[Peace-discuss] Peace-discuss Digest, Vol 147, Issue 36
Carl G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Thu Apr 14 19:30:47 EDT 2016
"Gibberish” is spelt with a “g.”
“Beg the question” doesn’t mean “pose the question.” It means to assume the conclusion of an argument - a type of circular reasoning. It is a fallacy in which an arguer includes the conclusion to be proven within a premise of the argument, often in an indirect way such that its presence within the premise is hidden or at least not easily apparent. The term "begging the question” originated in the 16th century as an awkward translation of the Latin petitio principii, which means "assuming the initial point."
> On Apr 14, 2016, at 4:06 PM, Stephen Francis via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
> more...
> What I'm saying is that I have and thousands of others have compiled more than enough evidence to prove that a crime was committed on 9/11 and that no one has gone to jail for it. It was absolutely not anyone from the Islamic faith that committed the crime. All the consequences of that crime are still in place (Patriot Act, DHS, loss of liberties, surveillance). The nineteen hijackers were just patsies. There was/is absolutely no justification for the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars where millions of people were killed or harmed. This is a ghastly, horrific truth.
>
> How can you trivialize this concept? It's mind-boggling absurdity.
> This is a very simple. If someone stole something from you and you can prove they did it, why would you avoid prosecuting them? 9/11 is placing this concept on a global scale where literally billions of people are affected.
> I hesitate to say it, but it is conceivable to say that resistance to this prosecution is complicity in the crime.
> The evidence all points to Neocons / Zionists and you won't let this see the light of day.
>
> Our positions are so far apart that one of us is clearly wrong, which begs the two questions: follow the money? and who benefits?... answer: not me or anyone in the 9/11 Truth community... the Iraq / Afghanistan wars cost $2-3 trillion that went into the hands of mostly Neocons / Zionists / war mongers / bankers.
>
> This cannot be trivialized with intellectual jibberish.
>
>
> On Thursday, April 14, 2016 3:50 PM, Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> What I'm saying is that I have and thousands of others have compiled more than enough evidence to prove that a crime was committed on 9/11 and that no one has gone to jail for it. It was absolutely not anyone from the Islamic faith that committed the crime. All the consequences of that crime are still in place (Patriot Act, DHS, loss of liberties, surveillance). The nineteen hijackers were just patsies. There was/is absolutely no justification for the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars where millions of people were killed or harmed. This is a ghastly, horrific truth.
>
> How can you trivialize this concept? It's mind-boggling absurdity.
> This is a very simple. If someone stole something from you and you can prove they did it, why would you avoid prosecuting them? 9/11 is placing this concept on a global scale where literally billions of people are affected.
> I hesitate to say it, but it is conceivable to say that resistance to this prosecution is complicity in the crime.
> The evidence all points to Neocons / Zionists and you won't let this see the light of day.
>
>
>
> On Thursday, April 14, 2016 2:08 PM, "peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net" <peace-discuss-request at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: Proposal (Karen Aram)
> 2. No Anti Semitism: No occupation (David Johnson)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 16:43:40 +0000
> From: Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com>
> To: David Johnson <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net>,
> "peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Proposal
> Message-ID:
> <CY1PR15MB034747E41B1621915B410D01A3970 at CY1PR15MB0347.namprd15.prod.outlook.com>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"
>
>
> David, wouldn't it be nice to think so, I wish it were true, but I'm not a nuclear physicist so I'm not going to assume a google search is going to enlighten me on this issue.
>
> Most Americans already believe Bush and Cheney were involved, just as most Americans think the CIA killed Kennedy. All they do is talk about it, you know like now all the conversation, wasted time and effort on this so called Peace Discuss List, that allows an anti-Semite to have his say and blame "Jews," his motives are obvious and why we don't want him on our panel. As Karen Medina Levy, and you said previously, "he is welcome to set up his own show".
>
> There is a Black Lives Matter movement as a result of so many young African Americans being killed and incarcerated. I see that as a positive step in the right direction. When the white working class joins them we might have some real progress.
>
> What we should be focused on is what our government under the Obama Administration is doing now. That's what we are responsible for, "we the American people aren't responsible for 9/11" except in our ignoring what our government was doing in other nations over many years.
