Wake Up Time from the Holocaust Hangover

Eileen Fleming

[Jerusalem, July 22, 2007] I had no clue when I gave 'birth' to my
website, exactly two years ago to this day, what I was really doing,
but, after my first of five journeys to Israel Palestine and
listening to many of the people who live here and seeing with my own
eyes the facts on the ground and feeling in my own gut a little of
what life is like under occupation, I got VERY PISSED OFF and had to
DO SOMETHING!

My government and mainstream media do NOT tell the truth and the
spin they spin makes me want to puke. Not all members of the
internationally recognized transparent democratically elected
members of Hamas are terrorists and democracy cannot be spread
through the barrel of a gun.

Criticizing the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic, just as
dissenting from the neo-con ideology is not unpatriotic; in fact it
is much more in line with our founding fathers;

"Soon after I had published the pamphlet "Common Sense" [on Feb. 14,
1776] in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution
in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the
system of religion... The world is my country, all mankind are my
brethren, and to do good is my religion."-Tom Paine

But what really gets my Irish up, is that so many American
Christians have no clue about the Christian Exodus from the Holy
Land which began in 1948 when innocent people were forced to flee
from their homes for fear of their life after they learned of the
barbaric terrorism perpetuated by Zionist imperialist in the
massacre at Deir Yassin.

"Early in the morning of Friday, April 9, 1948, commandos of the
Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, and the Stern Gang attacked Deir
Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. It was
several weeks before the end of the British Mandate. The village lay
outside of the area that the United Nations recommended be included
in a future Jewish State. Deir Yassin had a peaceful reputation and
was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Arab
militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and one plan, kept secret until years
afterwards, called for it to be destroyed and the residents
evacuated to make way for a small airfield that would supply the
beleaguered Jewish residents of Jerusalem.

By noon over 100 people, half of them women and children, had been
systematically murdered. Four commandos died at the hands of
resisting Palestinians using old Mausers and muskets. Twenty-five
male villagers were loaded into trucks, paraded through the Zakhron
Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, and then taken to a stone quarry along
the road between Givat Shaul and Deir Yassin and shot to death. The
remaining residents were driven to Arab East Jerusalem.

"That evening the Irgunists and the Sternists escorted a party of
foreign correspondents to a house at Givat Shaul, a nearby Jewish
settlement founded in 1906. Over tea and cookies they amplified the
details of the operation and justified it, saying Deir Yassin had
become a concentration point for Arabs, including Syrians and
Iraqis, planning to attack the western suburbs of Jerusalem. They
said that 25 members of the Haganah militia had reinforced the
attack and claimed that an Arabic-speaking Jew had warned the
villagers over a loudspeaker from an armored car. This was duly
reported in The New York Times on April 10.

"A final body count of 254 was reported by The New York Times on
April 13, a day after they were finally buried. By then the leaders
of the Haganah had distanced themselves from having participated in
the attack and issued a statement denouncing the dissidents of Irgun
and the Stern Gang, just as they had after the attack on the King
David Hotel in July 1946. A 1987 study undertaken by Birzeit
University's Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian
Society found "the numbers of those killed does not exceed 120".

"The Haganah leaders admitted that the massacre "disgraced the cause
of Jewish fighters and dishonored Jewish arms and the Jewish flag."
They played down the fact that their militia had reinforced the
terrorists' attack, even though they did not participate in the
barbarism and looting during the subsequent "mopping up" operations.

"They also played down the fact that, in Begin's words, "Deir Yassin
was captured with the knowledge of the Haganah and with the approval
of its commander" as a part of its "plan for establishing an
airfield."

"Ben Gurion even sent an apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan.
But this horrific act served the future State of Israel well.
According to Begin:

"Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales
of "Irgun butchery," were seized with limitless panic and started to
flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a
maddened, uncontrollable stampede. The political and economic
significance of this development can hardly be overestimated." [1]

The Christian Exodus from the Holy Land has escalated in recent
years to reduce their numbers from 20% of the total population of
the Holy Land, to less than 1.3% since 1948. The reasons for the
exodus of the most well educated and consistently nonviolent members
of society are the now 40 years of occupation and oppression that
has resulted in lack of economic opportunities, The Wall which
divides them from their land, resources, families and holy sites and
the increasing sense of hopelessness that fuels militancy and the
growth of fundamentalism within all three branches of Father
Abraham's offspring's.

