While the Jewish community continues to cope with the problem of Holocaust denial, a new form of historical revisionism is emerging that victimizes both Jews and Non-Jews. In its plainest form it might be called Terrorism Denial. It seems inconceivable that any sane person could deny the existence of the Holocaust or the reality of terrorism, yet there is a large Holocaust denial industry and now there is also a large 9/11 denial industry.

Both industries are run much the same way, amateurish documentaries, elaborate conspiracy theories, books desperately trying to poke holes in history with a sharpened pen and a malicious eye. Beyond these venomous manifestations though, the milder forms of Holocaust denial cover vast populations existing not as calculated denial but as deliberately avoidance. This form of Holocaust denial began when Jews were being massacred by the hundreds of thousands while the world steadfastly turned its eyes elsewhere and buried the reports deep down as a minor item in the New York Times. The Holocaust represented an inconvenient fact and so it was generally ignored during the war and for a while afterwards.

Contrary to Al Gore's new documentary, it is Islamic terrorism that is today's inconvenient fact. It is an inconvenient fact that earnest liberals are earnestly ignoring, as they earnestly ignored the Holocaust. The most common form of Terrorism Denial pervasive in the Democratic party and among Liberals is to ignore its existence or to argue that global warming and the extinction of the penguins are far graver threats. Beyond this calculated ignorance Terrorism Denial takes its first halting steps into the realm of conspiracy theories by claiming that the attacks of September 11th were blowback from CIA operations or payback for supporting Israel, that they were carried out possibly even with the knowledge of the CIA or the Mossad. The next step is of course to argue that the CIA and the Mossad actually did carry them out. And that is where 9/11 Denial begins.

9/11 deniers who without irony will call themselves the 9/11 Truth Movement represent the most rabid form of Terrorism Denial. Terrorism Deniers may be compared to defense lawyers pursuing a strategy to get their terrorist clients off on charges of mass murder. The more moderate liberal Terrorism Deniers will argue that their clients came from an impoverished backgrounds, were abused by the United States government and that their crimes need to be understood in that context. 9/11 Deniers though take the tack that not only didn't their clients kill anyone, but they were actually framed by the police and that it is the victims of who are the guilty ones.

Here is where Arab conspiracy theories inspired by Western conspiracy theories such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the rabid rantings of Nazi literature come full circle at last to feed into the conspiracy theories of America and Europe. For most Americans 9/11 was a national tragedy and an act of war. For the far-right and the far-left, 9/11 was a meeting point where Neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, Neo-Trotskyist, radical Muslims and a thousand other species of cretins that huddle in the political fringes met and shook hands.

The far-right and the far-left shook hands with each other and then shook hands with Muslim terrorists for a grand alliance that has David Duke delivering lectures in Arab countries, Noam Chomsky writing the introduction to a Holocaust denier's book and radical Muslim organizations participating in Neo-Trotskyist Anti-War rallies. Together they gave birth to a common narrative centering on the evils of America, the crimes of the Zionist Jews and the historical revisionism necessary for Terrorism Denial.
The far right and the far left both have extensive experience in historical revisionism. The far right has dedicated enormous efforts to Holocaust denial. The far left has struggled to maintain a blanket of silence over the blackest crimes of Communism, the murder of uncounted millions by Stalin and the USSR. On 9/11 they joined forces for a new project of historical revisionism that can be loosely called Terrorism Denial because its main purpose is to deny that terrorism is a threat and to argue that the real threat comes from Washington.

The one thing that unites these otherwise ideological enemies is their belief in the evil of America and that it must be overthrown so that a new society must arise in its place. A Fourth Reich for the far-right, a socialist tyranny for the far-left and a Caliphate for radical Muslims. While they do not agree on their ideal society, they all agree on what must happen to civilization as we know it for their monstrous utopias to come into being.

The American far-right and Far-left have long indulged in fantasies of leading a revolutionary campaign to overthrow the US government. The far-right has The Turner Diaries, a novel of the overthrow of America accompanied by the classical Nazi program of genocide, particularly of the Jews. The far-left has endless revolutionary texts prophesizing the fall of capitalism, the onset of a fascist tyranny followed by a bloody revolution and purges of the capitalists. Both seek to resurrect their glory days under Stalin and Hitler, yet at the same time both recognize that they are incapable of actually leading and fighting that revolution. Islam's bloody jihad represents their answer.

In their propaganda Islam is the force of the oppressed coming to bring down the American government and to do the bloody work the David Duke's and Noam Chomsky's are too cowardly to take on themselves. Islamic terrorist attacks push governments into adopt proof that we are living under a tyranny and gain new recruits for their ranks. To the far-right and the far-left, Islamic terrorists are the cannon-fodder with which to secure their revolution and their utopian society. And 9/11 was exactly what they had dreamed of for a long time, the glorious act of wholesale destruction of America's power to which the Oklahoma City bombing or the ALF's bouts of environmentalist vandalism could only aspire to.

With Bin Laden and his cohorts providing the wholesale destruction, the far-right and the far-left maintain their side of the partnership by providing the propaganda that stigmatizes every action America takes and redirects the blame for even the actions of the terrorists back onto America. 9/11 denial serves as a key tool in undermining the War on Terror by not only arguing that there is no actual terrorism but that it was carried out by the US government itself. This is a common practice by the allies of Muslim terrorism.

