Israeli doctors colluding in torture

Israel’s watchdog body on medical ethics has failed to investigate evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are turning a blind eye to cases of torture, according to Israeli human rights groups.

The Israeli Medical Association (IMA) has ignored repeated requests to examine such evidence, the rights groups say, even though it has been presented with examples of Israeli doctors who have broken their legal and ethical duty towards Palestinians in their care.

The accusations will add fuel to a campaign backed by hundreds of doctors from around the world to force Yoram Blachar, who heads the IMA, to step down from his recent appointment as president of the World Medical Association (WMA).

More than 700 doctors have signed a petition arguing that Dr Blachar has disqualified himself from leadership of the WMA, the profession’s governing ethical body, by effectively condoning torture in Israel.

The campaign against Dr Blachar has gained ground rapidly since his appointment as president in November. Critics said his alleged complicity in the use of torture in Israeli detention facilities can be traced to 1995, when he became chairman of the IMA.

Until 1999, when Israel’s Supreme Court restricted torture, Israeli doctors routinely supervised the medical treatment of abused detainees, mostly Palestinians from the occupied territories.

During that period Dr Blachar surprised many colleagues by expressing support for Israeli interrogators’ use of “moderate physical pressure” in a letter to The Lancet, the British medical journal. The phrase covers a wide range of practices from beatings and binding prisoners in painful positions to sleep deprivation. It is regarded by human rights organisations as a euphemism for torture.

Despite the 1999 court ruling, a coalition of 14 Israeli human rights groups known as United Against Torture concluded in its latest annual report in November that Israeli detention facilities are still using torture systematically. Israeli doctors are also being relied on to treat the resulting injuries.

Last week, Physicians for Human Rights and the Public Committee against Torture in Israel published a joint report examining hundreds of arrests in which Palestinians were bound in “distorted and unnatural” ways to inflict “pain and humiliation” amounting to torture.

The report noted instances where prisoners, including a pregnant woman and a dying man, were shackled while doctors carried out emergency procedures in a hospital.

According to the report, the doctors violated the Tokyo Declaration, the key code of medical ethics adopted by the WMA in 1975 that bans the use of cruel, humiliating or inhuman treatment by physicians.

Ishai Menuchin, the head of the Public Committee, said his group had been lobbying strenuously against Israeli doctors’ complicity in torture since it issued a report, Ticking Bombs, in 2007, arguing that torture was routine in Israel.

The Public Committee highlighted the testimonies of nine Palestinians who had been tortured by interrogators. The report also noted that in most cases Israeli physicians treating detainees “return their patients to additional rounds of torture, and remain silent”.

In June last year, Physicians for Human Rights drew the IMA’s attention to two cases in which the attending doctor failed to report signs of torture on a Palestinian.

Anat Litvin of Physicians for Human Rights told the IMA: “We believe that doctors are used by torturers as a safety net – take them out of the system and torture will be much more difficult to enact.”

The groups stepped up their pressure in February, writing to Avinoam Reches, the chairman of the IMA’s ethics committee. They demanded that his association investigate six cases of doctors who failed to report signs of torture.

In one case, a prison doctor, under pressure from interrogators, agreed to retract a written recommendation that a detainee be immediately hospitalised for treatment.

Prof Reches promised to conduct an inquiry. However, last month the two human rights groups criticised him for failing to investigate their claims, accusing him of holding only “amicable and unofficial” conversations over the phone with a few of the doctors concerned.

“We have sent to the IMA many testimonies from victims of torture who were referred to doctors for treatment,” Dr Menuchin said. “But the IMA has yet to do anything about it.

“A significant number of doctors in Israel, in detention facilities and public hospitals, know torture is taking place, but choose to avert their gaze.”

This month, Defence for Children International issued a report on the torture of Palestinian children, noting that in several of the cases it cited, Israeli doctors had turned a blind eye. A boy of 14 who was beaten repeatedly on a broken arm reported the abuse to a doctor who, he said, replied only: “I had nothing to do with that.”

The report stated that the group “has not encountered a single case where an adult in a position of authority, such as a soldier, doctor, judicial officer or prison staff, has intervened on behalf of a child who was mistreated”.

Campaigners against Dr Blachar’s appointment as the head of the WMA say its Israeli sister association’s inaction on torture is unsurprising given its chairman’s public stance.

Derek Summerfield of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London, said: “The IMA under Dr Blachar is in collusion with the Israeli state policy of torture. Its role is to put a benign face on the occupation.”

Dr Blachar told the Israeli website Ynet last week that such criticisms were “slanderous”, saying he and the IMA denounced all forms of torture.

The WMA, with nine million members in more than 80 countries, was established in 1947 as a response to the abuses sanctioned by German and Japanese doctors during the Second World War.

In 2007, the WMA’s general assembly called on doctors to document and report all cases of suspected torture.

Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter

Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.

Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.

I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

JPost actually ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

JPost, a major news organization, promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono? (who benefits).

There’s no question that Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation. According to a recent poll, more than half of Israel’s population support using military force against Iran if they do not cease from developing nuclear energy (which they have the legal right to do as per the NNP treaty). Oddly enough, this comes out of a country which is not a cosigner to the NNP treaty and has no right to develop nuclear energy, yet posses an arsenal of nuclear BOMBS.

Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud? As obvious as it was in our own 2000 election, Al Gore would not touch the topic of voter fraud. No major US politician goes near the subject. They know full well that such an accusation would shake the entire foundation of our democracy and threaten the political structures that are in place.

These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes, of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don’t speak English and don’t use Twitter!

[Update] JPost removes the evidence and issues a response

Meet The Spammers

IranRiggedElect
3146 followers. 31 friends.
340 tweets in past 4 days. none before that.
Top 5 words - iranelection, cnnfail, mousavi, tehran,
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 12pm and 2pm eastern standard time
Most retweets: @StopAhmadi @IranElection09 @change_for_iran

Change_for_Iran
14,000 followers. 0 friends
117 tweets in 2 days. none before that.
All tweets in English
Time: Bulk between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern.
Top 5 words: iranelection, people, police, right, students
No retweets

IranElection09
800 followers. 9 friends.
196 tweets in 3 days. none before that.
185 in English. 11 in Farsi (Arabic appearing letters. Not sure if it’s Farsi)
Time: bulk between 2:00pm and 6:00pm eastern. Also 1:00am.
Top 5 words: iranelection, rt, mousavi, tehran, march
Most retweets: @IranRiggedElect @StopAhmadi

StopAhmadi
6199 followers. 53 friends.
1107 tweets in past 3 days. None before then.
top 5 words: iranelection, ppl, news, rt, iran.
All tweets in English
Time: bulk between 9:00am and 5:00pm eastern
Most retweets: @mohamadreza @mahdi

mohamadreza
1433 followers. 142 friends
(protected account. cant see data)

The following all have the same photo in their profile and are followed by the profiles previously mentioned.

http://twitter.com/SadeqEn
http://twitter.com/greenvote
http://twitter.com/Change_for_Iran (14,000 followers)
http://twitter.com/iranbaan
http://twitter.com/sdavood
http://twitter.com/IranElection09 (800 followers. 9 friends.)

Click below for the JPost Article

[Update 1] Reuter’s on Pre-election Polling: Ahmadinejad lead by a 2-to-1 ratio, greater than the announced results of the “contested” vote.

[Update 2] NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel says Twitter and Facebook are helping Iranians organize a “revolution.”

[Update 3] Wonder where all of the nasty comments are coming from? FYI- DDOS = distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. (Recognize the avatar?) BUT….their latest spamming campaign (Against CS) is backfiring.

Spammers get a taste of their own medicine!: Block CS eh? It’s not us being blocked…..

[Update 4] The Guardian: Iran’s election result may not be fraudulent. Our polling suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory is what voters wanted

[Update 5] Iran blocked access to twitter yesterday BUT that doesn’t stop the “Iranian Students” from continuing to tweet every 10 or so minutes.

[Update 6] Iranian intelligence arrested “Agents” within the country “who masterminded the recent post-election violence in Tehran.”

[Update 7] JPost removes the evidence and issues a response

[Update 8] Tehran- Riots orchestrated by enemies

[Update 9] Washington Post: “Twitter’s impact inside Iran is zero,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles. “Here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.”

[Update 10] CIA Factbook: Languages spoken in Iran: Persian and Persian dialects 58%, Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%, Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Balochi 1%, Arabic 1%, Turkish 1%, other 2%. Sure, some of the more educated people (a small amount) do speak English but its not at all popular.

