Newsletter No 313

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                   February 2007
                                                                                   No 313

Israel rewrites history with impunity, but Iran is vilified for discussing it

by Greg Felton, Thursday January 18 2007

"The Knesset Education Committee decided by a majority vote that the Green Line no longer exists. Just like that, the Zionist Occupation Government made an arbitrary decision to erase an armistice line from history, much as it has been erasing Palestine since 1947."

Since the end of the 1967 War, the Green Line has demarcated Occupied Palestine (Israel) from the Occupied Territories that Israel illegally seized during the war. It was not a formal border, but rather an armistice line behind which Israel was ordered to withdraw all military force.

Despite the unequivocal voice of UN Security Council Resolution 242 in this matter, Israel has maintained its illegal occupation. To make matters worse, all subsequent attempts to negotiate a peace with Palestine, once Israel was forced to recognize the refugees in its midst, has been predicated on using the Green Line as a basis for a permanent settlement.

Of course, Israel has never negotiated in good faith, because it has no other objective but to annex Palestinian land piece by piece and make life as miserable an inhumane as possible for the Arabs. Only capitulationists, deluded pacifists and Arab quislings like Mahmoud Abbas still buy into the notion that a compromise is possible.

The erection of the Apartheid Wall that swallowed up whole swaths of the West Bank should have been enough to convince the world of Israel’s true nature. Yet, the Green Line and the delusion of a two-state solution that it nurtured persisted, until now.

The Knesset Education Committee has decided by a majority vote that the Green Line no longer exists. Just like that, the Zionist Occupation Government made an arbitrary decision to erase an armistice line from history, much as it has been erasing Palestine since 1947.

The Green Line was an uncomfortable proof of Palestine’s existence, since if nothing else it demarcated Israel from non-Israeli territory. Now, Israel has rewritten history again in the spirit of David ben Gurion who said of the Arabs in 1948: “The old will die and the young will forget.”

The cult of the virtuous democratic oasis in the Middle East can persist only if it keeps buried the history of the Palestinians, the history of UN resolutions condemning Israeli atrocities, and even the words of zionists themselves, who have a habit of speaking a little too honestly about the Nazi-inspired genocide perpetrated in the name of the “Jewish State.”

Despite the erasure of the Green Line, Israel’s history is getting a lot more attention, much to the consternation of The Lobby. President Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine—Peace not Apartheid has placed the issue of Israel’s faux-democracy and mistreatment of Arabs prominently in the public domain. What used to be unspeakable is now openly debated. Even the well-orchestrated smear campaign by intellectual knee-cappers like Alan Dershowitz cannot dent the enlightening effect of the book. The same is true of the seminal article “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which openly attacked the pernicious influence of The Lobby on U.S. foreign policy.

If there is one aspect of history that Israel must keep covered up at all costs it is the Nazi holocaust and the opportunistic way zionists blackmailed the world into sanctioning the creation of Israel. Consequently, The Lobby and Israel outdid themselves in fraud, disinformation, and hatemongering to denounce the Conference on the Nazi holocaust held recently in Tehran.

Leaving aside the specifics of what did or did not happen, or how many Jews were killed and by what means, the overreaction to scholarly historical investigation said more about the tenuous credibility of the zionist version of reality than anything the conference participants could have said.

So far as the Lobby and Israel are concerned, the holocaust is to be accepted, not questioned; believed, not understood. No doubt is permitted. Investigation is tantamount to “Holocaust Denial.” Elie Wiesel, one of the holocaust industry’s most well-known apologists absurdly declared once that the holocaust stood outside of history. By saying this, he placed the holocaust in the realm of religious myth, alongside the Resurrection of Jesus, and the story of Adam and Eve. In short, he said the holocaust did not happen, because if it did, then it exists within history and is researchable.

But to research the holocaust in exhaustive detail would lead to the revelation of exaggerated death figures, and zionist collusion with the Nazis. Something is terribly amiss here: Israel dogmatically maintains the holocaust to be a fact, yet it denies the right of people to investigate it. Michael Rivero of www.whatreallyhappened.com summarizes the dilemma:

“What begs examination is whether the inmates at those camps died of the typhus epidemics that swept across Germany towards the end of the war, or whether there was a deliberate program of extermination.

“The modern nation of Israel owes its very existence to the latter version of the story. Here you had the entire world sacrificing much blood and treasure on the principle that one nation did not have the right to simply grab the land belonging to another people, and you had the founders of Israel seeking the world’s permission to do exactly that in Palestine. Without a propaganda device to persuade the world that Israel be allowed to do to Palestine what Germany could not be allowed to do to France, Israel would not exist.”