In Russia apologists for Muslim Chechnyan terrorists claim the KGB is actually behind many of the attacks attributed to the Chechnyans. In Israel conspiracy theorists like Barry Chamish claim that Israel is behind Arab terrorist attacks. In the US Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McKinney inspired an outpouring of anger from the Indian-American community when she claimed that Islamic terrorist attacks in India had actually been carried out by the Indian government. Time and time again the pattern recurs across the world. When Muslim terrorists blow up a building or open fire on a crowded bus, their apologists quickly come out claiming that the government was behind it. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement is only a piece of that larger Terrorism Denial movement which seeks to shift the blame from Muslim terrorists for their attacks to the government of that country.

In its milder forms Terrorism Denial victimizes Jews when much of the world deliberately pretends that Palestinian terrorism consists of a few rock throwing little boys. Terrorism Denial victimizes much of the world from Australia to America to Europe when Islamic attacks are ignored and Islam itself is praised as a religion of peace. The mild form of Terrorism Denial treats terrorist attacks as justifiable acts by an oppressed people that can only be resolved through appeasement and concessions.

The extreme form of Terrorism Denial insists that the enemy is the American government which must be overthrown and which is responsible for everything wrong with the world, including the terrorist attacks. In America this extreme form of Terrorism Denial is mainly limited to the fringes. In Europe, particularly in Russia, France and Germany, it has long since become mainstream.

The primary consumers of Terrorism Denial are those whose mindset cannot cope with a world in which America is the victim rather than the perpetrator, a state of affairs would logically demand that they support its national defense. Terrorism Denial is their response to this reality attempting to twist the truth, employ lies and deception in order to create a counter-reality in which America is the perpetrator and they are the true patriots.

Terrorism Denial is not about the left or the right. Like Holocaust denial, it is about a mindset. Long before David Irving, there was Harry Elmer Barnes, a noted liberal historian, who in attacking the truth of Nazi and Japanese atrocities as American propaganda, also included the Holocaust. Barnes is credited by Deborah Lipstadt with inspiring Holocaust denial and at the same time Barnes has inspired many New Left historians.

Like many liberals today Barnes' worldview was so rooted in his hatred of his own country that he could not see past it to even recognizing the evils of the Third Reich. The liberal response to Islamic terrorism is rooted in that very same inability to see past their hatred of the Bush administration to the evils of Islamic terrorists. The organizations of the far-right and the far-left thrive on such people who in the name of fighting evil, ally with evil. And this is the nature of Terrorism Denial, a toxic intellectual compound fed by those who support evil to those who refuse to see evil, until it is too late.

The much publicised visit of the Pope to Auschwitz has gotten the most publicity for the Pope's question, asking where was God at Auschwitz. A better question is where was man at Auschwitz. It was human hands that shots, gassed and murdered millions. It was men who did and many if not most of those men were Catholics. The Holocaust was a vast enterprise, beyond the many millions from across Western and Eastern Europe who collaborated, informed, rounded up, guarded and murdered the victims of the Holocaust; were a hundred times that number who sat with folded hands, either approving or uncaring.

But yet the Pope's question is revealing because it is yet another attempt by the Catholic Church to reframe itself as the victim and Pope Benedict's speech, the speech of the former Hitler Youth member Ratzinger is a cunning elaboration of that agenda.

By asking where was God, the Pope shifts the Holocaust from a physical crime carried out by human perpetrators to a perplexing religious dilemma laid at the doorstep of God. And so on behalf of a church that persecuted and massacred Jews for over a thousand years, the former Nazi turns to God asking why God let them carry out these mass murders. The amazing perversity of this is comparable to a murderer's family blaming the police for not stopping their father's homicidal rampage quickly enough.

But by reframing the question as religious the Pope not only shifts responsibility to God, but uses God to shift it to the Jewish victims themselves. The Pope's speech goes on to quote Psalm 44, "You have broken us in the haunt of jackals, and covered us with deep darkness ... because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off forever!" To a Catholic such quotations involving the Jews have a very specific context. When Jews cry out to God asking why they are suffering, the answer of the Church has usually been that it is because Jews have failed to accept Jesus as their Lord.

Indeed the Pope continues in the next paragraph, "We cannot peer into God’s mysterious plan - we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history. ... No - when all is said and done, we must continue to cry out humbly yet insistently to God...Let us cry out to God, that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence - a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser."

Thus the Holocaust becomes an incomprehensible act of God and only one of many acts of violence between men, that can only be resolved with conversion, to Christianity of course. There is no responsibility, only a lesson to be learned. And that lesson of course is accepting Jesus. Even the Holocaust was itself really an attack on Christianity and Jesus, a position the Catholic Church and many Christians have long championed.

"The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth...If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone - to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful," the Pope goes on to say.

The real victims of the Holocaust thus becomes the Catholic Church. Even in death, this reinterpration says, the Jews were nothing more than 'witnesses', the eternal wandering Jews still bearing witness to Jesus' crucifixion. This is the role after all that Jews hold in Catholic theology. The Holocaust then becomes a Nazi attempt to tamper with Catholic theology by removing the witnesses.

