Harry's Place

Like him or hate him, Patrick Buchanan is actually right about the ongoing persecution of John Demjanjuk, who was once a young man swept up in great events beyond his comprehension.

At a time when most of those who have an adult – or even an adolescent – memory of WW2 are dying off every day, there are those – not all Jews and not all Israels – who have very strong motives for finding sacrificial victims and squealing incessantly about the Holocaust.

American Jews of whatever political persuasion do themselves, and Israel, no favours by:

-1- Banging on endlessly about the Holocaust when most normal people in every country except Israel are sick, sorry and tired of the subject.

-2- Demanding limitless subsidies and handouts from American public coffers for Israel, whatever Israel does.

His name is almost unknown now, but former Congressman Paul Finlay had the temerity to object to limitless American aid to Israel. Pro-Israeli elements bankrolled his opponents lavishly and his political career ended swiftly.

Enough said?

OH PLEASE.

I am too ticked off by Mr. Corr’s above comment to respond at the moment.

I will tell you this however. Paul Findlay was defeated because the good people of Illinois recognized that his opponent, Dick Durbin, is a good person, a good leader and a good Democrat – and that Findlay is thisclose to being an open antisemite.

Get a clue.

Given his above post and his racist post on the previous thread which Gene deleted, I wonder if Bill Corr is actually a pesudodym for Pat Buchanan?

John Demjanjuk has been one of Pat Buchanan’s favorite causes for the last 25 years right along with the late Apartheid Regime in South Africa, Charles Lindbergh, and the Savior of White, Christian Spain from the Godless Red Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik Menace, His Excellance, Generalissmo Francisco Franco.

Sophia, Bill Corr is not worth getting mad over. His writings are the literary equivalent of horse droppings.

Why is it that the only time Pat Buchanan gets upset about civil rights is when it comes to accused Nazis??

Here’s another good opinion piece on Buchanan and Demjanjuk by
Menachem Z. Rosensaft:

Op-Ed: Comparing Demjanjuk to Jesus is obscene

http://jta.org/news/article/2009/04/27/1004691/op-ed-comparing-demjanjuk-to-jesus-is-obscene

Buchanan’s obscene comparison of Demjanjuk to Jesus is to imply that just as Jews murdered the Son of God so now they are persecuting Demjanjuk. It is typical of Buchanan’s nasty style to appeal to the worst traditions in Western Culture. He really is an evil person.
Maybe Buchanan and Mel Gibson should get together.

Enough said?

Enough to know that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Findley was voted out of a radically redrawn district at the height of a national recession. But he learned he could make money by playing the “the Zionists got me” card to idiots like you. So there are people who know nothing about the 1982 Durbin/Findley race except they’re sure Findley was done in by The Lobby.

I find it a bit odd that Demjanjuk having been extradited to Israeli, tried, found guilty and then found not guilty of being “Ivan the Terrible”, at the Treblinka extermination camp during the period 1942–1943, now faces a new trial.
Demjanjuk awaits trial for being a guard at Sobibor, during the same time period as we know he was not a SS Guard at Treblinka.
Buchanan is an asehole, but this second case suck’s.

Er, did any of you actually read the Buchanan article? Gene, in his haste to land some blows on the Right (or at least some people who leave comments on a Pat Buchanan blog), hasn’t bothered to write anything at all about its substance, just damning it as anti-Semitic. But Buchanan seems to have a point that Demjanjuk is facing double jeopardy, having been accused of being a guard at one camp, then acquited by the Israeli courts, and now accused of being a guard at another camp. The case against him looks weak, doesn’t it? Buchanan is certainly odious for his Dreyfus and Jesus comparisons, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a real danger here that an injustice is being done.

Then Buchanan doesn’t understand what “double jeopardy” means and apparently you don’t either. If you’ve been acquitted of robbing a bank, that doesn’t mean you never be prosecuted for robbing a bank again. It’s the instance of the crime, not the category of the crime, to which double jeopardy applies.

“Er, did any of you actually read the Buchanan article?”

Of course not.

And Gene was never ever convinced that Demjanjuk was Ivan of Sobibor. And he is not at all troubled that the OSI withheld from Israel excuplatory evidence.

And Gene, where would you be more likely to see anti-Israel sentiment: at a tea party (there was none that I heard of) or a anti-war march?

In the eyes of his remorseless and pitiless persecutors, it is vitally important that the aged and ill John Demjanjuk should not be allowed to slip away.

Demjanjuk may turn out to be the very, very last Revenge-for-the-Holocaust token Monster-of-the-Death-Camps against whom some sort of case, however flimsy, can be made.

Do the math, as they say. It is now 2009. Someone who was born in 1919 – and thus 26 years of age in 1945 – is 90 now. People of that age are crossing the Styx every day and no Nazi-hunter, no matter how resolute and dogged, can bring them back to stand trial.

The Revenge-for-the-Holocaust industry could probably track down more purported / alleged Monsters-of-the-Death-Camps in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, Croatia and even further afield [Canada, Australia, Argentina ...] but the paper evidence would be flimsy and trying to track down eye-witnesses who would make sense giving evidence in any self-respecting court would be an impossible task.

For the reasons Patrick Buchanan outlined in his article, there will be no more Germans standing trial. However, the Germans of today – or some of them anyway – seem to be determined to have one last ritualistic fling of apology and self-abasement about the Final Solution.

Better yet, they will be putting a Slav on trial:
“See! It wasn’t just us Germans. The Slavs were just as bad!”

I just read the Buchanan article and I find it surprisingly good. The comparison with Jesus is absurd and offensive, the one with Dreyfuss less so.

There is no denying that Buchanan is as close as possible to being an Anti-Semite without openly being an anti-Semite. There is no denying he has taken a lot of offensive positions on a wide range of subjects. In fact he probably is an anti-Semite. But there is something wrong here.

The truth is an injustice has been done. This man was persecuted and prosecuted for over a decade for a crime he did not commit. Kept in prison all that time – and at his age too. Now we have some more dubious evidence and the possibility of yet another miscarriage of justice.

I don’t know if this man is guilty or not. I suspect he is of something. But it is time to leave it to God to sort out. There is no chance of a proper conviction based on the memories of people in their nineties – even if some witnesses came forward.

Yes, you don’t have to be Islamic or Lefty to be an anti-Semite. But …

Now, let’s find the odd Buddhist terrorist.

Gene gives a link to the Philip Klein article. Go to it, read it and read all the responses.

One respondent has an interesting point to make, assuming that this is all real information rather than a Creative Writing #101 fabrication :

Israel has refused to extradite an Israeli citizen called Soloman Morel to Poland, a country in which Morel is alleged to have murdered 1,500 Poles and Germans, presumably commanding others to do so rather than having wiped out the lot single-handed.

It is alleged in the response that Soloman Morel is one of many [?] former Chekists and ex-NKVD operatives of Jewish origin who have chosen to end their days in Israel.

Interesting if true.

Bill Corr, he is not being extradited as Israel has no extradition treaty with Poland. The reason that Israel has no extradition treaty with Poland is that Poland didn’t want to send Poles to Israel to stand trial for crimes committed during and after the war.

But Buchanan seems to have a point that Demjanjuk is facing double jeopardy, having been accused of being a guard at one camp, then acquited by the Israeli courts, and now accused of being a guard at another camp.

So, once someone has been acquitted of one crime he can never be prosecuted for an entirely separate crime? What a deal!!

It’s not double jeopardy. Legally speaking, it is a silly claim and not supported by the law.

The case against him looks weak, doesn’t it? Buchanan is certainly odious for his Dreyfus and Jesus comparisons, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a real danger here that an injustice is being done.

No, it doesn’t. The only injustice is that this sadist, Demjanjuk, was not tried and executed 60 years ago.

Then Buchanan doesn’t understand what “double jeopardy” means and apparently you don’t either. If you’ve been acquitted of robbing a bank, that doesn’t mean you never be prosecuted for robbing a bank again. It’s the instance of the crime, not the category of the crime, to which double jeopardy applies.

illinois boy: Didn’t see your answer before I posted mine.

kmag – “The only injustice is that this sadist, Demjanjuk, was not tried and executed 60 years ago.”

Well yes. If he is guilty. The only problem is we will never know. There is also the other problem. If he was a POW who accepted that the choice was between dying in a camp or becoming a guard, would we blame him? All sorts of people worked for the Germans in camps – some of them Jews. It is next to impossible to sort out guilt in such cases.

But in the end, it is not enough to show he was a guard, we need to show that he killed people. The Court does not punish categories of people but individual crimes. As a general rule. How are we going to find any evidence of any crime?

I dont know about Findlay, but Dick Durbin is horrendous, a troofer.

