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Mar 11, 2011

Dutch PM: European leaders can't trust Netanyahu

 

  • Published 02:56 08.03.11
  • Latest update 02:56 08.03.11




Former Dutch PM tells Haaretz: European leaders can't trust Netanyahu

Dries van Agt wants the EU to make Israel pay for its policies, but says his own country is one of the main obstacles to recognition for Palestine.

By Akiva Eldar

The red carpet was not rolled out to greet 80-year-old Dries van Agt upon his arrival at Ben-Gurion International Airport. The man who was prime minister of Holland from 1977 to 1982 is known here as one of the leading delegitimizers of Israel.

This visit, like ones before, is aimed at expressing his support for the Palestinians under the occupation and to give a boost to the Israeli peace camp. Van Agt is one of 26 European personages who called upon the European Union in December to declare that a Palestinian state will spread over an area equal to 100 percent of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and that its capital will be East Jerusalem.

The signatories include the previous European foreign affairs and defense policy coordinator Javier Solana, and former leaders of Germany, Spain, Italy and Ireland, among others.

The retired leaders urged EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton to take an active role in thawing the negotiations and freezing settlement construction.

They noted key American figures have hinted to them that the best way to help U.S. President Barack Obama advance the peace process is to make Israel pay a "price tag" for policy contradicting the United States' wishes.

That price would be EU recognition of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, as several South American countries have done.

Last Thursday, shortly after speaking at an international Christian conference in Bethlehem and before taking off to fly back to Amsterdam, van Agt presented to me a despairing picture of the EU policy regarding the conflict.

True, he says, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's telephone conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows the EU has woken up from the delusion that the Israeli leader has changed.

Van Agt recounts with relish British Prime Minister David Cameron's reply to a member of Parliament who inquired whether Netanyahu had also phoned London in order to chastise the prime minister for Britain's' vote in the United Nations condemning the settlements.

Cameron said he had not been granted that honor but had Netanyahu complained to him, he would have received a "robust" reply similar to the one he received from Berlin ("How dare you?" ).

"Most of the European leaders, headed by those of the major countries - France, Britain and Germany - are partners to the feeling that it's impossible to trust Netanyahu," van Agt said. "He squandered the credit he received from Europe in the wake of his Bar-Ilan speech and turned it into empty words."

However, van Agt expects the first European country to join the South American states will be Norway, which is not a member of the EU. He says he has reasons to believe Spain will be the first EU country to follow in Oslo's footsteps.

But he doesn't hold out much hope for a domino effect. The retired Dutch statesman, who believes Europe owes a special debt to the Palestinians because they are the victims of victims of the Holocaust, does not believe their salvation will come from the continent.

"The EU is everything but a union," he says.

He calls the members from Central Europe "slaves of the United States" and assesses they will carry out its orders to thwart a consensus - a necessary condition for a resolution by the EU to recognize a Palestinian state in the vote expected at the UN this coming September.

The highest hurdle, says van Agt, is to be found in his home country of Holland. The combination of guilty feelings and Islamophobia has, he says, made Dutch politicians the bastion of the Israeli right in Europe.

As evidence, he pulls out a copy of a resolution passed with a sweeping majority (including their Labor Party ) in the Dutch Parliament on the eve of the vote against the settlements in the UN, which won the support of all the European ambassadors in the Security Council.

The Dutch Parliament called upon the EU to oppose recognition of a Palestinian state. It also demanded of the Palestinians that they return to the negotiating table in order to bring about a just resolution of the conflict and "explicitly" recognize a democratic and Jewish state. Not a word about the settlements.

It is small wonder, then, that no less than 20 Israeli diplomats have vied of late for the position of ambassador to The Hague. The tulips are blooming and the herring - lip-smacking good.

Livni-style democracy

Opposition leader MK Tzipi Livni of Kadima has a new project. She is proposing to the Arab world that it adopt the codes of its democratic sister. In an article published last week in The Washington Post, Livni wrote that the leaders of the free world must exert their influence in order to protect the young democracies in the Middle East from groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

According to her, Israel fears the democratic revolution in Egypt will bring about the replacement of Hosni Mubarak with a leader who has an extremist worldview and an anti-democratic bent (no doubt she is referring to the Muslim Brotherhood ).

In a letter she appended to the article, Livni explained to me that the role of the leaders of the free world, and especially in Israel, is to harness the world to the future shaping of the region in accordance with those interests shared by Israel and the free world.

Livni claims her initiative "correctly translates the values of democracy in a way that will be acceptable to all the pragmatic and moderate elements in our region."

She proposes banning all parties that uphold violence and/or racism and/or do not respect international agreements. If Netanyahu were to propose "translating" his democratic codes for the Arabs, we would say he is arrogant, colonialist and insensitive.