[Update 11] This post became one of the most followed, tweeted and retweeted stories regarding the #IranElection on the net yesterday. The 3 “Iranian Student” spammers specifically mentioned this post as did hundreds of others. So, um, where are the Iranians?? The screen shot below is of our traffic yesterday by country.

Disclaimer: Before I get attacked as being an Anti-Semite,you should know that I am half Jewish. Alternatively, I hope that people do not misinterpret this as some “JEWISH” conspiracy. It isn’t. These are the workings of the extreme right wing of Israeli politics. They have their own Bush’s and Cheney’s there too.

Israel To Close US Embassies

Holocau$t™ News-Washington

Israeli Embassy spokesperson "Bennie" Thugstein announced today that Israel will close its embassies in New York and DC due to a lack of qualified personnel.

"We're in a real bind here. Many of our best administrators have been hired by President Obama to fill his cabinet with Zionists and Israeli-Firsters. While that makes us extremely happy, it also leaves us short of key people needed to staff our combination embassy/MOSSAD hangouts," said Thugstein.

Thugstein also said that "While we probably could get some help from our good friends at the AIPAC Lobby, that wouldn't be much help, since their forte is bribing and corrupting the U.S. Congress and not running a bureaucracy."

Thugstein added that they might promote some key MOSSAD personnel to upper echelon positions, but that they were so busy now creating conditions for the next false-flag against America, that they wouldn't have enough time to devote to running the day to day operations of the embassies.

"We also talked with our good friends on Wall Street and tried to recruit some, but they said they hand their hands full, literally, looting American pension funds and 401K retirement accounts and couldn't part with any of their staff, so we'll just have to bite the bagel and for now, close some embassies until this staffing shortage is over."

Reporting from Washington, this is Moe Ronn for Holocau$t™ News

Posted by Greg Bacon at 4:46 AM

Declaration of Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)

I, Ward Boston, Jr. do declare that the following statement is true and complete:

For more than 30 years, I have remained silent on the topic of USS Liberty. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them.

However, recent attempts to rewrite history compel me to share the truth.

In June of 1967, while serving as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps, Department of the Navy, I was assigned as senior legal counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the brutal attack on USS Liberty, which had occurred on June 8th.

The late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, president of the Court, and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation into the attack, despite the fact that we both had estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry into an attack of this magnitude would take at least six months to conduct.

Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., then Commander-in-chief, Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR), at his headquarters in London, had charged Admiral Kidd (in a letter dated June 10, 1967) to “inquire into all the pertinent facts and circumstances leading to and connected with the armed attack; damage resulting therefrom; and deaths of and injuries to Naval personnel.”

Despite the short amount of time we were given, we gathered a vast amount of evidence, including hours of heartbreaking testimony from the young survivors.

The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as “murderous bastards.” It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.

I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their superiors, who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was American.

I saw the flag, which had visibly identified the ship as American, riddled with bullet holes, and heard testimony that made it clear that the Israelis intended there be no survivors. 10. Not only did the Israelis attack the ship with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned three lifeboats that had been launched in an attempt by the crew to save the most seriously wounded — a war crime.

Admiral Kidd and I both felt it necessary to travel to Israel to interview the Israelis who took part in the attack. Admiral Kidd telephoned Admiral McCain to discuss making arrangements. Admiral Kidd later told me that Admiral McCain was adamant that we were not to travel to Israel or contact the Israelis concerning this matter.

Regrettably, we did not receive into evidence and the Court did not consider any of the more than sixty witness declarations from men who had been hospitalized and were unable to testify in person.

I am outraged at the efforts of the apologists for Israel in this country to claim that this attack was a case of “mistaken identity.”

In particular, the recent publication of Jay Cristol’s book, The Liberty Incident, twists the facts and misrepresents the views of those of us who investigated the attack.

It is Cristol’s insidious attempt to whitewash the facts that has pushed me to speak out.

I know from personal conversations I had with Admiral Kidd that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Admiral Kidd told me, after returning from Washington, D.C. that he had been ordered to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the court’s findings.

Admiral Kidd also told me that he had been ordered to “put the lid” on everything having to do with the attack on USS Liberty. We were never to speak of it and we were to caution everyone else involved that they could never speak of it again.

I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that statement as I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent off to Washington.

I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and I did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. Finally, the testimony of Lt. Painter concerning the deliberate machine gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and included in the original transcript, is now missing and has been excised.

Following the conclusion of the Court of Inquiry, Admiral Kidd and I remained in contact. Though we never spoke of the attack in public, we did discuss it between ourselves, on occasion. Every time we discussed the attack, Admiral Kidd was adamant that it was a deliberate, planned attack on an American ship.

In 1990, I received a telephone call from Jay Cristol, who wanted to interview me concerning the functioning of the Court of Inquiry. I told him that I would not speak to him on that subject and prepared to hang up the telephone. Cristol then began asking me about my personal background and other, non-Court of Inquiry related matters. I endeavored to answer these questions and politely extricate myself from the conversation. Cristol continued to return to the subject of the Court of Inquiry, which I refused to discuss with him. Finally, I suggested that he contact Admiral Kidd and ask him about the Court of Inquiry.

Shortly after my conversation with Cristol, I received a telephone call from Admiral Kidd, inquiring about Cristol and what he was up to. The Admiral spoke of Cristol in disparaging terms and even opined that “Cristol must be an Israeli agent.” I don’t know if he meant that literally or it was his way of expressing his disgust for Cristol’s highly partisan, pro-Israeli approach to questions involving USS Liberty.

At no time did I ever hear Admiral Kidd speak of Cristol other than in highly disparaging terms. I find Cristol’s claims of a “close friendship” with Admiral Kidd to be utterly incredible. I also find it impossible to believe the statements he attributes to Admiral Kidd, concerning the attack on USS Liberty.

Several years later, I received a letter from Cristol that contained what he purported to be his notes of our prior conversation. These “notes” were grossly incorrect and bore no resemblance in reality to that discussion. I find it hard to believe that these “notes” were the product of a mistake, rather than an attempt to deceive. I informed Cristol that I disagreed with his recollection of our conversation and that he was wrong. Cristol made several attempts to arrange for the two of us to meet in person and talk but I always found ways to avoid doing this. I did not wish to meet with Cristol as we had nothing in common and I did not trust him.

Contrary to the misinformation presented by Cristol and others, it is important for the American people to know that it is clear that Israel is responsible for deliberately attacking an American ship and murdering American sailors, whose bereaved shipmates have lived with this egregious conclusion for many years.

Dated: January 9, 2004
at Coronado, California.
Ward Boston, Jr., Captain, JAGC, USN (Ret.)
Senior Counsel to the USS Liberty Court of Inquiry

Israel facing hundreds of war crime lawsuits

Israel could soon be charged with hundreds of war crimes as Palestinian lawyers file 936 lawsuits against the Israeli military five months after its three week war on Gaza. The cases will soon be heard in Spain's National Court under universal jurisdiction, the pro-Israeli magazine Der Spiegel reported.

It's about Time. And it's truly unfortunate that these lawsuits couldn't be filed in the United States where we seem to have lost our way, discarded the Constitution and embraced Fascism.

Israeli Government Most Corrupt In World

A poll conducted by an anti-Corruption organization has revealed that the majority of Israeli's believe their government is not seriously fighting against Corruption.

The annual Global Corruption Barometer report released by Transparency International shows that 86 percent of Israelis --the highest level in the world--say the government's efforts to fight Corruption are ineffective.

Only 13 percent of Israelis believed that the government is taking the necessary measures to fight Corruption, Haaretz reported.

In 2006, 66 percent of those questioned did not believe in their government's anti-Corruption efforts.

The global public opinion survey represents the views of citizens from 69 countries around the world, including 500 in Israel.

The survey asks people about their attitudes toward local Corruption and their own personal involvement in such corrupt acts as bribery.

Senior Israeli officials including Israel's incumbent Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are charged with being engaged in several cases of financial Corruption.

Many other Israeli former officials including former president Moshe Katsav, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, former Israeli finance minister Avraham Hirshson and Knesset (Parliament) member Shlomo Benizri have been involved in corruption cases.

Doron Navot of the University of Haifa and the Israel Democracy Institute says in Israel "not only do the government and elected officials not fight political Corruption, but in recent years they see politicians and elected officials fighting the guardians - those battling against Corruption - and trying to weaken them and advance reforms that harm the fight against Corruption."

Japan’s Embrace of a Phony War on Terror

Japan may be “in the American Embrace,” as Gavan McCormack’s Client State cogently argues, but in whose embrace is America?

In Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, Gavan McCormack demonstrates how Japan’s apparent nationalist turn owes much to the need to conceal the country’s increasing subordination to American imperial designs. However, a closer examination of the driving forces behind the US Empire in the 21st century suggests that both countries may be serving a quite different agenda.

Rightly described as a “masterful” analysis by fellow Japan expert Chalmers Johnson, McCormack’s 2007 book expertly documents how Japan’s postwar “peace constitution” has been steadily attenuated to the point of meaninglessness, as Tokyo has consistently bowed to pressure from Washington to become more active in its support of US hegemony, culminating in a “merger” of their military forces in the wake of 9/11.

McCormack claims that this is “an agenda heavily in the American, rather than the Japanese national interest.” But in what sense could the extremely costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now being expanded into Pakistan under the “antiwar” commander-in-chief Obama, be said to be in “the American interest”?

These illegal wars of aggression have been costly to America not only in terms of the trillions of dollars added to its ballooning national debt, but also in terms of the incalculable loss of credibility that it has suffered in the eyes of world opinion, appalled by the shameless lies about WMDs, the lurid scenes of torture in Abu Ghraib, and the massive casualties inflicted by high-tech weaponry on innocent civilians, whose lives are casually dismissed as “collateral damage” in the never-ending pursuit of the elusive Bin Laden.

The so-called War on Terror may be extremely profitable for weapons manufacturers, private military corporations, and the venal pro-war pundits they fund, but who else does it benefit?

Big Oil, says the antiwar left. But the “no blood for oil” adherents too may be misinformed, according to one leading analyst of the Iraq war. “Contrary to the view of most American progressives that oil, and specifically the interests of Big Oil, is the primary mover, there is no evidence that the major US oil corporations pressured Congress or promoted the war in Iraq or the current confrontation with Iran,” James Petras argues in The Power of Israel in the United States. “To the contrary: there is plenty of evidence that they are very uneasy about the losses that may result from an Israeli attack on Iran.”

And as for the American people, or at least those lucky enough to hold their jobs in the coming Wall Street-induced depression, they will be paying dearly in greatly increased taxes for their government’s folly for the foreseeable future.

Considering all this, it is difficult not to concur with the conclusion of a policy paper published by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) that the War on Terror has been “for the most part, extremely damaging to US interests.”

The 2003 paper, “Clean Break or Dirty War?” by Irmep, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that studies US-Middle East policy formulation, shows how policies originally prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 by a study group which included the likes of Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser under the title “A Clean Break: A Strategy for Securing the Realm” came to shape US foreign policy under the Bush administration.

“A Clean Break” (ACB) advocated getting rid of Saddam Hussein, and the destabilisation or overthrow of the governments of Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia for Israel to be truly safe. Many of the same themes were repeated in the Project for the New American Century’s 2000 document “Rebuilding America’s Defences,” which, after the “catastrophic and catalysing event” of 9/11, became the official US policy of “preemptive war” in the US National Security Strategy of 2002, authored by PNAC signatory Paul Wolfowitz.

As the IRmep paper explains, “...no set of policies ever come to fruition without an active and vocal distribution and implementation network.” This small but influential neocon network,” it is argued, “have achieved amazing success at seasoning and baking ACB policy agenda items into a tenuous mold as ‘vital interests’ of the United States itself.”

The IRmep paper damningly concludes: “Many US actions are simply so inexplicable that consideration of their chief benefactor, Israel, is the only reasonable explanation. And as Americans dismiss Arab government charges that Israel is attacking them by proxy across the region, the evidence shows that the Arabs are correct. ‘A Clean Break’ is, at heart, an Israeli proclamation of ‘Dirty War.’”

The spies who love the USA

Indeed, Americans recently got an inkling of just how corrupted their political system has been by Israeli interests, or at least they would have if the mainstream media had given the latest twist in the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) spy scandal the serious attention it deserved. For those who haven’t been following the story on Antiwar.com, where Justin Raimondo, Grant F. Smith, Philip Giraldi and others have written extensively about it, here’s what happened.

Jeff Stein, who writes for Congressional Quarterly, reported in April that two former national security officials had read transcripts of National Security Agency wiretaps in which Democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman was overheard talking to a “suspected Israeli agent” who wanted her to lobby the Justice Department on behalf of two former AIPAC officials under indictment for violating the 1917 Espionage Act. The two lobbyists, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged with passing on classified information about Iran to the press and the Israeli embassy, which they had received from Colonel Lawrence Franklin, who had been a top Iran analyst in Douglas Feith’s office at the Pentagon before Franklin pled guilty to espionage in 2005. In return for Harman’s assistance, the Israeli operativepromised to pressure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give Harman the chair of the House Intelligence Committee by threatening to withhold the political contributions of Haim Saban if she didn’t.

It was not a threat to be taken lightly, as Saban, the billionaire Israeli-American media mogul, had been the largest overall contributor to the Democratic National Committee during the 2001-2002 cycle, when, according to Matthew Yglesias, “the party leadership was backing the Iraq War.”

In case there are some outraged Democrats who might protest that Saban’s support for the party was probably not just about Iraq, that he more than likely also approved of the Democrats’ liberal domestic policies, Saban’s own words should disabuse them of that notion. On September 5, 2004 he told the New York Times, “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.”

Considering that this self-confessed monomaniac used to spend hours on the phone with Ariel Sharon, the so-called “man of peace” who in a saner world would have been hauled to the Hague for war crimes, Saban’s influence over the Democrats should be cause for concern, to say the least.

Now that the Iraqi “threat” to Israel has been effectively neutralized by the American invasion and seemingly endless occupation (America’s West Bank?), Saban’s current paramount concern appears to be the “existential danger” that Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons now pose to Israel, a state which already hashundreds of nuclear weapons - the only one in the Middle East which does. Yet Israel is also the only one which is not under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the only one which has not acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Despite these facts, Saban’s recent acquisition of Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the US, as part of a wider AIPAC outreach strategy to the growing Hispanic community, is probably intended to convince its 3.7 million viewers of the urgent need to spill more American blood, much of it Hispanic, in curbing the Iranian “threat.”

Lest anyone dismiss Haim Saban as an isolated ideologue attempting to use his wealth - he’s the 102nd richest person in America - to remake US foreign policy in the image of the Likud party, consider that close to 60 percent of Democratic Party funding (compared to 35 percent for the Republican Party) comes from mainly hardline pro-Israeli Jews, unrepresentative of American Jews in general, who tend to be antiwar unless Israel is directly involved.

Rosen, another PNAC signatory, even had the chutzpah to lead the witch-hunt that prevented Charles Freeman from becoming chairman of the National Intelligence Council, practically smearing the respected diplomat as an “anti-Semite” for his failure to confuse American interests with Israel’s. In that key position, Freeman would have been responsible for supplying the President with sound intelligence about genuine threats facing America, as opposed to the fake intelligence that led to the Iraq war, some of which made its way to the White House from Ariel Sharon’s office via Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, as recounted in Julian Borger’s 2003 Guardian article, “The Spies Who Pushed For War.”

You’d think Rosen would have kept a lower profile at least until his own trial was over, which was ultimately quashed in early May, apparently due to White House pressure. But perhaps he was confident in the knowledge that in Washington Israel’s security is “sacrosanct,” as Obama assured his AIPAC sponsors, whereas America’s security seems to be for sale to the highest bidder, at least as long as most Americans are kept in the dark about the costs of their “special relationship” with Israel.

Dying for a lie

While US taxpayers had subsidised Israel to the tune of at least $108 billion up to 2006 (currently $3 billion a year) the Japanese too have paid dearly for their subordination to a US Empire prone to fight Israel’s wars.

“The seriously ill Japanese economy takes every possible step to prop up the equally ailing US economy, pouring Japanese savings into the black hole of American illiquidity in order to subsidize the US global empire, fund its debt, and finance its over-consumption,” writes McCormack. “Japan has become the sine qua non of Washington’s global, superpower strategy and status.”

Japan’s commitment to the War on Terror has brought added costs. One estimate puts the cost of Japan’s post-9/11 “rear support” at $90 billion. Tokyo promised another $5 billion for rebuilding an Iraq that had been destroyed by lies.

But Japan’s treasure is no longer sufficient to satisfy Washington’s demands of its “client state.”

Richard Armitage, yet another PNAC signatory, once told an Australian audience that an “alliance” meant that “Australian sons and daughters...would be willing to die to help defend the United States. That’s what an alliance means.” As long as the Israel lobby maintains its stranglehold over US foreign policy, that also means being willing to die to defend Israel against its neighbours, who increasingly see its drive for regional hegemony as a real threat to their existence. And as long as Japan remains in the American embrace, it won’t be long before Japanese parents will be expected to make a similar sacrifice.