The need to repress this history has led to ever more spectacular displays of insanity and desperation. Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former Minister of Justice and Israel’s chief voice in Cabinet, wrote a frothing tirade in Ha’aretz demanding that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be charged with inciting genocide. In fact, Cotler conspicuously repeats “incite or “incitement” 10 times, a fact that demonstrates he is more interested in regurgitating buzzwords than in writing informed commentary.

Here again, we have a strange disjuncture between word and deed. Israel commits mass murder with impunity against Palestine and Lebanon. and Cotler does not consider Israel’s actions to be genocidal. Ahmadinejad suggests that the Zionist state should pass into history—he never said it should be wiped of the map—and Cotler can barely contain himself.

Even if Ahmadinejad had said those words, so what? Words don’t commit genocide—zionists who use bulldozers, bullets and cluster bombs commit genocide.

Cotler, Wiesel and Dershowitz, have even banded together to advocate that Iran be expelled from the UN, a delicious spectacle of hypocrisy, since Israel is the only entity that it is violation of its terms of admittance. The object of the three stooges’ paranoia though, is not Iran or even Ahmadinejad, but history. Like the ugly, grotesque visage in the picture of Dorian Grey, the Nazi holocaust must be locked away out of public view, lest anyone get too close a look.

Former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev famously remarked that historians were dangerous people because they upset everything. For Israel, everyone who thinks for himself is a dangerous person, be he Arab or Jew.

In a scene that would not have been out of place in Nazi Germany a Jewish family was evicted from a Brooklyn hotel because of who they were.

Austrian Rabbi Moshe Aryeh Friedman, who belongs to the ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta and who attended the conference in Tehran, was forced out by zionist Jews, simply because they didn’t want him in the building. “Anti-Semitism,” anyone?!

“As one who has conducted research on the [holocaust] for years, I regrettably notice how Judaism and fame of our ancestors are abused through distortion of the historical event,” he told the Islamic Republic News Agency. “ We should focus on the reality that the behind-the-curtain individuals and financial providers as well as perpetrators of some of the World War II crimes had been Zionists themselves.”

We should not vilify Iran and the Neturei Karta, but rather honour them for daring to be dangerous people.

Tim Fischer reveals how a future Australian MP sparked the political crisis 50 years ago that brought down a British prime minister. Fischer is a former deputy prime minister, trade minister & leader of the National Party, & an author.

It was a dramatic and powerful point of order on the floor of Britain’s House of Commons. Arguably it was as powerful a point of order as ever put down in the Westminster system, certainly one of the most contentious. The date: November 1, 1956. The issue: the Suez crisis.

As often happens, the focus of an unfolding crisis was on the floor of the Commons with the lord privy seal, Rab Butler, and many others in intense debate into the evening of November 1. The debate on Egypt and Israel was reaching its climax, a vote of confidence in the Conservative government, when the member for The Wrekin from 19555 to 1966, Bill Yates, raised what may aptly be described as a wrecking point of order.

Now a retired beekeeper at Tallangatta in Victoria, Yates had served in the Foreign Office in the Middle East, working in military intelligence in the Suez Canal Zone, and had lived briefly in Lebanon.

The Commons Hansard of November 1, column 1716, reveals all: Mr W. Yates: “On a point of order, I am a young member of the house and I desire to have your advice, Mr Speaker. I have been to France and I have come to the conclusion that Her Majesty’s government has been involved in international conspiracy.”

Mr Speaker: That is not a point of order.”

Honourable members: “Let him speak.”

There was uproar on the floor of the house; in a sense all hell broke loose and Butler sought to calm the waters by closing the debate on the crisis. The government survived the division but, as the young first-term backbencher, Yates, walked out into the lobby, he came upon the prime minister, Anthony Eden, who was leaning on a mantelpiece.

Yates said to the prime minister: “I have been to France and I have come to the conclusion that you are involved in international conspiracy.” An exhausted-looking Eden replied in perfect French, Perfide Albion.” An exact translation is “treacherous Britain”. The question is, was it an admission by Eden or an attempt to make light of a tense situation as the joint armed forces of the three ostensibly conspirator nations raced towards the Suez Canal.

The point of order revealed the tip of an iceberg: the unholy secret alliance of Britain, France and Israel double-crossing the US and Commonwealth countries such as Canada. It led to Australia’s shortest sea-route to Europe, through the Suez Canal, being cut off for several critical months. Technically, it was not a point of order at all, as the speaker pointed out in vain, but the damage was already done. The speaker was Shakes Morrison, a Conservative, who went on to become Lord Dunrossil, governor-general of Australia.

The Suez point of order on conspiracy created the beginning of the end of the Conservative prime minister, Eden, who within 100 days had resigned from 10 Downing St.

