He Who Tells the Truth Gets Chased out of Nine Villages, Part II
Recorded August 20, 2006
Introduction: After a brief rant on the nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (which will be summarized in FTR#569), Mr. Emory highlighted the factual existence of Islamic fascism, a rhetorical football in the wake of George W. Bush’s use of the term. After reviewing some of the history of the Grand Mufti (a major Third Reich operative in the Middle East before, during, and after World War II), the program notes his deep involvement with Iran. That country was specifically renamed from its long-held name “Persia” in order to emphasize its alliance with the Third Reich. Iran means “Aryan.” Iran became a hot bed of Nazi activity, until the British and Soviets invaded and put a half to Nazi activity there. After the rise of the Islamic fundamentalists in Iran, that country became a hotbed of Holocaust denial. A Holocaust denier, the president of contemporary Iran has crafted a government that has been compared to that of 1930’s Germany by German chancellor Angela Merkel. In addition, officials of the German government have compared Iranian president Ahmadi-Nejad’s views to those of the German extreme right. The program reviews some of the history of the postwar collaboration of SS elements with Arab regimes intent on annihilating Israel, as well as introducing the subject of media bias against Israel during the recent conflict in Lebanon.
Program Highlights Include: The Nazi and SS influence on the political genesis of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat; a vituperative e‑mail sent to Mr. Emory about his recent interview with John Loftus; links between Nazi émigrés who landed in Egypt after World War II and the Bank al Taqwa (an alleged funding source for Al Qaeda; Hezbollah’s stage management of news coming out of the war in Lebanon.
1. Highlighting the subject of the Israeli/Palestinian issue, Mr. Emory compared the venality that pervades the issue with that surrounding the OJ Simpson case. Mr. Emory also feels that people are as fundamentally misinformed about the Israeli/Arab conflict as they were about the OJ Simpson case. (For more about the OJ case, use the search function. In particular, check out FTR#’s 39, 40.) Mr. Emory read an e‑mail from a listener that embodies the hysteria that surrounds the issue of Israel. The guest that he is referring to is John Loftus, interviewed in FTR#564. Note that the e‑mail is presented in unedited form. “ ‘Dave: I have listened to your show for years, and last night I was really upset that you had this obvious Bush apologist and Israeli Jewish Extremist Nazi Likud Party (Benjamin Netanyahu is a Jewish Nazi, as he hates Arabs just as much as the Arab Extremists hate Jews, and you know it! And I’d like to remind you what Mae Brussel [sic] said about Ellioit Abrahms [sic], Michael Ludeen [sic], and Richarl Pearl [sic]: ‘Jewish Nazis’) supporter spouting off his views on the latest Levanon [sic] invasion. Fist off [sic], I think you need to have someone on who has an opposing viewpoint, and who actually might have been on the ground there seeing what really happened . . . . L.D. Freitas, Aptos, California.’”
2. In order to understand the recent Lebanon war, it is important to grasp the Islamofascism of the Iranian government. That government is the focal point of admiration by German neo-Nazis. “Rightwing extremists and neo-Nazis posed a security threat security threat to the soccer World Cup in Germany this summer, the German government admitted for the first time yesterday. . . . The extremist protests are aimed in part at expressing support for Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the Iranian president, who caused outrage last year by calling for Israel’s abolition and by denying the Holocaust, according to intelligence officials. . . .”
(“‘Neo-Nazis Pose Threat to World Cup’” by Hugh Williamson; Financial Times; 3/31/2006; p. 5.)
