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bring rationality to the discussion of US foreign policy as well as
document the threat of Zionist terrorism, subversion, and ethnonational financial warfare
while I finish The Israel Lobby and American Society.
For more info click here or here!
In addition, I am liquidating my extensive comic book collection to support my pro-Palestinian anti-Israel projects. Some go back to the 1960s, but most go back to the 80s when I was working on digital special effects software and script doctoring.
Many like Nexus (optioned by Disney) have relevance to pop culture views of Jews, Palestinians, the Holocaust, terrorism, and Islam. If you have any special interests, let me know at ThorsProvoni@aol.com.
I can be inspired to add blog entries relating comic books, pop culture, and US foreign policy. I am gradually listing all my comic books at Joachim's comic collection.
wa-laqad katabnaa fi-l-zabur min ba`di-l-dhikri anna-l-arda yarithuha `ibadiya-l-salihuna We have decreed in the Psalms, from beside (in addition to) the reminder, that the land shall be inherited by My righteous (pious — salihuna) servants.
The Promise: Peshitta Matthew 5:5
ܛܽܘܒ݂ܰܝܗܽܘܢ ܠܡܰܟ݁ܺܝܟ݂ܶܐ ܕ݁ܗܶܢܽܘܢ ܢܺܐܪܬ݂ܽܘܢ ܠܰܐܪܥܳܐ tubihun limkika dehenun ni'rtun le'ar`a To the meek their happiness as they will inherit the land.
The Promise: Greek New Testament Matthew 5:5
Makarioi hoi praeis hoti autoi kleronomesousin ten gen Fortunate are the humble, because they will themselves inherit the land.
The Promise: Biblia Vulgata Matthew 5:4
Beati mites: quoniam ipsi possidebunt terram. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.
But the humble shall inherit the land (i.e. Palestine),and delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
Key Principle
Tip O'Neill said: "All politics is local."
Martillo's globalization extension: "All local politics is global and all global politics is local." (See Mondoweiss comment.)
Acting with justice: Sayings of the Fathers 1:14
[Hillel] was accustomed to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
Ode to Cholent by Heinrich Heine
Holy cholent, dish celestial, Daughter of Elysium: If he'd only tasted cholent, Schiller would have changed his hymn. God devised and God delivered Unto Moses from on high, And commanded us to savor Cholent for eternity.
Heine's Original German from Prinzessin Sabbat
Schalet, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium! Also klänge Schillers Hochlied, Hätt er Schalet je gekostet.
Schalet ist die Himmelspeise, Die der liebe Herrgott selber Einst den Moses kochen lehrte Auf dem Berge Sinai,
Wo der Allerhöchste gleichfalls All die guten Glaubenslehren Und die heil'gen Zehn Gebote Wetterleuchtend offenbarte.
I run a hi-tech company. I am an inventor and created a key technology that makes it extremely hard for governments and mega-corporations to control the Internet (see Routing in a Bridged Network). Americans can probably thank me that they have any access over the Internet to news reports that have not been sanitized by US corporate media.
Because of my business in the Middle East, I have become concerned about US Israel policy and have begun to apply my background in Eastern European and Jewish studies on behalf of pro-Palestinian anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activism.
I put up the following question on Yahoo!Answers because International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches.
As Jewish Neocons, the Israel Lobby, the organized Jewish community and the State of Israel engage in even more outrageous behavior, an open discussion of Holocaust remembrance as well as Zionism and Jewish extremist racism is of the utmost necessity.
Is Holocaust Remembrance Day an insult to victims of Jewish racism, extremism and genocidalism?
INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY 2008
In 2006, the UNGA designated Jan. 27 as the day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era.
From the end of the 19th century through the manipulations of fanatic racist Jewish Neocons today, Jews have led murderous radicalism and subversion in the Czarist Empire, the German Empire, the British Empire and the USA.
3/4s of the leaders of the murderous Communist Coup in Bavaria after WW1 were German Jews or ethnic Ashkenazim.
The Communists would not have been able to steal the Russian Revoluation without the talents and skills of Russian Jews.
Russian Jews were in the forefront of Soviet mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide from the Revolution through the end of WW2.
Zionist Jews murdered Arab Palestine.
Jewish Neocons have manipulated the USA into making or supporting wars causing millions of casualties.
Is remembering Jewish victims more important than memorializing the victims of Jews?
Additional Details
Holocaust Deniers need not respond. I have spent too long studying the mass murders of Jews during WW2 to tolerate this particular position.
I will state that the Holocaust of History does not correspond to the Holocaust of Zionist Ideology.
Sources: The Jewish Century by Slezkine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Pappe.
Dear First Dragon,
Do you understand Hebrew? It is easy to listen to Internet radio and find mainstream Israeli Jewish politicians, who either are or have been members of the current government and who call for the transfer (i.e. ethnic cleansing) of Israeli Palestinians from Israel.
Dear Robin,
Jewish powerlessness in Central and Eastern Europe before WW2 is simply a myth. Jews (actually ethnic Ashkenazim) constituted one of the larger ethnic groups in E. Europe, were on the whole better educated and wealthier. They often formed the leadership and core of important political groups. They also had no reluctance to carry out assassinations, mass murder and genocide -- all before the German Nazis decided that Germany was in a life and death struggle with the Soviet Union, which was in German Nazi opinion run by Jews. Now that we can look at Soviet archival material, one has to admit that the German Nazis were not completely wrong. In Soviet studies and outside, it is not unusual to hear phrases like "Stalin's willing executioners", which refers to Soviet Jews.
Dear Unknown,
Your answer was better than most, but the organized Jewish community does
treat the Holocaust as if they own it and
freak when non-Jews try to honor their victims of the German Nazis (Auschwitz Convent).
Common usage invariably identifies the Holocaust as a specifically Jewish tragedy, and that certainly is how Eli Wiesel uses it.
In the UK members of the Muslim community recommended a Genocide Remembrance Day (so that Muslim and other non-Jewish victims of genocide could be memorialized). The British organized Jewish community rejected the idea categorically.
