Newsletter No 406

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                                                  September 2008
                                                                    No 406

How the Jewish Holocaust Lies are instrumentalized to justify a possible attack on Iran

ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months — and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war — either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb.

It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike, or that both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate. We know what would ensue: a traumatic destabilization of the Middle East with resounding political and military consequences around the globe, serious injury to the West’s oil supply and radioactive pollution of the earth’s atmosphere and water.

But should Israel’s conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain, given Russia’s and China’s continued recalcitrance and Western Europe’s (and America’s) ambivalence in behavior, if not in rhetoric. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the “point of no return” in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years.

Which leaves the world with only one option if it wishes to halt Iran’s march toward nuclear weaponry: the military option, meaning an aerial assault by either the United States or Israel. Clearly, America has the conventional military capacity to do the job, which would involve a protracted air assault against Iran’s air defenses followed by strikes on the nuclear sites themselves. But, as a result of the Iraq imbroglio, and what is rapidly turning into the Afghan imbroglio, the American public has little enthusiasm for wars in the Islamic lands. This curtails the White House’s ability to begin yet another major military campaign in pursuit of a goal that is not seen as a vital national interest by many Americans.

Which leaves only Israel — the country threatened almost daily with destruction by Iran’s leaders. Thus the recent reports about Israeli plans and preparations to attack Iran (the period from Nov. 5 to Jan. 19 seems the best bet, as it gives the West half a year to try the diplomatic route but ensures that Israel will have support from a lame-duck White House).

The problem is that Israel’s military capacities are far smaller than America’s and, given the distances involved, the fact that the Iranian sites are widely dispersed and underground, and Israel’s inadequate intelligence, it is unlikely that the Israeli conventional forces, even if allowed the use of Jordanian and Iraqi airspace (and perhaps, pending American approval, even Iraqi air strips) can destroy or perhaps significantly delay the Iranian nuclear project.

Nonetheless, Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake — and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum — will certainly make the effort. Israel’s leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel’s destruction; Iran will not be allowed to get the bomb.

The best outcome will be that an Israeli conventional strike, whether failed or not — and, given the Tehran regime’s totalitarian grip, it may not be immediately clear how much damage the Israeli assault has caused — would persuade the Iranians to halt their nuclear program, or at least persuade the Western powers to significantly increase the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.

But the more likely result is that the international community will continue to do nothing effective and that Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel’s cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish — and possibly American — targets worldwide (though the Iranians may at the last moment be wary of provoking American military involvement).

Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best — meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal.

Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards.

Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland. Some Iranians may believe that this is a worthwhile gamble if the prospect is Israel’s demise. But most Iranians probably don’t.

Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University, is the author, most recently, of “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/opinion/18morris.html

“Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Barring this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”

Morris is a frequent lecturer and consultant to the Israeli political and military establishment and has unique access to Israeli strategic military planners. Morris’ advocacy and public support of the massive, brutal expulsion of all Palestinians is on public record. Yet his genocidal views have not precluded his receiving numerous academic awards. His writings and views are published in Israel’s leading newspapers and journals. Morris’ views are not the idle ranting of a marginal psychopath, as witnessed by the recent publication of his latest op-ed article in the New York Times.

What does the publication by the New York Times of an article, which calls for the nuclear incineration of 70 million Iranians and the contamination of the better part of a billion people in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, tell us about US politics and culture? For it is the NYT, which informs the ‘educated classes’ in the US, its Sunday supplements, literary and editorial pages and which serves as the ‘moral conscience’ of important sectors of the cultural, economic and political elite.

The New York Times provides a certain respectability to mass murder, which Morris’ views otherwise would not possess if say, they were published in the neo-conservative weeklies or monthlies. The fact that the NYT considers the prospect of an Israeli mass extermination of millions of Iranians part of the policy debate in the Middle East reveals the degree to which Zionofascism has infected the ‘higher’ cultural and journalist circles of the United States. Truth to say, this is the logical outgrowth of the Times public endorsement of Israel’s economic blockade to starve 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza; the Times’ cover-up of Israeli-Zionist-AIPAC influence in launching the US invasion of Iraq leading to over one million murdered Iraqi citizens.

