American ideals. We may also be able to reestablish America’s sanity and humanity. Again, our primary purpose would be to save Iranian lives, but saving Iran could save America.
Sources and Footnotes:
Primary sources: The Economist magazine, San Diego Union Tribune SDUT,
(1) 9/20-22/2002 Gallup poll
58% opposed a US invasion of Iraq without UN support,
37% supported such action. Our politicians claimed they supported the Iraq war for political reasons. Their political reasons were dollars not votes.
10/3-6/2002 Gallup poll found - If the President decided to invade, 47% thought the U.S. should invade and would support his decision, and 27% thought the U.S. should not invade but would still support his decision, for a total of 74% who would support his decision.
A poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates on 1/23-24/2003, published 1/25/2003 in a Newsweek web exclusive, found the following:
53% of Americans opposed a unilateral war with only one or two major allies and without UN
approval,
7% were undecided, and
40% supported such a war. These were the results after Congress voted.
(2) The Shadow World by Andrew Feinstein pgs.282-6 and The Carlyle Group by Tom Shorrock with thenation.com 3/26/2002 http://www.rense.com/general21/gf.htm
(3) 2/3/2009 Nova episode - The Spy Factory http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/spy-
factory.html Mark Rossini and Doug Miller were liaison FBI agents at Alec Station in the CIA.
They were ordered not to inform the FBI of these terrorists’ presence in the US.
(4) 10/2009 Interview of former counterterrorism czar Richard A Clarke
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d-RGkYpXCg Clarke stated on record he had intelligence that three former top CIA officials -- George Tenet, Cofer Black, and Richard Blee --
knowingly withheld key information on alleged hijackers al Mihdhar and al Hazmi in Kuala Lumpur and San Diego from the White House, the FBI, Immigration INS, the State Department, and the Defense Department.
Clarke stated the CIA wanted to get inside al Qaeda, and he suspects they hoped to turn al Mihdhar and al Hazmi. The CIA finally placed these two on their terrorist watch list on 8/21/2001 and 8/23/2001. Clarke postulates that if this information had been shared with senior levels of counter terrorism offices in the White House, FBI, INS, etc., even as late as the Principles Meeting of 9/4/2001, we could have apprehended these suspects before 9/11. They were using hotel rooms and credit cards in their own names.
(5) Great Decisions 2014 by the Foreign Policy Association p.6
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(6) https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2014-01-03/congress-passes-2014-
526.8 B in base expenditures, 80.7 B in overseas contingency operations (including Afghanistan), and 17.6 B in Dep of Energy nuclear weapons programs for a total of 625.1 B.
(7) https://appropriations.house.gov/news/press-releases/house-approves-fiscal-year-2014-
consolidated-appropriations-package
(8) 12/21/2013 The Economist p.82
(9) The GDP figure used was the average annualized figures for the first three quarters of 2013
from the Federal Reserve’s 12/09/2013 Z-1 release at http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/
(10) 12/08/2013 SDUT p. A32 New US Bombers by Tony Capaccio with Bloomberg. One hundred of the Air Force’s new long-range strike bombers are projected, by three defense analysts, to cost 81 B or 810 M per plane.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-06/u-s-bombers-seen-costing-81-billion-47-more-
(11) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/f-35-joint-strike-fighter-60-minutes/
(12) 1/18/2014 The Economist p.40
(13) 3/2013 American Rifleman p.33
(14) 12/29/2013 SDUT article on new gun laws by Steven Greenhut p. A11
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Addendum: State and Local Corruption
2014 03 04
The essays above deal primarily with corruption at a national level, but it is at every level. I will address San Diego and California as indicative examples. Until 2011 California law allowed the formation of redevelopment agencies financed by increases in future property taxes. I submit these agencies were used overwhelmingly for plutocrat welfare. All new property taxes in a designated area like downtown San Diego went to its redevelopment agency. In the years before repeal of this welfare law, San Diego’s downtown agency had hundreds of millions to invest in redevelopment.
We had redevelopment and other public funds to invest in a baseball park we did not need and a high end, central library we did not need, but the city’s general fund could not afford to pay our pension costs, maintain our infrastructure in roads buildings and water system, or hire 500
needed firefighters. We could not meet minimum public needs.
Our investment in new structures reduced our capacity to maintain current structures leading to a need for new structures. Developer plutocrats flourished while San Diego declined into one of America’s worst cities.
The above-described redevelopment agency could lie with impunity. It claimed in 7/2009 that original plans for a new city hall would cost only 432 M. The cost was 520 M. There was no law enforcement or regulator response to this agency’s misrepresentation, though the new city hall was never built. This public agency continues to exist as Civic San Diego.
San Diego has been criminally negligent in not providing adequate fire protection. The City lost hundreds of homes in October wildfires, 321 destroyed and 70 damaged in 2003, 365 destroyed and 79 damaged in 2007 (Sources: City of SD After Action Reports). Interestingly, developers and the building industry made profits rebuilding those homes. So, while we cannot afford adequate fire protection because we are funding unnecessary redevelopment for developer profits, the resulting reduction in fire protection also results in developer profits. It is like Orwell’s 1984 but with wildfires replacing wars to create the destruction reconstruction destruction cycle in Big Brother’s utopian economy.
The City now plans to spend 520 M to expand our convention center while we cannot afford to maintain the current facility. The facility has over 25 million in deferred maintenance costs.
(Source:
https://apps.sandiego.gov/directories/iba/pdf/reports/2013/13_31attachment1_130725.pdf ) Community planning is a vicious circle of exceptions. A developer identifies a community need and promises to fill that need in exchange for a variance such as higher density in a planned development which creates another need, a need which is then filled by the next developer.
Poway Unified school district, which services my portion of San Diego, borrowed 124.6 M in 7/2011 on construction bonds for which it will pay back 981 M. The bond exceeded its legal lending limit of 105 M and pays 5.9% effective interest well over the then market rate of less 82
than 3.75%. These are capital appreciation bonds so we will be paying excessively high interest for an excessively long period. This may not directly involve developers but at least a small portion 124.6 M will benefit developers’ allies in the building industry. The biggest ill-gotten benefit will go to the special bond holders who hold these special bonds. It is certainly another example of corruption to which, again, there has been no law enforcement or regulator response.
The fact that California’s redevelopment law was repealed gives me hope, but our developer plutocrats continue to push for new redevelopment legislation such as CA Senate Bill 1 –
Sustainable Communities Investment Authority. This bill allows a local government to establish an Authority and direct tax increment revenues to that Authority to address blight by supporting development in transit priority project areas, small walk able communities, and clean energy manufacturing sites.
9/12/13
placed on inactive status
9/9/13
Senate concurred with Assembly amendments
9/9/13
passed Assembly version 48 to 28
5/28/13
passed Senate version 27 to 11, 1 abstention
The 2014 California Jobs and Education Development Initiative Act (Jedi Act) was another threat of future corruption.
7 Addendum – Proper Gun Control
Know your weapon. Dry fire (snapping in) Practice Visualize every possible situation.
Practice to develop the muscle memory needed to take you through any situation.
Use the meaty part of the tip of your finger on the trigger.
Use a sling on a rifle.
When shooting a rifle, support your weapon with your bones not your muscles.
Attain a natural point of aim. Do not force yourself into a position. If you are in a natural point of aim, you will return to the same position after firing a round. (You will then be able to instantly continue firing at your target. This assumes you are using a semi auto weapon.) Site picture – concentrate/ focus on the front sight blade. The front sight should be crystal clear. Place the tip of your front site on the center of your target. The target should be out of focus. If you concentrate on the front sight, your rear sight will fall into place.
Do not anticipate your shots. You should not know when your weapon fires.
Remember your BRASS:
Breathe – Do not hold your breath. Exhale.
Relax
Aim – focus on the front site.
Slack – take up the slack in the trigger.
Squeeze – Do not jerk. Do not anticipate your shots.
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2014 03 04
Re-edited
Kennedy was working to get us out of Vietnam. Through the 10/11/1963 NSAM 263, he (Kennedy) approved plans to remove 1,000 advisors from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and most of the 16,000+ advisors by the end of 1965.
Source:
http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM263.html www.jfklancerpublications.com and “JFK and the Unspeakable” by James Douglass. NSAM – National Security Action Memo
3,500 advisors were projected to still be in Vietnam through 1966 with lesser numbers in following years.
Kennedy had begun his withdrawal. Most of the 1,000 advisors were withdrawn. The high of about 16,742 advisors in October was reduced to about 15,894 by the end of December.
CINCPAC even completed a somewhat more accelerated withdrawal plan on 12/05/1963.
Source:
https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/research/pentagon-papers/Pentagon-Papers-
See pdf pages 47 and 50 of 65, pages 27 and 30 of the original document.
It has been claimed Kennedy only threatened advisor withdrawals to pressure the Diem regime and its successor regime. Immediately after the Diem coup, America restored its Vietnamese aid programs – economic aid, the Commercial Import Program, and various capital work projects, yet advisor withdrawals continued. After Kennedy’s assassination in NSAM 273 dated 11/26/1963, President Johnson reaffirmed, “The objective of the US with respect to the withdrawal of US Personnel remains as stated in the White House statement of 10/02/1963.”
The 10/02/63 White House WH statement stated, “3. Major U. S. assistance in support of this military effort is needed only until the insurgency has been suppressed or until the national security forces of the Government of South Viet-Nam are capable of suppressing it. Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgment that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965, although there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S. training personnel. They reported that by the end of this year, the US
program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where 1,000 US military personnel assigned to South Vietnam can be withdrawn.”
Sources:
NSAM 273 - https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/nsf-nsam273
10/02/1963 WH Memo –
https://nara-media-001.s3.amazonaws.com/arcmedia/research/pentagon-papers/Pentagon-Papers-
See pdf pages 42-43
Pages 22-23 of the original document in which the WH memo was copied.