>
> Our government is responsible one way or another, as Carl pointed out, no matter who dropped the bombs or pulled the trigger.The shadow government, under the auspices of the "Council on Foreign Relations", has been advising Presidents since the 20's. Did they actually suggest bombing the World Trade Center? So far no evidence, but they do advise the White House of the ongoing plan to control resources that rightfully belong to others. As there are 5000 members its difficult to tar brush them as all guilty, but we know Kissinger, Hass, and currently advisor Zbigniew Brezinski, its all out there, documented for anyone to see.
>
> What we should be concerned with is what our government does in our name. Our provocations and the thousands killed in the Ukraine as a result of US regime change and intervention, we now have Nato on the border of Russia. Our support for Israel, our provocations in the South China Sea, our proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world, remilitarizing Japan, and the fact that most Americans have no idea, or concern for the potential consequences, other than how much we spend, which is huge.
>
> Our targeted killings with drones will likely be done in the future with nuclear bombs, which are being created now at Livermore in order to have first strike, rather than just deterrence capabilities. This issue was discussed on DemocracyNow yesterday, and I discussed it last week with one of the scientists working on it.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: David Johnson <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net>
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 9:30 AM
> To: karenaram at hotmail.com; peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> Subject: FW: [Peace-discuss] Proposal
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net]
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 9:29 AM
> To: 'Karen Aram'; peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Proposal
>
> " As to the mystery surrounding 9/11. Please tell me how will it change anything if we discover our leaders are responsible for such a treasonous act? "
>
> Seriously Karen ?
>
> You sincerely believe that if an independent investigation found that Bush, Cheney, et al either allowed the 9-11 attacks to happen or actually planned and contracted out the attacks, that the American people would not be outraged to the point of wanting them tried for the mass murder of 3,000 American citizens ?
>
> And in addition to that and I am sorry to say more important, that it wouldn't destroy the credibility of the U.S. government in it's justification for ; The war on terror, invasions and drone strikes, regime change, the patriot act, the NDAA, and the existence of Guantanamo ?
>
> The revelation of the truth would destroy the entire foundation of the propaganda of the ruling class in this country and their ability to carry out invasions, coups, destabilizations, etc. with the majority / near majority support of the American people who believe their credibility and propaganda.
>
> The 9-11 cover-up is the foundation and the lynch pin that would destroy them.
>
> Now, when trying to demolish a building or in this case the corporate ruling class and their shadow government that has existed in this country since 1947, one should always try to focus on both their strongest points and their weakest points. The point being that one never knows where the crucial pressure point will be that will eventually cause it's collapse.
>
> That is why I do NOT solely focus on the 9-11 cover-up, because other truth and info needs to also be exposed and reported on.
> But at the same time it is foolish to ignore or try to distract from the 9-11 cover up as a means to discredit the war mongering class, its very successful propaganda machine, and end the U.S. government aggression abroad and at home.
>
> David J.
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Karen Aram via Peace-discuss
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 7:27 AM
> To: Roger Helbig; C. G. Estabrook; Peace-discuss List
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Proposal
>
>
> Carl, you put it so well, thank you.
>
> Mort, my attempt to keep it simple, obviously failed. My goal was to explain that we Americans seem to think that as we are "exceptional" and any crime against us, is a major concern, by us I mean our hallowed halls of Wall Street. The thousands whom we are killing now, that we are responsible for killing, should be our main concern. That is something we actually could do something about changing.
>
> Your accusation that I am saying the Holocaust doesn't matter is beyond ridiculous. In fact, if we open our eyes we would see that we, Americans are living in the Berlin of the early thirties, turning away from crimes against others, because we aren't them. The arrogance of white elites.
>
> Here is another simple, really simple example:
>
> When we constantly cry over who is responsible for 9/11, we're like the bully in the playground screaming that "Johnny hit me". No mention of the fact that he, the bully, had been hitting Johnny for four years or so, as well as several other of the children he had been hitting for years. That's not to say that its okay, that Johnny hit the bully, but for parents and teachers who ignored the bullying by the big kid, to suddenly take notice because one kid, maybe his Dad was the Chairman of the Board thus he was considered "exceptional" is not solving the problem. They allowed the abuse to continue for so long and now they want to punish Johnny for taking the matter into his own hands, wrong though it maybe, is not justice and doesn't solve the problem.