It is worth remembering that Livni has conducted (and quite probably will conduct ) intense coalition negotiations with an Israeli political party that wants to transfer Arabs out of Israel and incites against minorities.

In fact, she too proposed in the past transferring to a Palestinian state the Israeli inhabitants of divided villages.


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$20 Billion More...hey why not?

 



Israel May Ask US For $20 Billion More in Security Aid, Barak Says 
Haaretz (Israel) 
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-may-ask-u-s-for-20-billion-more-in-security-aid-barak-says-1.347866 

Israel may request an addition $20 billion in military aid from the United States in light of the unrest sweeping the Arab world, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday .. .. With the popular protests shaking up the Mideast, Netanyahu is under fierce international pressure to prove he is serious about getting peacemaking moving again, especially after the U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's West Bank settlement construction last month. 

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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
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Call anytime: 917-974-6367

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The Pope’s new book

 

The Hoffman Wire
Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History

Subscribe: HoffmanWire-subscribe@topica.com
Michael A. Hoffman II: Editor. RevisionistHistory.org

***

Pope Benedict's new book and the conversion of the "Jews"

by Michael Hoffman

This column is online with research links:
http://tinyurl.com/65ntkpx

The pope's new book on Jesus Christ and the Jews, "Jesus of Nazareth:
Holy Week," has been published. I will be reading it early next week and
my full review will appear in "Revisionist History" newsletter in April.

From excerpts I have read online, the book is written in the classic
mode of casuistry, the post-medieval Roman Catholic lawyer's corollary
to the Talmud's lawyerly pilpul.

By means of this casuistry the pope is saying one thing to the Left and
the rabbis, but provides enough cover for his thesis so that the Right
and conservative Catholics can allow themselves to believe that he
really didn't say what the rabbis and the Left are saying he did say.

What a tangled web! Whatever happened to plain speech? "Let your yes be
yes, and your no be no; anything else is of the evil one" (Matthew
5:37).

The Vatican and the rabbis do not heed Christ's sage admonition, that's
for sure. For example, Purim, the Talmudic feast of revenge, is just
around the corner on the rabbinic calendar, Adar 14 (March 19-20). On
Purim, every Judaic male is required to get so drunk he can't tell the
difference between Haman and Mordechai. The Talmud obligates Judaic
males to become intoxicated at Purim, then warns them of the potential
dangers of such inebriation (Babylonian Talmud, Megila 7b). The Talmud
provides a plausible denial loophole for its own command to Judaic males
to become intoxicated with alcohol. Bottom line: for centuries Judaic
males have gotten hopelessly drunk on Purim.

Pope Benedict's casuistry reflects the plausible denial stratagem
exhibited in Megila 7b: while the pope does not affirm in "Jesus of
Nazareth: Holy Week" the theory holding that "Jews" will be saved
independently of Christ, he does suggest the Church should not be
targeting "Jews" for conversion efforts.

Observe this tangled web of papal casuistry: [1] "Don't convert the
'Jews,' [2] but they do need Christ to be saved."

[1] Don't convert the "Jews" — absolutely delights Pharisaic Judaism and
the Left.

[2] "Jews" still need Christ to be saved — provides a face-saving escape
clause for the pope's Right-wing.

Benedict "approvingly quotes" Cistercian abbess and "Biblical writer"
Hildegard Brem: "The church must not concern herself with the conversion
of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for this by God."

I'm going to "approvingly quote" the founder of the Christian Church
(just in case His words count for anything next to those of abbesses and
pontiffs): "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
(Matthew 15:24)

Let's see now, at the beginning of His ministry Jesus focused his
conversion efforts solely on the House of Israel, but since then, that
focus has been abrogated? Or would the casuists prefer to employ the
word "derogated"?

The charge given by Jesus later in His ministry, to carry the Gospel to
the gentiles, to the ends of the earth, Pope Benedict reverses, in favor
of what the pontiff terms a "sequence": first the "full number" of the
Gentiles comes to the faith, and only then the Jews.

So Jesus had it wrong. He sought to convert the Jews first. He wasn't
aware of the "sequence"!

The pope quotes St. Bernard of Clairvaux's advice to one of his
predecessors, Pope Eugene III, that "a determined time has been fixed"
for the conversion of the Jews "that cannot be anticipated."

Clever! The pope has switched gears and is alluding to eschatology, the
Pauline prediction of Judaic conversion in general, in some form and to
some extent (we know not the particulars), at the end of time.

This process would, however, never forbid the conversion of individual
"Jews" before the end time, and it never did. Ecclesiastic history
testifies to militant missionary efforts toward Judaics. Otherwise, what
were Peter and Paul doing in the Church in the first place? Why didn't
Christ just convert the Roman Centurion, the Samaritan woman and any
other gentile He chose, and make them apostles and disciples, leaving
His call to the Simons and Sauls to the time when the "full number" of
the gentiles would be converted?