3. Further illustrating the Islamic fascist character of the Iranian government, the program sets forth the Holocaust-denying president Ahmadi-Nejad’s correspondence with German chancellor Angela Merkel. The German government compared his statements to the views of the German extreme right. Merkel compared Iran to Germany in the 1930’s. In this context, it is important to remember the close relationship between the Iranian fundamentalists and Nazis associated with the Bank Al Taqwa milieu, such as Ahmed Huber and Francois Genoud. (For more about this, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 343, 352, 354, 456.) Be sure, also, to view the pictures of Hezbollah in Paragraph 1 of FTR#564. “The German government said yesterday it would ignore a letter sent this week by President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad of Iran to Chancellor Angela Merkel, as it addressed neither the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program nor the crisis in Lebanon. The letter from Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad, handed to the German embassy in Tehran on Wednesday, contained ‘many assertions that are not acceptable to us, particularly about Israel, its legitimacy and the Holocaust,’ said Ulrich Wilhelm, Ms. Merkel’s spokesman. Mr. Wilhelm said the chancellor had no intention of replying and would not publish the letter, although officials said they expected Tehran to do so, as it did with a letter sent by Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad to President George W. Bush earlier this year.”
(“Gerrmany Intends to Ignore ‘Bizarre’ Note from Tehran” by Bertrand Benoit; Financial Times; 7/22–23/2006; p. 2.)
4. “One Berlin official described he 10-page letter as ‘bizarre,’ drawing parallels between Iranian and German history since 1945 and the two countries’ alleged oppression by Zionism, the ‘international Jewish conspiracy’ and the world’s great powers. Although the Iranian president calls for co-operation between the countries, ‘his argument is surprisingly identical to that made by the German extreme-right,’ the official said. [Emphasis added.] ‘There is not a single line about the nuclear program or about Lebanon or Hezbollah.’ As in his 18-page letter to Mr. Bush, Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad also elaborates extensively on the similarities between the three monotheist religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism.” (Idem.)
5. “Defending the German government’s decision not to publish the letter, the official said Berlin had no interest in helping disseminate the views expressed by the Iranian president. Ms. Merkel has been extremely critical of Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad’s anti-Semitic comments in the past. Speaking at a security conference in Munich this year, she compared his administration to that of the Nazis in 1930’s Germany. [Emphasis added.] Israel and the West have accused Iran and Syria of providing direct military and financial support to Hezbollah that has helped the Lebanon-based militia launch destructive rocket attacks on Israeli towns, an accusation that Tehran denies.” (Idem.)
6. “Germany said it would continue to support efforts by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to draft a resolution that would force Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program, which they believe is geared towards building arms as a nuclear deterrent. The German official said Mr. Ahmadi-Nejad’s offer to co-operate with Germany in his letter was ‘strange’ and seemed disingenuous, given that ‘such an offer of cooperation is part of the incentives included in the offer of negotiations.” (Idem.)
7. It is fascinating to note that Ahmadi-Nejad wrote that Iran and Germany should work together to restructure international relations in a manner fundamentally different from the one determined by the outcome of the Second World War. “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad told German Chancellor Angela that their countries had been subjected to tyranny from World War II victors and that they should cooperate to end he imposed world order. Ahmadi-Nejad made the remarks in a letter to Merkel in July. A copy of it, the details of which were not made public at the time, was obtained from a diplomat who asked not to be identified. In the letter, the Iranian president did not repeat his previous claim that the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews, was a myth. But he railed against Zionism.” (“Leader of Iran Saw an Ally in Germany” [Reuters]; The Los Angeles Times; 8/25/2006; p. A12.)
8. “Merkel rejected the letter at the time as ‘totally unacceptable to Germany’ and said it did not deserve a reply. ‘I have no intention of arguing about the Holocaust,’ Ahmadi-Nejad wrote. ‘But . . . some victorious countries of World War II intended to create an alibi on the basis of which they could continue keeping the defeated nations of World War II indebted to them,’ the English version of the letter says. ‘I believe we and you have been the subject of tyranny. They do not respect your rights and want us also to forgo our rights,’ Ahmadi-Nejad wrote ‘Together we must end the present abnormalities in international relations, the type of order and relations that are based on the impositions of the victors of the World War II on the defeated nations,’ he wrote. [Emphasis added.]. . .” (Idem.)