The Times sets the tone for the entire New York cultural scene, which privileges Israeli interests, to the point of assimilating into the US political discourse not only its routine violations of international law, but its threats, indeed promises, to scorch vast areas of the earth in pursuit of its regional supremacy. The willingness of the NYT to publish an Israeli genocide-ethnocide advocate tells us about the strength of the ties between a purportedly ‘liberal establishment’ pro-Israel publication and the totalitarian Israeli right: It is as if to say that for the liberal pro-Israel establishment, the nonJewish Nazis are off limits, but the views and policies of Judeo-fascists need careful consideration and possible implementation.

Morris’ New York Times ‘nuclear-extermination’ article did not provoke any opposition from the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) because, in its daily information bulletin, Daily Alert, it has frequently published articles by Israeli and US Zionists advocating an Israeli and/or US nuclear attack on Iran. In other words, Morris’ totalitarian views are part of the cultural matrix deeply embedded in the Zionist organizational networks and its extensive ‘reach’ in US cultural and political circles. What the Times did in publishing Morris’ lunacy has taken genocidal discourse out of the limited circulation of Zionist influentials and into the mainstream of millions of American readers.

Apart from a handful of writers (Gentile and Jewish) publishing in marginal web sites, there was no political or moral condemnation from the entire literary, political and journalistic world of this affront to our humanity. No attempt was made to link Morris’ totalitarian genocidal policies to Israel’s public official threats and preparations for nuclear war. There is no anti-nuclear campaign led by our most influential public intellectuals to repudiate the state (Israel) and its public intellectuals who prepare a nuclear war with the potential to exterminate more than ten times the number of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis.

A nuclear incineration of the nation of Iran is the Israeli counterpart of Hitler’s gas chambers and ovens writ large. Extermination is the last stage of Zionism: Informed by the doctrine of rule the Middle East or ruin the air and land of the world. That is the explicit message of Benny Morris (and his official Israeli sponsors), who like Hitler, issues ultimatums to the Iranians, ‘surrender or be destroyed’ and who threatens the US, join us in bombing Iran or face a world ecological and economic catastrophe.

That Morris is utterly, starkly and clinically insane is beyond question. That the New York Times in publishing his genocidal ravings provides new signs of how power and wealth has contributed to the degeneration of Jewish intellectual and cultural life in the US. To comprehend the dimensions of this decay we need only compare the brilliant tragic-romantic German-Jewish writer, Walter Benjamin, desperately fleeing the advance of totalitarian Nazi terror to the Israeli-Jewish writer, Benny Morris’ criminal advocacy of Zionist nuclear terror published in the New York Times.

The question of Zionist power in America is not merely a question of a ‘lobby’ influencing Congressional and White House decisions concerning foreign aid to Israel. What is at stake today are the related questions of the advocacy of a nuclear war in which 70 million Iranians face extermination and the complicity of the US mass media in providing a platform, nay a certain political respectability for mass murder and global contamination. Unlike the Nazi past, we cannot claim, as the good Germans did, that ‘we did not know’ or ‘we weren’t notified’, because it was written by an eminent Israeli academic and was published in the New York Times.

THE FLAGRANT VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW BY THE ZIONIST APARTHEID REGIME OF ISRAEL REGARDING THE APARTHEID WALL IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE CONTINUES
by Benjamin Merhav

More than 4 years ago, on 9 July 2004, at the request of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an AdvisoryOpinion on the legal consequences of Israel's construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Court made clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal.

'The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, despite intense pressure from Israel, the US and EU Governments, confirms what Palestinians and the world have known since the beginning of its planning and construction - THE WALL IS ILLEGAL!