No doubt Dr. Scott Hahn and other august PhD. theologians beholden to
the Novus Ordo Seclorum, will resolve these "seeming" contradictions and
tie them into a neat traditional package, exactly corresponding to "what
the Church has always taught."

But the Church has always taught that from motives of charity and
compassion we should free Judaics from the shackles of bomdage to the
religious system based on the Babylonian Talmud, and lead them to the
love, grace and mercy of Jesus.

Catholic Saints like Vincent Ferrer responded heroically to the call to
convert Judaics. Among Protestants, international missionary
organizations were founded, such as the London Society for Promoting
Christianity Among the Jews. In the space of a few decades of the 19th
century, nearly 1800 Judiacs were converted and baptized in the
Society's London chapel in Palestine Lane, and thousands more were
converted throughout Germany and eastern Europe. One of the leaders of
the Society, Rev. Dr. Alexander McCaul, warned of the sins which Judaics
commit as long as they remain in Judaism:

"Every man who uses the prayers of the synagogue, there confesses
himself to God as a believer in the oral law, and consequently ready to
execute all its decrees of cruelty, fraud and persecution...That is his
profession in the synagogue; when he then comes forth from the solemn
act of Divine Worship and tells me that he is...charitable and that he
abhors persecution, how can I possibly believe him?..so long as their
words and their deeds contradict each other, a mist hangs over
them...There is falsehood somewhere and the only possible mode of
removing this appearance is by a public renunciation of the oral
law...To their God they owe it, for by the blasphemies of the oral law,
His character is misrepresented and His name blasphemed."

Judaism is an offense to God — now — at this moment! Pope Benedict XVI,
by "suggesting" that Jews need not convert to faith in Jesus Christ "at
this time in history," is abandoning them to their sins, and ultimately
to damnation, for no one is saved by their race!

Who then is the "Jew hater"? Is it the Christian evangelist who converts
Judaics, or the Catholic casuist who leaves them to die without Christ?

The rabbis claim to be the defenders of the "Jews." Are they not
actually their worst enemies? And what of a pope who, by retarding
missionary efforts, cooperates with the Christless agenda of rabbinic
Judaism?

Michael Hoffman is the author of "Judaism Discovered," an 1100 page
textbook and reference work. He is a former reporter for the New York
bureau of the Associated Press.

Hoffman's work is reader-funded, through donations and book and
newsletter sales.

This column is online with research links:
http://tinyurl.com/65ntkpx
Tell a friend!

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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
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‘Humanitarian Imperialism’ in Libya Could End the Whiteman’s Burden

 


'Humanitarian Imperialism' in Libya Could End the Whiteman's Burden!


http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/03/humanitarian-imperialism-in-libya-could.html


"Using force to stop slaughter is lawful. The duty to stop the mass murder of innocents, as best we can, has crystallised to make the use of force by Nato not merely 'legitimate' but lawful." Geoffrey Robertson QC ,a member of the UN's justice council 

David Cameron, now heading a coalition government of a bankrupt United Kingdom , along with some elements in France and elsewhere in Europe is raring to go to war on Libya in the 21 century version of Whiteman's burden .Still drunk with the colonial power hangover ,Cameron is an apt successor of Tony Blair , who told lies before the 2003 invasion of Iraq and joined George Bush in spite of the original legal advice that it was illegal .Though accused of various crimes he is still roaming around relatively free. 

Day of Reckoning

Josh Gerstein wrote in 'Politico' on 22 February ,2011 that the US Justice Department has quietly dropped its legal representation of more than a dozen Bush-era Pentagon and administration officials - including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and aide Paul Wolfowitz - in a lawsuit by Jose Padilla, who spent years behind bars without charges in conditions his lawyers compare to torture.

Ray McGovern , former CIA officer and now a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) wrote in Information Clearing House on19 February 2011 that former president George Bush abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance that week in Geneva to avoid the risk of arrest on a torture charge. 

Libya and the Return of Humanitarian Imperialism

Writing in Counterpunch.org , Jean Brichmont says that "The whole gang is back' which includes the parties of the European Left and other assorted groups , Bernard-Henry Lévy and Bernard Kouchner, calling for some sort of "humanitarian intervention" against the "Libyan tyrant."

It reminds me of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo war to stop a nonexistent genocide. Since then US led West after the illegal invasion and brutal occupation of Iraq ,has resulted in over 1.4 million Iraqis deaths and the destruction of the country .These European leaders of humanitarian intervention in Libya do not talk of genocide in Iraq. Was not the Afghan war to protect women (go and check their situation now), and the Iraq war to protect the Kurds and find weapons of mass destruction (none were found ). Was not even Hitler "protecting minorities" in Czechoslovakia and Poland, scoffs Brichmont . 

