POSTCRIPT

21. Editing according to the letters editor in his weekly 'Postscript' (Press 30/01/10) is like a 'Chinese' puzzle, as he calls it. Bearing in mind that the pro-Israel lobby in the letter pages invariably seem to be granted more space and/or the last word, would it therefore be not more appropriate to call it a 'Zionist' puzzle ?

GENOCIDE IN SLOW MOTION

20. While overindulging this holiday season, why not spare a thought for the children of Gaza. Gaza is still under siege, still being left to starve or die from untreated water. The Israeli activist Uri Avnery describes the situation as, "Genocide n slow motion"

In Pakistan, America is ntensifying its drone attacks. These examples of blatant abuse of power, and many others, which theworld has witnessed in 2009, have madeit clear that the US and Israel see themselves as 'exeptions', exempt from international law includin the Geneva Conventions.
Signs of hope come from peace activists, such as the Israeli teenagers who refuse military service, the Americans who protest at the Navada Air Force Base that launches drone strikes, and the decent people of several countries who together try food and medical aid, by ship or by land convoys, into the Gaza Strip.

The future is very bleak though, unless we become a world where humanitarian laws, including the Geneva Conventions, aply to everyone with no exeptions.
Contributed by L.G. (letter was rejected by the editor)

DESENSITIZED PUBLIC ?

19. I am always shocked when NZers, including some letter writers to the Press, trivialize the destruction of Gaza: sanitation facilities, factories, farm animals, schools, clinics, power stations etc. One of the world's most powerful armies waged war on some of the world's most impoverished people. The war continues as Israel prevents humanitarian aid entering the Strip. Rebuilding is impossible. 1400 Gazans dies of direct violence lats year: starvation and disease will kill more. As for the comparison of Israel's policies with apartheid, is it only people of my age who remember the world-wide outrage over Sharpville in 1960, when some 60 Africans were killed by South African police ? Where was the outrage last year ?
Is to-days public desensitized to atrocities ?

Contributed by M.G. (letter was rejected by the editor.

LETTER TO KBRM

18. This letter was e-mailed to the KBRM 19 January 2010 in response to their advertisment in the Christchurch Press some days before.

Sir,
Before starting accusing me of anti-Semitism, let me tell you that during WW 2 and in fear of our own lives, we saved many Jewish families from the Nazi deathcamps, by hiding and providing them safe haven for them in our homes. Also if you care to read my blogspot Contraviews (Post 5) you will see that I couldn't possibly be be ant-Semitic, because Jews and Palestinian Arabs are ethnically of the same race; they are both Semites. I am against Zionism as it is practiced to-day, which is quite different from being anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. I am against Zionism because it brings back personal memories of occupation and resistance. We were the "terrorists" in those days.So if you wish to call me something, it would be mote appropriate to call me anti-Zionist.

You have taken it on you to "inform" the public of the truth, well let's call it "your truth" of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. However taking note of your unsubstantiated arguments and the rather aggressive ways you are conducting your crusade of bringing your "truth" (by placing expensive advertisements) it is not too difficult fro the discerning reader what your real intentions are.

I for one have also taken it on me to find the truth and in the pursuit to do so I have read numerous books on the history of the "creation" (!) of Israel: literature written by renowned and reputable historians, many of them even Jewish. Although historians sometimes differ in their findings on particular details, the general picture that emerges is nevertheless by and large fairly consensual and in fact in complete variance of the picture that you are trying to sell to an unsuspecting public. The truth is that you are in the business of selling the public a Zionist and historically completely distorted version of events as they have happened over the last sixty years and over. You are making propaganda for a cause, which means you cannot be taken seriously. So if one has to make a choice whose version of history we should believe than of course that choice is not so difficult to make. You must come up with some very convincing arguments why we should ignore he research findings of renowned and reputable historians. I shall not mention any names, because I know from personal experience that the anwer is always the same: anti-Semitic, biased, controversial, outdated, refute (by whom the KBRM) and so on, even if they have never read any of these books themselves.
You are in complete denial of historical facts. By denying the NABKA, you are doing exactly the same as the ones who are denying the Holocaust. Not a very honest standpoint to adopt.