>
> As to the mystery surrounding 9/11. Please tell me how will it change anything if we discover our leaders are responsible for such a treasonous act? Has Kissinger been incarcerated, Bush or Cheney, Obama, the list goes on. No, in fact, one those responsible for the deaths and destruction in Libya, and Honduras, is now running for President with support from many Americans who support identity politics, because they must be clueless as to her crimes.
> ________________________________________
> From: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net> on behalf of C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2016 6:04 AM
> To: Roger Helbig
> Cc: Brussel, Morton K; Peace Discuss
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Proposal
>
> "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”
> --Stated on CBS's 60 Minutes (May 12, 1996) in reply to Lesley Stahl's question "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time. [Wikiquote]
>
>
> > On Apr 14, 2016, at 3:29 AM, Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Half a million children - nonsense - and where is this alleged quote
> > in something reputable instead of a on-line blog -
> >
> > Roger
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 8:32 PM, C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss
> > <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >> Certainly, it would be interesting to know if (e.g.) the US vice-president or the Mossad promoted the crimes of 9/11/2001 - I think it unlikely but not impossible.
> >>
> >> But the attacks themselves were counter-attacks in the long US war for domination of the Mideast and its energy resources. The Bush I and Clinton (I?) administrations had killed many (a half million children in Iraq alone, said Clinton's SoS).
> >>
> >> And 9/11 didn’t change much in that war. When the US invaded Iraq two years later - the greatest crime of the 21st century - 9/11 was not a factor in US propaganda, even though the Bush administration was facing the largest anti-war demonstrations in history, because the US couldn't make a plausible case for an Iraq connection to 9/11; they had to lie about WMD instead.
> >>
> >> There’s little doubt about Israeli government Schadenfreude over 9/11. (In 2008, Netanyahu said, “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq. [The events] swung American public opinion in our favor.”) But there is a lot of confusion about the relation of the US and Israeli governments. Here’s what seems to me a good summary: <https://chomsky.info/20060328/>.
> >>
> >> AWARE was founded to encourage opposition to decades of killing by the US government in support of the world economic hegemony of the US 1% - what George Kennan called (in 1949) “maintaining the disparity." It was clear that the crimes of 9/11 would be employed in the propaganda for what became the subsequent Bush-Obama(-Clinton?) wars, so an accurate analysis of the context in which they occurred was and remains essential. But like the US wars in SE Asia, the ongoing wars in SW Asia are crimes, not mistakes - not something the US was tricked into.
> >>
> >> —CGE
> >>
> >>> On Apr 13, 2016, at 9:33 PM, Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Correction: I meant to write "astounding analysis” in the second paragraph below.
> >>>
> >>> -mkb
> >>>> On Apr 13, 2016, at 9:30 PM, Brussel, Morton K <brussel at illinois.edu> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Quoting: When some of us say "9/11 doesn't matter", we mean that our opinion of who is responsible for the killing of over 3,000 people here in the US, doesn't change anything, not that those lives don't matter. What we do think matters is the thousands upon thousands that the US has been killing, with little coverage by the media. That matters because we hope that if the American people know and understand what we are doing and why, we might be able to prevent it's continuance.
> >>>>
> >>>> And so with this rationale, who was responsible for the “ holocaust doesn’t really matter, nor who caused the Iraq wars, the Libya debacle, the Ruanda massacres, in fact almost anything that occurred in the past doesn’t matter, since knowledge of who was responsible for all this “doesn’t change anything (for whomever)”?? . Quite an as analysis(?) to come from being “AWARE”.
> >>>>
> >>>> Indeed, if we really knew that Israel was behind the 9/11 disaster, would it not affect future policy here and abroad?
> >>>> A true knowledge of the causes of historical events does affect future events.