Citing the Right to Self Determination, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, relevant human rights and humanitarian law, as well as the Rights to Freedom of Movement, Work, Education, Health, Food and Water, Religion and the Right of the Child, the ICJ voted 14-1 that 'construction of the wall and its associated regime are contrary to international law' that Israel must immediately cease construction of the Wall in all areas, dismantle parts already build and repeal any legislation or regulation relating to the Wall and that Israel must make reparations for damages caused by construction of the Wall.

The ICJ reiterates the illegality of Israeli settlements and their relationship to the Wall's path, referring to the Wall's unilateral demarcation of a new border in the West Bank, seizure and destruction of property, the effective annexation of occupied lands and settlements and the demographic changes within Palestine as a result of the Wall's construction. In an important assertion, the Court fully disregards the relevance of the Israeli position that the Wall is for 'security' or 'self defense.'

In the introduction to its website the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign organisation states as follows:

The Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign is a coalition of Palestinian non governmental organizations and popular committees that mobilize and coordinate efforts on local, national and international levels. These efforts are focused upon stopping and dismantling the Apartheid Wall, and resisting Israeli occupation and colonization.

A call for a coordinated, popular, and grassroots effort to tear down the Wall came out of Jerusalem on the 2nd of October 2002, from the office of the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON). From this moment the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign was born. The Campaign initiated its work on three levels: acting as the voice of communities locally; mobilization and coordination nationally; and additionally as part of the global struggle against colonization, war and racism.'

The following current news items are reported by the website. The first is about the murder of a Palestinian young boy by the the zionist occupation army in the village of Ni'lin. The second reports the zionist 'legalisation' of the wall and the land robbery near the Palestinian village of Jayyus. The third reports the continuation of Palestinian resistance to the wall.

Latest News, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, July 29th, 2008

At 5 pm today, the Occupation forces in Ni'lin shot Ahmad Husam Yousef Mousa, a 12-year-old boy from the village.
After the demonstration had finished, Ahmad was sitting under a tree when alive bullet pierced his head. The boy died immediately. His funeral will be held tomorrow morning. The village of Ni'lin has been holding continuous protests against the Wall for over 80 days with the support of national and international activists.

The murder of Ahmad Mousa today comes after a series of other oppressive tactics by the Occupation forces, including an imposed 5 day complete siege and curfew on the village from July 4 to July 9 2008. These are seen as attemptsto repress the mobilization of the people fighting against the construction of the Wall; the Wall that, upon completion, will isolatethe village of Ni'lin from their lands and livelihoods.

The murder of the child follows a clear pattern the Occupation has established, in which they have killed youth in other villages in the Ramallah district where people were staging ever more powerful demonstrations and protests against the Apartheid Wall in defense of their lands and futures. On July 8, 2005 they killed 15 year old Mahyoub Assi in Beit Liqiya. On May 14, 2005 Jamal Jaber, 15 years old,and Uday Mofeed, 14, were murdered in the same village, and on April19, 2004 Diya', 24 years old.

A change in the route of the Apartheid Wall near Jayyus sanctions the land confiscation

Latest News, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, July 28th, 2008

After a five-year battle against the Apartheid Wall, the Occupation courts presented the villagers in Jayyous with a decision that de facto sanctions both the Wall and the settlement expansion that it secures.

The Israeli Occupation Authorities agreed to change the route of the Apartheid Wall near Jayyus village to the north of Qalqiliya, by replacing a 2.4-kilometer stretch with 4.9 kilometers of Wall closer to the Green Line (approximately 4 kilometers inside the West Bank).

The change in the route of the Apartheid Wall will return 2,609 dunums (out of almost 9,000 dunums) of agricultural land to its Palestinian owners, while 5,585 dunums will be confiscated once and for all and will be used for settlement expansion plans. A further 277 dunums of land will be razed for the new path of the Wall. Farmers will be completely cut off from their lands that are on the other side of the Wall as the gates in this section of the Wall will be completely closed.