9. In order to help the listener to better understand the historical relationship between Iran and Nazi Germany, Mr. Emory presents an article by Edwin Black, the author of The War Against the Weak, IBM and the Holocaust, and The Transfer Agreement. “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shot to the forefront of Holocaust denial with his rabble-rousing remarks last month. But it’s more like self-denial. The president of Iran need only look to his country’s Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were strongly connected to the Holocaust and the Hitler regime, as was the entire Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem. Iran’s axis with the Third Reich began during the prewar years, when it welcomed Nazi Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use the city as a base for Middle East agitation against the British and the region’s Jews. Key among these German agents was Fritz Grobba, Berlin’s envoy to the Middle East, who was often called ‘the German Lawrence,’ because he promised a Pan-Islamic state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran. Relations between Berlin and Tehran were strong from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. At that time, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s nation was known as Persia. The shah became a stalwart admirer of Hitler, Nazism and the concept of the Aryan master race. He also sought the Reich’s help in reducing British petro-political domination.” (“Denial of Holocaust Nothing New in Iran: Ties to Hitler Led to Plots Against British and Jews” by Edwin Black; San Francisco Chronicle; 1/8/2006.)
10. “So intense was the shah’s identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country ‘Iran,’ which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished. The idea for the name change was suggested by the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of Hitler’s trusted banker, Hjalmar Schacht. From that point, all Iranians were constantly reminded that their country shared a common bond with the Nazi regime.” (Idem.)
11. Note the presence in this sequence of events of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti was the first leader of the Palestinian movement and an individual whose presence figures prominently in the history of World War II, the Middle East, international fascism and the events in and around 9/11. (For more about the Grand Mufti, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 354, 441, 416, 456.) “Shortly after World War II broke out in 1939, the Mufti of Jerusalem crafted a strategic alliance with Hitler to exchange Iraqi oil for active Arab and Islamic participation in the murder of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe. This was predicated on support for a pan-Arab state and Arab control over Palestine. During the war years, Iran became a haven for Gestapo agents. It was from Iran that the seeds of the abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad were planted. After Churchill’s forces booted the Nazis out of Iraq in June 1941, German aircrews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across Iraq’s northern border back into Iran. Likewise, the mufti of Jerusalem was spirited across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British.” (Idem.)
12. “His venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts in Tehran. The mufti was a vocal opponent of allowing Jewish refugees to be transported or ransomed into Jewish Palestine. Instead, he wanted them shipped to the gas chambers of Poland. In the summer of 1941, the mufti, with the support of key Iranian military and government leaders, advocated implementing in Iran what had failed months earlier in Iraq. The plan once again was for a total diversion of oil from the Allies to the Nazis, in exchange for the accelerated destruction of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the Nazis’ support for an Arab state. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., Iran had already been supplying Hitler’s forces in occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria. Now, the mufti agitated to cut off the British and the Allies completely and supply Germany in its push against Russia.” (Idem.)
13. “In October 1941, British, USSR other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested, and the shah’s son was installed in power. The mufti scampered into the Italian embassy, where he shaved his beard and dyed his hair. In this disguise, he was allowed to leave the country along with the rest of the Italian delegation. Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported ‘bureau,’ he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From Berlin and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for international Jewish destruction, as well as a pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime.” (Idem.)
14. “He called upon all Muslims to ‘kill the Jews wherever you see them.’ In Tehran’s marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, ‘In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler.’ When the mufti raised three divisions of Islamic Waffen SS to undertake cruel operations in Bosnia, among the 30,000 killers were some volunteer contingents from Iran. Iranian Nazis, along with the other Muslim Waffen SS, operated under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for barbarous actions against Jews and others in Bosnia. Recruitment for the murderous ‘Handschar Divisions’ was done openly in Iran. Iran and its leaders were not only aware of the Holocaust, they played both sides. The country offered overland escape routes for refugee Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to Israel — and later fleeing postwar Iraqi fascist persecution — but only in exchange for extortionate passage fees.” (Idem.)