Now if only there were a powerful Japan lobby in Washington - let’s call it AJPAC - things might be a lot different.

Maidhc Ó Cathail is a freelance writer living in Japan who writes a monthly political column for Kansai Time Out magazine. He also contributes a monthly column to the Irish language internet magazine Beo!

Zionism Is Racism and Isn't Jewish

Israel’s Little Hitler

There is always fresh evidence justifying the Israeli-Nazi analogy. In recent days and weeks, a number of Israeli officials and lawmakers proposed “draft laws” that would effectively formalize Israel’s de facto racism and seriously restrict the human and civil rights of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens.

One of the proposals being discussed would criminalize the commemoration of Nakba by Palestinians holding the Israeli citizenship. Predictably, the brazenly racist proposal has infuriated Israel’s 1.5-million- strong Palestinian community.

One Israeli Palestinian parliamentarian compared the proposed law with an imagined promulgation by Germany of a law banning all Jewish activities commemorating the holocaust.

The lawmaker’s remarks are not far-fetched. After all, the Nakba or catastrophe is the Palestinian holocaust, whether we like or not. True, the scope may not be identical in both cases. However, it is also true that Zionists have wrested the Palestinian people historical homeland form its rightful native inhabitants, destroyed their homes and towns, and expelled them to the four corners of the globe.

More to the point, the Palestinians are the longest-suffering people in modern history. They are still being haphazardly killed in the hundreds and thousands by a Gestapo-like army which claims to be the “most moral army in the world.” Palestinian homes are still being demolished, Palestinian land is still being stolen on a daily basis, and millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and especially Gaza Strip are still being hounded, starved, tormented, savaged and terrorized by the very country that shamelessly claims to be the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Aryeh Eldad

One of the most thuggish Israeli leaders who has been promoting Israel’s manifestly racist discourse against non-Jews in general and Palestinians in particular is Aryeh Eldad of the Nazi-like Ichud Leumi, or National Union.

This party holds more or less the same ideas and perceptions toward the Palestinian people that the German Nazis held against the Jews and other “untermenschen.” It advocates genocide, ethnic cleansing, discriminatory treatment of non-Jews as well as wanton home demolitions and land confiscation of land owned by Palestinians.

Some of the party’s associates have called for “wiping off the goyem (non-Jews) from ‘the Land of Israel pursuant Biblical methods.”

The term “Biblical methods” refer to the genocidal wars the ancient Israelites waged against the Canaanite tribes in Palestine as recorded in the Bible.

A few days ago, Eldad proposed that Jordan be “transformed” into a Palestinian state and that Palestinians in the West Bank be granted the Jordanian citizenship.

The proposal would impose the Israeli sovereignty on “all mandatory Palestine” from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean and prepare the psychological and legal ground for the ultimate deportation of the estimated 5.1 million Palestinians from their ancestral homeland.

Interestingly, many Israeli leaders from various political parties have expressed keen interest in the diabolical proposal. Indeed, those who voiced reservations about the proposal did so on the ground that it was “unrealistic” and “impractical” not immoral and criminal.

In fact, even Labor party lawmakers in the Likud-led government voted in favor of referring the proposal to further discussion by the Knesset.

Eldad has a long history of making bluntly-fascist and racist provocations against the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line as well as against Islam and Muslims.

Nearly six months ago, he hosted in West Jerusalem a virulently anti-Islam “seminar” in which a number of fascist-minded speakers from Israel and abroad took part.

The one-day seminar was addressed by notorious Islamophobes such as Daniel Pipes, an American-Jewish supremacist, Dutch Legislator Greet Wilders and Eldad himself.

After making characteristically venomous remarks against Islam, the Quran and Muslims, Wilders received a standing ovation.

A few years ago Eldad suggested that non-Jews were not true human beings.

He was quoted as saying during a protest against the eviction by the Israeli army of a small settler outpost in the West Bank that “it was sad that the army was treating real human beings as if they were Arabs.”

Eldad has also been a focal advocate of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem where successive Israeli governments have been trying to besiege Arab demographic presence while actively encouraging Jewish settlement activities in and around the occupied Arab city.

Arab Knesset member Ahmed Teibi has described Eldad and likeminded Jewish leaders as “representing and embodying the ugly face of racism and fascism.”

“If Eldad and his ilk were living in any European country, they would be thrown behind bars immediately. The fact that they are thriving in Israel speaks volumes about the poisoned political environment in this country.”

Teibi said the roots of Palestinians in occupied Palestine were deeper, much deeper, than the shallow roots of most Israeli Jews.

“Every honest person in this world can attest that every Jewish town or village is built on the ruins of an Arab town and village.”

I believe that honest people around the world are morally obligated to call the spade a spade, irrespective of whose hands the shovel happens to be.

Today, the ugly face of fascism is rising in Israel, and a Jewish Third Reich must never be allowed to evolve and prosper into a full-fledged Hitlerian monster at the hands of the very people who have made the epithet “Nazi” one of the ugliest words in all languages of the world.

Hence, the entire humanity is urged to combat and defeat the new Nazism now thriving in Israel. The fact that this Nazism is having a Jewish garment is totally irrelevant. Evil doesn’t become kosher or innocuous when done by Jews.

Israel destroying Gaza’s farmlands

May 22, 2009

On the morning of 4 May 2009, Israeli troops set fire to Palestinian crops along Gaza’s eastern border with Israel. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that 200,000 square meters of crops were destroyed, including wheat and barley ready for harvest, as well as vegetables, olive and pomegranate trees.

Local farmers report that the blaze carried over a four-kilometer stretch on the Palestinian side of the eastern border land. Ibrahim Hassan Safadi, 49, from one of the farming families whose crops were destroyed by the blaze, said that the fires were smoldering until early evening, despite efforts by the fire brigades to extinguish them.

Safadi says he was present when Israeli soldiers fired small bombs into his field, which soon after caught ablaze. He explained that “The Israeli soldiers fired from their jeeps, causing a fire to break out on the land. They burned the wheat, burned the pomegranate trees … The fire spread across the valley. We called the fire brigades. They came to the area and put out the fire. But in some places the fire started again.” According to Safadi, he lost 30,000 square meters to the blaze, including 300 pomegranate trees, 150 olive trees, and wheat.

In the border areas it has long since become nearly impossible to work on the land due to almost daily shooting from the Israeli soldiers. The crops that were burned on 4 May were dried and ready to harvest, meaning that they were extremely flammable.

“It took only three minutes for the fire to destroy 65,000 square meters,” said Nahed Jaber Abu Said, whose farmland lies a few kilometers down the road from Safadi. He added that “It was nearly 9am. I was here when the Israeli jeeps came. An Israeli soldier at the fence shot an explosive into our field of wheat. It went up in flames immediately.”

Safadi said that the arson attack was the third major time his farm has suffered from an Israeli attack. In previous attacks over the last decade, he explained, Israeli soldiers bulldozed his land, razing his lemon, olive and clementine trees as well as demolishing greenhouses.

“We’ve suffered great losses. The Israeli soldiers have destroyed so much of our land, trees and equipment. They’ve cost us a lot of money,” he said, citing cumulative losses of $330,000 since 2000 when the heightened invasions began. In the last attack, Safadi said that $130,000 worth of crops, trees and irrigation piping was destroyed.

A wheat field destroyed by fire.

On top of the destruction, Safadi complains of not being able to replace destroyed items like the plastic hosing used to irrigate his fields. These, along with fertilizers and machinery replacement parts, are banned from entering Gaza due to the Israeli-led and internationally-backed whole-scale siege of the territory.

Abu Said reports losses of $2,000 on one patch of his land alone. “This isn’t including the land closest to the border fence,” he said. “I’m so sad now, what can I do?”

His experiences also extend beyond the 4 May attacks, and beyond the loss of land. In 2008, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 11 of his sheep and seriously injured a 15-year-old cousin, Jaber, by shooting him in the mouth.

Attacks by Israeli soldiers occur on a near-daily basis along Gaza’s borders with Israel. Nearly a decade ago, Israel unilaterally imposed a “buffer” or “no-go” zone solely on the Gaza side of their shared borders. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, the initial 100-meter “off-limits” area has now extended to one kilometer across much of Gaza’s eastern border and two kilometers along the Strip’s northern border. FAO further reports that roughly one-third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies within the confines of the “buffer zone.”

Since the 18 January ceasefire, three Palestinian civilians, including one child, have been killed in the “buffer zone” area from shooting and shelling by Israeli forces. Another 12 Palestinians have been injured, including three children and two women, due to Israeli fire along the border.