Withdrawals were real and Kennedy Policy. They were not simply threats to pressure the governments of Vietnam. Kennedy had planned, delayed, re-planned, and finally began a withdrawal which I believe was a primary reason for his assassination.
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Primary Source:
https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/
All 47/48 volumes 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers were declassified and published by the National Archives on 6/13/2011. 34% was new material. Note - nothing cited above was new material, but it was presented in a more organized, complete, and clear form.
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2011 05 06
I submit America is now a corrupt principality with the mere veneer of a Republic ruled by warlord princes. We mere plebes are allowed our freedom and have influence, but we do not control our country. Machiavelli, contrary to his reputation, supported good government and preferred Republics over Principalities. He would not be pleased with the current state of America. Read his thoughts on corruption below. Five hundred years ago he wrote in these words an apt description of America today.
The most significant corruption in America is our willfully ignorant cowardice. We are unwilling to face some awful truths.
The Discourses by Niccolo Machiavelli
First Book, Chapter 18 – How in a corrupt state a free government may be maintained, assuming that one exists there already; and how it could be introduced if none had previously existed.
Upon this subject I must say that either one of them would be exceedingly difficult.
…good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people. Besides, the constitution and laws established in a republic at its very origin, when men were still pure, no longer suit when men have become corrupt and bad.
…And the truth that the original institutions (constitution) were no longer suitable to a corrupt state is clearly seen in these two main points, - the creation of the magistrates, and the forms used in making laws.
As regards the first… (Roman) security and the weakness of conquered nations caused the Roman people no longer to bestow the consulate/(magistrate) according to the merits of the candidates, but according to favor…After that they descended from those who were most favored to such as had (the) most wealth and power, so that the really meritorious became wholly excluded from that dignity.
…Now as to the mode of making laws. At first …any citizen had the right to propose any law, and every citizen could speak in favor or against it before its final adoption. This system was good as long as the citizens were uncorrupted. … (then) people having heard both sides may decide in favor of the best. But when the citizens had become corrupt, this system became the worst possible, for then only the powerful proposed laws, not for the common good and the liberty of all, but for the increase of their own power, and fear restrained all the others from speaking against such laws; and thus, the people were by force and fraud made to resolve upon their own ruin.
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It was necessary, therefore, if Rome wished to preserve her liberty in the midst of this corruption that she should have modified her constitution… as the constitution of a state, when once it has been discovered to be no longer suitable, should be amended, either all at once or by degrees as each defect becomes known, I say that both these courses are equally impossible…
For a gradual modification requires to be the work of some wise man… but it is very likely that such a man may never rise up in the state, and even if he did he will hardly be able to persuade the others to what he proposes for men accustomed to live after one fashion do not like to change, and the less so as they do not see the evil staring them in the face, but presented to them as a mere conjecture.
As to reforming these institutions all at once, when their defects have become manifest to everybody, that also is difficult; for to do this ordinary means will not suffice; they may even be injurious under such circumstances, and therefore it becomes necessary to resort to extraordinary measures, such as violence and arms, and above all things to make one’s self absolute master of the state, so as to be able to dispose of it at will. And as the reformation of the political condition of a state presupposes a good man … the making of himself prince of a republic by violence naturally presupposes a bad one…
From these combined causes arises the difficulty or impossibility of maintaining liberty in a republic that has become corrupt…
First Book, Chapter 33 – When an evil has sprung up within a state,
or come upon from without, it is safer to temporize with it rather than to attack it violently
…And such evils arise more frequently in a republic from intrinsic than extrinsic causes, as it often occurs that a citizen is allowed to acquire more authority than is proper; or that changes are permitted in a law which is the very nerve and life of liberty, and then they let this evil go so far that it becomes more hazardous to correct it than to allow it to run on.
Source: The Prince and the Discourses published by Modern Library College Editions 87
9.1 Solutions – Pivot to Diplomacy
2014 11 15
Most all the world’s problems do not have military solutions.
Establish American ideals as the foundation of American foreign policy in the following order of importance: Truth, justice, self-determination, majority rule with minority rights, and peace.
Recognize we have been a primary cause of the current chaos in the Middle East. See references to the Pentagon’s 2001 Middle East war plans at: Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8 10/3/2007 Commonwealth Club/
https://www.youtube.com/foratv , and (1)
Support Plebiscites to determine who should rule where. Demand UN supervised plebiscites in Eastern Ukraine and Kashmir. Recognize past plebiscites in South Ossetia and the Crimea.
Talk with everybody about everything. We must negotiate with terrorists, though we should not allow a terrorist act to force us to take or not to take an action.
Subordinate ourselves to the rule of law in general and specifically the International Criminal Court ICC and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea UNCLOS. We have not ratified either statute. If we had been subject to the ICC, President Bush and Vice President Cheney may have been deterred from attacking Iraq, and how can we ask China to follow UNCLOS
while we refuse to recognize this Convention?
All foreign military aid should be reduced over the next five years to nearly nothing.
Islamic State IS
Support IS containment then Stop
/ No rollbacks
/ No long war
The goal should be to contain not to destroy IS. Stop their expansion out of Sunni Arab areas then Stop. Do not make war on the IS. We can offer no viable alternative. We took out oppressive leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya and then allowed them to be replaced by continuing war, chaos, and corruption. Stop
Just over one year ago we were going to fight with ISIL against Syria’s Assad. I believe we balked at allying ourselves with such extremists, and they are extremists. Even al Qaeda has labeled them overly brutal. But, while they have executed thousands, Assad has targeted and killed tens of thousands of civilians (2). As extreme as they are, they are not as extreme as Assad. We should not be taking on the IS, freeing Assad to concentrate on more moderate groups (3).
Most of Syria’s oil fields are in Eastern Syria. I submit one primary reason we are attacking the IS and not Assad is that the IS now controls those fields.
There is no moderate Syrian force capable of pushing both the IS and Assad out of Syria. The Free Syrian Army FSA is not a viable force. The Syrian National Coalition, the political arm of the FSA, has almost no support in Syria. In October 2013 dozens of rebel groups broke with this coalition (4). The addition of 5,000 well trained fighters to the FSA will not likely be the seed of a future, effective force.
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If we limited ourselves to the containment of the IS in Sunni Arab areas, only engaged them to check their expansion into areas unfriendly to them, and left them in peace otherwise, they might be willing to accept these limits and minimize acts of terror against us. We could then allow the IS and Assad to expend themselves on each other.
Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria must bear the primary responsibility for determining how they are to be governed in Sunni Arab areas. The IS in their areas is their responsibility.
Iraq
Iraq’s Sunni Arabs have not been allowed an effective voice in Baghdad for over a decade.
According to former Marine Josh Rushing with Al Jazeera most of the IS fighters in Iraq are local Sunni Arabs (5). Iraqi Sunnis must determine if they want to be a part of a reformed Iraq, the IS, or something else. The fate of Western Iraq belongs to these Sunnis not to Iraqi Shiites, not to Iraqi Kurds, and certainly not to Americans.
As President Johnson said/inferred in his 1964 campaign, we should not send American boys to fight a war Asian boys should fight. Replace Asian with Vietnamese, Kuwaiti, Afghani, or Iraqi and the statement is still true. Stop
America should not deploy any major, ground combat units.
Syria
Syria’s Sunni Arabs must determine if they want to be a part of Syria, the IS, or something else.
President Obama has been criticized for not bombing Syria after the Assad government breached his red line on the use of chemical weapons and for not earlier arming moderate Syrian rebels.
Obama established his red line in August 2012. In fact, most all of Syria’s chemical weapons were eliminated without American bombing. And, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia began training and arming Syrian rebels in Istanbul in 2012. Unfortunately, much of that effort eventually aided the IS. Obama was correct in refusing to do “stupid stuff” though the US, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan began a different program to train and arm moderate rebels in 2013. (6) Note - We trained and armed the Iraqi army yet an IS force of 1,000 was able to overwhelm an Iraqi army force of 30,000 and take Mosul, Iraq (7). If there is no political solution, there will be no lasting military solution in Iraq or Syria. Further, our defense industries were paid to arm Iraq with weapons that now arm IS and will likely be paid to rearm Iraq. The world may be in chaos, but there is one constant - war profits.
Al Qaeda
Talk
They were our allies in 1980s Afghanistan and recently against the IS. The al Nusra Front is al Qaeda’s primary affiliate in Syria. Al Qaeda and al Nusra broke with the IS in June 2013. On 02/23/2014 the IS assassinated Abu Khaled al-Suri, al Qaeda’s primary representative in Syria.
Recognize al Qaeda is more a multi-national militia than a terrorist organization with most of its members militiamen not terrorists. They do not have to be our enemy on this front.
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The Khorasan Group – I believe this fiction was created as an excuse to attack the al Nusra Front. Our war plutocrats do not want to be allied with al Qaeda against the IS and hope to bomb them all into reconciliation.
“Within the (al Qaeda) organization members refer to the central command as Khorasan…”
(Source: Anatomy of Terror by Ali Soufan (Former FBI Interrogator) p.182) Ahrar al Sham
We bombed its Bab al Hawa, Syria headquarters on 11/06/2014. It is part of the “Islamic Front”
coalition, supports theocracy over democracy in Syria, but does not fight for global Jihad. It is not affiliated with al Qaeda though some of its leadership have had ties to al Qaeda. It has cooperated with the al Nusra Front as have more moderate Syrian groups.
