Gretavo, in answer to your question re: what Russian MiGs might accomplish –

And thank you for your clarification of details. Gosh, I was wholly unaware that Poland has been a Catholic country for like, 20,000 years. You seem to have this kind of fly-like mentality that misses all the really important points of a long, detailed comment on current events and only attaches itself to the little turds of nitpicky irrelevant inaccuracies which, on the whole, have nothing much to do with the general, big-picture discussion at hand. Did you attend the same rabbinical school as Mark Regev? Do you have one of those Bolshevik software alert things on your desktop so that when anyone on the internet tubes mentions ‘Trotsky’ or the ‘Red Army’, it alerts you to rush to your laptop? What do you think about the Zionist genocide over the last few decades in Palestine? Have you seen any of the photos or videos coming out of Gaza lately, or don’t you care? I think you need to get a girlfriend, or boyfriend, or a job, or something. Oh yeah, what did you think of that photo gallery of the Bromberg Massacres? Was Hitler and the German kids nailed to their father’s barns just hallucinating, or was that just a very good Photoshop job? Did you know that Stalin was actually a Tahitian Buddhist?

Hey E V, thanks for your great comments and that Top Ten List, wow! True, true. I saved it to Word. Word.

I don’t seriously advocate the barbarism of carpet-bombing civilians like the Israelis do in their wars against the ‘Amelekites’, but as a public service, bloggers and researchers do have a duty to point out that this whole notion of nuking Persia and starting up “WWIV–the Final Solution,” one which certain people running for the post of Israeli PM entertain within their Zionist mental landscapes, is just comic book insane. Let’s see, who has already pledged military support to Iran if Israel attacks their mutual and valuable trading partner? Oh, why that would be Putin’s Russia and, wait for it, ...Communist CHINA! If you’re Israel, you don’t just nuke Iran, turn around and say you’re sorry, our bad, and then give your middle finger to the world community as you stroll onto the 18th hole. And the Zionists’ threatened, global suicide “Samson Option” thing just shows that they have been watching too many re-runs of Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” Get out of those think tanks and get some fresh air, fer gosh sakes.

You wrote: “perhaps you are right, bullies only listen to force. I just don't want the force used.”

I don’t want to see any more death and destruction either, but in confronting a bully, if you don’t bring any kind of threat or capability of force to the table, that party will just roll over you and keep on moving. Those are just the hard cold facts of human history and behaviour. I was merely pointing out that what the cycles of history and empire show us is, that if Israel keeps on doing its Sgt. Uri and His Howling Commandos thing, they will reach a place in the road where a single party, or a coalition, will stand up and say no more. Like clockwork, it happens every time, so far as we know from ancient records. The heroes of Zionism and those admired by the founders of Israel are people like Michael Collins and the early IRA, Mussolini, and Bar Kokba, of course. Gandhi and his style does not cut it with these folks at all. Gandhi, in fact, didn’t seem to dig the Zionist tactic of terrorism (car bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, blowing up buildings, the usual) either, at least from what he wrote. Long Live Mahatma Gumbhi!

“Yes, they are pusillanimous bullies. Yes, yes, yes. But we do not have to act like they do.”

I wasn’t implying in any way that “we” should act like the IOF or the IAF, absolutely not. I always remember the woman in Qana, screaming into the camera during the Lebanese Holocaust™ of 2006 – “We will not let you turn us into what you have become!” Somebody with silkscreen skills should make a T-shirt of that. Seriously.

Perhaps we should just try the “Jewish Mother” plan on Israel, where we stop them in their tracks by making them feel guilty and ashamed with INFORMATION and real HISTORY. That’s why they call the research of people such as Germar Rudolf or David Cole “hate speech research,” because the carnies always hate it when their game is blown through too much INFORMATION, which then precipitously causes them to quickly pack up the carnival and leave town.

On my response to your response at this late date and hour, I don’t think it is necessarily a case of people here not liking a good argument because they're “pussies.” Sometimes it can be merely due to extreme busyness with multiple projects, or sometimes writing and posting something, after taking up to 15-20 minutes sometimes to even get on the ol’ WTCD, can be discouraging, and is a project perhaps put off to a period when more time is in one’s possession. I would rather talk than type anyways.

You wrote: “To believe oneself chosen is dangerous.”