In addition to the physical threat and the destruction of agricultural land and equipment, Gaza’s farming sector is further devastated by the destruction of what is believed to be hundreds of wells and sources of water and the contamination of farmland due to Israel’s invasion of Gaza at the beginning of the year. As reported by the Guardian newspaper in February 2009, these attacks have left nearly 60 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land useless.

The consequences of the active destruction of Gaza’s farming sector are amplified within the context of Israel’s siege and the stagnant state of rebuilding efforts since the ceasefire. With only a trickle of aid entering Gaza and poverty and malnutrition rates soaring, the ability to produce food is all the more vital to Palestinians in Gaza.

All images by Eva Bartlett.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel’s ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel’s recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Settlers burn barley harvest belonging to Nablus-area farmer

May 22, 2009

Nablus – Ma’an – Israeli settlers from the illegal Yitzhar settlement south of Nablus set fire to bales of harvested barley in a large field owned by a Nablus farmer Friday morning.

The owner, 37-year-old Muhammad Rida, had harvested half the crop on Thursday and stacked the grains to dry in the field near Khallat As-Siwar south of Nablus.

When he arrived to the field Friday morning to finish harvesting the crop he saw dozens of settlers setting fire to the bales.

“This is not the first time they have done this,” Rida commented. The entire crop was burned.

Even Crayons Are Banned

The few items merchants are allowed to trade in are divided into three categories: food, medicine and detergent. Everything else is forbidden - including building materials (which are necessary to rehabilitate Gaza's ruins and rebuild its infrastructure), electric appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines, spare machine and car parts, fabrics, threads, needles, light bulbs, candles, matches, books, musical instruments, crayons, clothing, shoes, mattresses, sheets, blankets, cutlery, crockery, cups, glasses and animals. Many of the banned products are imported through the tunnels and can be found in Gaza's markets.

Pasta, which had been forbidden in the past, is now allowed, after U.S. Senator John Kerry expressed his astonishment at the ban during a visit to Gaza in February. But tea, coffee, sausages, semolina, milk products in large packages and most baking products are forbidden. So are industrial commodities for manufacturing food products, chocolate, sesame seeds and nuts. Israel does allow importing fruit, milk products in small packages and frozen food products as well as limited amounts of industrial fuel.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that during the first week of May, 2.2 million liters of industrial fuel - some 70 percent of the weekly supply required to operate the power station - was allowed into Gaza. UNRWA receives petrol and diesel supplies separately. A daily 270-300 tons of cooking gas - 54 percent of the required amount - is allowed.

Petrol and diesel for private cars and public transportation have not been imported from Israel since November 2, 2008, except for a small amount for UNRWA. The union of Gaza's gas station owners estimates that some 100,000 liters of diesel and 70,000 liters of petrol are brought through the tunnels daily.

Egypt, which in the past two months has been restricting the trade movement through the tunnels, does not limit the supply of gas and fuel. But since Egyptian fuel is heavier than Israeli fuel, it damages the newer cars in Gaza and causes malfunctions.

In the past, Israel allowed wood for home furnishings to be brought into Gaza for some time, but not wood for windows and doors. Now Israel has resumed the ban on wood for furniture.

The ban on toilet paper, diapers and sanitary napkins was lifted three months ago. A little more than a month ago, following a long ban, Israel permitted the import of detergents and soaps into Gaza. Even shampoo was allowed. But one merchant discovered that the bottles of shampoo he had ordered were sent back because they included conditioner, which was not on the list.

Five weeks ago Israel allowed margarine, salt and artificial sweetener to be brought into Gaza. Legumes have been allowed for the past two months and yeast for the past two weeks. Contrary to rumors, Israel has not banned sugar.

COGAT commented that, "The policy of bringing commodities derives from and is coordinated with Israel's policy toward the Gaza Strip, as determined by the cabinet decision on September 19, 2007."

A COGAT forum convenes with representatives of international organizations weekly to address special requests of the international community regarding humanitarian equipment and the changing needs of the Palestinian population, the statement says.

Police attack, kidnap students marking the Nakba in Jerusalem

Eyewitnesses reported that the Israeli police and soldiers attacked more than 1000 students, and abducted some of them.

Most of the protestors are students of the Al Qalam Academic Foundation, and the Al Aqsa Islamic Society.

The protestors, determined to mark the Nakba, continued their nonviolent activity in the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Al Aqsa Mosque, in addition to a number of towns in the suburbs of East Jerusalem, illegally annexed by Israel after the war in 1967.

Head of the media department of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and spokesperson of Al Aqsa Foundation, Khalid Mhanna, slammed the attack and the arrests, and added that this is just one example of the systematic Israeli policies of oppression and aggression against the Palestinian people.

Mhanna added that despite the attacks against them, the protestors helped in cleaning cemeteries in Jerusalem, and visited Palestinian villages surrounding the Old City.

Occupied Jerusalem Is Being Suffocated

AL-QUDS — Besieged by settlement blocs and strangled by a towering separation wall, Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) is suffocating under the Israeli occupation that aims at isolating the holy city from its Palestinian context and displacing its people.

“They want as few Arabs in Al-Quds as possibly,” Khalil Tufakji, an official of the Arab Cartography Department in Al-Quds, told IslamOnline.net.

“This is why they are trying to strangle Arab demography in Al-Quds by surrounding the Arab areas with Jewish colonies from all directions,” added Tufakji, a prominent expert on Jewish settlements schemes in the holy city.

According to the Cartography Department, Israel has confiscated more than 34 percent of the city for what it describes as “public benefits”. It has designated further 43 percent as a “green space.”

Nearly 10 percent of the city is seized for building additional Jewish settlements, leaving only 13 percent of the original area for the city’s 450, 000 Palestinian inhabitants.

One of the most ambitious settlement plans Israel is contemplating is to build tens of thousands of settlement housing units throughout the remaining area.

Last week, it announced plans to confiscate large swathes of Arab lands near Ma’ali Adomim settlements, east of Al-Quds, in order to merge the large colony with a smaller one nearby the city known as Kedar.

The Israeli group Peace Now has also revealed that Tel Aviv was planning to build more than 73,000 units in the occupied West Bank, many of them in and around Al-Quds.

Israel captured and occupied Al-Quds in the six-day 1967 war, then annexed it in a move not recognized by the world community or UN resolutions.

Greater Jerusalem

“They [the Israelis] are trying to decapitate Arab existence in Al-Quds step by step, home by home and neighborhood by neighborhood,” says Husseini.

The Palestinian cartographer asserts that Israel is planning to expand the boundaries of what it calls “Greater Jerusalem” to the northern suburbs of Al-Khalil (Hebron) in the south, Ramallah in the north and the western slopes of Ariha (Jericho) in the east.

In this case, Greater Jerusalem would devour nearly one fifth of the West Bank area and would cut off entire cities like Al-Khalil and Bethlehem.

Tufakji, himself a resident of Al-Quds, added that Israel also plans to build a ring road around Al-Quds to connect settlements outside the city’s municipal boundaries.

“The purpose of this planned road is to reduce Arab neighborhoods into isolated and miserable ghettos without any real possibility for future expansion or growth.”

Al-Quds is home to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which includes Islam’s third holiest shrine Al-Aqsa Mosque, and represents the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Palestinians insist the city will be the capital of their future independent state.

Stealing Future

Israel’s plan to create new demographic realities in Al-Quds has seen further restrictions chocking the holy city and turning life unbearable for its original residents.

“Israel’s ultimate goal is to narrow our horizons, make our daily life unbearable and eventually force us to leave,” says Tufakji.

One of Israel’s major tools to achieve this scheme is through the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes under the pretext of not possessing building permits.

According to the Al-Quds Center for Economic and Social Rights, Israel issued in the first four months of 2009 a thousand demolition orders against homes owned by Arab citizens.

In addition, there are 15,000-20,000 homes already threatened to be torn down at any time, some of which dating back hundreds of years ago.

Last year, the Israeli interior ministry said it was planning to destroy dozens of Arab homes in the Arab Silwan neighborhood in order to create a “park” for Jewish settlers in the area.

“They are indulged in ethnic cleansing in broad daylight,” Rafiq al Husseini, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told IOL.

“They are chasing Palestinians out of their homes; they are trying to decapitate Arab existence in Al-Quds, step by step, home by home and neighborhood by neighborhood, while they continue to lie about their desire for peace.”

Tufakji, the cartographer, agrees that Israel is killing every hope for a future Palestinian state.

“They are stealing not only our past and present, but our future as well.”