Ugh, Pat Buchanan really is horrible.

Demjanjuk was found guilty, both on eyewitness testimony and by his paper trail. He should have been hanged.

And then, all of a sudden, an anonymous report surfaced, purporting to be testimony from other guards that this Ivan was not the Ivan of Treblinka – supposedly this testimony was given to the Soviets at the end of the war. This putative testimony was released just at the last minute, and was just so believable.

I get so angry when I read imbeciles who declare that the Tanakh is not different from say, the Koran, because of all of the horrible punishments which are in it. When Jews say, “Well, yes, they are there, but no one ever actually carried out these punishments because Jewish law surrounded these punishments with so many restrictions that they might as well not have been.” It is a very Jewish way to behave; to insist on punishments for transgressions, but to find a way to abrogate the punishments and substitute mercy instead.

Ivan Demjanjuk, the murderous fucking pig, helped to kill thousands of Jews, and according to the eyewitnesses, he enjoyed it. But the Supreme Court of Israel LET HIM GO, because that Soviet report cast a shadow of doubt on his identity, and according to Jewish law, and Israeli law, he could thus not be hanged.

He is as guilty as his many sins, and I hope his death, whenever it comes, is prolonged and painful. It still won’t be enough.

Dick Durbin is not a “troofer”.

For pete’s sake where do people get this stuff?

As for Demjanjuk – trials are supposed to help find the truth.

Referring to the search for truth and justice as the “Holocaust Revenge Industry” is simply appalling.

As noted above – horse pucky.

Listen. Our democracy – Western civilization – remain intact only so long as people remain balanced and able to confront the outrageous where we find it, even if somebody like Buchanan happens to be of our age, religion or party.

Trying to deflect blame from him does us no favors. He should never have become a fixture on mainstream TV let alone the “news”.

He is now Beyond The Pale. His Jesus and Dreyfuss allegations are horrendous, offensive, ridiculous and disgusting. He uses them to deflect blame from the Nazis onto the Jews.

He’s not alone of course. People have been jumping the shark left and right lately.

Solomonia has articles about Cynthia McKinney which make me want to cry. The Green Party should NOT be about the kind of racists she’s apparently been consorting with. But then she, like Findley, has no problem blaming “Zionists” for her problems.

Leftists who should know better find common cause with Hamas or defend Ahmadijenad. People who say they are anti-jihad and pro-democracy wind up in bed with far right wing neonazi fascists.

I think we need to step back from the brink, pronto.

We cannot argue against extremists and for an open, free, moderate society if we can’t control the extremists in our midst, or realize when we’re looking one right in the eyes – especially if the extremist we see happens to be in the mirror.

And we can’t give Nazism a pass. There is no statute of limitation of murder, even if you are an old sick man – certainly no statute of limitation on mass murder.

The law has no problem throwing sick old politicians and financiers in jail now does it? Or sick old drug dealers, pimps, car thieves or gang lords?

Beyond that Buchanan has a history of unsavory attitudes – he refers to WWII as “unnecessary” and claims we could have gotten along with the Nazis.

Jesus. How can anybody listen to this guy?

Well as they say the banality of evil rears its ugly head. Again.

So Much For Subtlety: I don’t have to be a witness to a crime to know if someone is guilty. You may never know, but most people after hearing the facts and applying the law will know. He may have been a POW but he was asked if he wanted to volunteer and he did — under no penalty of death. He could have volunteered to be a soldier instead of a sadistic guard committing genocide. But, hey better to have a job where you only have to shoot/beat the elderly, and women and children to strip and into a gas chamber, while stealing their food and money and blowing it on booze and hookers.

The germans believe they have enough evidence to prosecute their case and I have no reason not to believe them. If I had my way, I would throw him in a room and toss in the cyanide pellets myself and banish his name from every being mentioned again.

kmag – “I don’t have to be a witness to a crime to know if someone is guilty.”

Trials are such a waste of time aren’t they?

“You may never know, but most people after hearing the facts and applying the law will know.”

Which is what I would have said before the Israeli Supreme Court over-turned his last conviction on the grounds that, as it turned out, it wasn’t him that did it. Now? Who knows.

“He may have been a POW but he was asked if he wanted to volunteer and he did — under no penalty of death.”

Except that the POWs were reduced to cannibalism. That is more or less a penalty of death. One of Primo Levi’s fellow sufferers said that the only thing that mattered was survival and you had to do whatever it took to survive. Jews volunteered to work in the Gas Chambers too. I wouldn’t blame them if any survived.

“He could have volunteered to be a soldier instead of a sadistic guard committing genocide.”

And yet what’s the evidence that he was a sadistic guard? Nor am I convinced he could have volunteered to be a soldier. Where is the evidence that was an option?

Anat – “Demjanjuk was found guilty, both on eyewitness testimony and by his paper trail. He should have been hanged.”

He was convicted in Israel. A conviction which was overturned on the grounds that there was good reason to think he was not “Ivan the Terrible”. Where else has he been convicted?

“And then, all of a sudden, an anonymous report surfaced, purporting to be testimony from other guards that this Ivan was not the Ivan of Treblinka – supposedly this testimony was given to the Soviets at the end of the war. This putative testimony was released just at the last minute, and was just so believable.”

More to the point, it was withheld from the defence for over a decade. The Soviets regularly tried to defame exile groups. They had no reason to excuse Demjanjuk. If their archives had documents, taken after the war when memories were fresh, saying Ivan the Terrible was someone else, he was probably someone else.

“I get so angry when I read imbeciles who declare that the Tanakh is not different from say, the Koran, because of all of the horrible punishments which are in it.”

Then surely you should accept that the Tanakh and the Quran are similar but Jewish and Muslim attitudes to them are not?

“Ivan Demjanjuk, the murderous fucking pig, helped to kill thousands of Jews, and according to the eyewitnesses, he enjoyed it. But the Supreme Court of Israel LET HIM GO, because that Soviet report cast a shadow of doubt on his identity, and according to Jewish law, and Israeli law, he could thus not be hanged.”

Hardly a shadow of doubt. Having a completely different surname for one thing. There is no evidence Demjanjuk killed anyone. He was identified by elderly people with failing memories whose memories were recognised as failing by the Israeli Supreme Court.

“He is as guilty as his many sins, and I hope his death, whenever it comes, is prolonged and painful. It still won’t be enough.”

I agree he is likely to be guilty of something. What I don’t know. He may even be Ivan the Terrible – although the Americans did not think so as they gave him his citizenship back again. But we will never know. By the way, there is an inherent contradiction here. If he is Ivan the Terrible, he cannot also be the other Ivan they are claiming he is now. If he is the Ivan they are claiming he is now, he cannot be Ivan the Terrible. In the best possible case, there has been one miscarriage of justice. In the worst, two. This is not good.

The only solution is a biological one. No doubt this old man will be dragged through the legal processes for another decade and then he will die of natural causes. This is not justice.

OK so tell us Gene, exactly how much should US taxpayers be asked to fork out to subsidize Israel?

How much should the US pay for the bombs and bullets that are used to murder Gazans?

How much should they pay towards the bulldozers used to smash up Palestinian homes to make way for racially pure “settlements” on the West Bank?

Why is this money well spent when millions of Americans face losing their homes and/or their jobs?

And if your answer is that the US also has a budget for overseas aid…

Why send any money to Israel when so many people in the third world are living and dying in poverty?

Please give us the figure you suggest to the nearest billion … How much American money for Israel?

Oh and since we are focusing on war crimes, how about the crimes of the more recent past?

Such as the bombing and invasion of Gaza, resulting in 1300 dead (over a third of them children)?

When will the perpetrators be brought to justice?

>>> there are those – not all Jews and not all Israels – who have very strong motives for finding sacrificial victims and squealing incessantly about the Holocaust.

Indeed.

The crimes of the past being used to justify the crimes of the present.

Maybe they could put Demjanjuk’s great grandchildren on trial.

VIRUS ALERT!!!

Help! My computer is infected with the “Linda Virus”

Virus characteristics:-

Spews random antisemitic attacks using hyperbole and blood libels.

Random mantra generated text from the Nazi/Islamist phrase-book.

Infection Method:-

Seems to be a low-grade spam-bot. Poorly written due to low diversity of phrasebook selection. Attacks HP messageboard.

Your computer is infected with a dose of the truth parity ErRor.

Easily cured. Download any Mark Regev interview.

… and Nazi/Zionist is a more accurate pairing.

Israel owes its very foundation and its existence to the Nazis, and uses Nazi methods (including the grabbing of land from the indigenous population to make way for the Chosen People).

Most of the points I wanted to make have been made – excluding those of the ultra hardliners who openly express pleasure at the idea of behaving as Demjanjuk did.