The Pope's visit did nothing more than continue the Catholic Church's agenda of Christianizing the Holocaust. To that end he mentioned two names. The first was that of Father Maxmillian Kolbe who supposed took the place of a Jew saving his life and was made a saint for it. In reality Maxmillian Kolbe was a notorious Anti-Semite. He was housedwith only Polish prisoners. He substituted himself for a Pole not a Jew. The other name was of course that of Edith Stein, a Jewish woman who converted to the Church and was recently made a saint. This completes the Church's portrayal of their version of the Holocaust. Catholic benefactors whose generosity the Jews repay by conversion to the faith.

Throughout his speech the Pope of course emphasizes the Poles over the Jews taking great care to elaborate on Polish, that is Catholic suffering. When discussing Nazi Germany's role in the Holocaust Pope Benedict bends over backwards to remove German responsibility. Ratzinger describes his coming as that of a"...son of the German people - a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honour, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power." Thus once again we hear the old refrain that the German people were victims of the Nazis, that they were tricked, abused and had no idea what was going on. The German people were "used" by some outside forces, rather than being perpetrators, they too are victims.

The Pope's remarks can be summed up as a clever campaign of historical revisionism, that brand of it practiced by the Church in which it was the victim and devoid of guilt. There is no comprehension of actual responsibility or accountability. The Germans and the Poles too are equally shown as victims. The Jewish victimization was the work of God and therefore the Jews must appeal to God for it, and the Catholic Church is more than happy to 'show us the way.' The Carmelite nuns who have been the subject of numerous protests were praised by the Pope mentioned a whole round of facilities, only one of them Jewish. Having lifted Catholic responsibility for the Holocaust and recreated it as an attack on Christianity, it is only natural for the Church to appropriate Auschwitz as it has appropriated Jewish suffering as an attack on its own institution.

It ironic for a supposedly conservative religious leader to put forwards an understanding of evil that is not vested in the responsibility of human beings for their actions and to argue that no one is at fault and that everyone is a victim. When liberals do it with a single murderer and a single victim, conservative Catholics accuse them of doing exactly what the Pope has done, not with a single victim or murderer, but with millions. Of such thin cloth is the fabric of the Church's morality woven.

Recently everyone from the Liberal media to notorious racist Pat Buchanan have been picking up the "Starving Palestinian" meme claiming that the Palestinians are being starved to death by the Israelis. Never mind that the Palestinians recieve the most per capita UN aid of any people in the world (including Africa where people actually are starving), that Israel has shipped tons of free food to Palestinians, that the claims of Palestinian starvation in reality come down to a run on a single bakery after rumors of shortages that was then blown up out of proportion by the media... the shortages themselves caused by an attempt by Palestinian leaders to shut down an entry point where the food was supposed to be coming from, because they weren't recieving duties on it. Never mind all that.

The Palestinians are starving. And there is no better proof of that than this gallery full of horrifying pictures of the toll that the starvation has taken on Palestinians, particularly on the always svelte Palestinian leadership who obviously aren't eating enough. Gaze in horror, shudder and weep at these latest Israeli atrocities.













To help save these noble creatures from starving to death please make out your charitable donation of 100 million dollars or more to "Save The Palestinians C/O Bullets for Hamas, Royal Bank of Zurich, Account Number #NS000368145751."

Hurry and write your check now and remember only you can put croutons in their mouths and Dollars in their Swiss Bank Accounts. Every moment you delay their blood sugar continues to drop endangering their sugar rush and potentially depriving the terrorists of tommorow of their positive homicidal role models. Don't delay. Hurry now.

So far selling the next Disengagement and the next stage of the dismantling of the State of Israel is proceeding much the same as has every step of the peace process.

1. The Israeli government claims US support for its position. In public the President makes encouraging noises, though in fact the American position is to set demands far in excess of the Israeli position and expect them to be eventually carried out. In 1992 Israel's position was an autonomous territory for the Palestinians. America's position was a Palestinian state on most of the territory of 1967 and the dismantlement of the settlements. Now that Israel's position is seemingly in line with America, America has made it clear that they will only accept such a state on the condition that the Palestinians agree to such a state. In other words even giving the Palestinians the state isn't enough, it has to come by the agreement of the Palestinians and the fulfillment of all their demands. In other words no matter what concessions Israel offers, the resolution will always remain hostage to Palestinian Arab demands.

As usual though politicians like Rabin, Peres, Sharon and Olmert use their public appearances with American Presidents and speeches in Congress to fool the Israeli public into believing that America supports their position, when in reality America supports a position more extreme than ever theirs.

2. To argue, Ein Breirah, There's no alternative. The advocates of withdrawal, appeasement and surrender repeatedly argue that there is no other course of action, the presumption being that continuing to resist the Palestinian takeover of Israeli lands is untenable and that only withdrawing behind borders with safe demographics is feasible.

There are a number of ways to deconstruct this piece of absurdity. One, the lack of a better active course of action doesn't justify national suicide. Problems can often be unsolvable at a given moment, something secularists with their embrace of a godless universe have trouble understanding. Indeed Israel's military men have been frustrated precisely because they are used to making grand decisions and believing that they must either embrace an aggressive strategy or lose. When they failed to find an aggressive feasible strategy for immediate victory, they accepted defeat and began the process of retreat.