Mossad Blows Up Israeli Embassies

911blogger: In Yuri Felshtinsky’s new book, he shows that the KGB/FSB have engaged in False Flag terror to demonize Muslims in Chechnya. Recently, it was revealed in the New York Times, and elsewhere, that the Mossad recruited and ran a cousin of one of the alleged 9/11 hijackers as an asset. Can you cite some other examples of other nation’s intelligence agencies engaging in this practice?

Machon: Certainly. The classic example is the Israeli Embassy bombing in London in 1994. In this case, two innocent Palestinians studying in London, Samar Alami and Jawed Botmeh, were befriended by someone called Reda Moghrabi, who then asked for help in buying a second-hand car. That car subsequently exploded outside the embassy, and Alami and Botmeh were convicted of conspiring to cause a terrorist attack and sentenced to 20 years each. Moghrabi was never traced. MI5’s official assessment of this attack, after reviewing all the evidence and all the intelligence, was that Mossad had attacked their own embassy in a controlled explosion. They did this for two reasons: first to gain enhanced security around Israeli interests in London, and secondly to shatter a fast-growing Palestinian support network in which Alami and Botmeh happened to be active. This was one of the cases we blew the whistle on. You would think that there would have been an immediate retrial, but the government managed to avoid this as it would have justified the whistleblowing, and two innocent people continue to languish in prison. Additionally, there was a similar attack in Buenos Aires in 1994. A few years ago, the government there DID order a judicial enquiry, and this revealed that Mossad had carried out that attack too.

Full interview HERE

Israelis jailed for Hebron teenage death in 2002

April 28, 2009

An Israeli court has sentenced two border guards over the unlawful killing of a Palestinian teenager in the West Bank town of Hebron seven years ago. Imran Abu Hamdieh died after the two men, Shahar Botbeka and Denis Alhazov, pushed him from the back of a military vehicle travelling at 50mph (80km/h).

Botbeka was jailed for eight-and-a-half years and Alhazov for five-and-a-half. Botbeka's jail term for the 2002 killing is thought to be the longest for such a case in Israeli history.The sentences were handed down by Jerusalem District Court on Monday. The judge said Botbeka was the ringleader in the incident, but he noted that he had already been under house arrest for five years and was in poor mental health.

Two other border policemen have had previously been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment over the incident, one for eight-and-a-half years, the other for four-and-a-half years.

'Rare instance'

The four men seized Imran Abu Hamdieh from outside his home in Hebron on 30 December 2002 and beat him. He suffered serious head injuries when members of the border police unit - celebrating the end of their posting in Hebron - tried to make him to jump from the jeep as it sped through the streets. He refused, but as the vehicle reached up to 50mph (80km/h), the policemen managed to prise his grip loose and they pushed him out of the vehicle.

Although the sentence reportedly sets a precedent in Israel, the Israeli human rights group B'tselem said the gravity of the offense ought to have merited an even harsher punishment. "As a rule, the authorities refrain from enforcing the law on soldiers and police officers who commit crimes of violence against Palestinians," the organisation said in a written statement.

It described this verdict as a "rare instance" of Israeli security forces being held to account, as many cases were not properly investigated. In 2005, a former Israeli soldier was jailed for eight years over the death of British peace activist Tom Hurndall.

When The Truth Is Hard To Digest

The Western reaction to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN Conference on Racism, dubbed Durban II, has run on predictable lines.

At the precise moment that Ahmadinejad mentioned Israel, many of the Western diplomats took it as a cue to walk out. Said the UK’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter Gooderham: “As soon as President Ahmadinejad started talking about Israel, that was the cue for us to walk out. We agreed in advance that if there was any such rhetoric there would be no tolerance for it.” He concluded by adding that Ahmadinejad was guilty of anti-Semitism.

The fact is the boycotting delegates never heard his speech throughout. What the Iranian leader stated in his speech is there for all to see: “How can we expect the realization of justice and peace when discrimination is legalized and the origin of the law is dominated by coercion and force rather than by justice and the rights?

“The victorious powers called themselves the conquerors of the world while ignoring or treading upon rights of other nations by the imposition of oppressive laws and international arrangements.”

And referring to the continuous appeasement of Israel’s genocides by the UN Security Council, he added, “…they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.”

“The Security Council helped stabilize the occupying regime and supported it in the past 60 years giving them a free hand to commit all sorts of atrocities. It is all the more regrettable that a number of Western governments and the United States have committed themselves to defending those racist perpetrators of genocide while the awakened-conscience and free-minded people of the world condemn aggression, brutalities and the bombardment of civilians in Gaza. The supporters of Israel have always been either supportive or silent against the crimes.”

He went on to question the immoral war against the Iraqi people. “Why, indeed, almost a million people were killed and injured and a few more millions were displaced? Why, indeed, the Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars? And why was billions of dollars imposed on the American people as the result of these military actions? Was not the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists and their allies in the then US administration in complicity with the arms manufacturing countries and the possessors of wealth?”

Were these words fueled by anti-Semitism or simply a statement of the cold realities that have engulfed the Middle East since this pariah state was imposed on the region, a state whose morals are predicated by the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? There is nothing in his speech that could be construed as racist.

Were not the boycotting diplomats aware of the holocausts being perpetuated against the lawful residents of the land for the past 60 years? Were they not aware of what happened in Lebanon and more recently in Gaza?

Just what prompts a diplomat to shy away from truth? Perhaps they are following US foreign policy mandate that no one should criticize Israel, whatever its actions or policies. And there is documented evidence to prove that war crimes had been committed against the innocent civilians in Gaza in the recent war.

Or were the seasoned diplomats who walked out intimidated by the fear they would be dubbed anti-Semite had they chosen to remain seated? Does this collective fear of hearing the truth reside deep in their subconscious, or is it a reflection of the unspoken guilt that perhaps persists within them, a guilt borne of their inability to prevent the first Holocaust during World War II. Or was it simply because they did not have the courage to hear and speak the truth? Any way you look at it, it smacks of hypocrisy.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store stated it best during a news conference. “If we start walking out every time we feel uncomfortable dealing with our ideological rivals, the world would be the one to lose,” he said.

American - Israeli Murderers

الخرطوم: ذكرت مصادر موثوقة بالعاصمة السودانية الخرطوم أن سفينة إيرانية محملة بالأسلحة تم تدميرها في البحر الأحمر
قبالة السواحل السودانية خلال الأسبوعين الماضيين. وأشارت المصادر إلي أن صواريخ اطلقت من سفينة حربية مجهولة “يحتمل أن تكون إسرائيلية أو أمريكية” أدت إلي إغراق السفينة بكامل طاقمها. وتوقعت المصادر أن تكون السفينة الإيرانية محملة بالأسلحة وأنها كانت متجهة لإفراغ حمولتها داخل الأراضي السودانية تمهيدا لنقلها إلي قطاع غزة مرورا بالأراضي المصرية. وحسبما ذكرت صحيفة “الاسبوع” المصرية المستقلة، فقد تكتمت كل من إيران والطرف المعتدي أنباء الحادث الأخير، إلا أن مصادر عليا داخل العاصمة السودانية توصلت إلي هذه المعلومات الخطيرة. ويأتي الكشف عن الانتهاك الجديد لسيادة السودان بعد اسابيع قليلة من قيام سلاح الجو الإسرائيلي بقصف قافلة شاحنات قيل أنها كانت تنقل أسلحة من إيران إلى حركة حماس في قطاع غزة لدى مرورها في أراضي السودان خلال شهري يناير وفبراير الماضيين. واعترف الرئيس السوداني عمر البشير صراحة أمس السبت في حوار أجرته معه فضائية “الجزيرة” بوقوع الاعتداء والانتهاك الهمجي للأراضي السودانية، وقال: إن القافلة التي استهدفتها إسرائيل بشرق السودان نجا منها شخص واحد ، وأشار إلي أنه تحرك بسيارته من غير إضاءة ، واضاف : إن هناك بعض الجرحى ، وأوضح أن التقارير الأولية للحكومة السودانية أشار إلي أن الطائرات التي نفذت العملية أمريكية ، إلا أنه أكد بعد الاتصال بهم عدم ارتباطهم بالعملية ، مشيرا إلى أن إسرائيل أقرت بتنفيذ العملية”.

Holocaust Survivor Abused By Israeli Security

Mossad Exposed in Phony `Palestinian Al-Qaeda' Caper

Mossad agents arrested by the PA for attempting to set up phony 'al Qaeda' cells in the Gaza Strip.