Harvard could hardly have invited a more inappropriate speaker for the University-wide celebration of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Liz Walker works with Gloria White-Hammond. Both have long been involved with Charles Jacobs, the David Project, and the American Anti-Slavery Group, which have all been involved in the attempt to turn Sudan into a second Iraq. All of these individuals and groups have worked long and hard to poison human rights discourse while Walker and White-Hammond have explicitly refused to criticize any aspect of the Zionist treatment of the native population of Palestine.
With regard to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incitement, Walker and White-Hammond are foremost in the Boston African American community, and for their service on behalf of racist Israel advocacy groups they have been blessed by the organized Jewish Community. Their financial backers are to the first approximation people that fund the David Project. Gloria White-Hammond has worked closely with Eric Cohen, who is a close Neocon associate of William Kristol.
There is an American saying that "a person can't lie down with dogs without getting up with fleas." Walker and White-Hammond have long been in bed with the most bigoted anti-Muslim and anti-Arab segment of organized Jewish community.
The pattern of co-opting African American individuals and organizations to serve the most Zionist goals is pervasive throughout the USA. In many cases, the organized Jewish community tries to inject Abraham Joshua Heschel as the archetypal Jewish leader, who worked for civil rights for Black Americans.
Of course, Heschel did not care at about Palestinian human rights and had no problem with the murder of Arab Palestine by Eastern European invaders and interlopers. (See his book entitled Israel: An Echo of Eternity.)
In general American Jewish support for African American civil rights seems to have been mostly opportunistic except in the case of those activists, who took inspiration from Eastern European radical socialist and communist models. As far as I can tell, the whole involvement with radical political movements has been mostly written out of official histories of American Jews.
In a message dated 1/20/2008 9:21:21 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, syed@fas.harvard.edu writes:
Hey guys,
For those around campus, I'd HIGHLY recommend you stop by the MLK service tomorrow evening. Enjoy intercession! :)
Some Christians claim that Muslims do not worship the same god as Christians do even though Arab Christians routinely use the following terminology:
الله الآب, Allah al-Ab, i.e., God the Father,
الله الابن, Allah al-Ibn, i.e., God the Son,
الله الروح القدس, Allah al-Ruh al-qudus, i.e., God the Holy Spirit.
Allah, which is a God-name like Yahweh, is not exactly equivalent to God, which is the English word for god generically.
To be specific, the phrase "the God" is perfectly normal English but an Arabic phrase like al-Allah or a Hebrew phrase like ha-Yahweh is neither normal Arabic nor normal Hebrew.
English and most other European languages do not have a native God-name equivalent to Allah or Yahweh.
The generic Arabic word for god is ilaah (إله or إلاه ), which is comparable to Hebrew eloah or to Aramaic elah (אֱלָה) or to Syriac alah (ܐܰܠܳܗ).
אֱלָהָא is the determined form in Aramaic ܐܰܠܳܗܳܐ is the determined form in Syriac.
Targum Onkelos (Jewish Aramaic translation) for Psalms 18:32 contains the phrase:
Leyt elaha (אֱלָהָא) ela Yahweh.
La ilaaha illa allahu (لا إله إلاَّ الله) is the Arabic equivalent.
Thus, the first half of the Islamic Statement of Faith (the Shahada), "There is no god but God (Allah)," is, in fact, Biblical.
[Leyt (Aramaic for existential negation) requires a determined nominative where la (Arabic for not) requires an undetermined accusative.]
Today's Boston Globe (January 19, 2008) published a CIA claim that South Waziristan tribal leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who maintains strong ties to al-Qaeda and an alliance with the Taliban, was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The article is entitled CIA says Pakistan tribal head behind assassination.
Because Neocons want the CIA to have a free hand to operate in South Waziristan fingering Mehsud serves the interests of at least some US government officials even if there are many reasons why assassinating a possible opponent of Pervez Musharraf or Nawaz Sharif is not obviously in the interests of either al-Qaeda or the Taliban.
Not only is the intra-family conflict deep and complex (The Other Bhutto), but there is also an Islamic sectarian aspect to the national politics of the Bhutto family, which has Shiite origins. (Zulfikar, which is Benazir's father's name, is the name of Ali's famous sword and is rarely found as a name among Sunni Muslims. Benazir was, in fact, half-Iranian through her mother.) In majority Sunni Pakistan, the Bhutto's were almost forced into secularist politics, and naturally the Saudis favored Nawaz Sharif over Benazir.
In terms of her international politics, Benazir was directly involved with Neoliberals as Benazir and the Jews: A Love Story** from The New York Jewish Week reports. She was also indirectly involved with Neoconservatives through Husain Haqqani, who served both as spokesman and also as top aide to her for over a decade. Haqqani is an important figure at the Hudson Institute, which is a fanatic Neoconservative think-tank associated with racist ethnic Ashkenazi American ideologues and subversives like Norman "Bomb-Iran" Podhoretz. (See Poverty Fuels Extremism by Husain Haqqani [War on Terror in Pakistan].)
_____________ Note
*Fatima was probably sincere. Sometimes it is hard to remember that the Bhutto clan are actually a real family.
From Daughter of Destiny, An Autobiography, by Benazir Bhutto, pp. 257-8.
The phone rings constantly from Los Angeles, London, Paris -- my mother's friends and relatives calling to congratulate her on my release [in 1984 from prison in Pakistan]. I wasn't ready to talk to anyone yet, and only spoke to Yasmin and Dr. Niazi in London. Ardeshir Zahedi, a friend of my parents and Iran's former ambassador to the United States, arrived with caviar. My mother, Sunny, and I stayed up talking through the night. It all seemed so unbelievable. Yesterday I had been a prisoner. Today I was free, with my mother and sister. We were together. We were all alive.
Mir! A little brown-haired girl pulling at my coat! "Meet your niece, Fathi [Fatima]," Mir told me, standing in my mother's flat on my second day of freedom. Was my brother really standing in front of me? I saw his lips moving, heard my own voice responding. The noise of our reunion must have been deafening, but I can't remember a thing we said. At twenty-nine, Mir looked so handsome, his dark eyes flashing one minute, gentling the next as he lifted his eighteen-month-old daughter to give me a kiss. "Wait till you see Shah," Mir laughed. Shah had been eighteen the last time I'd seen him, just a boy. Now he was twenty-five with a longed-for mustache.