I keep coming back to the absolute irrationality of anti-semitism and the story about the Jews killing Jesus. The English killed Oscar Wilde is about as logical a propostion.

Here I sit and read the diaries, correspondence, poetry and prose, listen to the music of the most wonderful people who happen to be Jews, the spectre of anti-semitism comes back to me, and seems aberrant beyond words.

The bad Jew is a figment in the minds of anti-semites and speaks volumes about them and says nothing about Jews. The ‘bad Jew’ is their own evil alter-ego. “For every bad Jew there are ten bad Christians” – quoted from the correspondence of two German authors of the 19th century. I don’t like Berlusconi and his henchman, but I do not, for that, attack all Italians. One should attack the politicians one doesn’t like irrespective of their origins.

I would put Demjanjuk in jail for the rest of his life and treat him civilly. We don’t want to become like them.

Let the persecuted not become persecutors.

>>> Thanks for your comment! It has been placed in the moderation queue, and if it is approved it will be published here soon!

Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.

“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the ones who think differently.”

ROSA LUXEMBURG

I will keep posting the following until I see an answer.

And calling me “antisemitic” is not an answer it is a cowardly evasion:

OK so tell us Gene, exactly how much should US taxpayers be asked to fork out to subsidize Israel?

How much should the US pay for the bombs and bullets that are used to murder Gazans?

How much should they pay towards the bulldozers used to smash up Palestinian homes to make way for racially pure “settlements” on the West Bank?

Why is this money well spent when millions of Americans face losing their homes and/or their jobs?

And if your answer is that the US also has a budget for overseas aid…

Why send any money to Israel when so many people in the third world are living and dying in poverty?

Please give us the figure you suggest to the nearest billion … How much American money for Israel?

Such as the bombing and invasion of Gaza, resulting in 1300 dead (over a third of them children)?

How about the rocketing of Sderot which caused the invasion in the first place? How about the war crimes of deliberately using civilians as shields?

Oh yeah. It’s just the Jews who do wrong.

“How much should the US pay for the bombs and bullets that are used to murder Gazans?”

Krunstud, as an anarchist, why are you worryng about how the US State uses its money? You should be trying to abolish the US State altogether. You read as kooky as a Paulian.

>>> How about the rocketing of Sderot which caused the invasion in the first place?

More chauvinist howaboutery.

The rocketing of Sderot certainly did not “cause” an invasion that had been prepared months in advance.

NOW answer the question. How much should American taxpayers be forced to fork out to subsidize the racist and expansionist state of Israel?

VIRUS ALERT- UPDATE!!!

“Linda Virus”

Has now a mutated variant known as “Linda Self-Obsessed Compulsive Virus” aka “Linda OCD Virus”

Characteristic:-

The more you remove it the more it infects. It pleads to be heard even though the reader has already heard it before and has a stitch from laughing so much.

Method of removal:-

Make attractive to opposite sex so has a social life.

Alert mummy to seek help for child.

Get a job.

Relocate to Gaza to be amongst friends.

BTW probably the most disgusting lie of the current age is the idea that civilians killed by bombs and missiles are “human shields”.

Even Josef Goebbels did not come up with that one.

“there are those – not all Jews and not all Israels – who have very strong motives for finding sacrificial victims and squealing incessantly about the Holocaust.”

Horse droppings would be insulted by being compared to this utter filth.
Bill Corr is Mel Gibson and I claim my fiver.

Or perhaps Linda is.

>>> as an anarchist, why are you worryng about how the US State uses its money

a) I am not an anarchist
b) the money is created through the exploitation of the US working class

Thus, the exploited of the West are being asked to finance the bombing of the super-exploited in Palestine.

“Make attractive to opposite sex so has a social life”

I think you are on a loser there, mate.

Could someone please answer:

How much should American taxpayers be forced to fork out to subsidize the racist and expansionist state of Israel?

When Americans are being thrown out of work and out of their homes?

-1- Will Demjanjuk, the elderly Ukrainian accused of war crimes, be sent to Germany?

-2- Will he survive to stand trial or will the Grim Reaper step in and halt proceedings?

-3- Will the Germans actually enjoy yet another* expensive and prolonged episode of masochistic breast-beating and self-flagellation?

Hold your breath for next week’s / next month’s / next year’s exciting episode.

* As stated earlier, this may be the very, very last time that an alleged war criminal of the Third Reich era goes on trial. So it’ll be like Halley’s Comet; miss it and you’ve missed it.

FOOTNOTE: Incidentally, talking of national masochism, it is interesting and revealing that the Germans have chosen to keep, cherish and even memorialise the Cyrillic scrawls of their conquerors of 1945 right in their Bundestag building.

Can anyone think of a parallel elsewhere? The scrawls of the British soldiers and marines on the pillars of the White House, if any, were cleaned away long ago.

“Will the Germans actually enjoy yet another* expensive and prolonged episode of masochistic breast-beating and self-flagellation?”

No. Hitler is dead these past 64 years already.
What’s done is done.
It’s the crimes of today and the futre that can be prevented, not the crimes of the past.

Tell me, K Ronstadt, are you a sincere and committed ’socialist’. If you are could you please tell me why you socialists really hate the Jews.
Is it because you socialists think that Jews are natural money makers? Do you think the Jews are what? Right wing, is that it?
Socialism is about hate isn’t it, hate the right, hate the Lords, hate the ladies, hate the Tories, hate the Jews, hate, hate, hate. Thats why, I suppose, you have so much in common with your Islamist co-haters.

Tell me Mr Perfect Socialist Utopian Fool if you care so much for the Palestinians and their ‘elected’ representatives why don’t you go to Gaza and tell Hamas that all the Jew Hating Islamist Bullshit is actually just the same as Jew Hating Socialist Bullshit, ask them to throw away the Koran and read the writings of the German Jewish Socialist Prophet Karl Marx, tell them to embrace the socialism of your prophet.

I don’t think that will work though, do you?

Socialists like yourself think you can hitch a ride in this Islamist stolen car and there will not be any consequences, when stopped by the ‘police’ you claim you didn’t know it was a stolen car and you were only riding along with these people because you were both heading in the same direction.

When the ‘police point out the broken window and the wires hanging from the steering wheel, you say you don’t know these people, so let me go please, when the ‘police’ say they have seen you together at various ‘rallies’ you turn to your fellow travelers and in tandem you shout ‘racist fascist bastard’ You then say I want my mummy, who also happens to be my solicitor.

Socialism great Idea, Just doesn’t work.

Sophia, for some reason, i cant comment on Solomonia’s site.

But your paranoia about the far Right is blinding you.

The biggest threats to Western Civilization are Islam and the Left.

Buchanan is harmless…a one off media persona from the American Right, who Leftwingers like to hem and haw about. The real menace is on the Left.

I must have put Durbin in the troofer bin by mistake…..from his other ridiculous statements and generally whacked out kookiness.

Durbin Apologizes for Nazi, Gulag, Pol Pot Remarks

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160275,00.html

He was a loud voice of Bush Impeachment screechers and War Criminal Tribunals and all around jackass, with regards teh War on Terror.

I cant comment at Solomonia for some reason.

Yes, I can see Linda going on and on about today’s incessant war crimes by Hamas.

Oops, no, that’s in a parallel reality.

So, if you are not an anarchist, Kronstadt, why are you using the name of a city which is generally known as the place where the Communists murdered thousands of anarchists? To mock them?
Nice of you!

Note that the German taxpayer has also subsidized the state of Israel to the tune of about $5,000 per Israeli citizen.

But there is little discussion of the subject.

In some German corporations such as the Springer publishing house you have to sign a document saying you support the state of Israel before they will give you a job.

>>> So, if you are not an anarchist, Kronstadt, why are you using the name of a city which is generally known as the place where the Communists murdered thousands of anarchists? To mock them?
Nice of you!

That is an absurd ideological view.

Some of those were murdered were anarchists, others were loyal members of the Bolshevik party who wanted to put the revolution back on a proletarian course. Other members of the Kronstadt soviet had no affiliation.

What matters is that the suppression of the Kronstadt soviet meant the end of the revolution and the defeat of the Russian working class.

>>> Tell me, K Ronstadt, are you a sincere and committed ’socialist’. If you are could you please tell me why you socialists really hate the Jews.

What, Jews like Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg?

Rosa Luxemburg never bleated about antisemitism and she never called for a chauvinistic Jewish state – since she knew this would just help to reinforce bourgeois nationalist ideology among Jews. She opposed Polish nationalism for the same reasons.

She was perfectly right.

NOW ANSWER THE QUESTION – HOW MUCH SHOULD US TAXPAYERS FORK OUT FOR ISRAEL?