The settlement of Zufim is slated to swallow much of the annexed land together with an industrial zone the Occupation will build on the agricultural lands of Jayyous. The construction of infrastructure for the new part of the settlement called 'North Zufim' has already begun. Construction of an electricity network has started and the creation of housing units is imminent.

Once again the Occupation promotes acourt decision as a concession that presumably is to 'legalize' the Wall. Yet, it simply seals the farmers' fate of dispossession. The Wallis not less illegal and no less a tool of colonization and settlement expansion; furthermore, Palestinians do not fight to re-route the Wall but to tear it down.
This land grab is only the most recent in along history of colonization Jayyous has faced. After 1948, 'Ra'anana' was built on part of the village's land. Later on, Zufim settlement was built on the land that remained. Using the Wall, Occupation forces have until now isolated some 70% of Jayyous' farmland and six out of Jayyous' seven artesian wells. They have uprooted over 6,000 olive trees. 85% of the people in the village were farmers working in their fields or tending cattle who are now, for the major part, unemployed.

This map drawn up by the Occupation authorities was handed over to the people in Jayyous. The pink line shows the current path of the Wall; the blue and red line the path of the Wall approved yesterday; the yellow line a proposal that has been discarDed. The green line at the bottom marks a proposed change of the Wall's path that is still under discussion in the Occupation courts. The blue areas mark Zufim settlement and its expansion areas, Zufim north and the planned industrial zone to the east.

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Al Ma'sra: Summer camps join the struggle against the Wall

Latest News, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, July 25th, 2008

Young people attending summer camps in areas surrounding al-Ma'sra today joined the village for their weekly demonstration against the Apartheid Wall.

Over 200 people gathered in al-Ma'sra before marching to wards the area where village land is being destroyed to make way for construction of the Wall. As they reached the site of construction, they were confronted by occupation forces. However, facing down the soldiers the young people began pushing and pulling at the fence, and the Occupation forces were unable to push them back.

Many of the young people involved in today's demonstrations are too young to remember the days before the Intifada, and have grown up with continuous siege, checkpoints, invasions and the destruction of their family lands for the Wall.

However, the crimes of the occupation will never become normal or acceptable to the Palestinian people, and the new generation will not surrender to the occupation's creation of facts on the ground; the tactics of resistance will develop with each new generation.

Germany has replaced Christianity with a pernicious cult: “Holocaust religion.” In 1994, the parliament of the defunct “Bundesrepublik Deutschland” (BRD) - the post re-unification Federal Republic of Germany - treasonously mandated imposed Zionist legislation making it a criminal offense to deny or even play down the so-called “Jewish Holocaust.”

Anyone in Germany who publicly denies the propagandistic narrative upon which the terrorist state of Israel was established or questions any one of the many anomalies extant in the doctrine of official “history,” faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

Indeed, two German scholars, Ernst Zündel and Germar Rudolf were illegally abducted from the United States and imprisoned for presenting scientific evidence that a phenomenal hoax called the “Jewish Holocaust” had taken place.

Zündel's lawyer, Sylvia Stolz, was herself imprisoned for three years in January of 2008 simply for presenting supportive evidence on behalf of her client. British historian David Irving was snatched by police on a private trip to Austria and imprisoned for once having presented verifiable proof that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were constructed as propagandistic museum pieces in late 1948.

Yet hardly anyone mentions the “German Holocaust” which entailed the systematic murder, starvation, and death by typhus of almost 3,500,000 displaced and impoverished German citizens, whose corpses were stacked in the former labor camps of Auschwitz, Belsen and Treblinka - and photographed by the Zionist media as “evidence” of “mass-murdered Jews.”

In a speech given to the Israeli Knesset on March 19, 2008, Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, reiterated the decades-old reparations doctrine by saying: “Germans are filled with shame over the Jewish holocaust.”