15. Since the rise of the Islamist government in Iran, that country has become an epicenter of the Holocaust denial movement. “Thousands of Jews journeyed to Israel via Iran both during the Holocaust and during the years after the fall of Hitler, when Arab leaders, especially in Iraq, tried to continue Germany’s anti-Jewish program. Iran profited handsomely. Since the shah’s downfall, Iran has become a center for organized international Holocaust denial and has helped elevate the endeavor from fringe hate speech to a state-approved pseudo-intellectual debate. In international forums and on state-controlled radio, Iranian university experts and journalists help validate the revisionist views that Jews were never gassed or murdered in great numbers during the Holocaust. Indeed, Iran has become a refuge for the biggest names in European Holocaust denial. When in 2000, revisionist author Jürgen Graf was sentenced in Switzerland to 15 months in prison for Holocaust falsification, Graf fled to Tehran ‘at the invitation of a group of Iranian scholars and university professors who are sympathetic to Holocaust revisionism,’ according to the Institute for Historical Review, a denial clearinghouse.” (Idem.)
16. “What’s more, in May 2000, Iran’s embassy in Vienna granted asylum to Austrian Holocaust denier Wolfgang Fröhlich, who testified as a so-called expert witness during Graf’s 1998 trial. This saved Fröhlich from Austria’s severe anti-Holocaust denial statutes. Fröhlich argued that evidence proved no Jews were killed by Zyklon B gassing. Earlier, about 600 journalists and 160 members of the Iranian parliament signed petitions supporting French revisionist Roger Garaudy, who was fined $40,000 by French authorities for his book claiming the Holocaust was a myth. When Garaudy landed in Iran, the country’s supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Sayyad Khamenei, granted him an audience and lauded his work. Iran has played a leading role in the Holocaust drama and now tries to deny it. That should be very hard in a nation that was named for Hitler’s master race.” (Idem.)
17. Since George W. Bush opined about the U.S. battling Islamic fascists, the media have been rife with stupid comments from all quarters, most of them denying the very existence of Islamic fascism. Mr. Emory has done a great deal of work on the subject, including FTR#’s 414, 416, 453, 456, 473, 537. For people who don’t believe in the existence of Islamic fascism, take a look at the photos of Hezbollah in paragraph 1 of the description for FTR#564. Mr. Emory stressed that Islamic fascism must be understood as part of international fascism, and set forth some of the background to the Nazi/Arab alliance in the post World War II world. After the rise of Nasser in Egypt, many Third Reich alumni relocated to Egypt, converted to Islam and continued their campaign to eradicate the Jews. In FTR#558, Mr. Emory set forth the details of a CIA-sponsored mission to rebuild the Egyptian intelligence service and general staff. To do this, former Nazi general and CIA operative general Reinhard Gehlen recruited a bevy of Nazi war criminals, under the direction of SS colonel Otto Skorzeny–a favorite of Hitler’s and a leader of the ODESSA, the post-war SS underground. In Egypt, Skorzeny reunited with the Grand Mufti, as well as many other SS comrades, including Otto Ernst Remer, another ODESSA leader. It was this concatenation that saw the genesis of Yasser Arafat as the leader of the Palestinian national movement. In evaluating the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it is important to understand that the Israelis are very aware of this Nazi/Arab connection, as well as its dire implications for them. “ . . . During the post-Farouk era, the Grand Mufti held court at a closely guarded villa on Sharia Assuit Street in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo. There he entertained delegations from throughout the Arab world while maintaining close contact with radical nationalists from Germany and other countries. Among those who gathered at the Mufti’s home during the mid-1950’s was his distant cousin, Yasser Arafat, then an engineering student at the University of Cairo. [Otto Ernst] Remer, who would collaborate with Arafat in the years ahead, also visited the esteemed Grossmufti on several occasions. Over cups of strong Arabian coffee, they shared fond recollections of Adolf Hitler and indulged in the usual talk of driving Jews into the sea. The Grand Mufti’s network of sympathizers extended far and wide. ‘I did a couple of jobs for him, getting some documents from files that were otherwise unavailable,’ recalled [Nazi spy] H. Keith Thompson. Otto Skorzeny also collaborated with the Muslim leader. According to A.F.X. Baron, a prominent British fascist, Skorzeny was instrumental in funneling more than a million dollars, which the Mufti had raised for anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish propaganda, to various neo-Nazi groups around the world.” (The Beast Reawakens by Martin A. Lee; Little Brown & Co. [HC]; Copyright 1997 by Martin A. Lee; ISBN 0–316; p. 128.)