Palestinians are inherently peaceful people who have been made to
pay for the sins of The Third Reich and it is way past time for the
world to WAKE UP from the holocaust hangover that has allowed
America's best friend in the world to become the biggest bully on
the planet.

International Law demands that occupation is to be temporary,
maintain the status quo, not pilfer the resources of the occupied,
nor transfer the occupier's population into occupied territory. But
Israel does not adhere to international law; they follow the law of
the jungle.

American media reports much about Islamic fundamentalism, but not on
the inherently anti-Semitic cultish and escapist theology of
Christian Zionism or the ultra-Orthodox Jews of the Holy Land. On
July 19, 2007, Haaretz reported "The end of Zionism" regarding the
increasing numbers of youth who refuse to serve.

"Some young people explain their evasion of service by their loss of
confidence in the leadership, the cases of corruption and the
state's abandonment of its soldiers. But there is also an
accumulated weariness with the state of war, which has already
lasted 60 years, and many young people, along with their parents,
are no longer willing to sacrifice their lives on the altar of the
settlers' expansionist dreams.

"After all, 25 percent of those eligible for the draft never serve
at all (11 percent receive exemptions for yeshiva studies, 7 percent
for health reasons, 4 percent reside abroad and 3 percent have a
criminal record). Of those drafted, 17.5 percent do not complete a
full three years of service. The sharpest rise in the number of
draft-dodgers is among the ultra-Orthodox. In 1974, they comprised
only 2.4 percent of those eligible for the draft. Today, the figure
is 11 percent.

"Against this background, it is shocking to learn that yesterday the
Knesset decided to extend the so-called Tal Law…a cynical, immoral
law that absolves a significant portion of Jewish Israelis from the
need to either do army service or work for a living. The fact is
that 80 percent of ultra-Orthodox men do not work; instead, they
live on government grants and stipends and the earnings of their
wives.

"The secular donkey does not merely bear the military and economic
burden; it also continues to expand the scope of government support
for ultra-Orthodox education, including even the most extremist
strains. About two months ago, the Knesset, by a large majority,
approved the so-called Nahari Law, which compels the municipalities
to grant equal funding to ultra-Orthodox schools that are not part
of the official education system. These are extremist institutions…
they do not teach mathematics, English, nature, science, civics,
geography or history. In other words, they deliberately fail to
train their graduates for a life of work and productivity. So these
graduates have no choice but to cling to the coattails of ultra-
Orthodox activists.

And where will the new funding for these extremist schools come
from? [2]

Every day the U.S.A. provides over $7,023,288.00 to the Israeli
government and military and over $108 Billion since 1948. "Generous
as it is, what Israel actually got in U.S. aid is considerably less
than what it has cost U.S. taxpayers to provide it. The principal
difference is that so long as the U.S. runs an annual budget
deficit, every dollar of aid the U.S. gives Israel has to be raised
through U.S. government borrowing."- Richard Curtiss [3]

On July 19, 2007, in the Old City of Jerusalem, Professor Albert
Aghazarian, addressed nearly three dozen international and
Palestinian youth and this reporter who had gathered for Sabeel's
2nd International young Adult Conference: 40 Years in the Wilderness…
40 Years of Occupation...

He said two things that have not left my conscience since: "In a
nutshell, there is a deep schizophrenia in the Holy Land; what we
see, hear and talk. Zionism is the original sin; Zionism is an
untouchable icon. You can curse Mohammad, you can curse Mary, but
not Zionism…Do your best, and as long as you give it your best shot,
don't worry about the rest."

But injustice is unsustainable and all things must pass...

"There is a time for everything; a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time
to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." –Ecclesiastes 3: 1,
7, 8

1. http://www.deiryassin.org/mas.html

2. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/883868.html

3. http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html#source

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July 23, 2007 © Copyright Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor
http://www.wearewideawake.org/ AuthorKeep Hope Alive and Memoirs of
a Nice Irish American Girl's' Life in Occupied Territory,
Producer "30 Minutes With Vanunu " Permission is granted for reprint
in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and
the title remains unchanged. "Only in Solidarity do "we have it in
our power to begin the world again." -Tom Paine

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