The German media is now reporting that many Germans, particularly young people who no longer believe their teachers, are suffering from “holocaust fatigue” and no longer trust Berlin’s Zionist puppets, such as Angela Merkel, to tell them the truth. Yet even those who are brave enough to commit “heresy” and risk the wrath of the Jewish Inquisition are forced to whisper their dissent using coded language lest thy find themselves in a German Soviet Gulag, such as Mannheim.

Germany under its Zionist controlled leaders has now reached the point in which certain words used in German society will make one highly suspect. In Europe’s dissenting underground community these words are known as “Germany’s forbidden words.”

Highly charged words which are monitored by the Zionist thought police express the true inner thoughts of most Germans. There are 5 words that could get a German in trouble:

1) “Leitkultur” - This word denotes the “predominant culture” of German and European social mores which most Germans wish to retain as part of their Germanic culture.

An example of the fallout which occurred after using the forbidden word “Leitkultur” was evidenced when Friedrich Merz, a former leading member of the Christian Democratic Union, used the term “Leitkultur von Deutschland” to describe what immigrants coming to Germany should aspire to.

Merz inspired, (as did Jurgen Molleman of the Free Democrats who is believed to have been “suicided” by Mossad in June 2003), an awakening German patriotism by striking a chord in a country where acceptance of “Alleinschuld,” (German guilt for WWII), continually propagated by Germany’s Jews and Zionist-leadership, is on the wane. Merz’s use of the word “Leitkultur” sparked an intense national debate among ordinary people who long for a return to traditional German Christian values.

Leaders of the Zionist Jewish community attacked Merz with a vengeance. The German Jewish community leader, Paul Spiegel, the former President of the ADL-style Central Council of Jews in Germany, facetiously asked 200,000 people gathered at the disingenuously named We Stand Up for Humanity and Tolerance demonstration held in Berlin on November 9, 2000:

(Read the full speech translated by Hanna Sachs HERE and reflect on the many ways in which Jews are working to strip Christians of their “inviolable dignity.”)

Merz quickly became anathema in the eyes of the Jewish-controlled media and has since effectively retired from active participation in politics.

2) “Verdorbene Kultur”/”Entartete Kultur” - These phrases denote a rotten or decadent culture, which the German people of the 1920s and 1930s perceived as emanating from prominent Jews in the media, arts, film, theatre, and the sex and drugs trade.

The phrase “Verdorbene Kultur” was cited in July 2007 by Horst Mahler, a leading German revisionist historian, when saying that Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” should no longer be banned in Germany since it provided well-founded definitions of what constituted a Zionist-enslaved culture in moral decline. In so doing, Mahler was subject to months of abuse by the Jewish-controlled media, Germany’s Central Council of Jews, and the political elites.

In his still very popular book, Hitler wrote that one of the main evils responsible for the suffering, hunger and poverty of the German people was the German-Jewish role in creating a “rotten culture” of decadent art designed to destroy the true moral fiber of a once-proud civilization:

The idea of lifting the ban on Mein Kampf was swiftly criticised by Jewish groups. Wolfgang Benz, the head of the Centre For Anti-Semitism Research in Berlin, described it as “absurd.” Salomon Korn, of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said it would be an insult to Holocaust survivors.

Horst Mahler, who is no stranger to the Federal Republic of Germany’s brutal Gulag system, has just been sentenced to 11 months imprisonment for treating the Jew Michel Friedman with “disrespect.” Friedman, a notoriously arrogant talk show host and a former deputy General Secretary of the ZJD with a criminal record as a cocaine dealer and a suspected key player in the illicit sex trafficking trade, filed suit following an interview with Mahler in the November 2007 German edition of “Vanity Fair.”

In September 2007, the Catholic Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Meisner, ignited a firestorm of controversy when he told his congregation “a culture without God is a decadent culture.”