** Here is a version with better formatting.
Bhutto And The Jews: A LoveStory
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
by Larry Cohler-Esses
Editor At Large
As Pakistan’s prime minister in the mid-1990s, Benazir Bhutto sponsored the fundamentalist Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan — thereby bringing to power the force that would shelter and defend Osama bin Laden. Bhutto also unstintingly backed Pakistan’s covert nuclear weapons program as a response to the program of arch-rival India, including her country’s decision, while she was opposition leader, to conduct Pakistan’s first nuclear bomb tests in 1998, bringing to fruition the world’s first "Islamic bomb."
Yet by the time of her murder by forces unknown last week in Rawalpindi, Bhutto had won the personal friendship of some — and public support of many — influential Israelis and American Jews who understood the pressures of realpolitik under which she operated. In the days since her death, prominent Israeli and Jewish figures, including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Israeli President Shimon Peres, have showered Bhutto with accolades for her fiercely stated commitment to fighting terrorism waged in the name of Islam without quarter; her vision of a secular-oriented future for her country; and her unabashed interest in forging closer relations with the Jewish state.
In line with this, her death is seen now by some as a hammer blow to the very viability — not to mention pro-Western development — of the world’s second largest Muslim population. "I have met many people in my life, very impressive people," said Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman, who grew close to her in the last months of her life. But Bhutto, he said, was "one of the most impressive people I have ever met. She possessed great leadership, tremendous charisma. She was intelligent. She was eloquent. I really feel she was a very great leader, and I feel that had she led Pakistan again, she would have made every effort to lead it to democracy, and to avoid it falling to extremists."
Now, according to former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, the death of Bhutto at 54 is likely to affect not just Pakistan but, in the way of political ecology, the whole region and beyond, including U.S. relations with Iran. "Iran holds special weight both in the Pakistani theater and in the adjacent Afghani arena," Halevy wrote in the Israeli daily paper Yediot Achronot. "The U.S. and Iran have very similar interests in both those arenas and they are expected to tighten the cooperation between them in order to prevent the collapse of the regimes in those countries. Benazir Bhutto’s death will accelerate this trend."
Dinner At The Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Last September, Bhutto reached out to Gillerman, whom she had never met before, even as she was preparing to end a nine-year exile from Pakistan under a plan brokered by U.S. policymakers. Bush administration officials were pushing her and her longtime adversary, Pakistani President and military chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf, toward elections and — presuming she won — a tentative power-sharing. With Musharraf’s popularity in free fall, the plan was designed to lend his rule a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
In the midst of this, Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, dined with Gillerman and his wife, Janice, in a private room at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Columbus Circle. The quartet chatted for three-and-a-half hours. And the next day, Janice Gillerman lunched with Bhutto for some follow-up discussion. "We had a very warm, intimate conversation," recalled Gillerman. "It touched on every aspect of Pakistani life and Israeli relations. She described to me in great detail her plans to return. She talked about her great concern about extremists and expressed a lot of concern about her own safety. But she was determined to go back."
Asked why Bhutto, whose networking was the stuff of legend, had sought him out at such a crucial time, Gillerman was a realist. "I believe she was aiming not just at Jerusalem but Washington, as well," he said. "Maybe Israel could be influential in convincing Washington to give her more support. I’m not sure. It was sort of implied." Later, as her sense of imminent danger in Pakistan rose, perhaps Bhutto thought Gillerman might even influence Washington to push Musharraf on her faltering security. After her return there, "She sent us several e-mails in which she expressed concern and worry about her safety," Gillerman related. "They were not really specific, but she felt Musharrraf was not living up to his commitment to assure her safety." Gillerman conveyed Bhutto’s message to "the people I thought should be aware of it." He declined to say who.
"Benazir’s Jew" Meanwhile, Mark Siegel, a prominent Democratic Party consultant and lobbyist — and White House liaison with the Jewish community during the Jimmy Carter administration — was getting similar messages. But her turn to him was less surprising. "I was the most prominent Jew close to her," said Siegel, who was Bhutto’s representative in Washington. "Her opponents would refer to me as ‘Benazir’s Jew’ — a representative of the ‘Indo-Zionist lobby.’" The two met in 1984, shortly after Bhutto was allowed to leave Pakistan by an earlier military dictator, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. A close U.S. ally who funneled millions in American aid to Afghan Muslim fundamentalists then fighting the Soviet Union’s occupation of their country, Zia had deposed Bhutto’s father as prime minister in a 1977 military coup.
Despite worldwide appeals for him to grant Zulfikar Ali Bhutto clemency, Zia executed him in 1979 after putting him on trial for conspiracy to murder a political opponent. Benazir and other family members were detained. These were the dramatic events that set Benazir Bhutto’s own drive to power into motion. Bhutto redeemed that drive in 1988, after Zia died in a mysterious airplane crash and his military successors called elections that Bhutto returned to contest, and win, as head of the center-left Pakistan People’s Party founded by her father. But in 1990, after just 18 months as prime minister, she was dismissed from office by Pakistan’s president on corruption charges for which she was never tried.
Elected prime minister again in 1993, she was dismissed again on corruption allegations three years later. Reviews of her governance during these two tenures are highly mixed. Zardari, her husband, was tried and convicted on corruption charges and spent eight years in prison. Bhutto herself went into exile in Dubai from 1998 until her return in October. It was a return that saw the Pakistani populist greeted by hundreds of thousands after her landing in Karachi International Airport — and an attempt by two suicide bombers to kill her enroute to the city that left 134 dead but Bhutto unhurt. In November, amid protests from the country’s lawyers over his dismissal of most of the Supreme Court when he thought they were set to rule against him, Musharraf effectively declared martial law, and put Bhutto under house arrest when she announced her intent to lead a rally against him. She was released the next day.
Urgent E-Mails
Born to wealth, daughter of a major landowning family in a largely feudal society in Sindh Province, Bhutto knew both prison and privilege. During the late 1970’s and early ‘80s, after a stint at Oxford, she went to Radcliffe, where she grew close to Peter Galbraith, son of the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith and later himself a prominent U.S. ambassador. This was how she came to know Siegel.