Oh yesireebob, correcto on that, and as proof of that truism, I am posting this Al-Ahram Weekly article for your consideration and review in the light of events which have transpired in the Middle East over the last month and a half.

“All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts.” This was the religious opinion issued one week ago by Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a long-established religious institute attended by students and soldiers in the Israeli settlements of the West Bank. In an article published by numerous religious Israeli newspapers two weeks ago and run by the liberal Ha’aretz on 26 March, Rosen asserted that there is evidence in the Torah to justify this stand. Rosen, an authority able to issue religious opinions for Jews, wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of Amalekites that attacked the Israelite tribes on their way to Jerusalem after they had fled from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote that the Lord sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites, and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence.

Rosen’s article, which created a lot of noise in Israel, included the text of the ruling in the Torah: “Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill continuously, one after the other. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their beasts, from camels to donkeys.” Rosen adds that the Amalekites are not a particular race or religion, but rather all those who hate the Jews for religious or national motives. Rosen goes as far as saying that the “Amalekites will remain as long as there are Jews. In every age Amalekites will surface from other races to attack the Jews, and thus the war against them must be global.” He urges application of the “Amalekites ruling” and says that the Jews must undertake to implement it in all eras because it is a “divine commandment.”

Rosen does not hesitate to define the “Amalekites of this age” as the Palestinians. He writes, “those who kill students as they recite the Torah, and fire missiles on the city of Siderot, spread terror in the hearts of men and women. Those who dance over blood are the Amalekites, and we must respond with counter-hatred. We must uproot any trace of humanitarianism in dealing with them so that we emerge victorious.”

The true outrage is that most of those authorised to issue Jewish religious opinions support the view of Rabbi Rosen, as confirmed by Ha’aretz newspaper. At the head of those supporting his opinion is Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the leading religious authority in Israel’s religious national current, and former chief Eastern rabbi for Israel. Rosen’s opinion also has the support of Rabbi Dov Lior, president of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and a candidate for the post of chief rabbi of Israel. A number of political leaders in Israel have also shown enthusiasm for the opinion, including Ori Lubiansky, head of the Jerusalem municipality.

There is no dispute among observers in Israel that the shooting in Jerusalem three weeks ago that killed eight Jewish students in a religious school was pivotal for Jewish authorities issuing religious opinions of a racist, hateful nature. The day following the Jerusalem incident, a number of rabbis led by Daniel Satobsky issued a religious opinion calling on Jewish youth and “all those who believe in the Torah” to take revenge on the Palestinians as hastily as possible. A week following the operation, a group of leading rabbis issued an unprecedented religious opinion permitting the Israeli army to bomb Palestinian civilian areas. The opinion is issued by the “Association of Rabbis of the Land of Israel” and states that Jewish religious law permits the bombing of Palestinian civilian residential areas if they are a source of attacks on Jewish residential areas. It reads, “when the residents of cities bordering settlements and Jewish centres fire shells at Jewish settlements with the aim of death and destruction, the Torah permits for shells to be fired on the sources of firing even if civilian residents are present there.”

The opinion adds that sometimes it is necessary to respond with shelling to sources of fire immediately, without granting the Palestinian public prior warning. A week ago, Rabbi Eliyahu Kinvinsky, the second most senior authority in the Orthodox religious current, issued a religious opinion prohibiting the employment of Arabs, particularly in religious schools. This religious opinion followed another that had been issued by Rabbi Lior prohibiting the employment of Arabs and the renting of residential apartments to them in Jewish neighbourhoods. In order to provide a climate that allows Jewish extremist organisations to continue attacking Palestinian citizens, Rabbi Israel Ariel, one of the most prominent rabbis in the West Bank settlement complex, recently issued a religious opinion prohibiting religious Jews involved in attacks against Palestinians to appear before Israeli civil courts. According to this opinion, they must instead demand to appear before Torah courts that rule by Jewish religious law.