On 9/9/2014 its then leader Hassan Abboud and 27 others in the group’s leadership were killed in a suicide bombing by the IS. In an interview with the BBC last June, Abboud condemned the Islamic State: "Isis does not reflect Islam in any way. Islam is a religion of peace. It is not a religion of slaughter. Isis represents the worst image ever of Islam." Abboud said his group wanted a Syria in which women were able to drive and Christians, and even Assad's Alawite sect, would be safe from harm. Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27687018
Ahrar al Sham is not on the US list of terrorist organizations (8). It appears the current plan is to kill everybody and let God sort them out. Except Assad (9)
Turkey
Turkey must recognize it is a pluralist state with a Turkish majority and an18% Kurdish minority. These Kurds are not ethnic Turks, but they are Turkish nationals. Turkey has good relations with Kurdish Iraqis, and there is no reason it could not also have good relations with Kurdish Syrians and, most important, Kurdish Turks. Turkey needs to support Kurdish Turks’
language, culture, values, and loyalty to the Kurds of other nations - value and help all the people of Kurdistan. Whether or not there is ever a state of Kurdistan, all Kurdish people should come to value their ethnic Turk neighbors. The Ottomans, with exceptions, respected multiple cultures within their domain. Their descendants need to do the same.
Kurdish Syria’s democratic workers party PYD is closely tied to Kurdish Turkey’s PKK, and the PYD’s armed wing is now defending Kobani. These ties to the PKK are one reason Turkey has been slow to aid Kobani, but if Kobani is allowed to fall to the IS, current peace talks between Turkey and the PKK could end.
Gulf Monarchies
Demand they end their governments’ and citizens’ support for the military wings of terrorist organizations including the Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas, Taliban, etc. They must end all contributions to terrorists. Establish, if necessary, sanctions on the flow of Gulf oil until they end the flow of funds to terrorists.
Israel/ Palestine
End our support for greater Israel Zionists, for the blockade of Gaza, and for the occupation of the West Bank.
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Condemn Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza civilians. Demand Israel produce the Intel on all 17,000+ civilian homes which they believe made those homes legitimate military targets. They were not.
Cease all military aid gradually over five years or abruptly if Israel refuses to leave the West Bank by 11/01/2016.
Recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland and a pluralist state with a majority Jewish population and a 20% minority Palestinian, primarily Muslim population.
Recognize the State of Palestine. Support Palestine’s full membership in the UN.
Talk with Hamas. Condemn Hamas as collaborators with unending terror rationalizing unending occupation and blockade, rationalizing unending terror, rationalizing unending occupation and blockade... Demand Hamas commit to and forever stop indiscriminate shelling/ bombing.
Iran
Establish relations with a new embassy in Iran. Formally apologize for our actions in 1953
and our support for Saddam Hussein in the Iraq Iran war.
Unilaterally eliminate an American military option in pursuit of a nuclear free Iran.
Support her right to unlimited centrifuges under intrusive supervision by the IAEA.
India
Demand a plebiscite in Kashmir. India cannot claim to be a democracy if she will not allow self-determination in Kashmir.
Pakistan
Demand it end its military support for the Afghan Taliban and Kashmiri terrorists.
Cease all military aid gradually over five years or abruptly if Pakistan continues to support these groups.
Afghanistan
We would stop losing wars if we only fought just wars.
Russia
Our leadership vilifies Putin with extreme hypocrisy. They still condemn Russia’s invasion of Georgia but always fail to mention that Georgia first invaded South Ossetia (See Addendum).
Georgia was the aggressor just as America was the aggressor in the Iraq war. Last March Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov claimed the Ukraine could not function as a unified state and should federalize. Secretary of State Kerry responded about federalization, “It is up to the Ukrainians” (unless of course they are Crimean). We refused to recognize Crimea’s referendum.
Diplomacy requires us to see the other’s point of view. I submit the following combined to threaten the future of Russia and its Black Sea fleet:
NATO had moved ever eastward. Pro West Ukrainians had pursued ties and a future membership with NATO.
The West trained and armed Georgia before Georgia invaded South Ossetia in August 2008.
In September 2008 Ukraine’s pro West, then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko ruled out Russiàs Black Sea fleet staying in the Ukraine after its lease ends in 2017 (10a).
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In April 2010 under pro Russia President Yanukovych, Russia’s naval base leases were extended after encountering stiff opposition in Ukraine’s parliament and passing by only 52%. (10b)
Ukraine’s pro Russia government was replaced by a pro West government without a popular vote. On 2/22/2014 328 members of Ukraine’s Parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych. (11)
It was not unreasonable for Putin to be concerned and to take actions to reduce future threats. I concur a Crimean referendum should have preceded any Russian military action. But, I also believe Putin would not have annexed the Crimea if its plebiscite had not supported Russian annexation. He will not annex Donetsk and Luhansk unless most of their citizens support Russian annexation.
NATO Expansion - The inclusion of former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet Republics in NATO will not make Europe safer. I submit a primary reason for their inclusion is to create profits for Western defense industries from retooling Eastern Europe’s militaries. It is about money not security.
Eastern Ukraine Plebiscites
Russian and Ukrainian forces could work together in Eastern Ukraine to maintain order during a UN plebiscite. All sides could make it clear they will comply with the results of this plebiscite.
I suspect Donetsk and Luhansk would vote to be autonomous republics but within Ukraine, not in the Russian Federation given most of their people, though Russian speaking, identify as Ukrainian (12). The plebiscites should be UN supervised to ensure all citizens’ freedom to choose, ensure fairness, and to be acceptable to both the Ukraine and Russia.
I believe the Crimean plebiscite was legitimate given most of its people are Russian speaking and identify as Russians. If there are legitimate questions as to its legitimacy, another UN
supervised plebiscite could be held. The same could be done in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
I submit if 1938 Sudetenland had been allowed a plebiscite, it would have voted to join Germany. After the annexation, Sudetenland had one of the highest concentrations of Nazi party members in Germany (13). No democratic state could have legitimately condemned such a union though some equitable adjustments may have been necessary to compensate Czechoslovakia for its prior investments in Sudetenland. I submit the Munich Agreement with equitable adjustments would have been acceptable, and diplomacy is most always preferable to war. What was not acceptable was Hitler’s invasion of the rest of the Czech Republic six months later. WWII in Europe began with this invasion on the Ides of March 15th 1939, not on September 1st 1939.
Putin is not Hitler, and we need Russia as an ally to check China’s aggression.
China
Communist China has shown its belligerence from the invasion of Tibet in 1950 to its current claim over 90% of the South China Sea. It is absurd that China has territorial disputes and/or 92
exclusive economic zone EEZ conflicts with Brunei, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Shouldn’t China first conquer Vietnam and the Philippines?
Talk, support the rule of law, and play a major diplomatic role.
Support a military option to help Asian countries check China’s military expansion though the primary responsibility remains with these countries. I submit any military actions should be multilateral with the US in a minor supporting role. Do not send American boys to fight a war, Asian boys should fight.
Our war plutocrats
Demand our Congressmen end their collaboration with these plutocrats.
We may be corrupt beyond nonviolent redemption. Support a military option against these plutocrats.
It is not ok to kill hundreds of thousands of foreigners to protect a few thousand Americans from terrorists created by our killing hundreds of thousands of foreigners. Stop
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(1) The Pentagon’s 2001 Middle East war plans
Retired General Wesley Clark states there was an American foreign policy coup in 2001 calling for military campaigns against seven countries in the Middle East. He thought it may have been to enhance American control in the area. Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8 10/3/2007 Commonwealth Club/
https://www.youtube.com/foratv
Winning Modern Wars by Wesley Clark (New York: Public Affairs, 2003), 130. In this book Clark describes his conversation with a military officer in the Pentagon shortly after 9/11
regarding a plan to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in five years: "As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran."
(2) I define “targeting” to include area bombing/ shelling where most of the casualties were civilians. Sources:
09/27/2014 The Economist p.25 stated there had been 200,000 total deaths and 9.5M refugees in the Syrian civil war. “One Syrian NGO reckons IS has killed 830 Syrian civilians, compared with the regime’s 125,000.” (I suspect the NGO here is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights SOHR and the 125,000 includes the deaths of Syrian rebel forces. The Observatory’s 4/2014 report included those forces in their civilian death count. See below for corrected figures.
I still join with the Observatory to conclude Assad remains the greater evil with his use of area bombing/ shelling, chemical weapons, barrel bombs, and torture to create a much higher civilian body count than the IS.)
http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/04/16/most-reported-deaths-in-syria-have-not-been-committed-by-
150,344 total casualties including 24,274 Syrian rebel forces’ deaths and 51,212 civilian deaths 34.1% reported by the SOHR.
06/27/2013 San Diego Union p. A8 “Congress balks at lethal aid to Rebels” from the AP. The SOHR reported most of the 100,191 killed in Syria were combatants. 36,661 were civilians.
(3) http://www.voanews.com/content/syrian-regime-increases-airstrikes-in-rebel-
10/31/2014 Voice of America VOA
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday that Assad seems to be taking advantage of the American-led airstrikes against the Islamic State group, using the coalition’s air offensive as an opportunity to increase his own air assaults on opponents.
Abu Muhammad, a moderate Islamist insurgent commander, told VOA the Syrian president realigned his forces once the coalition airstrikes began — shifting some troops from eastern Syria to reinforce his offensive against moderate and Islamist rebels in the key city of Aleppo, and to strengthen his defense of the town of Idlib, to the west.
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In an assessment last week for a Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, security analyst Anthony Cordesman warned: “The Assad forces are using the U.S. and allied campaign against the Islamic State to make a massive step-up in air attacks on other rebels.”
(4) 10/17/2013 San Diego Union p. A9 “Rebels break from Syrian Opposition” from the AP
(5) https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/09/19/reporter-trip-rushing
(6) 10/04/2014 San Diego Union p. B8, “Syria’s Proxy War” by David Ignatius from the Washington Post
(7) 06/21/2014 The Economist p.47 “Why Iraq’s army crumbled”
(8) 11/7/2014 San Diego Union p. A4 “US Airstrikes target al-Qaeda affiliate (al Nusra) in Syria” from The Washington Post.