The ZJD went ballistic, denouncing the cardinal for using a word frequently cited by the National Socialists in their condemnation of decadent Jewish art, organized prostitution rings, sex trafficking and the drugs trade.

3) “Volksgemeinschaft” - This phrase denotes a society based upon the principles of a “Leitkultur” that prioritizes the needs of its own citizens. The Jewish State of Occupied Palestine (Israel) itself is indeed a “Volkgemeinschaft.”

However, in Germany, anyone who writes or speaks about the advantages of a “Volksgemeinschaft” for the German people is subject to prosecution under Section 130 and other laws that prohibit speaking favorably of National Socialism, which itself was based upon the promotion of a Volksgemeinschaft. In Israel, such people who hold to this creed are described as the “Chosen People.” In Germany, they are branded as “Nazis” and face imprisonment of up to five years.

4) “Jude” (Jew) - It is considered by the authorities as “anti-Semitic” to call a Jew a “Jew.” One must always refer to a Jew as a “Jewish person.” The irony is that 95 percent of all Semites living in the world today are Arabs. The other five percent are Sephardic Jews, who are themselves genetically identical to Palestinians.

5) “Vaterland” (Fatherland) - The police are obliged to question any German who refers to his home country as the “Fatherland.” The word is associated with National Socialism and those inclined to use it are branded as “Nazis.”

In Germany there exists a list of hundreds of forbidden words and phrases. We, Brother Nathanael and Michael James, have mentioned only five. Remove the muzzle — go to jail.

Common sense: if there was a Nazi official extermination policy in place, then why clothe, house, and feed Jewish prisoners? Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor! - 8th Commandment. I wish the Jews no harm, but I refuse to smear Germany for the sake of international diplomacy. It's well documented - Antony Sutton is one example - that Wall St. and London banks financed Hitler. One bank was the J. Henry Schroder bank in Germany.

FEDERAL Health Minister Nicola Roxon has urged Jewish medical specialists to help the Rudd Government reform the nation’s health system. At the launch of AusIMed Research Fund in Melbourne on Tuesday night, Roxon addressed the hundreds of doctors and health professionals in the room. “We have an opportunity now to change, but we need that input and those ideas,” Roxon said. “I would like to encourage all of you to consider being part of the reform process ... we really need to tap the talent that you bring to this sort of debate.”

After listening to presentations from neurologist Professor Stephen Davis, children’s health specialist Professor Frank Oberklaid, adolescent expert Professor Susan Sawyer and Dr Yair Birnbaum from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Organisation, Roxon said she was optimistic about AusIMed’s potential. “I hope that AusIMed, in the years to come, sparks brilliant new ideas, exciting new approaches and gives us advances in medicine that are as important as penicillin, Gardasil or the X-ray,” Roxon said.

The Health Minister also quipped that she hoped AusIMed would be a successful cross-cultural collaboration, just like herself. “I do have to have to confess to being a cross-cultural collaboration myself, between a family of socialist, Polish Jews and a family of Anglican saw-millers living in northern New South Wales.”

At the launch, which formalised research ties between Australia and Hadassah, former Victorian premier Steve Bracks was acknowledged as the catalyst for the new fund. Bracks, after visiting Israel in 2004, encouraged Hadassah and Melbourne’s The Alfred hospital to share knowledge on trauma medicine, which is their joint speciality.

Naomi Levin, July 22, 2008

THE debate over whether Holocaust education should be compulsory has re-emerged after an education expert expressed surprise that students in New South Wales can complete high school without learning about the Shoah.

In a speech delivered more than a month ago, but which was only recently published in The Australian, Michael Coutts-Trotter, the head of the NSW Department of Education and Training, said he regretted that learning about “the destruction of the Jews in Europe” was not mandatory.

“You will know a lot about Don Bradman, and that’s terrific. But I think to live life, you need to know the Holocaust happened,” said Coutts-Trotter.

When contacted by The AJN, the NSW education department said Coutts-Trotter was on holidays and not available for comment.