This is ultimately why generals are good in the field but bad in office. They lack the moral vision and faith of a true leader who can see the bigger picture and understand that political and national struggles aren't won in the short term but the long term. The Palestinians have been winning because they understand that and accept it. We are losing because we exist in the short attention span of the Western mindset that demands immediate results.

Secondly, adopting the old joke about Egypt copying Russia's WW2 strategy in 1967 of retreating and waiting for snow, is not a viable option for Israel which has nowhere to retreat to. By accepting the premise that there is an actual difference between Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs, Israel is only swallowing the propaganda the Arabs have been selling to the West for decades. In fact there are no real differences. If Arabs are demographically destined to outstrip the Jewish population, they will do so behind the Green Line anyway. If any sizable Arab population inside Israel will demand self-government, they will also do so inside Israel's borders, especially now that the Palestinian struggle is no longer dominated by Arab Socialism but by the universal Muslim religion.

Israel as it is currently set up is not an island. It depends on Arab labor. As long as this goes on there will be no seperation from an Arab state and the powerful business figures and industrialists who financed Kadima will accept terrorist attacks as a valid exchange for cheap labor.

Missiles in any case recognize no borders. Pilotless drones which can use GPS transmitters and extensive satellite maps of Israel to strike any target will soon be deployed in addition to the mortars and shells.

There are no such things as safe demographics or borders for Israel secured by any other means then a vigorous national defense. Retreat is not only the burden of guilty cowards, it always leads to a national implosion, look at Post-Algerian France and consider how long it took America to recover from the national trauma of Vietnam. Consider the fallout in Germany after their defeat in WWI. Or Russia after Afghanistan. And that is when your enemies are courteous enough to leave you alone to stew in your own nationwide psychological breakdown.

The Arabs are not likely to give us even that option.

We interrupt this blog for a brief confused public service query

This morning I saw what appeared to be a passenger jet flying dangerously low on a descending course. The roar of its engines was horrendously defeaning and left people in shock and covering their ears. This was repeated all morning with several roars loud enough to deafen passerby.

Around 15 minutes ago I saw what appeared to be a passenger jet plane on a steep descending course followed by two fighter jets, flying low but not nearly as low as before. There's a good deal of speculation on the streets as to what's going on, much of it centering on terrorism.

New York is having fleet week now, however the fleet week website only lists helicopter demonstrations as being scheduled for today. And these definetly weren't helicopters. The news only mentions the Washington to New York route shutdown.

If anyone has any further information on what's going on, please leave a comment at the beep. Fleet Week is the obvious assumption but no aerial activities besides helicopters are listed on the website and the larger planes did not look anything like military transports and I don't know of anything besides maybe AWACS that have white coloring and could be mistaken for passenger jets.

Updates: LGF is citing a reader who is a commercial pilot claiming the planes were at around 300 feet over the buildings and chasing an airliner

"This morning circa 11:00 am in NYC 4-5 jet planes, including a civilian plane large enough to be an airliner, roared over Manhattan east to west at about 300 ft over the buildings, crossing exactly at 75th St. The noise was stunning and I thought we were being attacked again. Several people I spoke with thought the first plane was an airliner. I saw three aircraft chasing it at about 400 knots right on the deck. They ALL made a left turn over the Hudson at a 90 degree bank.

We went up to the roof at 11 east 74th to look, every roof in sight had worried people on it.
This, whatever it was, is not being reported anywhere. I am a commercial pilot and the speed limit below 10,000 ft. AGL is 250 knots. No one is allowed to fly closer than 1000 feet above anything within 500 feet. All four or five planes broker numerous laws. It appeared to be an interception, but its not being reported anywhere."

Ukraine's new President, President Yuschenko has been widely celebrated as a reformer, a courageous leader, a friend of democracy in his coming to power during the Orange Revolution. Bush called him "the courageous leader of a free Ukraine" and American money and direct intervention played a key role in bringing Yuschenko to power.

Today President Yuschenko signed an order commemorating the "eternal memory" of Simon Petlura as a Hero of the Ukranian people. A large memorial will be unveiled in Kiev on October 1st. To many Ukranians Petlura is indeed a hero, a Cossack leader who temporarily ruled an independent Ukraine. To Jews he is better known for the massacres of as many as a hundred thousand Jews across the Ukraine carried out by the Ukranian army and Ukranian gangs.

Among the many thousands dead across hundreds of towns were nineteen members of a watchmaker's family who had served in the French Foreign Legion during World War I. When Simon Petluria fled to Paris, that watchmaker followed him. He set up a shop in the city and waited.

On May 26th he confronted Simon Petlura and crying, "This for the pogroms; this for the massacres; this for the victims," he shot him three times. When the police came that watchmaker whose name was Shalom Schwartzbard turned over his gun to a police officer saying "You can arrest me, I've killed a murderer."