(9) 11/15/2014 The Economist p.50 The war in Syria - “America’s decision to hit jihadist groups other than IS has further splintered the fractious rebels. Some have defected to extremist groups… convinced that America’s coalition is in effect an ally of Mr. Assad’s. Revelations that President Barack Obama promised not to attack the Assad regime in a secret letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei… have deepened such Sunni fears.”
I could not confirm this promise from another source, but promise or not, the Coalition has not attacked Assad’s forces.
(10) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_Pact
(10a) with original source http://www.unian.net/eng/news/news-274818.html
(10b) with additional source - Parliamentary chaos as Ukraine ratifies fleet deal, World (UK:
BBC), 27 April 2010
(11) Pro Russia President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown because he is alleged to have ordered the 2/20/2014 Black Thursday shooting of sixty protesters at Maidan Square yet he has not been pursued by the international community for crimes against humanity.
Gennady Moskal, head of a Ukrainian parliamentary commission investigating the shootings, said the bullets found did not match firearms issued to the special anti-riot police unit Berkut which unlike most police units are allowed to carry lethal weapons. Mr. Moskal said there was no forensic evidence linking the mass killings in Kiev on 2/20/2014 to the Berkut.
Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet told the EU’s Catherine Ashton, “There is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers – it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition… they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” Police and protestors were killed “by the same kind of bullets.” Mr. Paet confirmed the accuracy of the 95
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/rbth/politics/10857920/ukraine-murder-
See additional and some conflicting information at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan#Investigation_into_shooters.2Fsnipers
Nine Berkut unit officers were arrested, and the unit disbanded though additional special police and/or military units were alleged to be involved - units such as the SBU’s Alpha Unit and the Russian FSB. Why would pro government forces shoot their own police? If it was to provoke a crackdown, why lose sympathy by killing so many protesters? Why hasn’t Yanukovych been indicted?
(12) Polls suggest 2/3rds of people in the south and east want to stay part of Ukraine and not be annexed by Russia per 04/26/2014 The Economist p. 50. See the Public opinion section of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbass_status_referendums,_2014#Question
Referendums were held in rebel areas of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts on 05/11/2014 where voters are alleged to have overwhelmingly approved declarations of independence for the two republics.
(13) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudetenland#Sudetenland_as_part_of_Nazi_Germany with original source Zimmermann, Volker: Die Sudetendeutschen im NS-Staat. Politik und Stimmung der Bevölkerung im Reichsgau Sudetenland (1938-1945). Essen 1999. (ISBN 3-88474-770-3)
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/ Plebiscites
/ Secession
Sack the Sacks: Saakashvili and Bush
2008 08 23
We need to terminate the presidencies of aggressors such as Georgian President Saakashvili and President Bush.
On August 7th Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (aka Sackash*ti) said he planned to offer South Ossetia “unlimited autonomy” within the Georgian state, with Russia to be a guarantor of the arrangement. Both sides said they were in discussions. Later in the day, however, the Saak ordered a massive artillery attack on Tskhinvali followed the next day by a ground assault. (1) Zbigniew Brzezinski postulates that “Moscow was waiting for such an act to provide a pretext for the use of force.” (2) Even if this were true, the Saak did not have to provide the pretext. I suspect there has been manipulation on all sides. Given the close relationship between America and Georgia, I see the possibility the Administration was fully aware of and fully supported Saak’s plans. The Administration claims to have been blindsided but instead of criticizing Saak’s brash actions, they were instantly gushing with support.
Mr. Bush (our sack) continually emphasizes that Saak was democratically elected and paints Georgia as the offended party. Saak was the aggressor and should be condemned as such. Bush does not recognize this aggression just as he does not recognize his own aggression in Iraq.
Why do Bush and Saak recognize Georgian democracy and not South Ossetia’s democracy?
South Ossetia has been a de-facto independent, autonomous region for sixteen years. In a 2006
referendum South Ossetians voted overwhelmingly for independence (3). Russia, of course, suffers similar hypocrisy in recognizing the right of secession in Abkhazia and South Ossetia but not in Kosovo and Chechnya.
How are South Ossetia and Russia to deter future aggression if not by punitive strikes? I would prefer they struck only military targets, but they are within their rights to punish Georgia.
Georgia, as an aggressor nation, should not be allowed to join NATO. If our sack unilaterally attacks Iran, America should be thrown out of NATO. Democracy is not always synonymous with truth and justice; there are just too many sacks in the world.
Sources:
(1) 8/15/2008 San Diego Union Tribune p. B7, “Leaders Err on Ossetia and Georgia” by Thomas de Waal with the Institute of War and Peace.
(2) 8/14/2008 Time.com “Staring Down the Russians” by Zbigniew Brzezinski.
(3) 8/12/2008 Christian Science Monitor “Roots of Georgia-Russia clash run deep” by Fred Weird, Paul Rimple, and John Wendle.
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An independent inquiry ordered by the EU concluded Georgia violated international law and triggered last year’s war with Russia by attacking South Ossetia. The report also found that Russia’s invasion of Georgia after the attack was illegal and unjustified, and that Ossetian militias conducted ethnic cleansing of Georgian villages. (1)
I supported Russia’s punitive military actions against Georgia proper as I saw them deterring future aggression. It appears, contrary to the EU inquiry, Russia did not go far enough. Until the recent intervention by the Russian coast guard, US supplied, Georgian gun boats had been blockading Abkhazian ports (2).
My opponents refused to call Georgia’s actions aggression because they interpreted the breakaway republics as the sovereign territory of Georgia disregarding the years of their independence and the wishes of their people. My opponents cannot claim to support self-determination and democracy and still stand in support of forced union and stand against the right of secession.
After 144 years, Americans still have not learned the lessons of our civil war. 300,000
Confederate soldiers apparently died for nothing. It is true, they died in defense of slavery their unjust cause, but they also died in defense of the right of secession their just cause. I support the Confederate battle flag as our strongest American symbol of this right. I will only display it, however, in the presence of the black liberation flag or in the colors of the black liberation flag.
Those two flags represent the just causes of the civil war, the causes that made the civil war the tragedy it was. A greater tragedy, however, is that half of today’s Americans are mired in cowardice and willful ignorance, unwilling to discern the truth.
Sources:
(1) 10/1/2009 San Diego Union Tribune p. A8 “Georgia, Russia faulted in war report”
(2) 10/5/2009 Newsweek p.10 “Russia is spoiling for another fight” by Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova
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9.2 Solutions – IRV Majority Rule Democracy 2003
2003 08 04
Free America with IRV instant runoff voting.
America is not a democracy in that we do not have majority rule. Americans who vote for third parties, or even third candidates, are disenfranchised. Our national leaders may be elected by mere pluralities (1) in both primary and general elections, resulting in compounded injustice.
Plurality rule is the basis for the two-party system where third parties and third candidates have almost no chance. Our choices are fundamentally limited. We cannot vote for our best choice without throwing away our vote unless our candidate is one of the two frontrunners in one of the two main parties.
The two-party system facilitates corruption. Special interests need only contribute to the campaigns of the two frontrunners to cover their bets. Further, I suspect money alone can create a frontrunner. Although campaign financing reform is necessary, it is not as fundamental as majority rule, and majority rule may preclude the need for those reforms that could overreach and threaten free speech.
I submit if we opened up the electoral process, more Americans would register and vote as they would know their votes count. Americans may be apathetic, but that is not the basic problem.
The basic problem is the limitations of plurality rule.
Only 51.3% of the voting age population voted in the last presidential election. Gore won the popular vote with a plurality of 48.4% against Bush with 47.9% and Nader with 2.7%. Bush won the electoral vote by only 5 votes, receiving 271 against Gore’s 266. If we had runoff elections, most all of Nader’s supporters would have voted for Gore giving him a clear majority and almost certainly the presidency even with the electoral college. (2)
Americans need real political power to effect change. Even mass movements are marginalized in a corrupt system. Majority rule is not a cure-all, but it is a major step in the right direction.
By simply providing run-off elections we can create majority rule, create a multi-party system, enfranchise third party voters, and enfranchise third candidate voters.
It appears we can implement majority rule with changes in state and/or federal law. We do not need to amend the Constitution. Under the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures have the primary responsibility to set the manner of holding both presidential and congressional elections.
Alternately, Congress may alter the manner of holding congressional elections. (3) Fight for true democracy here in America. Add majority rule to your list of political causes.
Changing our voting process may be the only way to bring about many other political changes.
Instant runoff voting is already a plank in the Green party platform. Insist your party and your candidates support majority rule. In California, if our legislators won’t support majority rule, we may be able to use an initiative. Register and vote for majority rule.
2017 We need majority rule/ four round voting or ranked choice/ two round voting.
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Ranked choice voting is instant runoff voting and should be used in both primary and general elections. Parties should be able to vet their candidates in primaries before running them in general elections.
Majority rule/ four round voting would require runoffs in the primary and general elections.
Majority rule/ two round voting is even more restricted than plurality rule.
Majority rule/ four round voting would reduce extremism. Majority rule in primaries would require candidates to appeal to the majority of their party reducing extremism within a party.
Majority rule in generals would also reduce extremism as candidates must appeal to a majority of all voters.
If we required open primaries, all independent voters would be able to participate in the primaries. Voters should only be able to vote in one party primary for all offices which would minimize dishonest manipulation as they would lose the ability to vote for candidates in other parties.
Sources and Footnotes:
(1)
Plurality (from Webster’s 9th new collegiate dictionary definition 3c) - a number of votes cast for a candidate in a contest of more than two candidates that is greater than the number cast for any other candidate but not more than half the total votes cast.