“Even Josef Goebbels did not come up with that one…”

…ah , the old Israelis/jews are really just as bad as the Nazi’s line…

“HOW MUCH SHOULD US TAXPAYERS”

Kronstadt, why do you care how much here or how much there? Do you think that you will have your revolution if taxes are “properly used” by the State?
What you are doing here is lying about your real purposes.

Is Ronstadt a taxpayer? I suppose it VAT is payable on all the Sunny Delight it drinks, but I can’t imagine it actually paying income tax. That would mean someone employing it.

Answer the question.

How much should US taxpayers subsidize Israel, and what proportion of that subsidy should be spent on weapons?

I will keep posting the following until I see an answer.

And calling me “antisemitic” is not an answer it is a cowardly evasion:

OK so tell us Gene, exactly how much should US taxpayers be asked to fork out to subsidize Israel?

How much should the US pay for the bombs and bullets that are used to murder Gazans?

How much should they pay towards the bulldozers used to smash up Palestinian homes to make way for racially pure “settlements” on the West Bank?

Why is this money well spent when millions of Americans face losing their homes and/or their jobs?

And if your answer is that the US also has a budget for overseas aid…

Why send any money to Israel when so many people in the third world are living and dying in poverty?

Please give us the figure you suggest to the nearest billion … How much American money for Israel?

No Kronstadt, it is you who is avoiding the real question: How much rice would you like to eat if tomorrow you became a Chinese?

K Ronstadt

“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the ones who think differently.”

ROSA LUXEMBURG

She did not mean the freedom to think differently to the point of stopping others from thinking at all – as is the case in Gaza and similar hell-holes.

I agree with you about the evil of exploitation – where is it not being practised? – most certainly in Italy, where it is very, very bad.. But you concentrate all your attention on Israel, where it is practiised less than by the Palestinians.

There is also such a thing as protecting a bit of “civilisation” from out and out barbarism. If I were put before the choice of living in Gaza, Iran or Israel – well, you can guess the answer.

Rosa L. didn’t believe in attacking nations or ethnic groups, but in getting on just with people to nurture a better life for everyone, irrespective of borders with her humane socialism. She had the advantage and disadvantage of being absolutely incorruptible.

Someone says, socialism doesn’t work: well, it has never been seriously and intelligently attempted. It should operate less with spoon-feeding and more with incentivating people. But this is a big subject.

“Note that the German taxpayer has also subsidized the state of Israel to the tune of about $5,000 per Israeli citizen.”

Hmm, I wonder just why that is. Perhaps Linda’s mother should teach her some history.

“Israel owes its very foundation and its existence to the Nazis, and uses Nazi methods (including the grabbing of land from the indigenous population to make way for the Chosen People)”

I believe Linda claims she is not an anti-Semite. Be that as it may, she is one sick, ignorant and lying individual.

>>> Rosa L. didn’t believe in attacking nations or ethnic groups, but in getting on just with people to nurture a better life for everyone, irrespective of borders with her humane socialism.

UGH you make her sound like a wretched liberal.

Rosa believed that ultimately, humanity faced the choice of socialism or barbarism, and that only class struggle could smash the bourgeois state could bring about socialism.

In the context of the Middle East that means struggle against both the Israeli and Palestinian bourgeoisie.

She went to prison in defense of this principle during the first Great Imperialist War, and was later murdered by the social democratic state and its proto-nazi accomplices.

Fabian answer the question. It wasn’t about China.

And calling me “antisemitic” is not an answer it is a cowardly evasion:

OK so tell us Gene, exactly how much should US taxpayers be asked to fork out to subsidize Israel?

How much should the US pay for the bombs and bullets that are used to murder Gazans?

How much should they pay towards the bulldozers used to smash up Palestinian homes to make way for racially pure “settlements” on the West Bank?

Why is this money well spent when millions of Americans face losing their homes and/or their jobs?

And if your answer is that the US also has a budget for overseas aid…

Why send any money to Israel when so many people in the third world are living and dying in poverty?

Please give us the figure you suggest to the nearest billion … How much American money for Israel?

“And calling me “antisemitic” is not an answer it is a cowardly evasion”

I think it fits you. After all, your posts demonstrate that you hate Jews alive and with power, not dead Jews like Rosa L.

Just like your run of the mill antisemite.

BTW Kronstadt. Do you agree with Karl Marx that “The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew”?

>>> After all, your posts demonstrate that you hate Jews alive and with power

I dislike the power of the ruling class.

So did Rosa, who is and always had the greatest influence on my politics, after Karl Marx, another dead Jew.

What had Karl Marx of a Jew? He was baptized when he was 6 years old!

>>> BTW Kronstadt. Do you agree with Karl Marx that “The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew”?

If you mean am I a materialist like Karl Marx, then the answer is yes.

He was saying that the only true emancipation is the emancipation from money.

Communism = a world without money = liberation for all, regardless of religion.

No, no no, Kronstadt. I asked if you agree with Marx, baptized as Christian when he was six, that “The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew”?

>>> What had Karl Marx of a Jew? He was baptized when he was 6 years old!

So was I. So what?

Both of Karl Marx’s grandfathers were rabbis, and his uncle was in a line of rabbis for Trier that stretched back to 1650.

Both of his parents were converts from Judaism to Lutheranism.

“Both of Karl Marx’s grandfathers were rabbis, and his uncle was in a line of rabbis for Trier that stretched back to 1650.”

So you think that Judaism is something that passes by osmosis from your grandfather’s portrait in the wall to your mind?

And I said I agree with what Marx said – in the context of the article, which was an early development of his materialist conception of history, in which he argued that the only true emancipation is the emancipation from money.

Communism = a world without money = liberation for all, regardless of religion.

… though I understand perfectly well WHY you want to obscure the context. It’s an old rhetorical trick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question

>>> So you think

I’ll save you some time Fabian.

Questions that start “So you think..?” are always without exception dishonest rhetorical ploys that are designed to twist or misrepresent the opponent’s true position, so you can safely assume that the answer is no.

Now answer MY question:

How much should the US taxpayer fork out in subsidies (especially military subsidies) to Israel?

On the contrary, K. What is clear by the context is:

1. Marx’s words are can hardly be misinterpreted as you do.
2. Marx words show that he was a man of his time, and that he shared the usual Christian prejudices against the Jews.
3. Marx never actually knew anything about Judaism and he was never a Jew in any meaningful sense, unless you believe there is something like a “Jewish soul” (a Jewish Orthodox belief) or a “Jewish race/gene”, and you know what kind of belief that is.

I must go now, my house doesn’t clean itself.

It is a shame that you have allowed Marx’s antisemitic beliefs to mutate in you to hatred of the Jewish state. Too bad. But Jews like me always have lots of enemies.

Forgive and forget, ey, Bill, we all do crazy things when we’re young. Drank too much, slept with the wrong people, took part in the industrial slaughter of 11 million human beings. It’s all part of the learning experience.

Linda,

The USA gives Egypt every year almost as much foreign aid as it does Israel. Why doesn’t that upset you as well?

>>> The USA gives Egypt every year almost as much foreign aid as it does Israel.

Yes, this does concern me. The US is subsidizing a corrupt and reactionary dictatorship. In return, Egypt does what it is told. What is the per capita figure? How does this compare to Israel?

Answer the question – how much should the US taxpayer be expected to subsidize Israel?

>>> Marx words show that he was a man of his time, and that he shared the usual Christian prejudices against the Jews.

They show nothing of the sort. Marx was an atheist and a materialist.

He believed the true source of oppression lay in economics, not in religion, and therefore anyone who thought religious tolerance was the key to liberation was barking up the wrong tree. The article in question is focused on “The Jewish Question” so obviously it applies this outlook specifically to the situation of the Jews in Germany.

Luxemburg and other marxists with a Jewish background said the same, and applied the same philosophy to the question of so-called national liberation.

Likewise it is not islamophobic to say – as genuine marxists insist -that the liberation of muslims will come about not through jihad but through the overthrow of capitalism.

Answer the question – how much should the US taxpayer be expected to subsidize Israel?

I’ll answer the question: the current amount.

Now F.O.

Philip Roth got there way before Buchanan in 1993’s Operation Shylock. One of his characters compared Demjanjuk to both Jesus and Dreyfus. Perhaps Buchanan was “inspired” by Rothian tomfoolery?

>>> Answer the question – how much should the US taxpayer be expected to subsidize Israel?

I’ll answer the question: the current amount.

Please quantify what you understand to be the current amount because the true figure is hotly disputed. Much of the aid is “stealth aid”.