Shalom Schwartzbard was arrested and placed on trial. His defense was that acting "as an instrument of humanity's conscience" he had assasinated a mass murderer. The french court acquited him after only three weeks. He applied for the right to settle in Israel and was refused by the British, wrote Yiddish poetry and became a traveling encyclopedia salesman and only after death were his remains intered in the Heroes’ Acre at Netanya in Israel.

Ukranian nationalists meanwhile spent the rest of the century canonizing and memorializing Simon Petlura as a martyr to the cause of Ukranian nationalism. Some worked to prove that Simon Petluria had nothing to do with the massacres his own troops carried out. Others disdained deception arguing that all the Jews were Communists and got what they deserved.

In 'Free Ukraine' and among many American Ukranians Petlura and the cossacks are heroes. Among the Jews the hero was a short watchmaker who wrote poetry in his spare time and awaited the moment to avenge the murderer of his family. They remember their heroes, let us remember ours.

Whenever I read the chronicles of world history, my heart bleeds each time I
encounter human injustice. As long as there have been people on this earth,
the most pitiless enemy of any human being is another human being, wrote Shalom Schwartzbard in his memoir.

I cannot contain my tears when I recall the greatest suffering which our people endured the last centuries in the Ukraine, the vale of tears. For three hundred years Jewish blood flowed without halt on Ukrainian soil. In 1648, Hetman Bogdan Chmielnitsky and his Cossacks drenched the Ukraine with our blood. They slaughtered old people, tore little children limb from limb, raped women and strangled them afterward. This massacre lasted until 1654 and 500,000 Jews met their death in the severest agonies.

The Jewish people was destroyed with fire and sword in the Ukraine. A Polish memoirist describes this epoch:

When Kievan Ataman Charchevsky entered Kanev, the Cossacks massacred
all its Jews. It was their custom thus to entertain themselves. In Nemirov
an Ataman and his Cossacks lashed hundreds of Jews together and drowned
them. Little children were ingeniously severed in half. Six thousand Jews were murdered in Nemirov.

They desecrated synagogues, ripped apart Torah scrolls, and sent entire towns up in flame and smoke. The Jewish communities of Pereyaslav, Borisovka, Piryatin, Boryslaw, Dubno, Lachowicze, and many others were destroyed. Streams of blood flowed over the Ukrainian roads. In Tulchin all the Jews were assembled and ordered to be baptized. With one voice they cried out, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One."

The gruesome massacres, the ghastly acts committed by the Haidamacks of
Ataman Petlura in 1918, 1919, and 1920, in their cruelty and evil surpassed the earlier deeds of the Ukrainian heroes. I need only recall the dreadful time for a shudder to pass over my body. The hideous visions pursue me always, though I strive to ward them off. Though I seek to expunge them from my memory, they remain always fresh and fearful. Pogrom scenes I witnessed float before my eyes and at night keep
me awake. I jump up from my sleep and cannot shake off the bloody nightmares.

At the end of July 1919 I arrived in Zhidowska-Grebla, two days after the Haidamack pogrom. The first Jewish home I entered looked as if it had suffered an earthquake. Two old women sat on the ground and lying next to them an old man, his face bloodied, his eyes bloodshot, blood still running from his bandaged head, and from him issued one lament, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"

In that town, eight of fifteen families were completely annihilated. A widow
with six children, whose husband had fallen at the front, was violated and
then strangled.

In Cherkassy on the Dnieper, the first Jew I encountered told me, "We have just buried a thousand victims of the last pogrom. All lie in one mass grave. One gets accustomed to calamity. It is Providence."

At the end of August, when I was in Kiev, Petlura's advance guard entered.
They murdered all the Jews they met on their way. In the center of
Bolshaya Vasilkivskaya Street, I saw the corpse of a young man stretched out on the pavement, and, her head on his dead body, a woman lamenting for her one and only son. Hoodlums shouted obscenities, mocking her despair. One sermonized: "This is good. We'll show you, damned Jews, we'll slaughter you
all."

Kozyr-Zyrko, Petlura's aide, the hero of the massacre in Ovruch, selected thirty
old Jewish men for his amusement. Haidamacks encircled them and ordered
them to sing and dance. The Haidamacks were free with their whips and
revolvers, mocking, deriding, goading the dancers. When one Jew or another
broke out in lament, the torturers beat them, ordering them to continue dancing
and singing, and they shouted "Long live our Father Kozyr-Zyrko." Then they
shot all the old men and piled the bodies in a heap.

Palenko, another of Petlura's aides, told a Jewish delegation in Kiev: "I will not
listen to you. Do you think that for a few damned Jews I would disrupt my
boys' amusements?"

In Tripole on the Dnieper, Petlura's birthplace, after the fifth pogrom, forty-seven
corpses of the old, the sick, and the children were left lying in the street, and
no living soul remained after them. Dogs began to pick at the bodies and pigs
to nibble. Finally, a Gentile who used to work for Jews, out of pity dug a grave
and buried them. The Haidamacks learned of it and for that they murdered him.

Intoxicated with blood and uncontrolled hatred, the twentieth-century
descendants of Bogdan Chmielnitsky, Gonta, and Zheleznyak completed
the mission of their ancestors. Are these the flag-bearers of the New
Testament, of civilization and of hope for a nobler mankind?

Judge me, my judges.