Hence to the intelligent student of history desirous to know how the creation of Israel came about I suggest to make a serious effort to do some research yourself. Go to the libraries and read, read and still read more. Not one book, not two, but scores of them. You can also peruse and verify in the "Chronicles of the 20th Century" (brief excerpts of newspaper reports)
Once you have done that, than you can judge for yourself who is making propaganda and who is telling the truth.
Unfortunately most people choose the lazy way out and do not bother to make that effort. They rely on the very scant, biased reports, comments and articles of the western newsmedia so amenable to the Zionist point of view and in which you have a strong ally disseminating propaganda and half truth (see bottom quote of Contraviews) preying and targeting the ignorant and uninformed.

REJECTED LETTERS

17. Here follow some letters submitted this month to the Christchurch Press.

20 January. I am responding to Brian Metcalf and Alan McRobie's letters (20/0/10). McRobie hits the nail fair and square on its head. The Zionist lobbies in America (AIPEC) and Australia (AIJAC) are financially extremely powerful lobbies, exerting great pressure on members of the US Congress and western news media. The KBRM in New Zealand is probably an off-shoot of these two organisations and (partly ?) funded by the Israeli embassy. The eminent and renowned historian George Antonius warned us already many years ago that Zionist propaganda is active, well organised and widespread. On the other hand Arab propaganda is ineffective; lacking the skills and financial resources so that the world has been looking at the Middle East conflict mainly through Zionist spectacles




22 January. Earlier this week on the Haiti disaster TV ONE showed an IDF man (Israel Defence Force) rescuing a child from the rubble. Ironically these same people are responsible for the killing and maiming of hundreds of children in GAZA last year and thousands of children over the last 60 years or so if you include the occupied territories and Lebanon, where cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs and other high-tech Made in USA ordnance, were used against a civilian population. Was this deliberately done, one may wonder, because of the recent Goldstone report on Israeli war crimes ? Point is how insidiously propaganda from financially powerful Zionist lobbies (AIPEC in America and AIJAC in Australia) creep into our news and the strong grip they exert on our news media, making people see the world events and the Middle East in particular, mainly through Zionist spectacles.


The Geert Wilders race hate trial in The Netherlands

Being a Kiwi of Dutch descent I have of course been following with great interest the current race hate trials of Geert Wilders in The Netherlands. (Press 22/01/110). Wilders is a dangerous manas he plays on primitive emotions and thus inciting some hotheads to resort to violence in an already dangerous world. During the last hundred years we have seen much of the same in several countries: the persecution of the Jews, Apartheid in South Africa and to-day Zionist Israel based on white or religious supremacy; the latter two masquerading as pseudo democracies. History has shown us that sooner or later such regimes always come to an untimely end as they carry the "genes" of their onw demise. The strength of real genuine democratic societies rests on the integration, assimilation and religious tolerance of peoples from different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds and believe, as indeed is the case in immigrant countries such as the United States, Australia and as we enjoy it here in New Zealand to-day.

THE WAR ON TERROR

16.Thirty Three Billion dollar approved for war in Afghanistan.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, America required a new threat and new pretexts to continue its profitable Cold War policies (Eisenhower quote: beware of the Military Industrial Complex). Successive administrations began designing new threats to replace the now dead threat from Communism. Several options were considered, but most to the fore came: rogue states, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Islamic terror with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda providing a stunningly, unexpected but extremely convenient ideological motivation for the Pentagon war planners after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. As we have seen initially unsuccessful attempts were made to link Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein, later to be replaced with similar false accusations of Weapons of Mass Destruction so as to create a pretext to invade the most oil-rich country in the world and simultaneously consolidate and further expand US global power. Every aggressor has a "pretext" of which we should be very aware before climbing on bandwagons.

DEMOGRAPHIC ADJUSTMENTS

15. The Zionist creation of Israel is historically an aberration since this state is founded on a supremacy of one singular religion: Judaism. The demographic "landscape" has to be kept in check and need to be adjusted accordingly, in order to keep the Jewish/Arab Palestinian demography in favour of a Jewish majority, which since the inception of Israel has been kept at appr. 80/20%. The greatest nightmare for the Zionists is the far higher birthrates of the Arab population. (Please note that birthrates in poor communities are always much higher than in affluent societies). Prior to 1948 the Arab Palestinian/Jewish population ratio was approximately 80/20%. In order to reach the reverse ratio - as it is to-day - the indigenous Palestinian population had to be be expelled from their land. Ethnic cleansing campaigns on a large scale began in 1947 (Ben Gurion's Delta Plan B) a year before his unilateral proclamation in May 1948 and was carried out by the terrorist (as such described by contemporary news media) organisation Haganah, Irgun and Stern gangs, later amalgamated into the IDF. Some 400 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground, its inhabitants massacred (go to Googles and enter DAWAYMEH and also DEIR YASSIN), or made to flee to neighboring countries into the misery huge refugee camps, where they are still residing to this very day.