"I was asked by Peter to throw her a dinner party" when she came to Washington after Zia released her, Siegel recalled. "We invited members of the press, members of Congress. It was a small, intimate dinner party. From then on, we were just extremely close."
The two were in almost constant e-mail contact when she returned to Pakistan, Siegel related. And on Oct. 26, in a message from her Blackberry titled "MOST URGENT ATTENTION," Bhutto wrote Siegel: Nothing will, God willing happen. Just wanted u to know if it does in addition to the names in my letter to Musharaf of Oct 16th, I wld hold Musharaf responsible. I have been made to feel insecure by his minions and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides cld happen without him. (Jammers are electronic devices that block radio signals meant to set off Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs.)
Among those to whom Siegel relayed this message, at her request, was CNN "Situation Room" anchor Wolf Blitzer.
On the day of her assassination, Blitzer read her e-mail on the air, saying, "This is a story she wanted me to tell the world on her behalf if she were killed." Siegel, he explained, had sworn him to silence except in the event of her being killed. Now, Siegel is rushing to press with a book that is the result of his collaboration with her during these last few months. Entitled, "Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy And The West," it is, in effect, her last public testament.
"We’ve been working on this under the most difficult conditions," he said. "Two assassinations, house arrest, martial law. It must have been God who let us finish it. On 2 a.m. the day she died, she sent me the final chapters." Siegel said the book dealt with what she saw as the "two central tensions of the new millennium: the tension between democracy and dictatorship and between extremism and moderation. She was determined to write about the Islam she knew."
Bhutto’s death hit Siegel hard, leaving him struggling for words at one point during an interview. "We had our discussions about Islam, Christianity and Judaism. We had the same sense of humor. We were buddies. She was the most tolerant person I know." Asked if he ever brought her into his Jewish life, Siegel began, "She was at my daughter’s bat mitzvah. Her husband came to my daughter’s wedding." He abruptly stopped. "No. It’s too personal," he said.
I have made a minor effort to organize Yahoo!Answers users to resist Zionist or Jewish intimidation and chauvinism. Generally, Zionists are able to shovel a tremendous amount of fecal matter into a discussion, but they tend to fold under the pressure of the facts.
I have been adding questions like the following. Unfortunately, few respondents seem to understand either the inappropriateness or the historical distortions associated with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and there really is not yet sufficient understanding among the American and world populations of the sophisticated marketing techniques that Zionists use to maintain the State of Israel and to profit from it.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) serves in the effort to use the Holocaust to justify the theft of Palestine by Eastern European Zionists.
In the past directors like William Reich have tried to use the Museum as a platform for anti-Arab propaganda.
The USHMM is working with Neocons to mischaracterize the conflict in Darfur in order to distract from the Neocon program to incinerate Arab and Muslim Countries.
Shouldn't the US memorialize the injustice of slavery and destruction of N. American native populations before addressing the Holocaust?
The USHMM consistently covers up the role of Soviet ethnic Ashkenazim in Soviet mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide and, therefore, can only create misunderstanding of the Holocaust.
Because of American complicity in the Holoexaleipsis (erasure of Palestinians from Palestine) wouldn't a US Holoexaleipsis Memorial Museum be more appropriate?
Additional Details
I meant Walter Reich and not William Reich. He is the husband of Tova Reich, who wrote "My Holocaust."
From Melvin Jules Bukiet:
Serious and hilarious and utterly scathing -- no, lacerating; no, disemboweling -- My Holocaust takes no prisoners in its two short, bookended chapters and its two lengthy set pieces, one inside the museum's hallowed walls and another on a special donors' tour of Auschwitz. Reich knows this territory intimately; her husband, Walter, used to be the head of the D.C. institution she now pillories.
Your prejudice is showing, as well as your ignorance.
The campaign in Bosnia was an attempt to protect the mostly muslim population.
The US is not the only country in the history of the world to have had slaves; however, unlike muslim countries of today, the US abolished slavery over 140 years ago.
History go of its own . The demolition of USSR, and distribution of several states and their sovereignty , East and South Germany, Division of Korea, - so there are various examples. The debate will definitely be there and there will be different opinions of two class people. Some will say 'X' and other will ' Y' Only thing is , what is said to be , or deemed to be right has to go with the mass and manifested and propagated to awake the understanding of the mass and compel the rulers to initiate the desired action.
well there seams to be many questions here to answer Memorials are there for people to remember it does not seam like the people are listening though as still people are killing people for there beliefs it is a bit hypocritical really and a waste of money but it does get us talking
considering that most muslim nations were allies of Hiltler and his Nazis, then yes it makes sense to put them to work in places where they can serve Jews to atone for this evil....in fact, when thats considered perhaps we can consider the present subjugation of the Arab nations as a necessary mopping up effort long postponed......
Posted by Lew Rockwell at January 11, 2008 07:33 AM
Writes George Ajjan: "Karin Friedemann points out that Rose Wilder Lane, whom Ron Paul mentioned in his 'Onward!' email yesterday as one of the 'heroes of freedom', was the daughter of Almanzo Wilder. He attributed his unusual first name to a family tradition dating back to the Crusades, in which an ancestor of Wilder had his life saved by a certain el-Manzoor - Almanzo being the anglicized tribute. Karin says, 'The good deed of one Muslim is resulting in a presidential candidacy. Never underestimate the power of mercy!'"
Rose Wilder Lane is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the Little House on the Prairie books, which later became a television series.
Ron Paul describes her as a Hero of Freedom and lists her as an inspiration for his decision to enter politics. Because of Lane's book Islam and the Discovery of Freedom, the war-mongers and anti-Arab anti-Muslim Neocon racists were unable to ensnare Paul in the false Islamophobic consensus they were trying to create through fear.
Lane also argues that the West was exposed to the ideas of liberty that would in time lead to its ascendancy through contacts with Muslim traders and scholars. She notes that Spanish Catholics, while welcoming the Catholic kings of the reconquista, nonetheless would not give up the liberty they had enjoyed under Islamic rule (which was tolerant of religious differences). They demanded and got documents guaranteeing their freedoms. Ahmad adds that Magna Carta, to which Westerners trace the beginnings of the idea of limited government, resulted from pressure by English nobles who had returned from the Crusades, where they had learned that the Muslim leader Saladin was bound by the law the same as any other citizen.
