David Seaton's News LinksSo much of what is said in defense of Israel centers around the Holocaust. Lets talk about it a little.
First let me say that I have no doubts at all that it happened just the way it is portrayed (Raul Hilberg version at least).
Furthermore when I was only seven, the aged lady doctor with a heavy accent who walked several miles through a Midwestern blizzard to give me a lifesaving penicillin shot when I had gone into coma from double pneumonia, after my own pediatrician had refused to make the house call, had one of the tattoos on her arm. The next day, when I had awakened, I asked her about the numbers on her arm and my mother told me to shut up. So I am not a negationist. I loved that old lady and I owe my life to her.
So it strikes me as incongruous that with so much concern about the Holocaust that:
"an umbrella group of Holocaust survivor organizations in Israel estimated that about one-quarter of Israel’s 250,000 survivors are living in poverty."according to the Jewish Telegraph Agency.
With billions of dollars of American aid going to Israel every year, and all the endless hoohah about the Shoa: the monuments and memorials, the TV programs, the university endowments, the books etcetera... that these poor, old people who are actually all that is humanly left of the Holocaust are lacking in even simple comforts makes me want to puke.
I would think until those that brandish the Holocaust at every turn, to justify Israel, actually do something to help these survivors live tranquilly and in comfort for the little time they have left, they should shut up.
They are fakes, the Shoa was real, but they are fakes and everything they are selling is fake.
The next thing you are going to hear - mark my words - is that Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez are making a fund to help these old people. I'm not joking. DS
3 comments:
Another very good test for hypocrisy is to check for bipedalism and opposing thumbs :)
Yes, the Holocaust is for the Israeli right what the troops are for the American right: merely a symbol or prop. At least the Holocaust survivors can take comfort in knowing that the political establishment is merely indifferent to them; whereas the US military (as presently constituted) is the target of an active program of destruction.
I received this very interesting commentary from Miles Becker as an email and am including in the comments section so that my readers can enjoy it too:
Mr. Seaton - On Democracy Now the other day there was a discussion of Iran. It is clear that in 2003 a deal could have been struck with Iran, including the nuclear issue and even the recognition of Israel, but a deal was not desired. Why?
I have been troubled by the implications of the Millennium Challenge 2002 war games, carried out at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars. In these games, designed to test new American military doctrine in an attack on Iran, the American forces suffered catastrophic losses in the first 48 hours. An aircraft carrier, two Marine Corps helicopter carriers, and thirteen other ships were sunk. Thousands of service people killed. In two days.
The games were stopped, the fleet refloated, and the dead sailors, marines, and airmen brought back to life. General Van Ripper, in charge of the "Red Forces," was informed that his methods were unsound. He was prevented from using creative tactics to compensate for American technical superiority, and ordered to use tactics that would give the advantage to the US forces. As for instance to turn on his radars so they could be destroyed. When he realized that his orders to his forces were being systematically countermanded, he withdrew from the exercise, and soon after, retired.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/020906-iraq1.htm
Note that the wikipedia entry for Millenium Challenge posits that Israel, not Iran, was the adversary. This is absurd. Van Ripper used suicide attacks and communication by Friday prayers. Not Israel.
If you do a little research on the anti-ship missiles known to be in the possesion of the Iranians (exocet, silkworm), and the anti-ship missiles thought by some sources to be in their possesion (C-802, sunburn, moskit, yakhonts) it becomes evident that the results of the Millennium Challenge games are by no means improbable. Consider that Argentina in the Falklands War fired a handful of exocets and sank two and British ships and damaged a third. Two exocets in 1988 nearly sank the Stark. Hizballah seriously damaged an Israeli frigate last summer with a single silkworm or C-802. And the much more advanced sunburn and related missiles are truly fearsome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silkworm_missile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-802
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/moskit.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-270_Moskit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhont
Russian anti-ship doctrine calls for flooding the target vessel with missiles, to overwhelm any defensive measures that might be deployed. Iran is thought to have hundreds of exocet/silkworm class missiles, and may have significant numbers of the sunburn/moskit class missiles. The Israelis failed to suppress Hizballah missiles for a month. How will the US destroy Iran's anti ship capability? The entire Persian Gulf coast of Iran is a potential launch site for these missiles, as well as the small boats and planes used by Van Ripper.
What will happen in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq? Retaliation by commerce raiding, real sabotage and terror? Muslim rage world wide, finally provoked?
And of course the war will remove Iranian oil and gas from the world markets, and it is highly probable that Persian Gulf oil will be cut off as well, indefinitely. It is likely that Venezuela will replace Iran as a source for the Chinese, and refuse to sell to the US. This on top of the mortgage crisis and the rapidly sinking dollar. Economic catastrophe.
So what is it that the US intends?
I think Naomi Klein's book offers us insight.
This is not madness. It will be the mother of all shocks, and for whoever brought down the towers at free fall speed, the mother of all opportunities.
We need to be thinking in a much larger scale, and a much longer time frame, to understand what is being done to us.
Regards,
Miles Becker
it takes an accountant.
us aid to israel is mostly military supplies - about 2 B.
others are loan guarantees..
israeli military budget, at least 20B
israel's gdp: about 170B.
the us aid is a small percentage of the budget or gdp
there are many welfare problems, and the social security is stretched.
the poverty of the holocaust survivors is painful. none is starving. the min. social sec benefit is about 400 dollars, subsidized housing, senior homes are widely avaible...
the whole thing needs a good reporting and not the broadcasting of second-hand news.
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