(2)
Source - http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html
(3)
U.S. Constitution Article I Section 4 (1) [Control of congressional elections] - The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.
U.S. Constitution Article II Section 1 (2) [Appointment and qualifications of presidential electors] – Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors…
(4) See a tutorial on ranked choice voting at:
https://fairvote.org/our-reforms/ranked-choice-voting/
Strategies
Any change in the two-party system will be impossible without the acquiescence of one or both of the main parties. We must make changes from within these parties, recognizing these parties’
power structures have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. They will have to give lip service to this cause but will likely take little action, or worse, sabotage our efforts.
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The Democratic party could enhance its membership and power by enlisting third party members with promises to introduce legislation for instant runoff voting (IRV). The same can be said of individual democratic candidates. The party and Democratic candidates should support IRV as it will allow liberal, third-party members to vote in runoff elections for Democrats.
Third party members (TPM’s) could register as Democrats and vote in primaries for Democratic peace candidates that, at a minimum, support instant runoffs. In California, TPM’s need only register as independents to vote in the democratic primary. TPM’s could help make the Democratic party the peace party, or at least the Just-war party. Should a peace candidate not win the Democratic primary, TPM’s could still cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate.
A protest vote similar to the last presidential election would make it clear to the Democratic leadership; the party must change, support IRV, or it will continue to lose elections.
In the Democratic presidential primary, a candidate who receives less than 15% of the vote will be denied delegates. The number of delegates he would have received will be distributed proportionally among the remaining candidates including unjust war Democrats. Should your preferred candidate have less than 15% of the polls before the election, consider voting for your alternate. This system is archaic and undemocratic but until we change it, we must optimize the effectiveness of our votes with a full understanding of the system.
In state level voting, vote for Democrats who commit to introducing majority rule legislation, and do not vote for those who will not so commit.
A close partnership between Democrats and third parties would be mutually beneficial, and in fact, beneficial to the nation.
Recommendations for the Kucinich Campaign:
I recommend Kucinich commit to introducing federal legislation requiring all states use instant runoff voting (IRV) in congressional elections. Such support should win him the votes of third-party members and possibly third-party endorsements.
I think it is healthy for third parties to run candidates for President and to use those candidacies to sell their platforms, but ask those candidates to endorse Kucinich in the general elections in return for the commitment to IRV.
Questions and Issues:
We need constitutional lawyers to tell us exactly what state and federal laws must be changed.
We should work to change CA law about both state and federal elections
State legislatures are empowered under the U.S. Constitution to set the manner of federal elections. Would a CA IRV initiative be legal under the U.S. Constitution? Even if an initiative is not effective for federal elections, it can bring IRV to state elections. Why not begin a CA initiative process immediately?
The Green party already has an IRV plank. Would they be willing to lead the way with the help of different party members and the peace movement?
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2012 02 10+
We often criticize without offering solutions. The following is a summary of our significant problems, with an emphasis on our unjust wars, and a summary of actions which could help us solve these problems and reestablish American democracy.
The Problems:
Force recognition that our America is corrupt. Speak up.
Recognize the primary problem – Most Americans are willingly ignorant cowards unwilling to face awful truths. Leaven the truth with compassion for their pain but speak the truth
Force recognition of the Lies – the Tonkin Gulf incidents, 9/11, the war on terror, Iraq’s WMD, Iran’s nuclear threat, etc. Speak up.
Force recognition that America’s existential enemies are a segment of our plutocrats. They are the flesh and blood persons who own and control the artificial persons of corporate America. They are primarily domestic not foreign. Foreign terrorists pose no existential threat to America. Speak.
The Solutions:
Majority Rule democracy such as IRV instant runoff voting with multiple candidates and parties – End the too easily corrupted, two-party duopoly which results from our plurality rule system. In addition: Competitive political districts would motivate our representatives to listen to us. End gerrymandering. Voters’ political affiliation should not be considered.
As much as possible, all residents of a small city or a large neighborhood in a large city should share the same political districts in most levels of government. See Section 9.2.
Stop playing monopoly. Free competition capitalism should replace the current system of corrupt, monopoly capitalism. Competition will enable markets to self-regulate and thereby minimize the need for other, more intrusive regulation.
Re Regulation to reestablish honesty in our financial markets. This can only happen with reasonable government intervention. Reestablish Glass Steagall to end conflicts of interest.
Stand up to the corruption in our individual lives and workplaces.
Raise the minimum wage to between 40% and 45% of the national average hourly wage and thereby reduce the need for the social welfare safety net.
Raise taxes at all levels of government to, at least, meet minimal public needs including debt reduction. There is a place in our individual self-interests for the public good.
Join a militia. Rough justice may be the only justice available to us mere plebes and to citizens of other countries aggressor Americans may wish to attack. Next war, civil war.
If Americans are willing to allow our corruption to continue, so be it, unless that corruption leads to another unjust war. War in the nuclear age is potentially suicidal. Unjust war in any age is an abomination. Can we not now at least end America’s unjust wars?
This plan is not a mere fight for American ideals like truth, justice, freedom, and democracy.
This is a fight for the preservation of the species, the planet, and our humanity.
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Cali-fornication
The Problems – California and other states have created systems that make them ungovernable.
California’s initiative process has hamstrung our legislators. Most of our budget is now beyond legislative control. Term limits give us new blood but throw away experienced legislators.
Proposition 13 requires all state tax increases be passed by a 2/3rd vote of the legislature and most local tax increases be passed by a 2/3rd vote of the public. An amendment to the California constitution only requires a majority vote of the public. Redevelopment funds replaced much of normal capital budgets partly because they did not require public votes.
California’s chaos is so extreme as to make me think it is more due to intelligent design than to natural evolution. Things do not get this messed up by mere accident. All voters, including myself, must bear responsibility, but I submit our plutocrats with the abuse of their power bear extraordinary responsibility. This dysfunction has been to their benefit. Redevelopment funds became a source for their corporate welfare. Our plutocrats get their man in with a mere plurality of the vote in a gerrymandered district and then it takes a super majority of the legislature to increase their taxes, while the state goes straight to hell.
The Solutions – Californians should adopt the solutions noted above. Further: End term limits the loss of which can be offset by the enhanced power of voters in competitive districts with majority rule. Eliminate most all budget restrictions to allow the legislature to effectively govern us. Allow taxes to be increased by a simple majority of our legislators.
Conclusion
I believe it’s hopeless, but we’re not dead yet. Let’s work together to create an alternate ending.
The End of Volume I
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Supplement – Political Zionism
A Century of Racist, Zealot Dogma
2017 02 27
09/30/2016 Cover Letter
Ladies and Gentlemen:
The following is a rebuke of political Zionism - the movement to establish a Jewish nation/state of Israel. I submit Zionist leaders pushed America to war in WWI and in Iraq. I submit if we wish to end our perpetual war, we must end Israel’s undue influence on American politics beginning with a complete cessation of military aid.
I believe most Jews are political Zionists, and I understand their affinity for the state of Israel and the retention of Jerusalem as its capital. I am a mere Irish American and support a greater Ireland – the Unity of the island under the Republic of Ireland. There are, however, other positions I value more than Unity such as truth and justice, self-determination and democracy, majority rule with minority rights, and peace. I value all of these more than Unity and in the order they are listed. I ask Jews with a similar dream of a greater Israel to subordinate their dream to these other values. Support a future, greater Israel brought about by just means or not at all.
Excerpts of books and articles in the footnotes are an intricate part of this paper. Send me your thoughts and/or corrections to jfscanloniii@aol.com Subject: Zionism.
Note: I strongly recommend Mulhall’s book “America and the Founding of Israel.” Regardless of where you stand on this issue, this book will inform you.
Sincerely,
John F Scanlon
San Diego CA
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Political Zionism: A Century of Racist, Zealot Dogma
with aggression, conquest, ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and perpetual war.
Opinions/ Thoughts
I submit most Zionist leaders, from those who created modern Israel to their descendant Zionists who now control Israel, were/are ungodly men as evidenced by the means they have used to accomplish their ends. The Zionism of the last hundred years was/is not sanctioned by God.
The current government of Israel is not sanctioned by God. Greater Zionism, as it has been and is being implemented, is contrary to Jewish ethics, Christian ethics, and American ideals.
Zionism and Jewish immigration to Palestine began in the 19th century, but according to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy, by WWI (1914) the population of Palestine was 800,000
including just 60,000 Jews.
Balfour Declaration 11/2/1917 And the Palestine Mandate 9/29/1923
The British, in the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, had promised Ottoman Arabia to the Arabs in return for their military alliance in WWI. Yet in contravention of this commitment, they promised the French modern Syria and Lebanon, and promised the Zionists “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. The commitment to Zionists was not an empty promise as was the commitment to the Arabs. The Balfour Declaration was backed up by the creation of the British administered Mandatory Palestine sans Transjordan. Further, the administration of the Mandate was biased for Jews and against Arabs as shown in the “Palestine Papers” by Doreen Ingrams, and “Balfour and Palestine” by Anthony Nutting. (See footnotes below for WWI and the Interwar Years.)
The British would not have taken such significant actions for the benefit of Zionists without equally significant actions on the part of Zionists. I submit Zionist leaders promised to bring America into WWI, and their efforts were significant in making that happen. I submit the British believed this extreme statement, or they would not have taken the actions they took.
WWI - By the end of 1916, Britain and France had conquered all of Germany’s colonies except German East Africa, but the Western Front in Europe was at a stalemate after the catastrophic battles of Verdun and the Somme. On 12/12/1916, the Germans offered peace negotiations. On 12/18/1916, US President Wilson asked the belligerents to state their concrete war aims and the conditions they would require to make peace. Britain, through Prime Minister Lloyd George, demanded the full fruits of victory with “complete restitution, full reparation, and effectual guarantee (against repetition).” The British were not ready for peace as they had additional war aims.