Columbia Professor Richard W. Bulliet describes rather more academically in The Case for IslamoChristian Civilization the balance between the central government and the ulama (Islamic legal intellectual class) that created a system of checks and balances to limit governmental authority and provide space for personal freedom. The form of secularization that the West has encouraged or enforced throughout the Islamic world has contributed to shattering the balance and creating in Muslim countries a form of authoritarianism that resembles the strong-man dictatorial governments of nineteenth century Europe. A class of Western scholars now make the rather circular and illogical argument that the prevalence of such authoritarianism in Muslim countries indicates that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
Along the same line of thought Leef suggests that Lane's depiction of Islam is incomplete.
This book is not, however, a "warts and all" portrait of Islam, which was quite indifferent to the enslavement of Africans and Europeans and placed non-Muslims on a lower legal plane. For discussion of the dark side of this civilization, one must look elsewhere.
The negative characterization of the position of slaves and non-Muslims in Islamic society has served as a staple of the modern Western critique of Islamic society, but more recent scholarship has tried to get past the propaganda and polemic.
Islamic slavery cannot be equated with the common forms of Euro-American or European slavery. For example, Ottoman slavery could provide social mobility, confer political authority and give social status to members of an alien immigrant population. Tel Aviv University Professor Ehud Toledano discusses such aspects of Ottoman Slavery in Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East.
Hebrew University Professor Haim Gerber provides some of the results of his research into the Sharia-based legal system of the Ottoman Empire in State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective.
Gerber's data and analysis indicates that in a comparison of the courts of the core Ottoman Bursa/Istanbul region with those of core English region of the UK, the Ottoman State was far closer to the ideal of a Rechtstaat and achieved far greater legal equality among members of different religious groups or economic classes than the contemporary UK at all periods that Gerber studied.
Even though Rose Wilder Lane was not an academic specialist in Islam, her depiction of Islamic society could be a good deal closer to the historical reality of Arab-Islamic and Ottoman society than Leef believes because her unique family history made it possible for her to transcend traditional Western anti-Islamic and anti-Arab prejudices that Neocons and Zionists have worked so hard to revive and inflame in modern American society.
In the Ron Paul candidacy Americans are benefiting from Rose Wilder Lane's unprejudiced perspective. If Ron Paul helps shatter the perverted lens through which Americans view the Middle East, el-Manzoor's descendants may also reap the rewards of charity sown like a seed so long ago.
On June 1, 2007, I distributed an email message entitled The Zionist War on Truth. It describes the effort of the Hasbarah Fellowships of Aish haTorah (the Jewish face of HonestReporting) to make sure that only Zionist propaganda is available from Wikipedia.
Six months later, I took a day to look at Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/), which is a sort of disorganized Wikipedia with none of the pretensions. It was tremendously infested with Zionists.
Here is one of the less obnoxious questions from riviva .
Open Question
Explosives hidden in aid to Palestinians?
How can we stop this without incurring the wrath of the international community?
The conflict will continue until the murderous genocidal Zionist thieves and interlopers confess their crimes, return the country they stole, restore Palestinian residence rights, pay compensatory damages for over 100 years atrocities, and hand over their leadership to be tried in Nuremberg-style tribunals.
Yet, I am impressed by Zionist groupthink, pertinacity, racism, fanaticism and obliviousness to the facts.
I put up the following questions, which may be useful to anti-Zionists and anyone committed to fundamental American principles of support for human rights, opposition to racism, and encouragement of democracy.
Someone that believes that Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim had the right to steal Palestine from the native population on the basis of an etymological relationship between the word "Jew" and the word "Judea" would by the same reasoning argue that the Irish have the right to ethnically cleanse and steal Rome because the Irish mostly practice the Roman Catholic religion, which contains the word "Roman" in its name.
Zionist ideology is so extreme that it is practically psychotic.
Walt & Mearsheimer have clearly demonstrated in The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy that the Israel Lobby has manipulated US foreign policy to the detriment of US interests.
During the 20s, 30s, and 40s US communists secretly undertook similar subversion but were generally less successful.
Do Zionist subversives succeed where Communist subversives failed because Zionists use Christian religious gullibility while Communists attacked religion?
Modern Palestinians are the descendants of ancient Judeans, who remained true to 2nd Temple Judaism for Christianity and Islam are far closer to 2nd Temple Judaism than modern Rabbinic Judaism.
Modern Jews are descended of non-Judean populations that gradually assimilated to Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism after the 10th Century CE.
By supporting Zionist thieves, interlopers, and invaders in the genocide of the native Palestinian population, aren't Christian Zionists helping fanatic and extremist Jewish racists thwart the end-time prophecies of St. John with the result that the return of Jesus may be delayed forever.
Could there possibly be a greater sin from the standpoint of Christianity than Christian Zionism?
Additional Details
Here are some articles that I have put together that describe the non-Judean origin of modern Rabbinic and Karaite Jews.
During the Russian Revolution, the 20s and 30s, the most important Soviet genocide planners and perpetrators were Jewish. It is hardly surprising that Central and Eastern European populations hated, feared and wanted to kill Jews as a sort of collective revenge for the massive and horrendous crimes of Soviet Ashkenazim, but Palestinians became victims of genocide simply because they lived on land that Zionists wanted to steal.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Zionist invaders, thieves and interlopers have and continue to commit the crimes described in (a)-(d).
Zionists are prima facie genocidaires, and many argue (especially Jews) that genocide denial is genocide incitement.
UPDATE for Paperback_writer:
From 1933-1940 the Jewish population under German Nazi control increased. It hardly means that German Nazis were not trying to destroy the German Jewish and ethnic Ashkenazi populations of greater Germany.
I am providing this translation because Americans critical of US ME policy tend to put too much trust in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Organizations within the Boston-area Israel Lobby and organized Jewish community have discussed funding German leftist pro-Israel journals of the sort discussed in Weinthal's article.