18. Among the Nazis who emigrated to Egypt, changed their names and converted to Islam were Johann von Leers, in charge of anti-Semitic propaganda for the Third Reich. Bank al Taqwa director Ahmed Huber was a protégé of von Leers. (See, among other programs, FTR#354.) “Several German propaganda experts adopted Arabic names when they emigrated to Egypt. Johann von Leers, one of the Third Reich’s most prolific Jew-baiters, converted to Islam and became Omar Amin [von Leers]. He got a job with the Egyptian Information Ministry, thanks to the good offices of the Grossmufti. With von Leers in charge, Cairo’s anti-Israeli propaganda machine churned out hate literature and inflammatory broadcasts on a regular basis. Assisting von Leers were dozens of European Nazis who welcomed a fresh opportunity to continue their vendetta against the Jews. They had regular access to Radio Cairo, which utilized a powerful CIA-constructed transmitter to spread the message throughout much of the Arab world. Taking a cue from von Leers, Hans Appler, another Goebbels protégé, changed his name to Salah Shafar when he started preparing anti-Semitic for the Nasser regime. And Louis Heiden alias Louis Al-Hadj, a wartime employee of the German Press Agency, pitched in by translating Hitler’s Mein Kampf into Arabic. The Egyptian government also published an Arabic version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (the infamous forgery concocted by the czarist secret police), which Nasser recommended to a visiting Indian journalist in 1958. ‘It is very important that you should read it,’ the Egyptian president explained. ‘I will give you a copy. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continent.’” (Ibid.; pp. 128–129.)
19. Among the Nazi/SS émigrés who worked for Nasser (and the Soviets) against the Israelis was Bernhardt Bender, who headed Nasser’s police. “ . . . In particular, [East German security official] Ernst Wollweber had his eye on Bernhardt Bender, a Middle East expert who once held the rank of lieutenant colonel on Himmler’s personal staff. After the war, Bender resurfaced in Cairo, where he served as chief of the political department of Nasser’s police. In this capacity, Bender (aka Colonel Ben Salem) dispensed funds to a whole gang of SS émigrés that two-timed for the Soviets. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 133.)
20. The late Yasser Arafat, was a protégé of Otto Skorzeny. “ . . . Several young Palestinian refugees, including Yasser Arafat, joined the Egyptian soldiers who were learning the ways and means of unconventional warfare. Although initially the intended target was the British, the future PLO chief realized that rigorous commando exercises would help prepare the Palestinian militants who were eager to renew the battle for their lost homeland. A grateful Arafat recognized Skorzeny’s abundant skills in this area, and the two men struck up a relationship that lasted for many ears. Apparently, the Palestinian leader was quite fond of the scarfaced paladin. ‘Arafat would have done anything for Otto!’ remarked Ilse Skorzeny. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 129–130.)
21. The program closed with the opening paragraphs of an article that was read into the record in its entirety in FTR#566. The issue of media distortion of the events surrounding the war in Lebanon couldn’t be exaggerated. In FTR#564, we touched on some of the falsification of photographic evidence in the Lebanon war, as well as the staging or embellishment of civilian casualties. As noted here, among the factors skewing the media coverage of the war is the fact that Hezbollah very carefully restricted media access to the battlefield. In fairness to the journalists who covered the war, most of them saw only what Hezbollah allowed them to see. Nonetheless, the facile and inappropriate comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are outrageous, as well as preposterous. For example, one brigade of the Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler (a Waffen SS division) burned 200 villages in the Soviet Union with the people locked in the buildings, earning the nickname “the Blowtorch Brigade.” [A brigade usually consists of approximately 3,500 men, although this number can vary greatly from one army to the next.] “Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are actively fanning the flames. The BBC world service has a strong claim to be the number-one villain. It has come to sound like a virtual propaganda tool for Hezbollah. As it attempts to prove that Israel is guilty of committing ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity,’ it has introduced a new charge — one which I have heard several times on-air in recent days. The newscaster reads out carefully selected ‘audience comments.’ Among these are invariably contained some version of the claim that ‘Israel’s attack on Lebanon’ will serve as a ‘recruitment’ drive for al-Qaeda. But if anything is going to win new recruits for Osama bin Laden and his like, it will not be Israel’s defensive actions, which are far less damaging than Western TV stations would have us believe, but the inflammatory and one-sided way in which they are being reported by those very same news organizations.” (“The Media War Against Israel” by Tom Gross; National Post; 8/2/2006.)