> >>>>
> >>>> —mkb
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> On Apr 13, 2016, at 7:53 PM, Karen Aram <karenaram at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> As one of the seven active members of AWARE, and the most outspoken on this topic, amongst the group. Let me clarify:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Objections to S.Francis being on the program were due to his labeling and smearing "the Jewish people" for the attacks on 9/11. Just as he has done on this Peace Discuss List, in the past. None of us were concerned with the issue of 9/11. That being said, we do focus, as was intended by AWARE's creators on "Anti-war, anti-racism", the issue of racism taking a back seat to anti-war only because there are other groups focused on the race issue, while none in the area other than AWARE are focusing on war. There are other reasons as well, and to be clear, we were a group divided.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I'm not referring to the wars of the past, but those we are facing in the present and future. They are of course all connected, history of behavior does matter.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> When some of us say "9/11 doesn't matter", we mean that our opinion of who is responsible for the killing of over 3,000 people here in the US, doesn't change anything, not that those lives don't matter. What we do think matters is the thousands upon thousands that the US has been killing, with little coverage by the media. That matters because we hope that if the American people know and understand what we are doing and why, we might be able to prevent it's continuance.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Focusing on "ourselves as victims" of 9/11 offers no solutions. Let the experts do their research, let all documents be released and discuss it amongst your peers as you like, but don't expect the American people to rise up against oppression when the "truth of 9/11" is revealed. We have enough abuse occurring on a daily basis, that needs to be challenged and is sometimes covered by the corporate owned media. I won't go into the topic of "identity politics" or even address the " class system" and "capitalism" in this statement.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> What we, the American people, need to focus on is our own behavior, that's the only thing we can control. The crimes against humanity for which we are responsible if we turn away and ignore, makes us as guilty as the perpetrators, for allowing what is done in our name. In preventing the deaths of thousands upon thousands, keep in mind some of those lives could be our own.
> >>>>> From: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net> on
> >>>>> behalf of Brussel, Morton K via Peace-discuss
> >>>>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> >>>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 12:52 PM
> >>>>> To: Karen Medina
> >>>>> Cc: Peace Discuss
> >>>>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Proposal
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Regarding this statement:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> * We do often talk about U.S. support for Israel and Saudi Arabia -- seemingly the closest friends of the United States -- as we exchange money, weapons, and military training; But the reason for this even coming into the conversation is again the actions of OUR government, not that we are anti-(other countries).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Do “we" not talk about the repression by Israel of the Palestinians, the attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria… and other policies of Israel that we deplore? Strange that in replying to Stephen Daniel with otherwise admirable remarks, you insert this statement which I don’t believe holds wrt AWARE folks, the “we” of your remark.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Also, we may not be “anti- other countries", but we can be anti- what their governments and perhaps most of their people do and support.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Just a thought… The statement doesn’t apply to me.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> —mkb
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> On Apr 13, 2016, at 12:22 PM, Stephen Francis via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> correction:
> >>>>>> Sophisticated-sounding political arguments that intricately navigate through idealistic and well-intentioned discourse play well on chat screens, but wilt under the light of good ole plain 'follow the money' and analyzing who benefits, in getting to the root of the system we rail against.
> >>>>>> Investigations look for objective facts that fit patterns and care not who or what becomes the final target and eventual conclusions. I want names of people who can be prosecuted and put behind bars.
> >>>>>> 9/11 was a criminal attack on the US by Neocon Zionists to further theirs and Israel's goals in the Middle East and ... the 19 hijackers were patsies just as Oswald was a patsy in Kennedy's assassination. There are hundreds of pieces of evidence supporting this, if you look for them.
> >>>>>> Yesterday, I created a partial list of Neocon Zionists from my work on the internet that totalled over 500 people, but the list was so long (or something?) that this (Peace-discuss) site system blocked it as spam...so I just dropped the idea...but it is available on the net with no spam issues whatsoever.
> >>>>>> This is REAL investigation.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Wednesday, April 13, 2016 11:45 AM, Stephen Francis <stephenf1113 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Sophisticated-sounding political arguments that intricately navigate through idealistic and well-intentioned discourse play well on chat screens, but wilt under the light of good ole plain 'follow the money' and analyzing who benefits, in getting to the root of the system we rail against.
> >>>>>> Investigations look for objective facts that fit patterns and care not who or what becomes the final target and eventual conclusions. I want names of people who can be prosecuted and put behind bars.
> >>>>>> Yesterday, I created a partial list of Neocon Zionists from my work on the internet that totalled over 500 people, but the list was so long (or something?) that this (Peace-discuss) site system blocked it as spam...so I just dropped the idea...but it is available on the net with no spam issues whatsoever.
> >>>>>> This is REAL investigation.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On Wednesday, April 13, 2016 11:17 AM, Karen Medina <kmedina67 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> As an anti-war activist:
> >>>>>> * I am interested in stopping the atrocities that my country is perpetuating.
> >>>>>> * I am not interested in provoking animosity toward people of other countries.