On August 7, 2007 Ha'aretz put "Letter from Berlin: The anti-anti-Zionists" by Benjamin Weinthal into the Net. In it the author mentioned a lead-article from Konkret (Concrete) publisher Herman L. Gremliza about the attack on Iraq and compares it with the unqualified pro-war position of the magazine Bahamas.
Also Weinthal identifies die junge Welt (The Young World),
which even today remains an incorrigibly reactionary newspaper on the left whose coverage is filled with left-wing anti-Semitic diatribes against Israel and American Jews.
Because we both have written for Konkret and also for die junge Welt, we wanted to know whether Gremliza with regard to the Iraq war took in Weinthal's eyes a qualified pro-war position; and in what sense die junge Welt is according to Weinthal's opinion filled with anti-Semitic incitement against Israel and American Jew; finally, whether he arguably considers all "American Jews" to be Zionists. We wrote to Haaretz.
we would like to address a letter to Mr. Weinthal in regard to his column "Letter from Berlin". Can you kindly let us know how to contact him or his office? Or should we send it to you and you can forward it?
Thank you very much for your attention.
Dr. Matthias Gockel and Thomas Immanuel Steinberg, Germany
Still we received no answer from Haaretz. So we snail-mailed anew and enclosed our inquiry to Benjamin Weinthal
Datum:13.09.07 10:14:49 Uhr
Dear Sir/Madam:
Enclosed you find our response to Mr. Weinthal's column about "The Anti-anti-Zionists". We think that the column contains questionable statements that should be rectified or at least explained.
We would appreciate a brief reply by the author.
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Kind regards, ...
The Inquiry
Dear Mr. Weinthal,
we have read your article in Ha'aretz "Letter from Berlin: The anti-anti-Zionists" (August 7, 2007) with great interest. As journalists who have written for Konkret as well as for junge Welt we would like to ask you to explain a few of your statements in greater detail, if you don't mind.
First, you mention Gremliza's editorial regarding the attack on Iraq and compare it to the "unqualified pro-war position" of Bahamas. How do you read Gremliza's editorial? Is it a qualified pro-war position?
Second, you claim that the junge Welt is "filled with", i.e., full of, "anti-Semitic diatribes against Israel and American Jews". This is a serious charge. If it were true, we would be honestly concerned, since we have written a number of articles for junge Welt. We would be rather distressed to give the impression of associating ourselves with an anti-semitic publication.
In contrast to your claim, we think that the junge Welt is devoted to the oath of Buchenwald and constantly publishes articles with a strong anti-fascist stance. It also convers the right-wing and neo-Nazi scene in Germany and often reports sympathetically about protests against neo-Nazi actions or anti-Semitism in general. Examples can be found in the newspaper's web edition.
Of course, we are aware that junge Welt reports critically about Israel's actions in the West Bank and its military actions against neighboring states. If you can explain to what extent these reports are anti-semitic, we would be very grateful.
Finally, we are certain that there has never been any "diatribe" against "American Jews", unless you claim that all "American Jews" hold Zionist positions. If you have an example to the contrary, please let us know.
Thank you for your attention and kind regards, ...
Again we obtained no answer. So we send the same mail on September 17, 2007 anew to Haaretz. Again we received no answer. Then we send a fifth letter to Haaretz:
Datum: 24.09.07 18:50:28 Uhr
Dear Editor:
Unfortunately, you have not responded to our letter regarding the article by Benjamin Weinthal about "The Anti-anti Zionists".
We are rather disappointed, especially since we think that the article contains a number of serious mistakes that warrant, at the very least, an explanation. We expect better from a liberal newspaper.
Sincerely, ...
Meanwhile a colleague shared Weinthal's mailing address with us. We wrote him what we had already snail-mailed to Haaretz:
we have read your article in Ha'aretz "Letter from Berlin: The anti-anti-Zionists" (August 7, 2007) with great interest. Although the column appeared more than 2 months ago, we would like to hear your comment on a few questions. As journalists who have written for Konkret as well as for junge Welt ...
It is now two months since. We are waiting and still waiting for an answer. Is Weinthal lazy to respond? Of late he translated into English what Ariel Muzicant puffed out about the natural gas deal between Austrian OMV and Iran. Just like Muzicant, Weinthal assiduously misreports [literally: botches] on behalf of the US-Israeli war lobby.
The statistics of the New Hampshire primary indicates a double cross-over effect.
The polls on the Democratic side so favored Obama that many pro-Obama independents crossed over to vote for McCain in the Republican primary because Obama seemed not to need their votes. (There may also have been a racial effect.)
When I woke up the day of the NH primary, I found that my AOL inbox contained an email from The New Republic. The message announced a slew of new articles. I clicked on Politics, and James Kirchick's article Angry White Man popped up. I read it and thought to myself, "The Zionist news media (FOX News, the Wall Street Journal, CanWest, TNR, et al.) have graduated from blacking out Ron Paul to swiftboating him." I wondered about the blogosphere and checked via google. It was covered with the Kirchick article, and anyone not familiar with the sort of drivel that Kirchick writes for TNR editor-in-chief Martin Peretz (see "The Staged Legacy of Rachel Corrie" below) and planning to vote for Ron Paul almost certainly reconsidered.
Ron Paul's independent supporters had no alternative in the Republican primary. These voters, who are disproportionately employed in the hi-tech industry and who almost certainly have fond memories of the Bill Clinton 90s, probably crossed over to vote for Hillary Clinton. Up until that point, polls were showing Ron Paul at 17% in the NH primary. The crossover boost to Hillary was almost certainly significant.
Maria's article below after the videos is worth reading because she discusses the similar sorts of smears that Boston area Israel advocates flung at her during the campaign of the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council against the Somerville Divestment Project. Both the Israel Lobby and the organized Jewish community take any threat to the flow of cash from the USA to Israel very seriously, and various Zionist think tanks in the USA and in Israel have long been constructing a sophisticated knowledge base to counteract any challenge to Zionist control of US ME policy.
The Battle for Divestment from Israeli Securities in Somerville - Seva Brodsky from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (headed by Dore Gold who is a former Israeli ambassador to the UN) discusses both Maria and me as well as other Boston area anti-Zionists. It is the sort of documentation that researchers and schemers at Zionist think tanks are producing.