Olmert arrived to speak at the Jewish Agency’s MASA meant to connect disaspora Jews with Israel. As he arrived an announcement was made asking the crowd to stand, very few stood, despite repeated pleas for the people to rise for the Prime Minister. As he began speaking he was booed with shouts of 'Boged' 'Traitor' or 'Gush Katif.'

To silence them larger speakers were turned on playing music which drowned out both the hecklers and Olmert's speech as well. In the middle of the speech Olmert suddenly switched to English and attempted to connect himself to Ariel Sharon's legacy. He then finished by advising the heavily Russian crowd not to drink too much. The result was a deathly uncomfortable silence instead of applause. Mattvei Ganapolsky who was in charge of the evening stepped out on stage pleading with the audience to applaud. After several futile attempts Ganapolsky exclaimed, "But it's the head of your government." All the response consisted of a few weak claps and Olmert departed unapplauded.

Ultimately once again this demonstrates that Olmert is merely a political hack lacking the charisma and the people skills of any of his predecesors. There is an unavoidable slimy taint to his his self-serving speeches, his arrogant smirks and oily advances. While the major papers predictably described Olmert's speech as a success, mentioning only a brief interruption by a few hecklers, it was yet another uncomfortable failed interaction between Olmert and the Israeli public. Sharon and Olmert succesfully seized power by destroying the two major political parties from within. Now one of them has joined the living dead and the other is holding on to power by his fingernails. With Bush having essentially already turned down funding, Olmert is set for yet another humiliating public apperance the media will desperately scramble to cover up.

It has become increasingly common in some circles to blame all of Israel's problems on the 'Erev Rav.' Any Israeli figure from Shimon Peres to the police officers at Amona are described as Erev Rav. Now it's entirely possible that we do indeed have the Erev Rav among us. Certainly many of those who have come to Israel, particularly from Russia, are not Jews. But at the same time the 'Erev Rav' is an easy way out to avoid dealing with the reality of the problems in the Jewish people.

Our Destroyers have all too often tended to come from us. Were Korach and the Meraglim Erev Rav? Were most of the kings of Yehuda and Yisrael Erev Rav, some of whom came out of the seed of David? Were the descendants of the Hasmonoim who allowed the Romans to take over? Was Josephus who betrayed his men and defected to the Romans and then composed a slanderous history of the Jews, even now being used in academic circles as legitimate, also Erev Rav? In the 20th century were the Yevsektsia and the Kapos, Erev Rav?

There may well be Erev Rav doing their destructive work among us, but that does not change the fact that they are most likely outnumbered by Jews doing the same thing. It was not only Russians at Amona. It is easier and more comfortable to deny that, to believe that Jews do not do such things to other Jews. Indeed the response of many Jews from isolated communities going on the internet and first encountering Jews for Palestine, Jews for Jesus and even Jews who think Hitler was right is to contend that they're not really Jews. And sometimes that is indeed the case. Other times though unfortunately these people are of Jewish origin. Ignoring that is to give way to a dangerous illusion of a seperation between them and us, to imagine that our children cannot become like them and that their behavior does not reflect on us.

Unfortunately Jewish history is a pattern, a pattern of exactly this kind of behavior we are seeing now. Looking back to the fall of Bais Sheini, we can see the very same events manifesting themselves over and over again. We can see the factions, the misplaced and misdirected fanaticism, the explosion of messianic beliefs and the utter disunity that gives way to a complete collapse. It can be seen but little is done about it. In that context 'Erev Rav' becomes a defense mechanism rather than a solution, a way to avoid acknowledging the problems within the Jewish people, rather than a way of dealing with them.

Word is that the Salute to Israel parade in New York formerly run by American Jews will now be subject to the control of the Israeli consulate. The consenquences of this is the barring of strong Zionist groups such as AFSI (Americans for a Safe Israel) and ZOA (Zionist Organizations of America), two groups who have always had a strong presence at the parade and have held the barricades opposing Oslo and further surrender to the Palestinians. The consulate will have approval over all signs at the parade and any group bringing unauthorized signs to the parade will be ejected and have its money pulled.

It appears that the Kadima regime has succeeded in accomplishing what Collete Avital under Peres could not, bring New York Jews into compliance with the policies of yet another appeasement government. The Columbus Day Parade is not under the aegis of the Italian government or the St. Patrick Day parade under the Irish government or the Puerto Rican Parade under Puerto Rico. The Salute to Israel parade is the local Jewish community's affair and should remain that way.

 Fresh from his film Munich about the Israeli response to the Munich massacre, Spielberg is set to film the story of the Israeli rescue attempt at Entebbe Airport saving the passengers of a plane seized by PLO and German terrorists and diverted to Uganda. 

A good deal of noise is being made now about how badly the Hamas run Palestinian Authority needs money. Jimmy Carter wrote an editorial accusing anyone who favors not funding terrorists, of treating the Palestinians like 'animals.' The 'Send Money to Hamas' crowd points to the money as providing aid to the needy and sustaining the Palestinian people, whom we are told are in danger of starving and dying within minutes.

But where is the money really going. An AP story cites the following data.

"The cutoff has left the Palestinian government virtually broke and increasingly unable to provide basic services. Some 165,000 government workers, whose incomes had supported one-third of Palestinian families, have not been paid for the past two months."