> >>>>>> * We do often talk about U.S. support for Israel and Saudi Arabia -- seemingly the closest friends of the United States -- as we exchange money, weapons, and military training; But the reason for this even coming into the conversation is again the actions of OUR government, not that we are anti-(other countries).
> >>>>>> * Working to change the current actions of the United States government is the sole responsibility of the citizens of the the United States: Classism, "Christian" extremism, exceptionalism, environmental destruction, and the mentality of "we are rich and powerful so we should tell those other countries who is boss" are the message that our current decision-makers in the United States are hearing.
> >>>>>> The anti-war voice needs to focus on these issues.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Peace-discuss mailing list
> >>>>>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >>>>>> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
> >>>>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Peace-discuss mailing list
> >> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> >> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 14:06:26 -0500
> From: "David Johnson" <davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net>
> To: <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> Subject: [Peace-discuss] No Anti Semitism: No occupation
> Message-ID: <004a01d19680$bedaddd0$3c909970$@comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> <http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/> Facts For Working People
>
> No Anti Semitism: No occupation
>
>
>
> >From Felicity Dowling
>
>
> Roger Silverman, whose father Sydney Silverman MP, received the first formal
> letter telling of the Holocaust writes below on the issue of Zionism, and
> the Jewish communities in Europe. Roger's father was a left MP and was
> involved as the article says in quite appalling events in the war. One was
> getting a letter addressed to him from Jews left in Europe on the true
> extent of the extermination ...not that he could do much about it. Then he
> went as one of the first British representative to the camps. The context is
> that some young people coming up are so involved in the Palestine issue they
> become almost Holocaust deniers. Then the right wing in Labour are pushing
> criticisms of the Left as being anti Semitic.
>
>
>
> ***************
>
>
>
> <https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-809_KTAs3dA/Vw_gkx9T-2I/AAAAAAAAMNg/HwIpuFa3b7QV
> 1Fn247np1jBdzeYltp3oQCLcB/s1600/image.jpg> Description:
> https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-809_KTAs3dA/Vw_gkx9T-2I/AAAAAAAAMNg/HwIpuFa3b7QV1
> Fn247np1jBdzeYltp3oQCLcB/s320/image.jpg
>
>
>
> <http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/the-europeans-no-25-sydney-silverman-1.14
> 33837> Sydney Silverman
>
> by Roger Silverman
>
> Zionism today is one of the most virulent manifestations of racism. It is
> the ideology used to justify the existence of a state which openly denies
> equal rights to a quarter of its population on racial grounds, and rules
> over four million colonial subjects in neighbouring territories that it has
> occupied for half a century by military conquest. How is it conceivable that
> such an ideology could ever have been acceptable to anyone considering
> themselves socialists?
>
>
> The Jews of Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe were a monstrously persecuted
> minority, living in designated ghettoes, speaking their own separate
> language, practising their own religious and cultural customs, denied civil
> rights, and subjected to periodic organised massacres in which thousands
> were killed: orgies of violence that acquired a special name of their own:
> pogroms. Those that had managed to flee to Britain before an Aliens Act was
> passed restricting further immigration were reviled by the establishment as
> a "dirty rabble".
>
>
> Throughout the Russian empire, the Jewish working class was organised in a
> socialist movement called the Bund, a separate but integral part of the
> Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. Its aspiration was for cultural
> autonomy within a democratic socialist Russia. It was in opposition to this
> mass cultural and political movement that Zionism emerged as a reactionary
> sect, feeding on despair that Jews could ever attain their rights except
> within a separate state of their own. It can be compared with the rise of
> national-racial separatist movements among the black population of the USA;
> Marcus Garvey's "back to Africa" movement, for instance, closely mirrors the
> Zionist mirage of the re-establishment of a Jewish nation in a historic
> Biblical "homeland". In both cases, aspirations towards class unity with the
> majority ethnic population were cut across by a semi-mystical mythology.
>
>
> Then came the rise of the Nazis in Germany, their conquest of Europe and
> their invasion of Russia. The Jewish population of occupied Europe was
> virtually annihilated. Six million were bludgeoned to death, forced to dig
> their own graves before being shot, or gassed on an industrial scale in
> specially constructed chambers.