Ron Paul's platform is particularly scary to Zionists. Not only does he intend to halt US payments to Israel, but he would dismantle the Zionist network control maintained by facilitators and gatekeepers in the national human services, civil rights and educational bureaucracies.
The following articles indicate the degree to which Zionists have subverted national and state bureaucracies:
Paul is correct that the USA really cannot afford to maintain the bloated national government as well as an oversized military. In addition, he shows remarkable insight in identifying the overweening power of the national bureaucracies as a threat to basic American liberty, but the twenty ton elephant in the room is the opportunity that such bureaucracies provide for subversion by agents loyal to a foreign power. At this point eliminating the bureaucracies and finding less expensive, less dangerous means to address national issues and problems may be the only way to save American democracy.
I have spent a week in trying to substantiate Kirchick's charges. I find parsimoniousness and excessive trust in the free market. After six years of paying for Neocon adventurism by printing money, attention to the bottom line is probably a good idea. Ron Paul does not seem to understand that a free market must be biased against the large players; otherwise, the problem of gambler's ruin and the inevitable trend to monopolization rear their ugly heads.
Because Ron Paul is a doctor, I can forgive a lack of understanding of probability theory while Fox News and TNR (i.e., CanWest) are working hard to show him that the inordinate power of big business can be just as dangerous as excessive governmental power.
Below are some videoclips that address Ron Paul's opposition to racism and his stance on gay marriage. Ron Paul was one of the few Republicans to oppose the Federal Marriage Amendment because it represented an attempt to expand federal power. No one can deny Dr. Paul's consistent effort to constrain the national government.
A 20 year friend of Ron Paul ,Austin Texas' NAACP Director Nelson Linder is interviewed by Scott Horton of Anti War radio concerning the accusations of racism against the congressman.The interview also explores the issue of civil rights and inequality in the American justice system .For more information on this story go to http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/011308_not_racist.htm .
DIGG THIS: http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Ron_Paul_I_don_t_want_white_supremacists_support racist scum cockroaches ron paul doesn't want or need your support racism don black stormfront david duke http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/350/index.html
John Stossel Interviews Republican on Personal Freedom, Drugs, Prostitution and Gay Marriage. 2007.12.07 original location: http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=3970423&page=1
Maria Hussain January 10, 2008 MariaHussain.wordpress.com
Martin Peretz, publisher and co-owner (along with CanWest) of The New Republic and contributor to the Hillary campaign, really hurt Paul yesterday. It was a typical Peretz thing to do - smear someone as a "homophobe" and "racist" the day of the election. The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick ludicrously claimed that Ron Paul personally called Martin Luther King a "gay pedophile" and made other outlandish claims he later retracted as mere gossip.
A very similar thing happened in Somerville on the eve of the vote about whether or not city funds should be invested in Israel or locally - in order to make it sound more "controversial" than the issue really was, all the Neocon pundits went crazy in making up stories that I am a supporter of the local investment movement and that I'm a homophobic terrorist supporter that hangs out with David Duke. This sort of smear is a common tactic. It makes you seem really "scary" to liberals, on whose vote we were counting.
If the American people can't get beyond the "homophobic" smear in order to save their country, America probably deserves to be crushed like a bug quite frankly. People act exactly like insects. Running around doing what "they" expect, never thinking.
We have to be prepared in advance. I mentioned a couple weeks ago the Zionist press is going to do this. Dr. Paul needed a pre-emptive attack - a statement on how his program is best for Blacks and Gays. As we all know, there is no difference between Huckabee and Hillary when it comes to AIPAC issues. This game is a distraction. But there is a comeback.
Is Dr. Paul a racist? No, Dr. Paul WILL SET YOU FREE. We need to emphasize his prison release program and of make sure people realize that Hillary and Obama are NOT going to end war, they want new wars. Ron Paul is the Black Man's Best Friend. He is going to bring your sons home from the war and release all non-violent drug offenders from prison his first day in office, he said. Ron Paul has more Black supporters than any other Republican candidate and more active US military personnel supporters than any other candidate.
The issue is not which candidate will win or lose. The real issue is are we going to lose our country? Americans are such sheep. If we don't somehow teach our friends to mistrust the media and double check everything, that's it for USA. The sad part is that Dr. Paul was polling at 17% but then a lot of those people went to vote Democratic because they were embarrassed by the homophobic racist smear that was circulated on the Internet. It is true that there was reportedly voter fraud. The hand count of the votes puts Dr. Paul at 15% not 8% as the news media erroneously reported. But that still means he lost 2% of the expected vote and all of the fence-sitters who could have put him above 20% just because of this typical Jewish smear tactic that was coordinated and planned to not give Ron Paul time to answer the accusations before the election.
Dr. Paul will not be counted as a winner unless he wins by an overwhelming landslide. Even then, the Neocons might send in the National Guard to prevent him from taking office, except the Guard is in Iraq. (How convenient.) What happens next? No country in the world knows what the next step is, how to get free. The question is, how much longer will Americans fall for these tricks?
RON PAUL'S RESPONSE
Ron Paul has already responded to these ridiculous accusations and slammed them as political haymaking to coincide with the New Hampshire primary.
"The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.
In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: `I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.'
This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.
When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name."
[We invite readers to share their views on Mr. Kirchick's article by e mailing him at james.kirchick@gmail.com.]
Dr. Paul has an honest opinion. The Neo-liberals have think tanks working night and day doing marketing analysis and using psychology to turn the public away from Dr. Paul. There are Israeli/Neocon spies that keep tabs on every political activist in Boston and do write-ups about them in Jerusalem, and meet with the local & Israeli government about how to neutralize them. In Palestine they just use gun with laser-targeting if someone starts telling the truth. In America they character assassinate more often. Like we have any importance whatsoever. They flew the mayor of Somerville to talk with President Moshe Katzav about how to silence eleven Boston responsible investment activists.
