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Posted August 4, 2001
A Thug Is A Thug
While your coverage of the Balkans conflict seems very evenhanded, I must take you to task for your single-minded approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
First, you seem to have Arafat and his cronies, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, et al confused with the mass of the Palestinian people. I really don't pretend to know what most Palestinians or Israeli Arabs think about the true prospects for peace with Israel. The real question is whether their definition of peace is mutual coexistence and trade or more war until the "Zionist entity" is destroyed. I applaud the fact that you will point out how much the US sends to Israel every year in fat arms subsidies, but Israel is not automatically in the wrong just because it enjoys a massive lobby in the US
Second, I have a problem with you leaving out the facts about what the Palestinian leadership is doing on the ground – the appalling neglect of infrastructure; the total brainwashing of youth and using these cute stone throwing kids to provide cover for their inept snipers (they're using M-16s, so can you really tell who shot who?). The money is disappearing into overseas bank accounts, while the Palestinian people are told that all of this is the fault of the occupier. Face it, once you became an "activist" in Palestine you don't have to work, you can make your rounds, take your protection money, assassinate your enemies and blame it all on Israel.
A
thug is a thug is a thug, no matter how fashionable his cause! I am
angry, not really with you but with what the PA gets a pass for – the
sheer stupidity and waste of precious human life.
I want to keep this brief so I won't argue with anyone on whether there was a country called Palestine in 1948 that was invaded, but do try to be more objective. Nobody on your web site seems to ask whether "self determination" should be exalted over the lives of so many stone throwing "martyrs," or whether Israelis and Palestinians got along much better before Arafat came along. I'd like to see just how loyal the Palestinian people are to their glorious leaders when Sharon unleashes the dogs of war to hunt them down (please don't cry for them).
Personally, I don't think any of this should be relevant to Americans, as we should be the Great Neutral. But we all know that won't happen, and the reasons why.
~ C. Ganske
Ran HaCohen replies:
It’s a persistent spin: whoever criticises Israel is automatically blamed of admiring Arafat. Arafat, the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian individuals are in no way free of faults and crimes. However, giving the blame to the occupied and not to the occupier, or even putting both parties on the same level, is in my eyes a moral crime. A thug is a thug, but an occupied thug with a stone is not an occupying thug with an F-16.
ZionistMediaTool.com?
I
find it totally strange for you to call yourselves "Antiwar"
while having the main article on your web site delivered July 31st [and]
titled "The
Chosen Pariah," written, apparently, by a typical Zionist.
It seems that Antiwar.com itself is turning [out] to be another tool
in the hands of the Zionist Media trying to convince the world that
Israel (the aggressor and the occupying force) is nothing but a victim
of the Arab and Palestinian "violence," forgetting that 50
years ago, Jews were brought from all over the world to replace the
unarmed Palestinian people in a 20th century version of terrible ethnic
cleansing, very close to what their grandfathers' allies (the Americans)
did to the Indians in the early 16th century. Palestinians were massacred,
terrorized and forced to leave their homes and villages and thrown in
refugees camps. 20 years later "poor Israel" managed to occupy
territories of 4 independent Arab countries, members of the UN, and
it described these military actions as self-defense!
I'm only trying to draw your attention to some of the real facts of
the Israeli aggression against the Arabs in the Middle East, trying
to remind you that the role of the media in such a conflict is not to
deceive the public but to reflect the facts of contemporary history.
And as they say, "you can deceive some of the people for some of
the time, but you can never deceive all of the people for all
of the time."
~ J. Kandeel
Ran HaCohen replies:
I am happy Mr. Kandeel took notice of my articles. I would have been even happier if he had cared to read any of them.
Silly Sentiment
[Regarding Ran HaCohen's column, "The Chosen Pariah":]
...I had not expected to see such a sentiment as silly as "Denmark…, the only Scandinavian country that bravely saved all its Jews from the Nazis," in any journal other than one for pubescent academics.
In
April 1940 when Germany invaded Denmark, the Danes made virtually no
resistance. It was not until 1943 that the Germans executed the first
Dane for resisting their rule. The Germans ... scheduled the arrest
and deportation of the 7000 Jews in Denmark for October 1, 1943. The
commander of the German troops in Denmark, General Best, ... informed
his maritime attaché, Georg Duckwitz....
Duckwitz, with the tacit approval of General Best, informed his friends among the Danish government, who arranged for the flight of these Jews. On a very warm October 1, while wearing winter coats and all their jewelry, many Jewish ladies rode the train from Copenhagen to the coast. ...Most Danish Jews lived in Copenhagen, and there was only one train line to the coast.
Herbert Pundik, then 16 years of age, remembered the train being "loaded with Jews." In not one case did German officials attempt to check the identity of even one Jew. One who escaped remembered Germans having an observation post near where his boat had left. Another remarked that the escape could not have happened without the connivance of the Germans.
Explanations of the behavior of the Germans have revolved around the fact that Denmark was furnishing the German Reich with ten percent of its food needs, and General Best had determined that continued tranquility in Denmark was his most important consideration. Mr. Pundik (now an editor of the newspaper Politiken) thought the reason that the truth of the escape from Denmark took fifty years to emerge was that the myth was too satisfying, and people did not want to smash it. (See the New York Times, Sep 28, 1993, p3.)
British historian, John Keegan, reminded readers of the ineffectiveness of the Resistance in Europe. While he applauded the Danes, Mr. Keegan noted that far more Danes, Walloons, Norwegians, Flemish and Belgians were enthusiastic soldiers in ethnic formations of the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front. (See Times Literary Supplement, p15, May 8, 1992.)
Ran HaCohen replies:
I am grateful for this well-informed letter, though Mr. Earley seems to have missed the irony in the beginning paragraphs of my column, which was meant as a short anthology of Israeli prejudices and clichés: calling Denmark “the only Scandinavian country that bravely saved all its Jews” was just as serious as my claim that “never in history was there a war in Scandinavia."