The United States government has been provided with concrete evidence that the Israeli Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services have been involved in a 13-month effort to "recruit" an Israeli-run, phony "al-Qaeda cell" among Palestinians, so that Israel could achieve a frontline position in the U.S. war against terrorism and get a green light for a worldwide "revenge without borders" policy.

Officials from the Palestinian Authority have accused the Israeli spy agency Mossad of setting up a fake al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Gaza.

Auschwitz - Myths & Facts

When considering the story of the lost 'Six Million', most overlook an obvious and crucial source of data: the 1938 World Almanac which listed the populations of countries by religion.

If you add up the numbers for the all European countries - less the Brittish Isles and the Americas - there was total population of roughly 6 Million Jews in the whole of Europe when the war broke out. There were about a half million in Germany.

This simple and irrefutable fact clearly debunks that claim that '6 million' were killed...or there would not have been any Jewish people left to tell a story. It would have meant that Hitler completed his supposed goals for Europe.

Most people should be able to find a copy of the 1938 Almanac in thier library. I hope this sheds some new, clear and logical light on the story.

Nearly everyone has heard of Auschwitz, the German wartime concentration camp where many prisoners -- most of them Jewish -- were reportedly exterminated, especially in gas chambers. Auschwitz is widely regarded as the most terrible Nazi extermination center. The camp's horrific reputation cannot, however, be reconciled with the facts.

Scholars Challenge Holocaust Story

Astonishing as it may seem, more and more historians and engineers have been challenging the widely accepted Auschwitz story. These "revisionist" scholars do not dispute the fact that large numbers of Jews were deported to the camp, or that many died there, particularly of typhus and other diseases. But the compelling evidence they present shows that Auschwitz was not an extermination center and that the story of mass killings in "gas chambers" is a myth.

The Auschwitz Camps

The Auschwitz camp complex was set up in 1940 in what is now south-central Poland. Large numbers of Jews were deported there between 1942 and mid-1944.

The main camp was known as Auschwitz I. Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, was supposedly the main extermination center, and Monowitz, or Auschwitz III, was a large industrial center where gasoline was produced from coal. In addition there were dozens of smaller satellite camps devoted to the war economy.

Four Million Victims?

At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, the Allies charged that the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz. This figure, which was invented by the Soviets, was uncritically accepted for many years. It often appeared in major American newspapers and magazines, for example. [1]

Today no reputable historian, not even those who generally accept the extermination story, believes this figure. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer said in 1989 that it is time to finally acknowledge the familiar four million figure is a deliberate myth. In July 1990 the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland, along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Center, suddenly announced that altogether perhaps one million people (both Jews and non-Jews) died there. Neither institution would say how many of these people were killed, nor were any estimates given of the numbers of those supposedly gassed. [2] One prominent Holocaust historian, Gerald Reitlinger, has estimated that perhaps 700,000 or so Jews perished at Auschwitz. More recently, Holocaust historian Jean-Claude Pressac has estimated that about 800,000 persons -- of whom 630,000 were Jewish -- perished at Auschwitz. While even such lower figures are incorrect, they show how the Auschwitz story has changed drastically over the years. [3]

Bizarre Tales

At one time it was seriously claimed that Jews were systematically electrocuted at Auschwitz. American newspapers, citing a Soviet eyewitness report from liberated Auschwitz, told readers in February 1945 that the methodical Germans had killed Jews there using an "electric conveyor belt on which hundreds of persons could be electrocuted simultaneously [and] then moved on into furnaces. They were burned almost instantly, producing fertilizer for nearby cabbage fields." [4]

And at the Nuremberg Tribunal, chief U.S. prosecutor Robert Jackson charged that the Germans used a "newly invented" device to instantaneously "vaporize" 20,000 Jews near Auschwitz "in such a way that there was no trace left of them." [5] No reputable historian now accepts either of these fanciful tales.

The Höss 'Confession'

A key Holocaust document is the "confession" of former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss of April 5, 1946, which was submitted by the U.S. prosecution at the main Nuremberg trial. [6]

Although it is still widely cited as solid proof for the Auschwitz extermination story, it is actually a false statement that was obtained by torture.

Many years after the war, British military intelligence sergeant Bernard Clarke described how he and five other British soldiers tortured the former commandant to obtain his "confession." Höss himself privately explained his ordeal in these words: "Certainly, I signed a statement that I killed two and half million Jews. I could just as well have said that it was five million Jews. There are certain methods by which any confession can be obtained, whether it is true or not." [7]

Even historians who generally accept the Holocaust extermination story now acknowledge that many of the specific statements made in the Höss "affidavit" are simply not true. For one thing, no serious scholar now claims that anything like two and a half or three million people perished in Auschwitz.

The Höss "affidavit" further alleges that Jews were already being exterminated by gas in the summer of 1941 at three other camps: Belzec, Treblinka and Wolzek. The "Wolzek" camp mentioned by Höss is a total invention. No such camp existed, and the name is no longer mentioned in Holocaust literature. Moreover, the story these days by those who believe in the Holocaust legend is that gassings of Jews did not begin at Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Belzec until sometime in 1942.

No Documentary Evidence

Many thousands of secret German documents dealing with Auschwitz were confiscated after the war by the Allies. Not a single one refers to a policy or program of extermination. In fact, the extermination story cannot be reconciled with the documentary evidence.

Many Jewish Inmates Unable to Work

For example, it is often claimed that all Jews at Auschwitz who were unable to work were immediately killed. Jews who were too old, young, sick, or weak were supposedly gassed on arrival, and only those who could be worked to death were temporarily kept alive.

But the evidence shows that, in fact, a very high percentage of the Jewish inmates were not able to work, and were nevertheless not killed. For example, an internal German telex message dated Sept. 4, 1943, from the chief of the Labor Allocation department of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA), reported that of 25,000 Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, only 3,581 were able to work, and that all of the remaining Jewish inmates -- some 21,500, or about 86 percent -- were unable to work. [8]

This is also confirmed in a secret report dated April 5, 1944, on "security measures in Auschwitz" by Oswald Pohl, head of the SS concentration camp system, to SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Pohl reported that there was a total of 67,000 inmates in the entire Auschwitz camp complex, of whom 18,000 were hospitalized or disabled. In the Auschwitz II camp (Birkenau), supposedly the main extermination center, there were 36,000 inmates, mostly female, of whom "approximately 15,000 are unable to work." [9]

These two documents simply cannot be reconciled with the Auschwitz extermination story.

The evidence shows that Auschwitz-Birkenau was established primarily as a camp for Jews who were not able to work, including the sick and elderly, as well as for those who were temporarily awaiting assignment to other camps. That's the considered view of Dr. Arthur Butz of Northwestern University, who also says that this was the reason for the unusually high death rate there. [10]

Princeton University history professor Arno Mayer, who is Jewish, acknowledges in a recent book about the "final solution" that more Jews perished at Auschwitz as a result of typhus and other "natural" causes than were executed. [11]

Anne Frank

Perhaps the best known Auschwitz inmate was Anne Frank, who is known around the world for her famous diary. But few people know that thousands of Jews, including Anne and her father, Otto Frank, "survived" Auschwitz.

The 15-year-old girl and her father were deported from the Netherlands to Auschwitz in September 1944. Several weeks later, in the face of the advancing Soviet army, Anne was evacuated along with many other Jews to the Bergen-Belsen camp, where she died of typhus in March 1945.

Her father came down with typhus in Auschwitz and was sent to the camp hospital to recover. He was one of thousands of sick and feeble Jews who were left behind when the Germans abandoned the camp in January 1945, shortly before it was overrun by the Soviets. He died in Switzerland in 1980.

If the German policy had been to kill Anne Frank and her father, they would not have survived Auschwitz. Their fate, tragic though it was, cannot be reconciled with the extermination story.

Allied Propaganda

The Auschwitz gassing story is based in large part on the hearsay statements of former Jewish inmates who did not personally see any evidence of extermination. Their beliefs are understandable, because rumors about gassings at Auschwitz were widespread.

Allied planes dropped large numbers of leaflets, written in Polish and German, on Auschwitz and the surrounding areas which claimed that people were being gassed in the camp. The Auschwitz gassing story, which was an important part of the Allied wartime propaganda effort, was also broadcast to Europe by Allied radio stations. [12]

Survivor Testimony

Former inmates have confirmed that they saw no evidence of extermination at Auschwitz.

An Austrian woman, Maria Vanherwaarden, testified about her camp experiences in a Toronto District Court in March 1988. She was interned in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942 for having sexual relations with a Polish forced laborer. On the train trip to the camp, a Gypsy woman told her and the others that they would all be gassed at Auschwitz.

