • January 15, 2009: Israel Pounds Gaza: Shells Crowded Hospital, UN Compound and Building Housing Media Organizations
  • January 15, 2009: U.S. Rabbis Urge Obama to Push For Gaza Cease-Fire
  • January 14, 2009: Leading Israeli Scholar Avi Shlaim: Israel Committing ‘State Terror’ in Gaza Attack, Preventing Peace
  • January 14, 2009: White Phosphorous and Dense Inert Metal Explosives: Is Israel Using Banned and Experimental Munitions in Gaza?
  • January 13, 2009: Pro-Israel Supporters Praise Gaza Assault as Justified Despite Mounting Civilian Death Toll
  • January 13, 2009: ‘Catastrophically Misguided and Incomprehensible Policy’–Renowned Jewish Playwright Tony Kushner Speaks Out Against Israel’s Assault on Gaza
  • January 13, 2009: Gaza Suffers Most Intense Bombardment of 18-Day Israeli Assault
  • January 12, 2009: Kucinich Cites Arms Export and Control Act in Decision to Vote Against House Measure Supporting Israeli Offensive
  • January 12, 2009: Tens of Thousands Demonstrate Globally Against Israeli Actions, Jewish Women Among Those Leading Protests
  • January 12, 2009: Fmr. Clinton Special Counsel Lanny Davis vs. Israeli Professor Neve Gordon: A Debate on the Israeli Assault on Gaza
  • January 08, 2009: Former Amb. Martin Indyk vs. Author Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault on Gaza and the US Role in the Conflict
  • January 07, 2009: 40+ Killed in Israeli Strike on Gaza School Sheltering Refugees
  • January 06, 2009: Israeli F-16 Attack Kills Father of Palestinian Journalist; Israel Bombs UN School, Killing Three
  • January 05, 2009: A Debate on Israel’s Invasion of Gaza: UNRWA’s Christopher Gunness v. Israel Project’s Meagan Buren
  • January 05, 2009: US Blocks UN Security Council Vote Calling for Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza
  • January 05, 2009: Israeli Professor Under Hamas Rocket Fire, Neve Gordon Condemns Israeli Invasion of Gaza
  • January 05, 2009: Report from Gaza City: Palestinian Journalist Sameh Habeeb on Gaza Under Siege
  • December 31, 2008: Israeli Lawmaker and Conscientious Objector Nephew of Ex-PM Benjamin Netanyahu Denounce Israeli Attack on Gaza Strip
  • December 29, 2008: Israeli Attacks Kill Over 310 in Gaza in One of Israel’s Bloodiest Attacks on Palestinians Since 1948

Chomsky, Shlaim, Finkelstein, Kushner, Gordon — a rogue’s gallery of extreme left-wing anti-Zionist Jews, interspersed with atrocity stories and stacked ‘debates’. This program is probably the most listened-to source of anti-Israel propaganda in our area.

KFCF and KPFA are listener-supported stations. KNXT is of course funded by the Diocese of Fresno.   I urge everyone to not contribute to KFCF or KPFA; and to express your opinion about KNXT (write to the Bishop, The Most Reverend John T. Steinbock, 1550 N. Fresno Street, Fresno, CA 93703-3788).

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Local Hamasniks, explosive Qurans, and more

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Everyone who thinks that the philosophy and methods of Hamas are confined to the Gaza strip and cannot come to America should look carefully at the video report of the violent San Francisco anti-Israel demonstration last Friday.

Here in Fresno, local Muslims from several mosques have joined forces with Peace Fresno — how an organization with ‘peace’ in its name can support Hamas is far from clear — to demonstrate against the Israeli “genocide” that they perceive in Gaza. Here is a promotional video of the event thoughtfully provided by some local ‘peace’ lovers. Although the Fresno happening was non-violent, the chants and anti-Israel lies were the same.

It is significant that — for what I believe to be the first time — the Imam of Fresno’s Islamic Cultural Center [ICCF], Seyed Ali Ghazvini, spoke at an anti-Israel demonstration (he is featured in the video).

This Friday, there will be another demonstration and this time there will be a significant counter-demonstration: Shaw & Blackstone at 4 PM.

Since even Peace Fresno can’t afford to admit that they support the racist, genocidal, misogynist, homophobic and antisemitic Hamas, they have to concentrate on the “Israeli war crimes of targeting mosques, schools, clinics, medics and innocent civilians in Gaza Strip” (from the ICCF website).

Let’s look at some of these ‘crimes’. 

Here’s an IDF video of a mosque being attacked. Oops, see those secondary explosions? Must have been full of, er, explosive Qurans.

Ah yes, the criminal IDF bombs schools, too.  Here is the same UN school where Palestinians claim that 40 civilians were killed by Israeli fire, showing terrorists firing mortar shells right next to the door (h/t: Yid with Lid). This particular video is from 2007, but the IDF says it was returning fire to mortars from here. And here are some weapons found in another school today.

Did you know that not only were civilians killed but also the Hamas mortar team? And that the school was booby-trapped, with many of the dead being caused by secondary explosions?

Maybe the war crimes that we are talking about are being committed by Hamas, which has consistently used Gaza civilians as human shields for its activities?

Mads GilbertPossibly we should also look at the numbers of civilian casualties that the media are quoting. A whole lot of’ ‘information’ comes from this guy:

Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor (note the attractive Norwegian scarf he is displaying) who is more a Doctor of Bullshit than a MD. An extreme Marxist and pro-Palestinian activist, he is used as a source by the NY Times, the BBC, CNN, etc. CAMERA (see link above) wonders “how he has the time to provide medical help, never mind ‘doing surgery around the clock’ as he claims”.

Palestinians have a long history of faking Israeli ‘atrocities’. Richard Landes has documented it exhaustively, and continues to do so. I suggest that we treat Palestinian reports, including photos, of civilian casualties very carefully.

Hamas wants to distract your attention from its war crimes by accusing Israel. It’s a lie, whether it comes directly from them or their supporters in Fresno.

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