Australia’s foreign minister of the day, Richard Casey, was visiting Westminster and wrote in his diary: “There was turmoil throughout the parliament and ministers and members on both sides were in consternation. The scenes in the House of Commons have been amazing and beyond anything I have ever witnessed. I am told only the most intense whipping has kept the Conservative Party intact.”

Curious enough, Casey completed an Aussie troika as Casey and Morrison were both to become Australian governors-general, while Yates subsequently became a member of the Australian House of Representatives. Yates went on to vote with the Conservative government on this particular occasion but days later abstained on related motions.

After the point of order and the close debate, as Yates left the Commons chamber late that night Gilbert Longdon, a senior Conservative, leaned across and said just four words to the new backbencher. “You are absolutely right.”

What Yates had done was to let the cat out of the bag with regard to a secret agreement between Britain, France and Israel known as the Sevres agreement or protocol. It had been signed at the Villa Bonnier near Paris, and the only copy remaining is held by the Israeli Government as Eden ordered the British copy to be destroyed and the French copy, held by foreign secretary Christian Pineau, went missing.

As Yates has laid out in an excellent thesis, The Post-War Middle East and the Kennedy-Nasser Letters, for the history department at the University of Melbourne, the plan was a simple one under the Sevres conspiracy: “Israel, having crossed the Egyptian frontiers, was to advance to the Suez Canal, and at that moment Britain and France would issue an ultimatum declaring that the safety of the canal was at stake and that all military force, both Israel and Egyptian, should withdraw 10 miles [16km] away from the canal. Britain and France would take over the canal once again to ensure the safety of international shipping. Speed was essential and attached to the ultimatum to both Israel and Egypt there was going to be a condition that they must reply within 12 hours.” History records that after president Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt announced the Suez Canal takeover on July 16, 1956, there had been a huge reaction from Britain and France but a more level-headed reaction from the US. The latter was led by a furious US secretary of state John Foster Dulles and president Dwight Eisenhower, who was up for re-election.

In the aftermath of the unilateral action to take over the ownership and operation of the canal from the Suez Canal Company, headquartered in Paris, the US moved through the UN to devise the Suez Canal Users Association concept and enter into discussions with Egypt to find a peaceful way forward. The US Republican administration was opposed to the sue of force and deeply concerned at the prospect that the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War, might enter the conflict.

For his part Eden, aided and abetted by the French, carried perhaps two conflicting chips on his shoulders. He was, after all, the Conservative successor to the great warrior Winston Churchill and wanted to show he was up to the task. For three long periods he had been foreign secretary of foreign minister of Britain most notably as a key member of the war cabinet during World War II. Conversely, Eden had lost two brothers and one son in world wars, a big personal loss, and so initially he was keen on a diplomatic solution, but soon he drifted towards sneaky military intervention to recapture the canal: fading empires did those sorts of things, with the successful Falklands venture to come.

To create distraction and some cover for the real objective, Eden invited the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, to go to Cairo in August and September 1956 to try to negotiate and open discussions with Nasser, but these talks quickly collapsed as Nasser felt under threat and saw what was coming.

Perhaps unfairly, the mission was dubbed a misadventure.

History records that on October 28, 1956, Israeli armed forces invaded Egypt, travelling quickly to within 16km of the Suez Canal. Britain and France immediately issued a 12-hour ultimatum, which an angry Dulles described as “a crude and brutal as anything I have ever seen:, adding that it was utterly unacceptable.

As the debate unfolded on the floor of the House of Commons, RAF planes started attacking Egyptian airfields and military installations and the conflict had begun, namely the move by Britain, France and Israel to recapture the canal from Egypt. Eisenhower did not allow the presidential election to distract him and the US administration took the matter to the UN.

Although Eden and his cabinet had voted for military action and had hoped to seize the Suez Canal quickly and present a fait accompli, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire.

The combined British and French invasion fleet, after a short burst of action lasting six days and making limited progress, was ordered by a crushed Eden to cease hostilities.

Years later British colonel Tubby Butler, who led his parachute unit down the West Bank of the canal, stated that they needed just 24 hours more and the canal would have been recaptured. It is now known that the British cabinet meeting on November 6, which ordered the ceasefire that led to total withdrawal by December 22, 1956, was also told there would be no needed support for British sterling through the International Monetary Fund or directly from the US unless the ceasefire or cave-in was ordered. So powerful forces were pointing a financial pistol at the English pound and the financial stability of Britain, threatening a devastating currency collapse.

At about the same time, the US Sixth Fleet intervened, in part to extract US nationals, but effectively to block or impede the British and French invasion force.

Meanwhile, Egypt had been busy blocking the canal by blowing up the Ismailia railway bridge at Kantara, an unforgivable action, dare I say. They also took the opportunity to blow up a number of oil pipelines and sank some ships in the canal.

It was many months before Egypt reopened the canal.