The history curriculum in NSW and Victoria does not include compulsory Holocaust education, but in Victoria, high school students are expected to learn about “the impact of significant issues”, including World War II, and about “key leaders”, including Adolf Hitler.

In NSW, students are required to study World War II, but the emphasis appears to be on the war in the Pacific, rather than Europe.

While education guidelines vary from state to state, earlier this year, Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said the government’s aim was to develop a national curriculum.

A spokesperson for the National Curriculum Board said it was yet to set a direction for specific subjects, such as history, and that the next few months would see “wide-ranging consultation” about general directions for a national curriculum, as well as specific forums on subjects.

Jewish community organisations currently work with their respective state governments to encourage schools to teach students about discrimination, racism and genocide.

Vic Alhadeff, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, said his organisation was “working in consultation with the NSW Department of Education, the NSW Board of Studies and other community groups, especially those whose histories included experiences of state-sponsored terror and genocide”.

“The Jewish community endorses the strong anti-racism policy and programming that exists in NSW schools and is endeavouring to raise awareness that anti-Semitism is a form of racism which is as unacceptable as all others,” he said.

However, a Jewish education expert warned that making Holocaust studies compulsory could be problematic, because teachers may not be properly trained to teach about the Shoah and students could be hostile to mandatory subjects.

The statute of limitations on overt expressions of anti-Semitism seems to have expired. For decades after the horrors of World War II, blatant anti-Semitism was tantamount to political suicide among mainstream political leaders of all stripes. No more. The anti-Semitic rhetoric spewing forth from the Middle East, Western Europe and the nations of the former Soviet Union has evolved from a trickle to a virtual flood. The danger, of course, is that anti-Semitism is becoming "normalized" as a part of political discourse. Consider the following:

* The JTA reported that Ukrainian politician Oleg Tyagnybok called for "a purge of Jews" in his country. In a speech last month, Tyagnybok, formerly with Our Ukraine, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko's parliament faction, called for "merciless action" against Jews and Russians who have "seized power" in Ukraine. Tyagnybok was expelled from Our Ukraine in 2004, reportedly for using anti-Semitc and xenophobic slogans during a speech. Tyagnybok reportedly lashed out at Yuschenko by claiming that his surrogates are beginning to use the same words that got him expelled from the president's parliament faction. Ukraine has a long and bloody history of anti-Semitism going back centuries and through the Holocaust. The fact that both opposition and mainstream politicians are using anti-Semitic slurs in political speeches without fear of repercussion is a more-than-disturbing sign of the times.

* In Berlin, at the Third Transatlantic Conference (supported partly by German federal funding), Mohammed Javad Larijani, former foreign minister of Iran, repeatedly said that "denial of the Holocaust in the Muslim world has nothing to do with anti-Semitism." The assertion would be comical if it were not yet another example of the extent to which current and former officials feel comfortable in making absurd and hateful assertions in international forums. Larijani also asserted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has "never denied the Holocaust," even though he hosted an international conference of Holocaust deniers in Tehran.

* In Saudi Arabia, often mislabeled a "moderate, pro-Western" regime, government-controlled newspapers routinely publish articles claiming that Jews use the blood of Muslim and Christian children to prepare Hamentashen for Purim, a new spin on the ancient "blood libel." Way back when, anti-Semitic fanatics claimed that Jews killed Christian children to bake their blood into matzah.

* In Egypt, state-controlled TV serialized the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claims a worldwide Jewish conspiracy is responsible for all wars and economic crises in history, up to the present. Egypt, also a so-called "moderate" Arab state largely because of its peace treaty with Israel, routinely publishes vile anti-Semitic cartoons in its state-controlled media. Unlike the frenzied reaction to the publication of anti-Muslim cartoons in a Danish newspaper two years ago, the Egyptian anti-Jewish cartoons have been largely ignored by mainstream media as a routine reality.