Upon arrival, Maria and the other women were ordered to undress and go into a large concrete room without windows to take a shower. The terrified women were sure that they were about to die. But then, instead of gas, water came out of the shower heads.

Auschwitz was no vacation center, Maria confirmed. She witnessed the death of many fellow inmates by disease, particularly typhus, and quite a few committed suicide. But she saw no evidence at all of mass killings, gassings, or of any extermination program. [13]

A Jewish woman named Marika Frank arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau from Hungary in July 1944, when 25,000 Jews were supposedly gassed and cremated daily. She likewise testified after the war that she heard and saw nothing of "gas chambers" during the time she was interned there. She heard the gassing stories only later. [14]

Inmates Released

Auschwitz internees who had served their sentences were released and returned to their home countries. If Auschwitz had actually been a top secret extermination center, the Germans would certainly not have released inmates who "knew" what was happening in the camp. [15]

Himmler Orders Death Rate Reduced

In response to the deaths of many inmates due to disease, especially typhus, the German authorities responsible for the camps ordered firm counter-measures.

The head of the SS camp administration office sent a directive dated Dec. 28, 1942, to Auschwitz and the other concentration camps. It sharply criticized the high death rate of inmates due to disease, and ordered that "camp physicians must use all means at their disposal to significantly reduce the death rate in the various camps." Furthermore, it ordered:

The camp doctors must supervise more often than in the past the nutrition of the prisoners and, in cooperation with the administration, submit improvement recommendations to the camp commandants ... The camp doctors are to see to it that the working conditions at the various labor places are improved as much as possible.

Finally, the directive stressed that "the Reichsfhrer SS [Heinrich Himmler] has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be reduced." [16]

German Camp Regulations

Official German camp regulations make clear that Auschwitz was not an extermination center. They ordered: [17]

New arrivals in the camp are to be given a thorough medical examination, and if there is any doubt [about their health], they must be sent to quarantine for observation.

Prisoners who report sick must be examined that same day by the camp physician. If necessary, the physician must transfer the prisoners to a hospital for professional treatment.

The camp physician must regularly inspect the kitchen regarding the preparation of the food and the quality of the food supply. Any deficiencies that may arise must be reported to the camp commandant.

Special care should be given in the treatment of accidents, in order not to impair the full productivity of the prisoners.

Prisoners who are to be released or transfered must first be brought before the camp physician for medical examination.

Telltale Aerial Photos

Detailed aerial reconnaissance photographs taken of Auschwitz-Birkenau on several random days in 1944 (during the height of the alleged extermination period there) were made public by the CIA in 1979. These photos show no trace of piles of corpses, smoking crematory chimneys or masses of Jews awaiting death, things that have been repeatedly alleged, and all of which would have been clearly visible if Auschwitz had been the extermination center it is said to have been. [18]

Absurd Cremation Claims

Cremation specialists have confirmed that thousands of corpses could not possibly have been cremated every day throughout the spring and summer of 1944 at Auschwitz, as commonly alleged.

For example, Mr. Ivan Lagace, manager of a large crematory in Calgary, Canada, testified in court in April 1988 that the Auschwitz cremation story is technically impossible. The allegation that 10,000 or even 20,000 corpses were burned every day at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944 in crematories and open pits is simply "preposterous" and "beyond the realm of reality," he declared under oath. [19]

Gassing Expert Refutes Extermination Story

America's leading gas chamber expert, Boston engineer Fred A. Leuchter, carefully examined the supposed "gas chambers" in Poland and concluded that the Auschwitz gassing story is absurd and technically impossible.

Leuchter is the foremost specialist on the design and installation of gas chambers used in the United States to execute convicted criminals. For example, he designed a gas chamber facility for the Missouri state penitentiary.

In February 1988 he carried out a detailed onsite examination of the "gas chambers" at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek in Poland, which are either still standing or only partially in ruins. In sworn testimony to a Toronto court and in a technical report, Leuchter described every aspect of his investigation.

He concluded by emphatically declaring that the alleged gassing facilities could not possibly have been used to kill people. Among other things, he pointed out that the so-called "gas chambers" were not properly sealed or vented to kill human beings without also killing German camp personnel. [20]

Dr. William B. Lindsey, a research chemist employed for 33 years by the Dupont Corporation, likewise testified in a 1985 court case that the Auschwitz gassing story is technically impossible. Based on a careful on-site examination of the "gas chambers" at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, and on his years of experience, he declared: "I have come to the conclusion that no one was willfully or purposefully killed with Zyklon B [hydrocyanic acid gas] in this manner. I consider it absolutely impossible." [21]

Summary

The Auschwitz extermination story originated as wartime propaganda. Now, more than 60 years after the end of the Second World War, it is time to take another, more objective look at this highly polemicized chapter of history. The Auschwitz legend is the core of the Holocaust story. If hundreds of thousands of Jews were not systematically killed there, as alleged, one of the great myths of our time collapses.

Artificially maintaining the hatreds and passions of the past prevents genuine reconciliation and lasting peace. Revisionism promotes historical awareness and international understanding. That is why the work of the Institute for Historical Review is so important and deserves your support.

Notes

1. Nuremberg document 008-USSR. IMT blue series, Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261.; NC

and A red series, vol. 1, p. 35.; C.L. Sulzberger, "Oswiecim Killings Placed

at 4,000,000," New York Times, May 8, 1945, and, New York Times, Jan. 31, 1986,

p. A4.

2. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept. 22,

1989; "Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," Daily Telegraph (London), July

17, 1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll Estimate to 1 Million," The

Washington Times, July 17, 1990.

3. G. Reitlinger, The Final Solution (1971); J.-C. Pressac, Le Crématoires

d'Auschwitz: La Machinerie du meurtre de mass (Paris: CNRS, 1993). On Pressac's

estimates, see: L'Express (France), Sept. 30, 1993, p. 33.

4. Washington (DC) Daily News, Feb. 2, 1945, pp. 2, 35. (United Press

dispatch from Moscow).

5. IMT blue series, Vol. 16, p. 529-530. (June 21, 1946).

6. Nuremberg document 3868-PS (USA-819). IMT blue series, Vol. 33, pp.

275-279.

7. Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235; R. Faurisson,

The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp. 389-403.

8. Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw, German document

No. 128, in: H. Eschwege, ed., Kennzeichen J (East Berlin: 1966), p. 264.

9. Nuremberg document NO-021. NMT green series, Vol. 5. pp. 384-385.

10. Arthur Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Costa Mesa, Calif.), p.

124.

11. Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in

History (Pantheon, 1989), p. 365.

12. Nuremberg document NI-11696. NMT green series, Vol. 8, p. 606.

13. Testimony in Toronto District Court, March 28, 1988. Toronto Star, March

29, 1988, p. A2.

14. Sylvia Rothchild, ed., Voices from the Holocaust (New York: 1981), pp.

188-191.

15. Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret (Boston: 1981), p. 169.

16. Nuremberg document PS-2171, Annex 2. NC&A red series, Vol. 4, pp.

833-834.

17. "Rules and Regulations for the Concentration Camps." Anthology, Inhuman

Medicine, Vol. 1, Part 1 (Warsaw: International Auschwitz Committee, 1970), pp.

149-151.; S. Paskuly, ed., Death Dealer: the Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at

Auschwitz (Buffalo: 1992), pp. 216-217.

18. Dino A. Brugioni and Robert C. Poirier, The Holocaust Revisited

(Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1979).

19. Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), April 14, 1988, p. 6.

20. The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas

Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek (Toronto: 1988). Available for

$17.00, postpaid, from the IHR.

21. The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Feb. 12, 1985, p. M3

#2001

About the Author

Mark Weber is director of the Institute for Historical Review. He studied

history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich,

Portland State University and Indiana University (M.A., 1977). For nine years he

served as editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review.

http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/auschwitz.shtml

Commentary

From Ted Twietmeyer

tedtw@frontiernet.net

1-30-5

This article was well-written and researched. And it also means that the Shindler's List film is fiction as well, which also depicts countless people being gassed daily. As for the crematories, I completely concur with the commentary in the article.

The Facts: It takes about 70 minutes (according to one furnace manufacturer's spec sheet, see

[1] ) to cremate a body even today. This is a burner of 400KW. If each crematory furnace were to cremate 20.6 bodies in every 24 hour period running 7 days a week, then to handle 20,000 bodies a day would require more than 971 furnaces running non-stop, AND sufficient fuel to keep them all operating. And all this, in a Germany that was always short on fuel?

Preposterous of historians to never look at the numbers!

Ted Twietmeyer

[1] - Furnace spec sheet with cycle time:

http://www.ati-furnace.com/en/four_2/shema.htm