As part of the equation, Israel was obliged to withdraw its armed forces from Egypt, but the biggest Middle East ramification was the launch of what many, including Yates, describe as the pan-Arab revolution. It continues in many forms to this day.

It has been suggested the secret Sevres protocol not only was a double-cross of the US but directly led the US effectively to side with Egypt against the forces of the Anglo-Franco empires and one of their creations – under the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and later the UN – the independent state of Israel.

For a period after the Suez crisis, the re-elected Eisenhower and the US were much admired in the Arab world, and Nasser was an Arab superhero. Eisenhower was extremely popular among the Arab states and the US was regarded as having taken the correct stand on the Suez Canal in favour of Egypt and the Arab world and against France and Britain.

Sadly, the US did not use this leverage to sort the Palestinian question at that time.

It was a grand opportunity missed, as the US alone was able to insist that Palestine be given recognition as a nation-state, comprising the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. This would have greatly helped peace in the Middle East.

Had Dulles in 1956 (or for that matter Tony Blair in 2006) written the missing letter balancing Balfour, then peace might have more chance in the Middle East.

It would be easy to draft, along the pattern of the short 1917 letter by then British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour that led to Israel’s creation and that read:

“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The new letter could read: The cabinet has decided today to recognise Palestine as a nation-state forthwith, as comprising all of the Gaza, East Jerusalem sensibly defined and the available areas of the West Bank: with a commitment to help negotiate further. In so doing nothing should arise injurious to bona fide minority residents or refugees.”

It has been suggested in some quarters that the Yates point of order was subject to a D-notice preventing media publication, and no reference to it is to be found in the media of 50 years ago, lending credence to the possibility the British government ordered suppression of the contents of the point of order and absolute suppression of the Sevres protocol to which the point of order referred.

What happened to Yates in the aftermath? Alas, he was not tog ain ministerial rank and subsequently departed Britain for Australia, where he was elected and served as the Liberal member for the Melbourne seat of Holt in the Australian Parliament from 1975 to 1980. Today he’s as punchy as ever, as tenacious as ever, and quietly proud that his busy, timely working visits to Egypt and France in October 1956 led to the point of order that made history.

As Churchill might have observed, never in the history of Westminster had so much consternation been caused for so many by just one extraordinary point of order, which was not even a true point of order but contributed mightily to the political destruction of one prime minister.

__________

FT comment: Tim Fischer is also a great friend of the Iranian people who still hold him in fond memory, something his successor, former Trade Minister Mark Vale, did not achieve. By removing Vale from the post Australia has lost direct political contact with the Iranians, thereby making it easier for the Howard government to move against Iran.

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Anti-Jew site ‘defying court’. Legal threat over internet material

Jessica Leo, Sunday Mail, December 3 2006

A RACE-HATE website operating from Adelaide had sparked a furious reaction from Australia’s top Jewish body. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry is considering further legal action against Dr Fredrick Töben, 62, from Wattle Park, who runs the Adelaide Institute website.

Dr Töben was the subject of a Federal Court directive in 2002 preventing the publication of material that vilifies Jews. Despite the court ordering him to remove such material from his website, anti-Jewish articles are still accessible from the site.

The Executive Council of the Australian Jewry says the statements made on the website contravene the Racial Discrimination Act. Council past president, Jeremy Jones, says the organization is now considering legal action. The move follows a national report finding that physical attacks against Jews have reached a record high. The report, released by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, identifies 156 physical attacks against Jews in the year to the end of September. The data, which has been collected on a national level since 1989, chronicled other attacks including arson, threats – via posters, leaflets, email, telephone or sms – and vandalism.

In the 12-month period, there were 442 attacks. Dr Töben’s website was also flagged in the report. “It is an ongoing concern and we are actively considering all options open to us,” Mr Jones said. The 2002 ruling found that the website had published material which implied some Jews had exaggerated Jewish deaths in World War II for financial gains.

While Dr Töben has since published a disclaimer on his website outlining the court-imposed restrictions, Mr Jones says the website’s content is still an issue.

“There has been quite a lot of anti-Jewish material published 0on that site,” he said. “Not exactly the same wording but the same kind of material.” The website contains links to an array of anti-Semitic material including:

ARTICLES which question whether the Holocaust actually occurred.

CLAIMS that the death toll from the Holocaust has been exaggerated.

LINKS to other website blaming Jews for some of the biggest crimes in the past century, including the 1999 Columbine High School massacre where 12 students were killed, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 people and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“The internet gives everybody a megaphone and a potential international audience,” Mr Jones said. “And if one person – who would otherwise have had no reason to dislike another human being – forms negative opinions because of something put on a website, the racist might be quite happy but all the rest of us have reason to be concerned,” he said.

It is understood Dr Töben is overseas and he could not be reached for comment.