22. “While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been razed. A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hezbollah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hezbollah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched. From the distorted imagery, selective witness accounts, and almost round-the-clock emphasis on casualties, you would be forgiven for thinking that the level of death and destruction in Lebanon is on par with that in Darfur, where Arab militias are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs, or with the 2004 tsunami that killed half a million in Southeast Asia.” (Idem.)
23. “In fact, Israel has taken great care to avoid killing civilians — even though this has proven extremely difficult and often tragically impossible, since members of Hezbollah, the self-styled ‘Party of God,’ have deliberately ensconced themselves in civilian homes. Nevertheless the civilian death toll has been mercifully low compared to other international conflicts in recent years. Last week, a senior journalist let slip how the news media allows its Mideast coverage to be distorted. CNN ‘senior international correspondent’ Nic Robertson admitted that his anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon was stage-managed from start to finish by Hezbollah. In particular, he revealed that his story was heavily influenced by the group’s ‘press officer,’ and that Hezbollah have ‘very, very sophisticated and slick media operations.’ When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program Reliable Sources, Robertson acknowledged that Hezbollah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hezbollah ‘had control of the situation,’ Robertson said. ‘They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn’t have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath.’” (Idem.)
24. “Robertson added that Hezbollah has ‘very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access to those areas. You don’t get in there without their permission. We didn’t have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hezbollah fighter by night.’ Yet Reliable Sources, presented by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hezbollah. Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: ‘To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.’” (Idem.)
25. “Robertson is not the only foreign journalist to have misled viewers with selected footage from Beirut. NBC’s Richard Engel, CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer, and a host of European and other networks, were also taken around the damaged areas by Hezbollah minders. Palmer commented on her report that ‘Hezbollah is also determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see.’ Palmer’s honesty is helpful. But it doesn’t prevent the damage being done by organizations such as the BBC, whose bias is obvious to those who know the facts. First, the BBC gave the impression that Israel had flattened the greater part of Beirut. Then to follow up its lopsided coverage, its Web site helpfully carried full details of the assembly points for an anti-Israel march due to take place in London, but did not give any details about a rally in support of Israel also held in London a short time later. Indeed, the BBC’s coverage of the present war has been so extraordinary that even staunch BBC supporters in London seem rather embarrassed — in conversation, not on the air, unfortunately. If the BBC were just a British problem, that would be one thing, but it is not. Thanks to British taxpayers, it is the world’s biggest and most lavishly funded news organization. No other station broadcasts so extensively in dozens of languages, on TV, radio and online.” (Idem.)
26. “The BBC’s radio service alone attracts over 163 million listeners. It pours forth its world view in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic and Turkish. (Needless to say, it declines to broadcast in Hebrew, even though it does broadcast in the languages of other small nations: Macedonian and Albanian, Azeri and Uzbek, Kinyarwanda and Kyrgyz, and so on.) It is not just that the supposed crimes of Israel are completely overplayed, but the fact that this is a two-sided war (started, of course, by Hezbollah) is all but obscured. As a result, in spite of hundreds of hours of broadcast by dozens of BBC reporters and studio anchors, you wouldn’t really know that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been living in bomb shelters for weeks now, tired, afraid, but resilient; that a grandmother and her seven-year old grandson were killed by a Katyusha rocket during a Friday night Sabbath dinner; that several other Israeli children have died. You wouldn’t have any real understanding of what it is like to have over 2,000 Iranian and Syrian rockets rain down indiscriminately on towns, villages and farms across one third of your country, aimed at killing civilians.” (Idem.)