Since the Palestinian government was never providing much in the way of services to begin with, actual services like electricity and water all coming from the Israeli side, the real issue is the 165,000 government workers. But why does the PA which has little in the way of an infrastructure need 165,000 government workers?

Even the largest estimates of the Palestinian population clock in at around 3 million. That's one government worker per 18 Palestinians.

42.9 percent or 1.06 million of the overall population is under 14 and so wouldn't hold down government jobs either. An additional 73,000 is over 65. Of the remainder in the 15-64 year category 676,427 are male and 644,347 female. The female half can be eliminated as women generally don't hold down jobs in the PA.

That means the actual ratio of Palestinian adult men is 676,427 to government workers at 165,000. In other words every 1 in 4 or 25 percent of Palestinian men would be government employees. On wages subsidized by America and Europe.

Of course there's nothing for the 165,000 to do. When we eliminate the terrorists on the Palestinian payroll masquerading as police, that still leaves a hundred thousand or so, some of whom recieve patronage payments and many of whom are likely fictious names whose 'salaries' are forwarded to overseas bank accounts by the Palestinian leadership. In its time that was Yasir Arafat and his cronies. Today it's Hamas.

This is the crisis that we are told needs to be met by immediately providing money to the Palestinian Authority. If these figures are accurate then the US has essentially been paying to provide do-nothing jobs to 1 in every 4 Palestinians. At best. At worst much of this money has been going to fund terrorism and private fortunes.

And this of course is the emergency we are told we must immediately cough up the cash for. Or else.

See more photos and videos at the official site of the Hevron community here Read about the situation here.

Those Jewish and Pro-Israel columnists who enjoyed a few moments of foolishly naive optimism arguing that the election of Hamas would finally convince the world that the Palestinians don't want peace today experienced yet another disappointment today as the Quartet has agreed to channel funds to the Hamas run Palestinian Authority.

The arguments for funding the Hamas government fall into two camps.

Those who openly endorse dealing with Hamas such as Jimmy Carter who authored an International Herald Tribune editorial accusing the US of treating the Palestinians like 'animals' for not wanting to fund a Hamas state, claiming that merely because the Palestinians voted in (another) terrorist organization doesn't mean they don't want peace, blaming everything on Israel and concluding by praising the integrity of Hamas and calling for negotiations with them.

This camp is the most open about its agenda. It unapologetically supports the legitimization and funding of Hamas, seethes with hatred for Israel and sees nothing wrong in anything the Palestinian side has ever done.

The second camp is more subtle and it includes most of the US government, the media and even many Jewish organizations. It argues that the best way to bring down Hamas is to fund Hamas. Earlier this year these same people claimed that funding Hamas would enable the Hamas moderates to rise to the top, but after failing to find anyone in Hamas who would even seriously pretend to recognize Israel and begin negotiating an actual peace accord, as opposed to temporary cease fires while Hamas secures its position; their new line of argument is that if we continue supporting the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians will realize what a big mistake they made and the whole Hamas problem will go away.

Never mind that the US was funding the PA when Hamas was elected in the first place, this tortured logic is merely the latest stage of the deranged intellectual circus that has characterized the peace process. For nearly a decade and a half, the Palestinians continued carrying out terrorist attacks and the world warned Israel not to retaliate so as not to perpetuate the cycle of violence. Any demand the Palestinians put forwards no matter how lunatic was soon endorsed by the State Department.

The Oslo Accords were violated so many times by the Palestinians that citing a full list is like reading from the telephone book. The very training and weapons the US and Israel provided to the Palestinian police force was then turned against them when those police forces became the terrorists carrying out attacks and opening fire on Israeli soldiers. And yet the US, under both administrations, insisted that Israel not attack the Palestinian police forces so that the Palestinians would be able to combat terrorism; with a police force made of terrorists. The sheer lunacy of this is almost unbearable and yet all this is the basis of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

The US funded and trained Mujahadeen in Afghanistan only to find that when the Russians were gone, their targets became the US. The US has funded and trained the Iraqi police forces only to discover that many of them are actually loyal to various Sunni and Shiite factions and will kill Americans in the name of Sadr or Al Queda. The US funded and trained Palestinian terrorists in the Fatah Palestinian police forces. Given half a chance it would train the Hamas forces too.

The tortured logic of appeasement demands human sacrifices. The nearly 1500 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists since the beginning of Oslo were labeled 'Sacrifices for Peace.' And the killing goes on and on and the same dignitaries, ministers, politicians and experts who dragged Israel to the table with that bloody murderer in khaki who ran the PLO are tirelessly struggling to repeat the maneuver again with Hamas. Sweden has already granted Hamas open access to Europe. The Quartet has arranged to continue the flow of money. The first phase is complete. The next phase will see Israel pressured into recognizing and negotiating with Hamas.

Stage by stage they will achieve a goal to continue a process that can only end in the annihilation of the State of Israel. The 'Peace' continues.

Though only in existance for little more than a year in collaboration with Microsoft, Sultan Knish has overthrown the over 1000 year reign of Muslim Sultans beginning with Mahmud of Ghazni to the many present day Muslim Sultans becoming the first Jewish Sultan to appear as the 7th result on MSN's Search for 'Sultan.'