* In Russia, ultra-nationalist and xenophobic political groups attacked Dmitry Medvedev for his allegedly Jewish parentage when former Russian President Vladimir Putin nominated him to succeed Putin to the presidency. Medvedev's mother is believed to have been Jewish. To Medvedev's credit, he has strongly denounced anti-Semitic acts, cases of xenophobia and chauvinism and anti-Russian sentiment since taking office as president.

* In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has strongly condemned anti-Semitism in the wake of several attacks on Jews around his country. But just a few days ago, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of France's extreme right, publicly made a joke about World War II crematoriums. His "joke" follows comments he made last fall that the Nazi gas chambers were a "minor point" in history. While Le Pen's comments are routinely condemned by French officials, he received 14 percent of the vote in the first round of France's presidential election in April.

Political leaders around the world should follow the positive example of Medvedev and Sarkozy and denounce — in the strongest possible terms — any and all manifestations of anti-Semitism. For nearly half a century, politicians anywhere outside of the Middle East would never have dared to tolerate, let alone encourage, public anti-Semitism. If that tide is turning, we must stop it now.

We must not allow anti-Semitism to become "normalized" as part of political discourse in this nation or anywhere in the world. We must vigorously support groups like the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Anti-Defamation League as they respond swiftly and forcefully to the return of anti-Semitism in the public square. We already know the consequences of silence in the face of raw hatred.

... and now something from the perverted and unbalanced mind of a delusional 'Nazi-hunter'...

Doesn't the world owe it to all the Nazis' victims to make equal efforts to bring each of their torturers and killers to justice? Recently, I've found myself increasingly preoccupied with that question, following a two-week mission to South America on the trail of the Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted Nazi war criminal, Dr. Aribert Heim. Heim committed his most heinous crimes at the Mauthausen concentration camp, where his nickname was "Doctor Death."

To put the question into proper perspective, it is important to note that during practically every press conference I conducted or interview that I gave in South America, I had to address the question of the validity or value of the effort to track down a 94-year-old war criminal. In every venue, I recited the standard mantras: "The passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the killers"; "a suspect's advanced age is no reason to ignore mass murder"; and "the practical implication of establishing a time limit for prosecuting genocide suspects is that those lucky enough, rich enough or smart enough to elude justice will ultimately be allowed to get away with their crimes." However, I also stressed the concept that every man and woman persecuted by the Nazis deserves that an effort be made to find and hold accountable those who turned them, innocent civilians, into victims.

I noted in my remarks that Simon Wiesenthal himself had always stressed this principle, and in fact I deeply believe in its validity and moral power. But the fact of the matter is that our recent mission to Chile and Argentina clearly underscores the unfortunate fact that not all of the Nazis' victims get equal treatment when it comes to the investment made to bring their killers to justice, and the Heim case is a classic illustration.

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PALESTINIAN CONFERENCE EMBRACES HOLOCAUST AS "MYTH" Fredrick Töben, Director of the Holocaust-denying Adelaide Institute, was a speaker at an Indonesian conference hosted by the Voice of Palestine and the Center for Islam and Middle East Studies last month. Töben urged participants to Holocaust denial as a part of the Palestinian cause. “Israel uses the Holocaust-Shoah as a shield and sword, and so the Revisionists’ arguments would demolish any reason for the existence of the Zionist state, thereby liberating Palestine from Zionist oppression,” he said. Töben described both the Shoah and the Jewish people as a myth and used the word Holocaust instead to describe the situation of Palestinians. “The Holocaust-Shoah is an ugly, evil death cult spreading hatred against Germans and justifying the Palestinian Holocaust,” he said, About 500 people attended the conference entitled "The Oppression of a People: Palestine Right of Return: Its Legal and Moral Principles" with representatives from the Palestinian territories, the United States, Egypt, Iran, South Africa and Senegal. Fredrick Töben's view of the Jakarta conference can be viewed here.