27. “You wouldn’t really appreciate that Hezbollah, far from being some ragtag militia, is in effect a division of the Iranian revolutionary guards, with relatively advanced weapons (unmanned aerial vehicles that have flown over northern Israel, extended-range artillery rockets, anti-ship cruise missiles), and that it has a global terror reach, having already killed 114 people in Argentina during the 1990s. The BBC and other media have carried report after report on the damaged Lebanese tourist industry, but none on its damaged Israeli counterpart, even though at least one hotel in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, was hit by a Hezbollah rocket. There are reports on Lebanese children who don’t know where they will be going to school, but none on Israeli children. Many have grown accustomed to left-wing papers such as Britain’s Guardian allowing their Mideast coverage to spill over into something akin to anti-Semitism. For example, last month a cartoon by the Guardian’s Martin Rowson depicted Stars of David being used as knuckle dusters on a bloody fist.” (Idem.)
28. “Now the Conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph, Britain’s best-selling quality daily, and previously one of the only papers in Europe to give Israel a fair hearing, has got in on the act. The cartoon at the top of the Telegraph comment page last Saturday showed two identical scenes of devastation, exactly the same in every detail. One was labeled: ‘Warsaw 1943’; the other: ‘Tyre, 2006.’ The suggestion, of course, is that modern Israel is no different from Nazi Germany. A politician had already given the cue for this horrendous libel. Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell told the House of Commons that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was ‘colluding’ with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the okay to wage a war crime ‘gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.’ Of course, there was no ‘Jewish quarter’ of Warsaw. In case anyone needs reminding (Sir Peter obviously does) the ghetto in the Polish capital, established in October 1940, constituted less than three square miles. Over 400,000 Jews were then crammed into it, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. 254,000 were sent to Treblinka where they were exterminated. Most of the rest were murdered in other ways. The ghetto was completely cleared of Jews by the end of May 1943.” (Idem.)
29. “The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Some British and European politicians, on both the left and right, have been supportive of Israel. So have some magazines, such as Britain’s Spectator. So have a number of individual newspaper commentators. But meanwhile, anti-Semitic coverage and cartoons are spreading across the globe. Norway’s third largest paper, the Oslo daily Dagbladet, ran a cartoon comparing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the infamous Nazi commander SS Major Amon Goeth, who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them from his balcony — as depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. (A month earlier, Dagbladet published an article, ‘The Third Tower’, which questioned whether Muslims were really responsible for the September 11 attacks.) Antonio Neri Licon of Mexico’s El Economista drew what appeared to be a Nazi soldier with stars of David on his uniform. The ‘soldier’ was surrounded by eyes that he had apparently gouged out.” (Idem.)
30. “A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butcher’s knife covered in blood. In the leading Australian daily The Age, a cartoon showed a wine glass full of blood being drunk in a scene reminiscent of a medieval blood libel. In New Zealand, veteran cartoonist Tom Stott came up with a drawing which equated Israel with al-Qaeda. At least one leading European politician has also vented his prejudice through visual symbolism. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wore an Arab scarf during an event at which he condemned Israel, but not Hezbollah, who he presumably thinks should not be stopped from killing Israelis. It’s entirely predictable that all this violent media distortion should lead to Jews being attacked and even murdered, as happened at a Seattle Jewish center last week. When live Jews can’t be found, dead ones are targeted. In Belgium last week, the urn that contained ashes from Auschwitz was desecrated at the Brussels memorial to the 25,411 Belgian Jews deported to Nazi death camps. It was smashed and excrement smeared over it. The silence from Belgian leaders following this desecration was deafening.” (Idem.)
31. “Other Jews continue to be killed in Israel itself without it being mentioned in the media abroad. Last Thursday, for example, 60-year-old Dr. Daniel Ya’akovi was murdered by the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist group within Fatah that Yasser Arafat set up five years ago using European Union aid money. But this is far from being an exclusively Jewish issue. Some international journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don’t understand yet that Hezbollah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those — Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jew — who don’t abide by its wishes.” (Idem.)
Discussion
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