Sultan Knish has beaten out the Sultan of Brunei, Tipu Sultan, Isaac Sultan's underwear emporium, Kuwait's Sultan Center shopping mall, Prince Sultan Airbase, Sultan Limousine Service and the Non-Muslim but entirely beloved Sultan, Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat.

(JTA) "Ehud Olmert reportedly came up with the title for the Hollywood hit "Pretty Woman". Israel´s prime minister-elect was a Knesset lawmaker when he helped his friend, film producer Arnon Milchan, choose golden oldie "Pretty Woman" as the title song for the 1990 romantic comedy, Yediot Aharonot reported Thursday. The daily did not cite sources but its reporter, Yair Lapid, is a former Milchan protege."

Since Olmert's military experience consisted of working on a newspaper and his main accomplishment is being indicted without being convicted of a financial coverup (something that doesn't play as well as it used to), his lackeys have to find something to his credit. Al Gore claimed he invented the internet, Ehud Olmert can claim he invented the title of an 80's movie about a prostitute. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

The only reason Sharon is still on life support is that Olmert knows he has no crediblity of his own and must lug around Sharon's body like a macabre political Israeli remake of 'Weekend at Bernie's' trying to convince the public that retreat and surrender were Sharon's real legacies. 'Pretty Woman' is indeed an appropriate product for the leader of a party of prostitutes, professional politicians who abandoned their parties and causes in exchange for money and power. The politicians who have led Israel down this road have sold it all away, now they can only hope for a wealthy bachelor nation to take them in off the streets.

But ultimately the Pretty Woman incident is a testament to something darker, to the belief of politicians and spimeisters that the Israeli public will be seduced by the promise of American dazzle and Hollywood celebrity into overlooking the very real threats to their survival. Shimon Peres' New Middle East always held the implicit promise that the ongoing conflict, the struggle for survival and isolation would be gone replaced by a middle-eastern version of Monaco, a playground for the rich buisnessmen and with some leavings for the rest. Citing Pretty Woman is the bottom of the barrel attempt to capitalize on the last vestiges of that fading glamour.

There are certain similarities between Munich and United 93. Both are high profile movies about terrorist attacks supposedly based on real life events and are the focus of a great deal of controversy. Let's look at the two of them now.

Munich Budget - 65 Million dollars \ United 93 Budget - 15 Million dollars

Munich was a large scale extravaganza with a top Hollywood director, a prominent cast, a famous screenwriter and lavish set designs. Its scenes were filled with symbolism and metaphors all around.

By contrast United 93 was cheaply shot in England with a small budget. Its actors are unknowns, the director was little known outside of cinematic circles and also handled the screenwriting. It tells its story without ornamentation or resort to metaphor and symbolism but by pointing a camera and showing how people lived and died.

Munich claimed to be based on a book by one of the Israeli agents, but in fact was written by an impostor. None of the actual agents were consulted, not even the agency itself and as a result the movie was filled with an endless cavalcade of absurd mistakes. When the movie came out both the Israeli and Palestinian sides described it as an absurd fiction and many of the family members condemned it.

By contrast United 93 used the actual flight controllers to recreate what had happened that day. Much of the story inside the plane was pieced together from cell phone calls and while additional material had to be added, it has not been challenged by the families or condemned for its inaccuracy.

Munich blatantly pursued a political agenda. United 93 tells the story without special pleading.

Munich bombed in theaters opening in eight place and failed to make back its budget. United 93 opened at the second spot and nearly made back its budget in its opening weekend alone.

Perhaps Hollywood can finally learn a lesson from this. It's not money, noise or propaganda that succeeds. Ultimately truth survives and lies sink.

The press is filled with praise for Bush's routine at the White House Correspondent's Dinner in which he teamed up with a Bush impersonator to poke fun at himself. The oddest thing is to see Conservatives glowing at seeing that Bush can make a fool of himself as well as his impersonators.

With the Clinton administration what America needed most desperately was to restore some dignity to the Presidency. Earlier Presidents might have attended the dinner and poked fun at themselves but it is a very different matter to joke about the Presidency in a time when the Presidency has become a joke. There is also a difference between delivering some jokes at a dinner and breaking into what amounts to a Saturday Night Live routine.

Clinton and Bush have both displayed an amazing teflon endurance displaying their faults openly and shrugging off the harping of their political opponents at their personal failings. But while this is a personal strength, it is a Presidential weakness. It reflects diminished public expectations of what a leader should be. The public did not tolerate Clinton's infidelities and deceitfulness because they believed he was a good man, but because they didn't care that he was a bad man. If Bush had any one legacy he had a duty to leave to the Presidency, it was to raise public expectations of the Presidency. Instead Bush has gone down Clinton's path of making a joke of himself and knowing that the public would rather laugh along then demand better of him.

Once upon a time the Presidency was a noble position and the men who occupied it became legendary and figures of almost mythical power, Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan were men who endure in the memory of this country because they countered diminished expectations by ennobling the Presidency. They made mistakes but they nevertheless presented models of leadership and public greatness and that is something we sorely lack today.