Footnote:
It stands to reason that Zionists vehemently deny these massacres, they have a strong ally in the western media(see quote by George Antonius at the bottom of INTRODUCTION) However, ironically most evidence comes from Jewish historians themselves and can hardly be denied.

ZIONIST CLAIMS

14. Zionist claims that the refugee problem was the result of the population fleeing for the "invading" Arab countries is quite untenable. 1) If that were true there would undoubtedly be many Jews amongst the refugees, which was not the case. There were no Jewish refugees. (and if there were they would of course have no problem returning) 2)Under international law (Geneva Convention Art 49 as well as U.N. Res. 194/ Art 11 December 11, 1948) refugees fleeing from war, have the right to return to their country of origin. 3) "Invading" Arab countries is also a misnomer, since Israel on the 15th May 1948 was at that point in time not an international recognised nation; had no legal status, was not a geographic entity as borders were not and are still not finalised. Ben Gurion, despite many warnings from amongst others American statesmen at the time and against United Nation plans and intentions, had unilaterally proclaimed his self styled "state". The United Nations Partition Plan Res. 188 had still not been finalised and was also rejected by the Arab side, who wanted democratic elections, which were rejected by the Zionists because of the Arab numerical majority they would have lost these elections. Israel was first recognised by the United Nations a year later on 11 May 1949.

TRUE WORDS

13.Some truly revealing words were spoken by one of Israel's great soldiers: Moshe Dayan in April 1956 at an eulogy for two slain soldiers: He said (quote):

"Let's not condemn these murders to-day. What do we know of their fierce hatred for us ? For eight years they have been living in refugee camps in Gaza, while right before their eyes e have been turning their land and villages, in which their forefathers lived, into our land. We should demand R's (the slain soldier)blood not from Arabs in GAZA,but from ourselves, for closing our eys to ourcruel fate and the role of our generation"
(from Martin Gilbert's "ISRAEL a history" bottom of page 311)

Dayan's words may be helpful in gaining a better understanding of the origins hat have lead to the Palestine/Israeli conflict.

BOYCOTTS ?

12. Boycotts in themselves will not work, but may indirectly make the general public more political aware of what the Palestinian/Israel conflict is about and eventually - hopefully - also lead to sanctions imposed by the United Nations and which may prove to be more effective. There are marked similarities between the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Nazi Germany and present day Israel (Marxism, Apartheid, National Socialism and Herzl's Zionism) in that they all had failed the test of times. They were man made ideologies, hence had limited lifespans, even though some of them were/are masquerading as mere pseudo-democracies. Israel may be able to sustain itself military for some time, but not all the time. One day it is bound to collapse and transformed into a unitary state (which was the initially the idea), embracing both Jews and Arab/Palestinians. It's now clear that a two state solution will not and can never happen. A unitary state is the best and most democratic solution, admittedly with all its attendant teething troubles we can hope and pray for as there is no other alternative. Remember: history is never static, it repeats itself; the same mistakes are being made over and over again, but in the end something quite different will emerge.

SPORTS and POLITICS

11. "Sport and politics should not mix" so the much echoed saying goes has become a much used slogan so as to deviate from the real issues that are at stake. I do not agree, it is a false argument. Sport events are used to promote a particular country as well. Sportsmen are "ambassadors" for their respective countries. We see this every time we participate in an international sports event. We play the national anthems and perform the HAKA. Already in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics, Hitler realised the importance of sport for promoting Germany, same as the Soviets and East European satellite countries at the time (which even some western governments wanted to have boycotted). Hence targeting sports events, by boycotting players who represent nations, such as Israel, committing gross violations of human rights and international law is an effective tool to make people aware of the horrific crimes this country has perpetrated against the Palestinian people, especially against the innocent, women and children in the occupied territories over the last sixty years or so and GAZA in particular.

Footnote:
Demonstration are OK as long as they are held in a dignified manner ! Although I agree with most of what John Minto has to say in his weekly comments I do not approve the way he and some of the other demonstrators were behaving at the recently held Auckland tennis tournaments, which would do more harm to the Palestinian cause than good.