>
>
> In 1942, as head of the British section of the World Jewish Congress, Sydney
> Silverman received the first reports of the holocaust and alerted the world:
>
>
> "It is certain that by a deliberate plan, the war on all Jews by Hitler and
> practised as a chronic psychopathic malady since he came to power nine years
> ago has become a raging tearing frenzy, acute in every part of Europe, where
> no one before was conscious of any so-called Jewish problem. They have been
> arrested, scattered, deported across Europe to strange and devastated areas
> and there murdered: men, women and children, without mercy, without
> discrimination of age or sex or strength, except some solitary few judged
> able for some months yet to work on as hopeless slaves. Certain it is that
> unless help comes there will soon be no Jews alive in Nazi-occupied Europe."
>
>
>
> Even in these circumstances it is to his credit that he added a warning
> against any scapegoating of the German people, and a reaffirmation of
> socialist internationalist principles:
>
> "It is so fatally easy to use their unimaginable horrors to play into the
> hands of those who would themselves use another kind of racial myth to
> destroy the greatest chance the world has ever had to reconstruct its life
> on saner, sounder principles, the recognition that we are all one human
> family and that our natural hates, fears, suspicions and oppressions arise,
> all of them, out of the failure to apply in comradeship and co-operation our
> human powers to the natural resources of the good earth so that all may live
> in peace together."
>
>
> I have a small personal connection with this. He wrote:
>
>
> "On April 15th 1945, my youngest son was born. That was the day
> Bergen-Belsen was liberated by the advancing British armies. But ten days
> earlier Eisenhower had freed Buchenwald. He was so horrified by what he saw,
> so terrified that nobody would believe it, that he invited the Speaker of
> the House of Commons to send an all-party delegation of MPs to come, to see
> and to testify. I was one of them, the only Jew - and even so I had to fight
> for my place. So I went, leaving my wife and three-day-old son in hospital.
> Two of the party had had, in pre-war days, pro-Hitler sympathies. One of
> them never recovered from the effects of his visit and died shortly after
> his return. The other committed suicide."
>
>
> It was the rise of Nazism which strengthened Sydney Silverman's defiant
> reassertion of his Jewish identity, and the reality of the holocaust which
> confirmed his own illusions in Zionism. After the war, what had previously
> throughout Eastern Europe been a peripheral reactionary sect became a
> credible, if ultimately illusory, lifeline. Jewish survivors of the
> concentration camps were desperately seeking refuge somewhere they could
> begin to build a new life free from persecution and the threat of
> annihilation. To that generation, the reactionary nature of Zionism with its
> susceptibility to future exploitation by world imperialism to create an
> outpost from which to suppress the Arab national uprising had not become
> apparent. The rickety boats of these holocaust survivors were turned back or
> sunk by British colonial warships, deliberately drowning refugees. Their
> settlements were besieged by feudal kingdoms and sheikhdoms and the Grand
> Mufti of Jerusalem. In their desperation they were all too easily seduced by
> Zionist demagogy.
>
>
> It might have been possible then to confront communal rivalry. In Palestine
> in the 1920s there had been 500,000 Arabs and 150,000 Jews, many of whom
> worked and struggled side by side. The heroic revolutionary Leopold Trepper,
> who was later to organise within Nazi Germany the underground communist spy
> network the Red Orchestra, had organised in Palestine the Ichud/Itachak
> (Unity) movement, which brought Jewish and Arab workers under a single
> banner, organised joint strikes and challenged the power of the Zionist
> Histadrut, which only admitted Jewish workers.
>
>
> Sydney Silverman retained to the end of his life misplaced illusions in the
> goal of a national homeland for Jews. In dispute with Stalinist critics, he
> argued that the reactionary policies of the Israeli government did not
> justify "pretending that Jewish people's national consciousness, pride in
> their language, care of their culture or faith in their future are more
> bourgeois, reactionary or capitalist than these things are when practised by
> Georgians, Uzbeks, Armenians or the Russians themselves."
>
>
> However, he condemned the reactionary alliance of the new Israeli state with
> Western imperialism. At the time of the Suez crisis, he was personally
> instrumental in forcing the Labour leadership to condemn the joint military
> action against Egypt by the British government in collusion with France and
> Israel; and when the Middle East came to war in 1967, he strongly opposed
> the Israeli occupation of neighbouring territories. It is beyond doubt that
> if he had lived beyond February 1968 he would certainly have denounced the
> continuing occupation and successive wars of colonial repression against the
> Palestinian people.
>
>
>
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> End of Peace-discuss Digest, Vol 147, Issue 36
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