The entry of the US into the war freed Britain to divert more resources to conquering the Ottoman Empire. Britain began her conquest of Palestine with the 3/26/1917 attack on Gaza just eleven days before the US declared war on Germany on 4/6/1917. I submit America entered the war not to fight for Wilson’s 14 Points and self-determination but to fight for the further expansions of the British and French empires.
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If Zionist leaders worked to bring America into the war, they helped extend the war with all its horrors by a year and half to advance their dogma.
The Palestine Mandate sans Transjordan closely fit the borders for a Palestine protectorate defined by the Zionist contingent at Versailles and Ezekiel chapter 47. The East bank of the Jordan, however, went to Transjordan. The remaining Mandate combined the Ottomans’
southern portion of the Beirut Vilayet, the southwestern portion of the Syria Vilayet, and the Jerusalem Governorate. I submit Zionists defined the borders of modern Palestine and created the modern, Palestinian Arab identity.
Interwar Years - I submit Germans joined the British in believing Zionists brought America into the war as evidenced by virulent anti-Semitism following the war. This perceived treachery would sow the seeds of destruction for 40% of the world’s Jews.
WWII – By December 1942 the Allies knew of the Nazi extermination plans, the death camps, and that two million Jews had already been killed. Yet they refused to undertake large scale rescue actions claiming such would hamper the war effort. Numerous reasons were given: There was nowhere to take them. There were not enough ships. They could be infiltrated and/or manipulated by Nazi spies. Hitler might actually comply with requests to free Jews burdening the allies with millions of refugees (as though this would be a bad thing). Note: America was not willing to rescue Jews but was willing and had the resources to provide transport, feed, clothe, and shelter nearly 425,000 German POWs inside the United States (Wyman p.338, NY
Times).
No large-scale rescue action took place. This position was ludicrous given Hitler’s willingness to continue the Final Solution even while he was losing the war.
It appears the Jewish Agency for Palestine colluded with the allies to do nothing. Nothing was done to take advantage of the 12/1942 Romanian proposal to free 72,000 Jews, or the 5/1944
Eichmann proposal to free one million Jews. (See footnotes below for WWII.)
Early in 1943 mainstream American Jewish organizations issued statements and held mass demonstrations in support of rescue action. They then effectively acquiesced to the Allies’
position. Though they continued to issue statements, they refused to aggressively lobby President Roosevelt and Congress for large scale rescue actions and the bombing of Holocaust infrastructure.
In 10/1943 the American Zionist Emergency Council AZEC successfully lobbied against the British 1939 White Paper (WP). On 11/10/1943 the British announced they would disregard the WP’s scheduled 3/31/1944 end of Jewish immigration to Palestine until the remaining 31,000
quota places had been filled. In the summer of 1944, Zionist leaders persuaded Republicans and Democrats alike to adopt platform planks calling for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine and the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth there. In the presidential campaign of 1944
both Roosevelt and Republican candidate Dewey pledged support for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. In 12/1945 both houses of Congress overwhelmingly passed the Palestine resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth. During the war American Jewish 106
organizations successfully lobbied for a Jewish commonwealth, but they made no such effort for large scale rescue. (Wyman, pages 172-174)
They did lobby against such efforts by the Bergson Group.
I submit Zionists wanted to use the Holocaust to create world opinion in favor of a Jewish state.
The Holocaust was the ultimate proof that Jews could not be assimilated and required a state of their own. I submit Zionist leaders were willing to sacrifice Europe’s unimportant Jews in pursuit of their dogma.
Exceptions - Revisionist Zionists Peter Bergson et al. lobbied the Roosevelt administration to rescue Europe’s Jews. The Bergson Group was marginally successful in spite of opposition by mainstream American Jewish organizations. The U.S. Labor Zionist movement, in August 1944, published an editorial calling for “Allied bombings of the death camps and the roads leading to them…” According to a report by the David S Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, this was the only time “an official organ of an American Jewish organization publicly calling for bombing the camps. ”
A related tangent - I submit the Allies did not bomb the death camps as the camps took attention away from our terror bombing of German and Japanese cities. Zyklon B took attention away from our preferred gas - gasoline based napalm. The Nazis mercifully killed their victims before burning their bodies in the ovens; we simply burned them alive.
See footnotes below for WWII.
American Zionists injured their own cause by not diligently pursuing the destruction of Holocaust infrastructure, the large-scale rescue of European Jews, and the immigration of European Jews everywhere, including but not limited to Palestine. Zionists would lose six million Jews and all their descendants as possible immigrants to Palestine.
1948 1967 - I submit, aside from lebensraum, another purpose for not allowing the return of Palestinians in 1948 and 1967 was to spur Arab countries to push their Jews out of their countries and thereby increase the Jewish population of Israel.
The 1982 Oded Yinon Plan called for Israel to pursue the balkanization of the Middle East. The plan may never have received official sanction, but it was/is being executed. Neo con Zionists implemented Paragraph 23 with the 2003 American invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Gaza War, Summer 2014 - 17,000 Palestinian homes were destroyed with 7,000 razed and 10,000 severely affected by bombing. An additional 79,000 homes were less damaged. (UN
estimates) The IDF dropped leaflets, knocked on the roofs, and took other extraordinary efforts to get civilians out of these homes before they were attacked. Those actions were commendable; however, the idea that most of the 17,000 homes were legitimate military targets is nonsense.
Perhaps thousands were legitimate targets. I cannot prove this statement, but I submit the IDF
will never share the Intel proving these homes were legitimate targets because no such evidence exists. By their own estimates the IDF killed 761 civilians, while Hamas terrorists only killed six 107
civilians. I submit this was another example of Israel’s collective punishment and disproportionate, extreme measures.
9/30/2016
I do support a Jewish home in Palestine, but I will no longer say I am a Zionist. I have not and do not recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist. Israelis have abrogated their right to self-determination by denying Palestinians their right to self-determination.
Zionist leaders sacrificed the world, including its Jews, in pursuit of their zealot dogma.
Next year, Justice in Jerusalem.
Al Adl/ Justice
Recommendations:
Greater Zionism v. Lesser Zionism
Lesser Zionism - Redefine Zionism/ Post-Zionism as a movement to maintain a Jewish cultural/spiritual home in a bi national, democratic state governed by majority rule with minority rights regardless of whether it has a Jewish or Arab majority.
Recognize Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
Recognize the State of Palestine.
Recognize Palestinian refugees of 1948 and 1967 and their descendants have a right of return and/or compensation.
Recognize the right of Palestine to defend itself.
Demand Hamas and Hezbollah cease their collaboration with greater Zionists in their terrorist targeting of civilians - target the IDF and armed settlers in the occupied territories, the IDF blockading the Gaza, greater Zionist political leaders, and Israel’s war plutocrats.
Give perpetual war to those most responsible for this perpetual war.
Cease all military aid to Israel. This aid supports far more than Israel’s defense; it supports her conquest of Palestine.
Recognize Israel as a Jewish cultural/spiritual home and a bi national state. Palestinians make up 25% of Israel proper and an overwhelming majority in the Occupied and Besieged Territories.
Demand all Arabs in Israeli controlled areas be given the right to vote in all levels of Israeli elections. Israeli controlled areas include the Besieged Territories. Citizens of the State of Palestine living in Israeli controlled areas would have dual citizenship as they would have voting rights in Israel for as long as they live in Israeli controlled areas.
108
Ernst, Morris L
So Far So Good
Published by Harper New York 1948
Hecht, Ben
Perfidy
Published by Julian Messner Inc. New York 1961
(Mr. Hecht bases much of this work on the Hebrew court records of the Kastner Trial.
Page numbers cited for this book are from an online version with rebuttals at:
http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres6/perfidy.pdf *) Alternate Source:
https://www.palestineremembered.com/images/Perfidy-Bey-Ben-Hetcht.pdf
Landman, Samuel M.A.
Great Britain, The Jews, and Palestine
Published in the New Zionist Press (London) March 1936.
See a transcript of this article at: http://desip.igc.org/1939sLandman.htm
Lilienthal, Alfred M.
What Price Israel
Published by Henry Regnery Company Chicago 1953
Medoff, Rafael
The Deafening Silence
Published by Shapolsky Publishers New York 1987
Mulhall, John W CSP
America and the Founding of Israel
Deshon Press, Los Angeles 1995 Paperback
Wyman, David S
Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945
Published by Pantheon Books New York 1984
Yale, William
The Near East: A Modern History
University of Michigan Press 1968 pages 266-270 This book was a part of the series: The University of Michigan History of the Modern World.
(Yale recognized a British Zionist agreement at the end of 1916, asserted James A Malcolm’s part in this endeavor, and cited Samuel Landman’s 1936 recognition of this agreement. This Academic’s recognition of these facts and sources gave them the credibility necessary for me to use them in this white paper.)
109
Sources and Footnotes with Excerpts
In Chronological Order - WWI, Interwar Years, and WWII including an Addendum –
The Hungarian Jews 1944
WWI
Great Britain, The Jews, and Palestine by Samuel Landman, M.A.
Published in the New Zionist Press (London) March 1936
See a transcript of this article at: http://desip.igc.org/1939sLandman.htm
Landman was the Secretary of the Joint Zionist Council of the UK in 1912, Joint Editor of the Zionist in 1913-1914. From 1917-1922 he was Solicitor and Secretary to the Zionist organization. He was Legal Adviser to the New Zionist Organization at this writing in 1936.
(Anti-Semitism in Germany and Poland created a great influx of Jews to Palestine with 134,000
emigrating from 1933-35. This influx created great difficulties for the British administration in Palestine. The purpose of Landman’s paper was to remind the British of their obligations under the 1916 “Gentleman’s” Agreement and the 1917 Balfour Declaration.)