Rosa Luxemburg never bleated about antisemitism and she never called for a chauvinistic Jewish state – since she knew this would just help to reinforce bourgeois nationalist ideology among Jews. She opposed Polish nationalism for the same reasons.

So did Trotsky–the butcher of Kronstadt–to the moment of his death during the Second World War. And yet if Jews had been allowed to establish their “bourgeois nationalist” state a little early (or simply been allowed to emigrate to Palestine) there’d likely be a few less of their victims counted in the Holocaust, no?

Please everyone, stop engaging Ronstadt.

>>> So did Trotsky–the butcher of Kronstadt–to the moment of his death during the Second World War.

Wrong, Trotsky moved over to the bourgeois camp long before the Second World War, in which he and his followers ordered workers to fight for the western democracies and stalinist Russia.

All Trots today support “national liberation”.

>>> And yet if Jews had been allowed to establish their “bourgeois nationalist” state a little early (or simply been allowed to emigrate to Palestine) there’d likely be a few less of their victims counted in the Holocaust, no?

Jewish emigration to Palestine began long before Israel was founded. The Nazis encouraged German Jews to leave for Palestine.

But western democracies did very little to help Jews escape persecution.

The plight of European jewry had zero influence on the decision by the western democracies to enter the Second World War – it was only used as a retospective justification for a slaughter that cost not six but 40 million lives in Europe alone (21 million of them Russians/soviet citizens), a slaughter in which all sides were guilty.

The Final Solution was not put into operation until 1942. And even though the camps were soon after that within range of Allied bombers, the Allies preferred to drop bombs on the German proletariat, rather than stop the Holocaust.

Of course, no one mentions the true scale of the horror of the Second World War, just selective bits of it.

Linda,

‘Answer the question – how much should the US taxpayer be expected to subsidize Israel?’

That’s easy. I think USA aid should be geared toward more Third World countries that really need it.

Likewise, I agree that USA aid should not go to support messanic fanatics moving into the Gaza strip.

That said, where we differ is I think despite its warts and faults, Israel deserve to exist(as does a seperate Palestinian state).

Since yu like to pose questions on here, let me ask you a couple

1)Name another country in the Middle East that allows women and homosexuals full legal and civil rights like Israel?

2)Name another country in the region that allows Jews to serve in their Supreme Court and in the top brass of their military like Israel allows Abdel Rahman Zuabi(Israeli Supreme Court) and several of its military officers?

3)Name another country in the region that allows their Jews to have their own political party like the three mainstream Arab parties in Israel: Hadash (a joint Arab-Jewish party with a large Arab presence), Balad and the United Arab List, which is a coalition of several different political organizations including the Islamic Movement?

4)According to the press index of Reporters without Borders, Israel has the highest rating of press freeedom of any country in the Middle East. The only country close to Israel is Lebanon who with that is still 20 points below. Why is this the case?

Wrong, Trotsky moved over to the bourgeois camp long before the Second World War

Not that I accept the bizarre ideological terminology you have internalized (or your characterization of Trotsky’s opinions regarding the war), but I thought that would have been clear by my allusion to his role in crushing the Kronstadt rebellion.

All Trots today support “national liberation”.

Including that of the Palestinians, which means a negation of Jewish self-determination. Which means we’re back where we started.

Jewish emigration to Palestine began long before Israel was founded.

Yes, their origins in what was later termed ‘Palestine’ are ancient. Oh wait, we’re limiting ourselves to a couple centuries here. You are right, of course. They were also restricted by the British during their reign there, part of that failure on the part of the western democracies that you mentioned. But then again, masses of fresh Jewish immigrants escaping persecution in Europe would have cultivated support for “bourgeois nationalist ideology” and an early declaration of independence for Israel, wouldn’t it? A sort of national liberation, I would contend. No?

Anti-Stalin, anti-Trotsky, anti-liberal, anti-western democracies, anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist. Truly a vanguard that was loudly and busily saving everyone.

>>> Of course, no one mentions the true scale of the horror of the Second World War, just selective bits of it.

And this is the true reason why we are confronted, 65 years after the fact, with this unedifying spectacle: the endless pursuit of individuals who were misguided, ignorant teenagers when they committed their terrible crimes.

It is designed to provide retrospective justification for a more generalized barbarism, and to provide ideological cover for the crimes of today.

>>> Anti-Stalin, anti-Trotsky, anti-liberal, anti-western democracies, anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist.

I can express it in fewer words.

Pro- proletarian internationalism.

>>> Including that of the Palestinians, which means a negation of Jewish self-determination. Which means we’re back where we started.

Every nationalism is a negation of other nationalisms.

Marxists are internationalists.

Ergo, Trots are not marxists.

I can express it in fewer words.

Pro- proletarian internationalism.

I can do it in fewer letters:

Army of one.

To all the people who want to say let bygones be bygones, I have to say “What about all the good things slavery in the US accomplished?”

The Final Solution was not put into operation until 1942. And even though the camps were soon after that within range of Allied bombers, the Allies preferred to drop bombs on the German proletariat, rather than stop the Holocaust.

So it wasn’t enough that the jews were getting gassed by the Germans, you wanted them bombed by the Allies too? FFS.

“So you think that Judaism is something that passes by osmosis from your grandfather’s portrait in the wall to your mind?”

Hilarious. Thanks – I needed the laugh as catharsis from the anti-Semitic posts on this and other threads.

So it wasn’t enough that the jews were getting gassed by the Germans, you wanted them bombed by the Allies too? FFS.

Well, it’s true that bombing the campsites would have made their operations less effective, though to what extent is sheer speculation.

It is, however, untrue that the western Allies missed any particular opportunity to do so. [This gets into really obscure historical details that I'm not interested in regurgitating.]

It’s also not certain that their use of resources towards that end would have resulted in a net gain of Jewish and other lives compared to wrapping up the war more quickly. I recently read about a supposed plan of the Nazis to exterminate the Jews in Palestine, which was preempted by Rommel’s defeat in North Africa. It was obviously not the intention of the Allied powers to intervene against the Nazis for the sake of the Jews, but their actions had that effect to a certain extent regardless.

Of course I should note that his comment presupposes the massive military effort (with plenty of deaths entailed) undertaken by the western democracies and Stalin’s regime to get to that point anyway, something he seems to have a problem with.

I presume his well-organized, anti-Trotsky, socialist splinter group was well underway with their own efforts at liberating the camps.

>>> So it wasn’t enough that the jews were getting gassed by the Germans, you wanted them bombed by the Allies too?

No.

I just don’t think the Allies really cared that much about the fate of the Jews until after the war was over, when it became a useful retrospective justification for their own crimes, which included (but were far from limited to) the carpet-bombing of densely populated proletarian suburbs of German cities.

As far as I know, nobody has been brought to justice for these crimes – and they were appalling crimes, as my mother witnessed for herself.

And it would not make much sense to do so now in any case.

>>> I presume his well-organized, anti-Trotsky, socialist splinter group was well underway with their own efforts at liberating the camps.

More undergraduate sarcasm, the same sort of idiotic comment I grew very weary of over at the Trot blog Lenin’s Tomb.

Mr. Danger,

What Linda forgets to mention is that yes the Allies were aware of the Final Solution but many of the Allied leaders when first presented with the information thought it was just vicous anti-German propoganda much like the First World War when rumors spread about Germans bayoneting Belgian babies.

When Jan Karski told William Cavendish-Bentinck and Anthomy Eden of Belzec concentration camp, Cavendish-Bentinck refused to tell Church or the War Cabniet of the findings and thought it was too incredible to believe.

Chalk it up to Allied naivty of the true nature of Hitler.

>>> It was obviously not the intention of the Allied powers to intervene against the Nazis for the sake of the Jews, but their actions had that effect to a certain extent regardless.

The Final Solution was implemented long AFTER the Allied intervention.

The cost of the Second World War was 40 million dead in Europe alone.

This is what Rosa Luxemburg meant when she said capitalism ultimately poses the choice of socialism or barbarism.

The working class was defeated in the 1920s and 1930s so barbarism is what we got.

>>> Chalk it up to Allied naivty of the true nature of Hitler.

Or that Churchill and Roosevelt were both antisemites and were in any case more interested in defending British and US imperialism.

If the railroads to the camps had been bombed, a lot of lives could have been saved.

Instead, the Allies bombed German cities killing MORE innocent people.

http://www.aish.com/holocaust/overview/The_Allied_Effort.asp

K, Hi, I got back.

I have two questions for you:

1. Why was Marx a Jew?
2. What did Marx that anybody half-knowleadgeable about Judaism could characterize as Jewish?

K Ronstadt

“Rosa believed that ultimately, humanity faced the choice of socialism or barbarism, and that only class struggle could smash the bourgeois state could bring about socialism.”

No, I don’t think Ronstadt should be ignored. There is a huge dollop of truth in what he says (putting aside the obsession with Israel).

Yes, your description of Rosa L. was precise, but if there was one thing that she and Marx believed, it was that times change. Marx was contemptuous of people who went on repeating the same ideology and had a note on his desk, saying, “I’m not a Marxist.” Rosa became aware from the beginning that Lenin and Trotzky were betraying the revolution in a devastating way.

She was not one to get stuck in an intellectual rut.

I agree with you that she was anything but a ‘weak liberal.” She was one of the most passionate and unswerrving believers in radical transformation. In this she was aeons removed from your repetitive platitudes. The road to Rosa’s genius is long perhaps too long for now. In one of her letters she refers to Jesus – not as a revolutionary zelot – But as a man who must have felt infinite sadness, knowing everything he said would be misunderstood and perverted, as by the Churches, as Marx by Marxism.

She – for her very passion – could not conceivably have concentrated all her attention on Bush and Israel, approved the retrogression of Islam, but would have seen the social malaise in its entirety.She identified entirely not only with all human suffering, but with every ant she might step on, every blade of grass in her prison yard, every injured bird that she nursed back to health, every flower that blooms.

Practically every biograpphy betrays her by leaving out this aesthetic side of her passion, inseparable from her political views and actions.

Remember, these threads pass quickly. I can’t say everything I would like to, but I will end with a refelction of Rosa’s on literature which is relevanttot everything else ( I have to translate):

” But in the true artist, the social recipe he prescribes is secondary: it is the source of his art, the spirit that enlivens it that count, and not the aims/intentions that he inserts into it.”

I am not a weak liberal nor a complete dimwit.

To get back on topic and all; I would think that the Israeli court that acquited Demjanjuk would have done so for good reason. I’m quite sure that Israeli jurists are among the most meticulous on earth, and that their investigative skills would be such that were there a possibility Demjanjuk was guilty, they would have been able to clearly prove it.

I think the behavior and moral backbone of those jurists are exemplary. The Holocaust is obviously of special concern to Jews and so the pressure to convict, and even to cut corners in order to do so, must have been enormous, but yet was resisted. I’ve no doubt, considering the enormous sensitivity of this issue, that his Israeli trial was one of the fairest and most objective ever held.

The fact that an anti-israeli paleoconservative has taken up Demjanjuk’s cause changes nothing and doesn’t make Demjanjuk somehow guilty by association.

The guy’s extradition to Germany and his retrial there has nothing to do with jewish venom and a lot to do with putting a balm on german guilt. If the Germans can tear a strip off of him, then they can soothe that guilt and feel a little more relieved about their Nazi past. The fact, as well, that Demjanjuk happens to be slavic just adds to that temptation.

Buchanan’s reasoning, thus, and his attempts to tie this back to Jews is nothing but bigoted ignorance.

Once again, Isreali courts are no doubt among the most accurate and meticulous on earth, and I’m confident that they carefully examined all of the evidence and testamonies and that based on that evidence and those testamonies sincerely felt that a conviction was impossible.

I can accept that decision, not because I like Pat Buchanan ( I don’t) or am trying to defend war criminals or am anti-semitic, but simply because the people handing down that decision are far better informed than anyone else.

Pat Buchanan is within a whisker of stating “What Holocaust?”

Felix – thanks for your intelligent and respectful reply.

At last. A breath of fresh air.

I believe that while time changes, there is a kernel to the communist programme that is unchanged in most of its essentials.

Various shocks and crises have thrown most former adherents to the communist project totally off course.

Rosa was one of those who stayed true to it until her death, while she also succeeded in applying it to the specific situation that confronted her.

In particular, she realized that no communist could support the war of 1914, and that the war was imperialist on all sides, and that “national liberation” was meaningless in the era of imperialism.

If we apply this to today’s situation: Israel is not a truly independent state and never can be. It is a client of US imperialism, surrounded by states and nationalist movements which are either themselves US clients (e.g. Egypt) or else clients of other hostile regional imperialisms (formerly Iraqi, and today, mainly Iranian).

The same applies to the Palestinians, for whom true “independence” is meaningless.

For most of the Cold War the PLO was a client of the USSR. Since the collapse of the USSR it has tried to fall in with US imperialism, which has delivered nothing of subsance to the Palestinians, just increasing misery.

This in turn has driven a substantial faction of the Palestinian bourgeoisie into the arms of Iran and other sponsors, which is why Hamas has a huge following.

I see no way out of this impasse except class struggle against both the ruling class of Israel AND that of Palestine.

And I am sure Rosa would have seen it in these terms as well.

Hey, don’t answer me, eh?

So Much For Subtlety:

kmag – “I don’t have to be a witness to a crime to know if someone is guilty.” Trials are such a waste of time aren’t they?

According to you, they are. It was you who said we would never know if Demjanjuk was guilty, not me.

“You may never know, but most people after hearing the facts and applying the law will know.” Which is what I would have said before the Israeli Supreme Court over-turned his last conviction on the grounds that, as it turned out, it wasn’t him that did it. Now? Who knows.

Who cares? He’s facing different charges. The evidence is different.

“He may have been a POW but he was asked if he wanted to volunteer and he did — under no penalty of death.” Except that the POWs were reduced to cannibalism. That is more or less a penalty of death. One of Primo Levi’s fellow sufferers said that the only thing that mattered was survival and you had to do whatever it took to survive. Jews volunteered to work in the Gas Chambers too. I wouldn’t blame them if any survived.

When Demjanjuk volunteered to work for the SS, neither he nor his fellow Ukranians were reduced to cannibalism. In fact, they looked quite healthy. And please don’t insult me by comparing his volunterrism to the plight of the Jews.

“He could have volunteered to be a soldier instead of a sadistic guard committing genocide.” And yet what’s the evidence that he was a sadistic guard?

Yes, the evidence was that he was a sadistic guard who beat people off the train cars, beat people to strip their clothes off, and beat people up the “funnel” and into the gas chambers.

Nor am I convinced he could have volunteered to be a soldier. Where is the evidence that was an option?

Many Ukrainians captured with Demjanjuk entered the German service only 1-2 months later. At the same time Demjanjuk was recruited and sent to train for Operation Reinhard. There is a 113 + page memorandum of findings of fact by the USDC. Read it. And frankly, I don’t care whether you are convinced or not. Your opinion is irrelevant.

Pat Buchanan is within a whisker of stating “What Holocaust?”

I think so too. And that also goes for many of his followers. If you go through the comments threads of his articles at “Takimag”, you’ll see a lot of classic anti-semitic tropes.

Fabian,

I am still waiting for K to answer my questions I asked back 12:11pm

1)Name another country in the Middle East that allows women and homosexuals full legal and civil rights like Israel?

2)Name another country in the region that allows Jews to serve in their Supreme Court and in the top brass of their military like Israel allows Abdel Rahman Zuabi(Israeli Supreme Court) and several of its military officers?

3)Name another country in the region that allows their Jews to have their own political party like the three mainstream Arab parties in Israel: Hadash (a joint Arab-Jewish party with a large Arab presence), Balad and the United Arab List, which is a coalition of several different political organizations including the Islamic Movement?

4)According to the press index of Reporters without Borders, Israel has the highest rating of press freeedom of any country in the Middle East. The only country close to Israel is Lebanon who with that is still 20 points below. Why is this the case?

1. Why was Marx a Jew?

For the same reason his friend Heinrich Heine was a Jew. That was their cultural heritage going back centuries.

2. Why do you hate apostates so much?

3. When will I get an answer to my questions?

Or is it Fabian, that you cannot accept that Marx was BOTH a German AND a Jew?

Funny, because that is exactly what the Nazis said.

The Final Solution was not put into operation until 1942.

The Einsatzgruppen were part of the Final Solution and they began murdering Jews as soon as Germany invaded Poland. By the time of the Wansee Conference they had murdered well over 1 million Jews.

>>> By the time of the Wansee Conference they had murdered well over 1 million Jews.

How many Russians and other Slavs had they murdered by then?

I can accept that decision, not because I like Pat Buchanan ( I don’t)

I like him, in the sense that a kid likes the crazy uncle who gives him his first sip of beer and frequent presents despite his tendency to abusive ranting on the holidays. If you watch him regularly on MSNBC (he’s often on “Morning Joe”), you see that he’s usually pretty reasonable and mainstream, and comes across as an affable guy.

It’s mostly when he’s given a platform to rant on about the Jews and Nazis where he goes off his rocker.

I see no way out of this impasse except class struggle against both the ruling class of Israel AND that of Palestine.

And I am sure Rosa would have seen it in these terms as well.

The problem with being a rigid ideologue is no one listens. It’s fine for an uninvolved Luxemburg idolater to sit on their hands and have no effect. But no one’s interested in starting a class war when they’re too busy dealing with a real one.

K, what “cultural heritage” as a Jew could Marx have, since he was baptized by his converted father at age 6 into Christianity?

But lets say that indeed, you can get this “cultural heritage” by looking at the portrait of your grandfather who was a rabbi (that would solve so many problems in my field (Jewish Education)!. You still have not answered my second question:

2. What did Marx that anybody half-knowleadgeable about Judaism could characterize as Jewish?

I have no idea why that last post of mine should be in the mod queue.

By German standards and the standards of all European countries for most of the 19th century, conversion did not somehow change Jews into non-Jews. A Jew was always an ethnic/racial label. A Jew could no more stop being a Jew by virtue of conversion than a black man could become white (in their eyes) by embracing the Catholic Church.

The same applies to Heinrich Heine and Mendelssohn. They were regarded as Germans AND Jews by their contemporaries.

Your second question makes no sense.

I don’t know why you want to deny Marx’s Jewish heritage. His father changed religion for political reasons.

Did the forced conversion of Jews by Torqemada mean they were absolutely cut off from their Jewish heritage?

K, you said that Marx was a Jew, not me. Now you try to defend that argument using racial principles. You are a racist.

In any case, the issue is that you have absolutely NO IDEA what “cultural heritage” means.

Whatever your ancestors did or believed, it doesn’t pass to you automatically, as if you were just a clone.

If you don’t have Jewish education, then you don’t have “cultural heritage”, capisce?

You might be called “Jew!” at school, but that means very little, and certainly, it is not “cultural heritage” your schoolmates are imposing on you.

>>> Name another country in the Middle East that allows women and homosexuals full legal and civil rights like Israel?

What on earth makes you imagine I would want to defend any state in the Middle East or anywhere else

“Your second question makes no sense.”

My second question makes all the sense in the world.

If you can’t name just one little Jewish thing Marx did in his lifetime, then in what sense can you call him a Jew? Did he go to synagogue? Did he fast in Yom Kippur? Did he at least got together with his family during Pessach for a seder, the last reduct of the assimilated Jew?

Did Marx have Jewish children?

I don’t know why you want to deny Marx’s Jewish heritage.

It’s not so much that Marx wasn’t ethnically Jewish as that this fact is a red herring in context. People with Jewish ancestry can be anti-semitic for a multitude of reasons, ideological and not. One time, a man in the KKK was exposed as Jew; his logical conclusion was to commit suicide (the story served as the basis for a great movie called The Believer). Even Reinhard Heydrich was rumored to be part Jewish.

Marx’s ultimate point may have been that emancipation of the Jews required the abolition of capitalism, but it’s undeniable that he believed in anti-semitic tropes about Jewish finance and usury that were common at the time. You might also wish to consult his private opinion of people like Ferdinand Lassalle:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1862/letters/62_07_30a.htm

“His father changed religion for political reasons.”

But Marx was baptized when he was six years old.
He never had anything Jewish in him. He never knew anything about Judaism. And it shows. Because only an ignorant and prejudiced antisemite like Marx could have written that the God of the Jews is the bill of exchange.
You know where did he got that? From his pub discussions with his Christians friends. They talked about the Jews, but they never actually went over their prejudices.

*went pass*

Fabian, by the same token Marx had his Prussian nationality withdrawn and he moved to England.

I suppose that means he was not German either?

Marx was one of the greatest intellectuals of all time.

If you wish to take his words out of context in order to dismiss him as “an ignorant and prejudiced antisemite” that is up to you; but in the process you just make yourself look foolish.

There are streets all over Germany that were renamed Karl-Marx-Strasse, Heinrich-Heine-Strasse etc. after the Second World War precisely in order to underline the contribution of Jewish Germans to the country’s cultural and intellectual heritage, and to get away from the Nazi ideology that you could not be German AND Jewish.

Odd that you are closer to the Nazi view – or perhaps not?

>>> Thanks for your comment! It has been placed in the moderation queue, and if it is approved it will be published here soon!

Oh for goodness sake!

Well Fabian that’s your answer.

“Well Fabian that’s your answer.”

I think it was the best answer yet from you.

I will keep posting the following until I see an answer.

What a sad life you must lead. For chrissake it’s just a blog.

k wrote,

‘What on earth makes you imagine I would want to defend any state in the Middle East or anywhere else’

Because you seem to have selective outrage on this Blog. Israel seems to be an obsession with you.

There are streets all over Germany that were renamed Karl-Marx-Strasse

If I had to guess, I’d say most of these were placed in the avowedly anti-Trotsky east.

>>> For chrissake it’s just a blog.

Then why do you go to the trouble to write articles for it?

How much should US taxpayers pay to subsidize Israel?

The paleocons don’t have much time for the tea party people, anyway. And it is a fair point that Israel is financially dependent on the United States. Why should whether or not this should be so be beyond the bounds of debate among the people who pay the bills?

No, it is not anti-Semitic ever to refer to the Crucifixion, even in relation to something that happened on Good Friday. Or have you all converted to Islam on the subject of the death (or otherwise) of Jesus?

As Buchanan makes clear in this article, the fault here is with the Germans, who voted themselves an amnesty when (indeed because) numerous senior and middle-ranking Nazis were still alive, and who are now trying to assuage their own guilt by persecuting some Slav chosen pretty much at random.

The Israelis, by contrast, come out of all of this rather well. As, again, Buchanan sets out, they upheld Demjanjuk’s appeal and refused to subject him to double jeapordy.

We should take note: having given themselves an amnesty over torture in Iraq, the Americans will eventually come after a citizen of somewhere else in order to assuage their own guilt. He might very well be some poor squaddie shown this very day at that ceremony in Basra.

>>> Because you seem to have selective outrage on this Blog. Israel seems to be an obsession with you.

It’s the other way round. I could criticise any other state and no-one here would bat an eyelid. I know, I have tried.

But one word against Israel and all the paranoid loonies start screaming “antisemite”.

>>> There are streets all over Germany that were renamed Karl-Marx-Strasse If I had to guess, I’d say most of these were placed in the avowedly anti-Trotsky east.

Wrong! Most west German cities have them and even a lot of villages. How do I know? Because I live here.

Though of course there were none named Karl-Marx-Strasse at all during the Nazi era, which would have pleased Fabian as he thinks Marx was an “antisemite”.

Krapstadt, the problem isnt’ that you criticise Israel. The problem is that you are a boring marxist twit and are rapidly becoming a classic troll.

“I will keep posting this”…. what kind of sad loser threatens to stalk a blog until people answer to him? In fact I did answer your question, and you just replaced it with another question that you demanded get answered too. Would anyone like to guess what would have happened if that question had been answered as well?

GET A F______G LIFE YOU COMPLETE SADDO.

>>> Thanks for your comment! It has been placed in the moderation queue, and if it is approved it will be published here soon!

Liberty if it means anything means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.

>>> In fact I did answer your question

No one has answered my question and there is absolutely no call for your rudeness and boorish insults, Mr Danger.

On the other hand I have repeatedly answered (for example) Fabian’s questions and he just moves the goalposts every time.

Now, how much should US taxpayers pay to subsidize Israel?

Easy question, and I would like an answer.

This is a formal call for more rudeness and boorish insults from Mr Danger.

Wrong! Most west German cities have them and even a lot of villages. How do I know? Because I live here.

When were they named as such? And were there not more in the east? Do you have a map and figures on this? I’m truly interested. I’m not just trying to be patronizing, though I am doing that.

Also, what would you estimate the result would be if Israel ceased to be a US “client state” and other “imperialisms” like the Russian or Chinese versions didn’t take them under their wing? And what would your solution be if Israel were overrun by other “regional imperialisms” like those of Iran? Similar to your solution for WWII, maybe?

K.Ronstadt

Thank-you for your reply above. In it you put reasoned arguments which deserve to be consdered, even if one disagrees.( I think that relevant subplots enrich a thread).

I have no time now as I have to teach. But a few tentative observations:

It’s a bit reductive to call Israel a client state. There are people living there! My impression is that the world is repolete with client states of one kind or another.

I wouldn’t know quite what to think of a class struggle in Italy. Most people come from an agrarian background and cling for dear life to the middle or lower middle class status and vote for Berlusconi. The officail left has imploded and become capitalism with a weak face. Your kind of Groups (I presume) are tiny fringe groups.

My life is primarily comcerned with the arts, so it’s difficult for me to think of a solution. But I think sometimes of Ruskin’s Unto this Last, a parallellwork to Das Kapital. Ruskin was conservative but wnet to the economic roots of art and society, attacking, Like Marx, the classical economists. I think Ruskin accepted the Capitalist economy: you would perhaps remain a bus driver or builder, but you would receive adequate compensation and free time. Today that should apply to all the people who do the dirty work fur us. His thesis was, either capital produces humanity, or we are in the shit, which we are. This is not necessarily what I believe, but an isea thrown out.

I have been in situations where I have wanted to strike, but the others couldn’t be bothered On two occasions “we were vigorously propelled into striking by the Trade Unions, who then let us down.
When the prices for ballet and opera went up a hundredfold I wanted to invade the opera house

I fear that class-struggle as you – I think – conceive it, would lead to more tyranny. By now we want to liberate humankind and not just one class.

Well.I’m very off thread, or perhaps too much on it.

KRon -the citizens of the US can do whatever they like with their taxes. If they don’t like what is being done with them at present they will change that by means of a democratic vote. If they chose to give out free ice cream to all their citzens instead of helping Israel that’s their perogative, but I really can’t see why it should concern a non-US taxpayer.
You may be interested to know that a Turkish court has thrown out an attempt to indict Israel’s leaders over the Gaza campaign because it realised that there was no base for the charges.

Lynne T was correct when she wrote:

“Please everyone, stop engaging Ronstadt.”

Please, by engaging with KRonstadt, you are giving credence to his Far Right/Soviet “anti-Zionist” arguments.

Please, think on, by “debating” him you are providing oxygen for that flame of anti-Jewish racism which burns close to KRonstadt’s heart.

You won’t be able to reason him out of his obsessive anti-Jewish racism, don’t waste your time.

i don’t think he’s an obsessive anti jewish racist, i don’t find his views offensive at all.

the problem is that he’s just a classic troll that want to derail every debate.

How many Russians and other Slavs had they murdered by then?

Non sequittur to what I posted. If you really want to know, go look it up.

i don’t think he’s an obsessive anti jewish racist

Whatever.

Israelinurse: but doesn’t he have the right to be concerned about the tentacles of the global Jewish capitalist conspiracy?

It’s kind of absurb to refer to Israel as a “client state” without noticing that the rest of the Middle East are also “client states” dependent upon Western and Asian money to power their industries and heat their homes and drive their cars, via oil and natural gas.

Instead of thinking of Israel as a thing, try looking at Israel as people.

The Arabs are also people, however they are richly blessed in land and resources.

The Jews are not.

Nevertheless, both Israel and the Jewish people have made contributions to the rest of mankind.

And, both have been subject to extermination attempts.

The US should and does, as a matter of morality, help the Jewish people (and Israel) survive.

The 22 Arab League nations, who absorb countless billions in oil money AND foreign aid, should redistribute their wealth and resources more equitably and help the Palestinian people by freeing them from their ghettos, opening their borders and proferring citizenship. They should also donate some of the vast land and oil resources to help the Palestinian people whom they helped disenfranchise by inciting war.

This includes putting conditions on those who want to exterminate Jews and/or other minorities and/or repress women and and/or suppress dissent. Arab leadership has a responsibility here and this goes double for Iran, which actually has gone backwards in these matters.

Were the Arabs and other players in the oil rich Middle East, Central Asia and Africa to back off trying to help exterminate the Jews/Israel and help integrate the Palestinians, the US wouldn’t be in the position of trying to help the Israelis defend themselves because their would be no need. The state of constant war would at least be lessened in intensity and danger.

Moreover, in re US subsidies: much aid to Israel is in the form of loan guarantees, which comes right back to the US and thus the American taxpayer.

And, the US tells Israel what to do in many cases, including preventing the Israelis from selling their own products – in some industries the Israelis are partners with the US and in other ways competitors.

Regardless, speaking of the Marxist ideal, to each, from each. The Israelis lack land and resources but contribute greatly.

And, unless Ms Rondstadt and her ilk are willing to see another bloodbath and genocide the US is doing the right thing by helping the Israeli people survive. Indeed they are leveling the playing field a tiny bit, which by looking at a map one can see is seriously skewed already.

I suppose however looking at a map, some population figures and at tables of oil and gas revenues, is too much to ask economic experts like Ms. R., as apparently is the idea of looking at Israel and seeing human beings. And apparently it is also too much to ask that, speaking of economic redistribution, the Arabs help the Arabs.

Sheese.

Mr Danger, you wrote:

“i don’t think he’s an obsessive anti jewish racist,”

well, you could be right, but let’s consider the evidence, on all previous threads that I read, “KRonstadt” has never expressed one positive political idea, he only becomes agitated when the topic relates to either Jews or Israel. He expresses completely negative, ahistorical arguments in that context, etc.

and if someone only trolls on anti-Jewish/anti-Israeli themes, well, then I’d suggest that they have some serious issues and maybe shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt, as a result.

Maybe he’s at a half way house stage?

before he finally swings over to the Far Right, it has been known, even amongst anarchists, not very common, but….

“Fabian, by the same token Marx had his Prussian nationality withdrawn and he moved to England.”

“I suppose that means he was not German either?”

Krudst: Marx was born in 1818. He (according to Wiki) renounced his Prussian Citizenship in 1845. He was then 27 years old. Plenty of time to have a solid German cultural heritage (without quotation marks).
In contrast, he was baptized at SIX, BY HIS CONVERTED FATHER YOU NUMBSKULL!!!!
Can’t you spot the difference, imbecil???

Hey Linda:

Of course nobody is answering your original question, because it’s unanswerable. How do I or you or anybody know “how much the u.s. should be subsidizing Israel?” All we can offer are opinions, ranging from $0 to $infinity. So stop asking such an idiotic, unanswerable question.

Also, the aid Israel does receive from the U.S. is about $3 billion. Let’s say another $3 billion for arms. That’s $6 billion. A nice chunk of change for an individual or a destitute African country, but let’s put it in perspective, before we start talking about how it could benefit Americans if it were kept there. Obama’s stimulus package is $787 billion or some such number. The U.S. is predicting a $1 trillion (that’s 1,000 billion) deficit. In short, the U.S. aid to Israel argument is a red herring and just an excuse to hammer away at Israel. From the Israeli point of view, the annual budget is somewhere between $50-60 billion; So the $3 or $6 billion Israel gets from the U.S., though significant, would not alter all that much, especially if one considers that most of the aid goes to defence, and if there was peace between Israel and her neighbours, it would not be necessary.

Finally, had Rosa Luxembourg not been killed and had she subsequently survived the Nazi Holocaust of Jews, it would have been interesting to hear whether or not her views on Zionism would have changed. After all, so many Leftie anti-Zionist jews did become supportive of a Jewish state because their alternative — making their own states hospitable for jews — had proven to be a mirage, at least in Europe. Overall, the idea of using pre-holocaust quotations to discuss Zionism is ridiculous, as Isaac Deutscher and many other former anti-Zionists recanted after WWII and became staunch supporters of Israel, though not of all her policies.

And actually it’s you who are closer to the nazi view re: karl marx’s judaism. His father converted, he was not brought up Jewish and never considered himself to be jewish. Had he been born a century later, he would have been considered a Jew — by the Nazis. So of course, after the war, the Germans, desperate to shed their own nazi heritage, renamed streets and towns after him and Heine because of their jewish ancestry. And that’s where you get it wrong; Of course Marx and Heine had Jewish ancestry, but that isn’t the same as Jewish heritage; for that, you have to actually be exposed to the Jewish community. Marx was not.

Of course if you’re claiming that Jews are in fact a nationality, like German, then you’re saying that Marx was a dual national (as evidenced by your poor analogy re: giving up citizenship when moving to England). But if you accept Jews as a nationality, you’re veering close to the dreaded Zionism. My own take is that Jews are a special case: religion, ethnic group and nationality, and all and none of the above. Of course that doesn’t fit into the rational little boxes lefties like you (and, to be fair, many others) are so fond of, but human life is more complex than that. If you don’t think so, consider Le Corbusier’s nice rational socialist architecture and how reviled it is by just about anybody who had to live in or near it.

Not sure why that makes Jews a “special” case. The Scots are an ethnicity and a nationality. There are many other examples. And what about the Sikhs with their special religion?

Oh, my! Somebody’s been fibbing!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8029574.stm

Why do Jews remind others constantly about their Holocaust?
How many civilians were killed under Stalin and Lenin? How many Armenians, Tutsis, Janjaweed, or Chinese were slaughtered in the last century? Do Jews recognize the other hundreds of millions of people that were slaughtered through out human history? If you haven’t, it may be a good time you start.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm
http://www.serendipity.li/more/finkel.html

Любопытная статья. Кое-что новое узнал для себя. Автору респект и уважуха :)