Basically how the Lobby won it (and it was a close race, 45 to 55%) was they made a bunch of slick posters with Deval Patrick's face on it, AND they released a number of news reports and commentaries that totally twisted the positions and arguments of both sides, so that the average voter would be confused about what they were voting for or against. They also used a lot of psychological pressure labeling people as "racists" "anti-Semites" etc. so that the people who would normally support the ballot initiative got scared away.
These people are very serious about not wanting Dr. Paul's voice to be heard and they don't want him to win. But they always use the same tactics.
If they don't succeed in turning Dr. Paul's name into mud, they will turn on the organizers of the movement. It's going to go on and on and we have to strategize. Is there a strategic planning wing of the People for Paul movement?
______________________________
The staged legacy of Rachel Corrie. Girlish Figure by James Kirchick
Only at TNR Online | Post date 11.22.06
Of all the subjects for a 90-minute, one-woman show, Rachel Corrie ought to have been at the bottom of the list. Corrie was the 23-year-old Evergreen State College student crushed in March 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer that was either set to raze a Palestinian home or clear brush that could conceal explosives, depending on whom you believe. She trekked all the way from Olympia, Washington, to the Gaza Strip with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)--which, despite claiming the mantle of a "peace" movement, has nonetheless abetted Palestinian suicide bombers. And now, New York's Minetta Lane Theater is telling her story in "My Name is Rachel Corrie," which brought the largest advance for any show ever performed there. It is based on Corrie's e-mails and diary entries, and it paints her as a saint who died for a worthy cause by eliding all of the intricacies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In locales from Corrie's dorm room to the streets of the Rafah refugee camp, "My Name is Rachel Corrie" takes us into the mind of its namesake. But there is hardly any mention of the Palestinian people she was so committed to. Corrie looks either like one of the upper-middle- class kids who take Latin American latrine-digging vacations to buff up their college resumes, or one of the "political pilgrims"--to use Paul Hollander's phrase--of the cold war (Paul Robeson, Ramsey Clark, Susan Sontag) who ventured to totalitarian lands and returned to boast of slumming it with the liberated natives. The selection of Corrie's writings on display never adequately explains why she would so determinedly seek out a dangerous place she knew little about, other than that she had a deep antipathy toward "injustice." A telling indicator not in the play was a photo circulated after her death; in it (and in her diary), Corrie flaunts her hatred of the United States by burning a mock American flag while Palestinian children crowd around her.
If the Palestinians in this play are props, the Israelis are sound effects. As this is a one-woman show, we obviously do not see either the Palestinians or the Israelis, but we sense the latter more than the former. We hear machine guns, helicopter blades, and tanks (though never the sounds of suicide bombs). If you watched "My Name is Rachel Corrie" knowing little about this decades-long crisis, you would leave thinking that Israelis are sadistic monsters who kill Palestinians at random, destroy olive groves, and harass women and children for the sheer thrill of it. The few mentions of terrorism or suicide bombing are vague, and only in reference to "the right of people to legitimate armed struggle." Never is it suggested that these acts take place against civilian targets, not soldiers (though, in her diary, Corrie excuses that, too).
In prostrating herself before an Israeli bulldozer, Corrie actually became that which she was (unwittingly, perhaps) protecting: the Palestinian suicide martyr. She received the martyr treatment--in both Palestinian propaganda and far-left protest circles--becoming a pieta of the anti-Israel movement. Or, as her ex-boyfriend put it, "she has become her death."
The actress Megan Dodds, who plays Corrie, does so accurately. She alternates between two personas in the play: on the one hand, an exuberant girl we see at the beginning (jumping about her messy room, perkily talking about boys) and, on the other, a self-righteous college activist espousing platitudes about the state of the world and the evils of U.S. foreign policy. Dodds, to her credit, is an honest performer: She does not bend to the (no doubt difficult) temptation to make Corrie less grating or sanctimonious than her diaries make her seem.
For a one-person show to sustain itself, its subject must either be humorous (think Elaine Stritch), possess some sort of intellectual severity (Spalding Gray), or both (Hal Holbrooke as Mark Twain). Rachel Corrie did not have any of these. Corrie's bouts of moral indignation overshadow a few moments of humor, which are nothing more than girlish flightiness anyway. She was a simpleton when it came to world politics, and yet the play sanctifies her as some sort of sage witness to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In part, due to the epistolary basis of "My Name is Rachel Corrie," comparisons have been made to "The Diary of Anne Frank." This is partly true. The villains in both plays are heard from but, for the most part, not seen; they are nevertheless omnipresent and threatening. But the comparison ends there: With Corrie, the bad guys are Israelis; with Frank, they are Nazis--hardly equal purveyors of horror. And Anne Frank was a probing character whose blameless observations of fascist Europe demonstrated the cruelty of a period in which children were perfunctorily murdered. Rachel Corrie was a know-it-all who deliberately placed herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. What's more, there is an issue of moral culpability among antagonists. Obviously, Frank's murderers had it. But Corrie died, accidentally, after giving intellectual (and actual) cover to those who are, essentially, the heirs of Frank's killers.
Bereft of gravity, a sympathetic character, or a compelling story, "My Name is Rachel Corrie" ignominiously turns to emotional blackmail. The image on the playbill is of a pre-pubescent Corrie smiling with wispy blond hair blowing across her face. Much of what the editors selected from Corrie's diaries reflect upon her childhood innocence. (Those editors are the venerable British actor Alan Rickman and, less shockingly, Katharine Viner, a writer and editor for The Guardian.) The last segment in the play is a video, taken when Corrie was in the fifth grade, decrying the state of world poverty and declaring her intent to personally "save" the poor. "I'm here because I care," she says in the video, and no doubt she was in Gaza because she cared. (What exactly she cared about is something the play, and Corrie herself, obfuscates.) But this adorable video is meant to convert your sympathy for Corrie into sympathy for her cause. How dare we ridicule such an precocious and idealistic young girl who now lies dead because of her devotion to world peace? What right do any of us have to question the cause for which Corrie gave her life? This is Cindy Sheehan politics.
But what the video unwittingly reveals is that Corrie never outgrew the naive little schoolgirl. Corrie at 23 was just like Corrie at ten. And that is what's so tragic and so telling about those who wish to change the world without really trying to understand it.
James Kirchick is a writer living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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