Paragraph 5 - “Mr. James A. Malcolm… knew that Mr. Woodrow Wilson, for good and sufficient reasons, always attached the greatest possible importance to the advice of a very prominent Zionist (Mr. Justice Brandeis, of the U.S. Supreme Court); and was in close touch with Mr. Greenberg, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle (London);… and realized the depth and strength of Jewish national aspirations;…
spontaneously took the initiative, to convince first of all Sir Mark Sykes, Under Secretary of the War Cabinet, and afterwards Monsieur Georges Picot, of the French Embassy in London… that the best and perhaps only way (which proved to be true) to induce the American President to come into (the) war was to secure the co-operation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilize the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in favour of the Allies on a Quid pro quo contract basis. Thus, as will be seen, the Zionists, having carried out their part, and greatly helped to bring America in, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 was but the public confirmation of the necessarily secret
“gentleman’s” agreement of 1916…”
Paragraph 7 – “An interesting account of the negotiations carried on in London and Paris, and subsequent developments, has already appeared in the Jewish press and need not be repeated here in detail, except to recall that immediately after the “gentleman’s” agreement between Mark Sykes, authorized by the War Cabinet, and the Zionist leaders, …cable facilities were given to the latter to communicate the glad tidings to their friends and organizations in America and elsewhere, and the change in official and public opinion as reflected in the American press in favor of joining the Allies in the War, was as gratifying as it was rapid.”
Paragraph 9 – “…The fact that it was Jewish help that brought (the) U.S.A. into the War on the side of the Allies has rankled ever since in German – especially Nazi – minds, and has contributed in no small measure to the prominence which anti-Semitism occupies in the Nazi programme.” End
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In 1937 Lloyd George told the Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission:
“Zionist leaders gave us a definite promise that, if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause. They kept their word.”
Source: 1937 Palestine Royal (Peel) Commission Report page 17 as quoted in Mulhall p.62.
In July 1937 Churchill speaking of the Balfour Declaration in the House of Commons, said:
“It is a delusion to suppose this was a mere act of crusading enthusiasm or quixotic philanthropy.
On the contrary, it was a measure taken… in due need of the war with the object of promoting the general victory of the Allies, for which we expected and received valuable and important assistance.”
Source: Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, Vol. 326, col. 2330 as quoted in Lilienthal p.22.
Medoff p.82
…in the 1930s, the American Jewish Committee had refused to help sponsor a US speaking tour for Winston Churchill because, Morris Waldman wrote in his memoirs, “we feared that his appearance in the United States on such a mission” might be interpreted as part of some Jewish-British plot to involve the United States in the European mess.” (5)
These fears were still apparent in the 1940s. During his 1940 tour of the United States, Jabotinsky (leader of the Revisionist Zionists) reported to friends that “the Jews are still shy of saying any decisive word lest they be charged with warmongering…. I have never seen American Jewry so scared of local anti-Semites as they are now.” (6) Jabotinsky was not alone in this assessment. Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion, who visited the United States in October of that year, recalled a conversation he had with one Jewish leader:
He agreed with all I said, but argued that he could do nothing in public, since he might injure the Jews of America. I asked him “Which are you first, a Jew or an American? He replied, “…We are a minority here. If I stand up and demand American aid for Britain, people will say after the war the dirty Jews got us into it, that it was a Jewish war, that it was for their sakes that our sons died in battle.” This fear I found in almost all Zionist circles. (7) (5) Morris Waldman, Nor by Power (New York: International Universities Press, 1953), pages 67-68.
(6) Robert Silverberg, If I forget Thee O Jerusalem: American Jews and the State of Israel (New York: William Morrow, 1970), p.183
(7) Ibid, pages 184-185 End
(Thoughts: I submit these American Jews had good reason to be concerned given they knew of the Zionists’ part in getting America into WWI.)
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Balfour and Palestine: A legacy of deceit
By Sir Anthony Nutting
https://balfourproject.org/balfour-and-palestine/
(Anthony Nutting resigned from Anthony Eden’s cabinet when he found Eden was going into Suez (1956). Writing around 1975, he reflects on Doreen Ingram's book “The Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict”. The papers in this book made clear that during and after the First World War British Government ministers and officials had intentionally rather than accidentally laid the groundwork for a Jewish state in Palestine, while deliberately keeping this from the Arabs. With a brief glance at the history since, Nutting acknowledges the impossibility of undoing the harm done at the time, but emphasizes Britain’s responsibility to help resolve the modern situation.)
Excerpts with footnote numbers for position references:
One of the most shattering and shaming indictments of British Foreign policy ever framed has recently come to light in a collection of state documents compiled by Doreen Ingrams and entitled "Palestine Papers 1917-1922, Seeds of Conflict" (John Murray, 1972). As the Foreword very properly reminds us, 'the (Palestine) conflict began not in 1948 but in 1917' with the publication of the Balfour Declaration…
(10)… It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that Lord Curzon made no impression on Balfour when he warned him that Weizmann 'contemplates a Jewish state, a Jewish nation, a subordinate population of Arabs, etc. ruled by Jews; the Jews in possession of the fat of the land and directing the Administration', and that he was 'trying to effect this behind the screen and under the shelter of British trusteeship'.(11) Curzon's warning was ignored, as was also his protest that, on historical grounds, the British had 'a stronger claim to parts of France' than the Jews had to Palestine, considering that their connection with the land had 'terminated 1,200 years ago'.(12) Likewise, Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India and himself a Jew, was brushed aside when he argued that the system of Government under the British mandate discriminated against the Arabs in favour of the tiny Jewish minority. (13)
For, as is all too evident from the Cabinet documents of this period, the British Government never intended to allow the Arab majority any voice in shaping the future of their own country.
'The weak point of our position', Balfour wrote to Lloyd George in February 1919, 'is of course that in the case of Palestine we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principle of self-determination’. (14) If the existing population were consulted, he added, they would 'unquestionably' return an anti-Zionist verdict. And in reply to Curzon, Balfour stated quite categorically that 'in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country .... The Four Great Powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land’. (15)
(17) …The solemn promise of independence which was given by Sir Henry McMahon in 1915
when High Commissioner in Cairo and which secured the support of the Arab armies of Emir Feisal against the Turks in World War I was to be cynically ignored. So too was the Anglo-112
French declaration of November 1918, pledging that the Arabs in the territories to be liberated from Turkish rule would be free to choose their own form of government, which had been issued as a reassurance to those who feared that the Balfour Declaration would cancel out McMahon's undertaking…
(25) …No less determined than the Zionists' leader to deceive the Arab majority in Palestine, the Foreign Office said, in a telegram sent early in 1918 to Sir Reginald Wingate, the High Commissioner in Cairo, 'it is most important that everything should be done to allay Arab suspicions regarding the true aims of Zionism’. (26)
And when an Arab delegation visited London in August 1921 to seek assurances regarding their future, a senior Colonial Office official, Sir Hubert Young, still further spelled out to Ministers the deceptions which they were practising on the inhabitants of Palestine. In a memorandum for the Foreign Secretary he wrote that, although the general strategic idea was 'the gradual immigration of Jews into Palestine until that country becomes a predominantly Jewish State' , it was 'questionable whether we are in a position to tell the Arabs what our policy really means.’ (27)
And to the same Arab delegation Sir Herbert Samuel, as the High Commissioner in Palestine, was no less ready to dissemble than Weizmann had been in his encounters with Feisal. Having earlier proclaimed in a public speech that the British Government ‘has never consented and will never consent’ to the establishment of a Jewish Government… (28)
(32)… And the only result which (Foreign Secretary) Carson’s remonstrances obtained was the transfer of responsibility for Palestine affairs from the Foreign Office, over which he presided, to the Colonial Office, then under direction of Mr. Winston Churchill, an avowed supporter of the Zionist cause.
(35) …While the Arabs were denied any democratic system of representation; the Zionists were allowed to establish a Commission and later an Agency of their own in Palestine…
(37) …at the end of 1920 an Advisory Council (was established) of ten official and ten non-official members… the non-official members, with four Moslems, three Jews and three Christians making up the total of ten, put the Arab Moslems in a minority although they then numbered some 80 per cent of the total population…
(38)… Apart from this travesty of democracy, the Arabs, whether Moslem or Christian, were not allowed any representative institutions, although the Jewish minority had been permitted early in 1920 to hold elections for a Jewish Assembly to deal with matters affecting their community…
(39)… Any elected body of Arabs would, it was felt, 'undoubtedly prohibit further immigration of Jews' (40) and so 'bar the way to the execution of the Zionist programme’. (41) And as Churchill claimed in his statement to the House of Commons on Palestine policy on June 14, 1921, to stop future immigration would be to accept the proposition that 'the word of Britain no longer counts throughout the East and the Middle East'.
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(44)… So, the discriminations continued. Tens of thousands of Jews from Europe were allowed to migrate to Palestine and by the middle thirties the Jewish proportion of the population had risen from 8 to 30 per cent. More threatening still, large tracts of land were bought up by the Jewish Agency from Lebanese and Syrian landlords now living under French rule, who found it difficult and sometimes impossible to obtain the necessary passports and permits to visit their tenant farms. And as the land was parceled out among the new Jewish settlers, the former Arab tenants were evicted, sometimes with only a few pounds compensation, often with none.
Deprived of any constitutional means of appeal or protest, the Arabs in 1936 resorted to violence in an attempt to force their British rulers to honour their guarantees and to 'deal with them with equality'. But to no avail…
…The famous proposal in the White Paper of 1939 for the establishment, after a ten-year transition period, of an independent binational state in Palestine was still-born... End WWII
Fall/1941
Hitler’s headquarters orders the “physical annihilation” of the Jews.