(At New Delhi's National Defence College Seminar last year on the-'Role of Force in Strategic Affairs , Lawrence Freedman ,a member of the Chilcot Enquiry , while presiding at a session claimed that the Iraq invasion was to quickly make a regime change and come out. He even contested my claim, based on my over 50 articles ( 2002 to 2010) on the Iraq war that both former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and former Fed reserve chief Alan Greenspan had proclaimed that the invasion was for Iraq's oil .Wikileaks has confirmed that the Chiclot Enquiry is but a whitewash to help save Tony Blair's skin !)

Likely ramifications of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya

Mike Lind writes in Salon ,"The implication [of McCain, Lieberman, Kerry et al.] is that the enforcement of "no-fly zones," by the U.S. alone or with NATO allies, would be a moderate, reasonable measure short of war, like a trade embargo. In reality, declaring and enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya would be a radical act of war. It would require the U.S. not only to shoot down Libyan military aircraft but also to bomb Libya in order to destroy anti-aircraft defenses. Under any legal theory, bombing a foreign government's territory and blasting its air force out of the sky is war.

"Could America's war in Libya remain limited? The hawks glibly promise that the U.S. could limit its participation in the Libyan civil war to airstrikes, leaving the fighting to Libyan rebels.

"These assurances by the hawks are ominously familiar."

Lind then traces us back through the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that each of these turned into wars of larger scale than intended (Afghanistan and Iraq were supposed to be quick and easy, remember?).                                                              

"Stay the Course '  He concludes ;  "The lesson of these three wars is that the rhetoric of lift-and-strike is a gateway drug that leads to all-out American military invasion and occupation. Once the U.S. has committed itself to using limited military force to depose a foreign regime, the pressure to "stay the course" becomes irresistible. If lift-and-strike were to fail in Libya, the same neo-con hawks who promised that it would succeed would not apologize for their mistake. Instead, they would up the ante. They would call for escalating American involvement further, because America's prestige would now be on the line. They would denounce any alternative as a cowardly policy of "cut and run." And as soon as any American soldiers died in Libya, the hawks would claim that we would be betraying their memory, unless we conquered Libya and occupied it for years or decades until it became a functioning, pro-American democracy.

"Those who are promoting an American war against Gadhafi must answer the question: "You and whose army?" The term "jingoism" comes from a Victorian British music-hall ditty: "We don't want to fight but by Jingo if we do,/ We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too." Unfortunately for 21st-century America's jingoes, we haven't got the ships, the men or the money."(As for the men, late decorated US Marine Col Murtha had said in 2006 that the US army was broken in Iraq.)

'No-fly zone' is a euphemism for war

Similar views are expressed by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian of 9 March ;" We'd be mad to try it.

 "Cameron's urge to dust himself in military glory may be strong, but he should not interfere in the Libyan rebels' cause. The craving of politicians to dust themselves in military glory is as old as the hills, embedded in leadership psychosis. However daft a war may be, however illegal, however unwinnable, politicians seem helpless before the sound of trumpets and drums. Considerations of prudence, economy or overstretch are nothing. That Britain has been fighting and not winning two wars already in Muslim countries seems to teach nothing in Libya. Jingoism never dies.

"There is no point is repeating that Libya is not our country or our business. It was always going to be bloody one day. I find it incredible that Labour ministers, as they simpered in Gaddafi's presence, could have thought he would lie down like a lamb should his people rise against him. But unless we redefine words, he is not committing genocide and his brutality is hardly exceptional. If the rebels win it should be their victory, emerging from a new balance of power inside Libya. If they fail, they must fight another day. There is no good reason for us to intervene. However embattled they feel, Obama and Cameron should find other paths to glory." 

Cameron outlined his conversation with Obama on BBC1, "We have got to prepare for what we might have to do if he [Gaddafi] goes on brutalising his own people," he said."I had a phone call with President Obama this afternoon to talk about the planning we have to do in case this continues and in case he does terrible things to his own people. I don't think we can stand aside and let that happen." 

A Downing Street spokesman said: "The prime minister and the president agreed to press forward with planning, including at Nato on the full spectrum of possible responses, including surveillance, humanitarian assistance, enforcement of the arms embargo , and a no fly zone. They committed to close co-ordination on next steps."

 US Secretaries of Defense and State oppose 'No Fly Zone "

But only last week Robert Gates , the US defense secretary, criticised "loose talk" over a no-fly zone and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cautioned that a no-fly zone would need clear approval by the UN security council and warned of the dangers if the West took charge of any military operation Clinton told Sky News: "We think it's important that the United Nations make this decision, not the United States, and so far the United Nations has not done that.

"I think it's very important that this not be a US-le


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Peace.
Michael Santomauro 
@ 917-974-6367 

What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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