Ha’aretz newspaper noted that what Rabbi Ariel was trying to achieve through this religious opinion has in fact already taken place. The first instance of such a court in Kfar Saba ordered the release of a young Jewish woman called Tsevia Teshrael who attacked a Palestinian farmer in the middle of the West Bank. And there are Jewish religious authorities that glorify killing and praise terrorists, such as Rabbi Yitzhaq Ginsburg, a top rabbi in Israel who published a book entitled Baruch the Hero in memoriam of Baruch Goldstein, who committed the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994 when he opened fire and killed 29 Palestinians as they were performing the dawn prayer in Hebron in the southern West Bank. Ginsburg considers his act “honourable and glorious.”

The danger of these religious opinions lies in the fact that the religious authorities issuing them have wide respect among religious Jewish youth. And while only 28 per cent of Israel’s population is religious, more than 50 per cent of Israelis define themselves as conservative and grant major significance to opinions issued by Jewish religious authorities. According to a study conducted by the Social Sciences Department of Bar Elon University, more than 90 per cent of those who identify as religious believe that if state laws and government orders are incongruous with the content of religious opinions issued by rabbis, they must overlook the former and act in accordance with the latter.

What grants the racist religious opinions a deeper and far-reaching impact is the fact that for the last decade followers of the Zionist religious current, who form nearly 10 per cent of the population, have been seeking to take control of the army and security institutions. They are doing so through volunteering for service in special combat units. The spokesperson’s office in the Israeli army says that although the percentage of followers of this current is low in the state’s demographic makeup, they form more than 50 per cent of the officers in the Israeli army and more than 60 per cent of its special unit commanders. According to an opinion poll of religious officers and soldiers supervised by the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya and published last year, more than 95 per cent of religious soldiers and officers say that they will execute orders from the elected government and their leaders in the army only if they are in harmony with the religious opinions issued by leading rabbis and religious authorities.

Wasil Taha, Arab Knesset member from the Tajammu Party led by Azmi Bishara, says that these religious opinions lead to the committal of crimes. He mentions religious opinions issued by a number of rabbis in mid-1995 that led to the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at that time. “If that’s what happens when religious opinions urge attacks against Jewish leaders such as Rabin, what will the situation be like when they urge attacks against Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian public?” he asks. “We, as Arab leaders, have begun to feel a lack of security following this flood of religious opinions, and we realise that the matter requires a great deal of caution in our movements as we are certain that there are those who seek to implement these opinions,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly.

Taha dismisses those who ask about the role of the government and Israeli political cadre in confronting these extremist religious opinions. “The ministers in the Israeli government and the Knesset members compete to incite against the Palestinian public and don’t hesitate to threaten expulsion of the Palestinians who live on their land in Israel and carry Israeli citizenship outside of Israel’s borders, just as former deputy premier Avigdor Lieberman and representative Evi Etam did,” Taha said. He notes that Palestinian citizens within Israel have begun to take extreme precautionary measures since the issue of these religious opinions, including security measures around mosques and public institutions and informing officials of public demonstrations so that members of Jewish terrorist organisations can be prevented from attacking participants. Taha holds that the sectors of the Palestinian population most likely to be harmed by these religious opinions are those living in the various cities populated by both Jews and Palestinians, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramleh and Jerusalem.

Palestinian writer and researcher Abdul-Hakim Mufid, from the city Um Fahem, holds that the religious opinions of rabbis have gained major significance due to the harmony between official rhetoric and that of the rabbis. Mufid notes that official Israeli establishments have not tried to confront the “fascist” rhetoric expressed in these religious opinions even though they are capable of doing so. “Most of the rabbis who issue tyrannical religious opinions are official employees in state institutions and receive salaries from them. And the state has not held these rabbis accountable or sought to prohibit the issue of such opinions,” he told the Weekly.

Mufid points out that when the official political institution is in a crisis, the Zionist consensus behind these religious opinions grows more intense, and offers as an example the religious opinions relied upon by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1980s to justify his call to forcefully expel the Palestinians. Mufid adds that Israel in practice encourages all those who kill Palestinians, and points to the way that the Israeli government dealt with the recommendations of the Orr Commission that investigated the Israeli police’s killing of 13 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in October of 2000. The government closed the file even though the commission confirmed that the police had acted aggressively towards the Palestinian citizens. Mufid suggests that what makes the racist rhetoric the rabbis insist upon influential is the silence of leftist and liberal voices, and the lack of any direct mobilisation against it.

* This is the title given to this article by the blog poster, an article by Saleh Al-Naami, originally titled “Genocide Announced.”