01/20/1942
Wannsee Conference plans the “Final Solution.”
06/13/1942 New York Times p. 7
Nazis Blame Jews For Big Bombings
Propaganda Minister Goebbels said tonight that Germany would carry out a mass
“extermination” of Jews in reprisal for the Allied air bombings of German cities… (originally from a 6/12 German Broadcast recorded by the United Press in New York)
Dr. Goebbels said… Germany would repay “blow by blow” the air attacks on her cities. “This is a very expensive method but England wanted it and she will get it,” he continued. “Terror can be crushed only by terror…” The Propaganda Minister said that the “Jewish press” of London and New York had, with “bloodthirsty malice,” brought on the bombing of German cities. “The Jews are playing a frivolous game and they will pay for it with the extermination of their race in all Europe and perhaps beyond Europe.” (originally from an article in the publication “The Reich”)
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Rescuing European Jews –
Wyman, pages 82-83
The Romanian Proposal
…According to a representative of the Jewish Agency (for Palestine), a Dutch businessman, resident in Rumania, had called on him in Istanbul in early December (1942) carrying a proposal from Rumanian officials. They were ready to permit the departure of 72,000 Jews still alive in Transnistria and offered to provide ships to move them to Palestine or another Allied port. The Dutchman also stated the Catholic bishop of Bucharest was prepared to permit the use of the Vatican flag on the ships. End
(The NY Times reported this proposal on 2/13/1943. The Romanians had asked to be paid expenses of 20,000 Rumanian Lei ($130) per refugee along with additional funds should Romanian ships be utilized. The Jewish Agency had informed the British government of the proposal. More than two months passed before this proposal was made public. Why didn’t the Jewish Agency inform American Jewish organizations of this proposal? American Jewish organizations, with or without help from others, could have funded this venture.
I submit the Jewish Agency colluded with the British to do nothing. The Agency was more concerned with its relations with Britain and the future state of Israel than 72,000 Jews in Transnistria. The Agency showed the same skewed values in its handling of the 5/1944
Eichmann proposal. See the Addendum below.)
What Price Israel by Alfred M. Lilienthal pages 32-34 Immigration of War Refugees There were other lands, besides Palestine, to which the displaced persons (DPs) could have gone.
President Roosevelt was deeply concerned with the plight of the European refugees and thought that all the free nations of the world ought to accept a certain number of immigrants, irrespective of race, creed, color, or political belief. The President hoped the rescue of 500,000 DPs could be achieved by such a generous grant of a worldwide political asylum. In line with this humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney and close friend of the President, went to London in the middle of the war to see if the British would take in 100,000 to 200,000 uprooted people. The President had reasons to assume that Canada, Australia, and the South American countries would gladly open their doors. And if such good examples were set by other nations, Mr. Roosevelt felt that the American Congress could be “educated to go back to our traditional position of asylum.” The key was in London. Would Morris Ernst succeed there? Mr. Ernst came home to report and this is what took place in the White House (as related to a Cincinnati audience in 1950):
Ernst: “We are at home plate. That little island [and it was during the second Blitz that he visited England] on a properly representative program of a World Immigration Budget, will match the United States up to 150,000”
Roosevelt: “150,000 to England – 150,000 to match that in the United Stated – pick up 200,000
or 300,000 elsewhere, and we can start with a half a million of these oppressed people.”
A week later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again visited the President.
115
Roosevelt: …to Ernst: “Nothing doing on the program. We can’t put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won’t stand for it.”
Ernst: “It’s impossible! Why?”
Roosevelt: “They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, ‘There is no other place this poor Jew can go.’ But if there is a world political asylum for all people irrespective of race, creed, or color, they cannot raise their money. Then the people who do not want to give the money will have an excuse to say ‘What do you mean, there is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the preferred wards of the world.’”
Morris Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his leader and friend. He began to lobby among his influential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue, without mentioning the President’s or the British reaction. As he himself has put it: “I was thrown out of parlors of friends of mine who very frankly said ‘Morris, this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist movement.’ He ran into the same reaction amongst all Jewish groups and leaders. Everywhere he found “a deep, genuine, often fanatically emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement” in men “who are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.”
This response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roosevelt effort to rescue Europe’s Displaced Persons. End
(Roosevelt did establish the War Refugee Board in 1/1944.)
(Lilienthal referenced So Far So Good by Morris L Ernst, pages 170-177, for additional discussion on Europe’s war refugees.)
Hecht, p. 33
These crimes involve, also, a hardness of heart difficult to imagine as a basic Jewish quality. But it is there in the leaders of Israel.
Itzchak Greenbaum, Chief of the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency, announced in Tel Aviv in 1943, " When they asked me, couldn't you give money out of United Jewish Appeal funds for the rescue of Jews in Europe, I said, 'No! ' And I say again, 'No!' In my opinion one should resist this wave which pushes the Zionist activities to secondary importance."27
(27) "On the Holocaust and on the Reaction," statement by Itzhak Greenbaum addressed to the Zionist Executive Council on February 18, 1943 and published in his book, Beeyemei Khurban Veshoah (In days of Holocaust and Destruction), 1946. End
(The War Refugee Board WRB acted mainly as a facilitator and coordinator of projects carried out by private organizations. Further, projects sponsored by the WRB were almost entirely funded by Jewish organizations. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee JDC was the largest Jewish organization conducting overseas relief and contributed $15 million to WRB
projects. The American United Jewish Appeal UJA was the major American Jewish fund-raising agency and the main source of the JDC’s income. (Wyman, pages 213-214))
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…this is what the Jewish Forward, (the) largest Yiddish newspaper in the world, had to say on December 11, 1943: “The Jewish Conference is alive only when there is something in the air which has to do with a Commonwealth in Palestine, and it is asleep when it concerns rescue work for the Jews in the Diaspora.”
The "Bergson Boys"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/timeline/index.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX88.html
On the morning of November 25, 1942, a small but shocking article in "The Washington Post"
grabbed the attention of Peter Bergson, a young Jewish Palestinian who was staying in Washington, D.C. The headline read " Two Million Jews Slain." The story went on to explain that World Jewish Congress Chairman Rabbi Stephen Wise had confirmation from the State Department that the Nazis were planning to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.
The 32-year-old reader was not only dismayed at the content of the article, he was also extremely distressed that it had been buried on page six of the paper. It made such an impact on him that it would drastically change his mission in the United States, making him take a course of action that would ultimately play a decisive role in President Roosevelt's decision to create a government agency devoted to saving Jews.
Bergson and a handful of other young Palestinian Jews associated with the Zionist, right-wing Irgun organization had arrived in the United States in 1940 hoping to create a Jewish Army. This separate Jewish fighting force, made up of Palestinian Jews, stateless Jewish refugees, and Jews from non-belligerent nations, would fight alongside other Allied armies under supreme Allied command. "JEWS FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO FIGHT" ran one of their "New York Times"
advertisements at the beginning of 1942. But reading about the horrifying news from Europe, Bergson changed his focus: now the rescue of Europe's Jews became his top priority.
…FOR SALE TO HUMANITY 70,000 JEWS, GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS AT $50 A
PIECE, the group demanded that the Allied countries "immediately appoint an inter-governmental committee" to devise plans to end the Holocaust. The established American Jewish leadership, Zionists included, was horrified: they accused the "Bergson Boys", as the young men were known, of sensationalism and recklessness; and they argued the foreigners had no mandate to speak for American Jews.
In January 1944, before Congress could vote on (a) resolution, President Roosevelt made it irrelevant by establishing the War Refugee Board, an agency charged with rescuing the victims of Nazi oppression. He did so in part because the Treasury Department had just presented him with a searing indictment of the State Department's continuous obstruction of all rescue efforts.
But the mounting pressure the Bergsonites had helped create on Capitol Hill for an independent rescue agency produced a political climate that also encouraged him to act.
Although the War Refugee Board suffered from inadequate funding and lack of cooperation from other government agencies, it probably saved about 200,000 lives. End 117
In Dramatic Dissent: The Bergson Boys by Monty Noam Penkower American Jewish History
Vol. 70, No. 3 (March 1981), pages 281-309
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press http://www.jstor.org/publisher/jhup
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23881816
Penkower p. 282 - A divided Jewish leadership also failed to grasp or convey the significance of the disaster (the Holocaust).
End of 1943, Penkower p. 294 - Rabbi Stephen Wise’s appearance before the Bloom House Foreign Affairs Committee on the War Refugee Board WRB resolution:
“Speaking as a co-chairman of the recently established American Jewish Conference AJC, Wise lost no time in throwing a damper on the resolution…
…The Zionist official then deemed the resolution at hand “inadequate” for its lack of a specific program, especially for not mentioning open entry into Palestine…
…For Wise and other leading Zionists, however, rescue and Palestine were inseparable…”
Penkower p. 306 - The Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe (a committee of the Bergson Group), (was) the first broadly based organization calling for rescue action. End
WWII continued -
Bombing the Death Camps –
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/bombau.html Paragraph 11
…the Jewish Frontier, the monthly magazine of the U.S. Labor Zionist movement, published (in its August 1944 edition) an unsigned editorial calling for “Allied bombings of the death camps and the roads leading to them…” According to a report by the David S Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, this was the only time “an official organ of an American Jewish organization publicly calling for bombing the camps” (other requests were made privately by other Jewish groups). (6a)
(6a) Rafael Medoff, “Golda Meir and the Campaigne for an Allied Bombing of Auschwitz.” The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, (September 2011). End
118
The Gruenwald/Kastner Trial 1954 and The Kastner Train
Eichmann’s “Blood for Cargo” Proposal and Joel Brand
Eichmann’s Story Part 2
The Horthy Offer 07/18/1944
The Gruenwald/Kastner Trial
Dr. