Take a good look at this fellow and his fashionable comb-over. He’s Alan Hart a British journalist, and author of the book “Arafat, Terrorist or Peacemaker?” One reviewer said that Hart’s Arafat was “a man of courage tempered by warmth and sensitivity”, which may give you an idea of which side of the question he comes down on. His latest book is a two-volume opus called “Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews”, and this time the title leaves no room for speculation about his point of view.
Archive for the ‘My favorite posts’ Category
Alan Hart, a case-study in obsessive Israel-hatred
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007The Pope and the Holocaust
Sunday, April 15th, 2007The Vatican’s ambassador to Israel has reversed an earlier decision, and will visit Yad Vashem.
Monsignor Antonio Franco, announced last week that he would skip Sunday night’s event because of a caption at the [Yad Vashem Holocaust] museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII.
The caption next to the picture of Pius in Yad Vashem’s museum reads, “Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest,†refusing to sign a 1942 allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews…
Officials from Yad Vashem, the Vatican’s Embassy and the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that Sunday that Franco had reversed his decision and would attend Sunday’s ceremony.
Franco told Ynet he merely wanted to draw attention to the Catholic Church’s stance regarding the picture of Pius, saying it was “only diplomacy.â€
According to him, there is evidence that the pope worked diligently to help save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. — YNet
Here is a story told to my wife by a survivor now living in Israel. This woman was not given to making things up and there’s no reason to doubt her story.
Molly’s parents managed to get her family from Germany to Italy by the beginning of the war when she was perhaps 10 or 11 years old. She was hidden in a convent in Rome near the Vatican with her sister and brother and several other children; only the Mother Superior knew that they were Jewish.
Molly remembers that the Mother Superior would take the children from time to time on “dry runs” through a long underground tunnel into another building; she was told that this was part of the Vatican and that this would be their escape route if their presence and identity were discovered by the Germans.
Did the Pope know? How many children were saved through similar arrangements? Who knows?
Paul Wolfowitz wins coveted award
Saturday, April 14th, 2007
The FresnoZionism award for the ‘guy we most wish wasn’t Jewish’ was hotly contested this year. With nominees like Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Justice Minister Haim Ramon, we were sure the prize (a jar of oxidized horseradish from last Pesach) would find a home in the Jewish state. But Israel has enough trouble without that horseradish, and we’re happy to announce that it is on its way to (we hope soon to be former) World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.
Showing a combination of arrogance, greed, stupidity, and plain tackiness that even outdoes last year’s winner Jack Abramoff, Wolfowitz negotiated a contract that would make a sports star blush when he joined the World Bank in 2005. Now he’s been caught arranging a new job for his girlfriend with a salary of nearly $200,000/yr.
The irony of Wolfowitz telling borrower countries that they have to clean up corruption while he feathers his own nest is striking. The girlfriend is said to be a former ‘gender consultant’, and while I would be the last to make jokes about exactly what that entails, I wonder if it’s worth $200,000.
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The Jews must not pay the price for the crimes of the Arab nations
Friday, April 13th, 2007Arab MK Azmi Bishara has returned to Israel. In an interview to Israeli-Arab radio Al-Shams, he said:
We must remember that we are the original owners of this land. They want us to act like we are guests in our land, and always prove to them that we are ‘okay’. We are not ‘okay’. We are the Palestinian Arabs, sons of this land, and we will do whatever is right to resist occupation and aggression.
There really isn’t anything else to say about Bishara. I suppose someone could say “he is talking about the West Bank”, but I don’t believe that, and I bet that Bishara would agree with me if I could ask him.
What he is saying is that the State of Israel is illegitimate and the land of Israel belongs to the Arabs. That’s fine, it’s the same point of view held by Mahmoud Abbas, Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Meshaal, Bashar al-Assad and many others. He is entitled to this point of view.
He is not entitled to hold it and be a member of the Knesset.
A Knesset member can hold very strong opinions about equal rights for Arabs and Jews and fair treatment for minorities in a democratic state. He cannot say that the state needs become an Arab state.
There was supposed to be a Palestinian state in historical Palestine; it became Jordan and is not ruled by Palestinians. This is not the Jews’ fault. Later (1947), there was supposed to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel and about the same size. It didn’t happen. This isn’t the Jews’ fault either. To turn a popular anti-Zionist argument around, Bishara shouldn’t expect the Jews to pay the price for the crimes of the Arab nations.
Zionism
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007The other day a friend of mine said “your blog is really interesting…but don’t you think calling it Fresno Zionism turns off a lot of possible readers?”
That’s the idea, of course. Not to turn off possible readers, that is, but to take ownership of the concept of Zionism from those who use it as a term of abuse.
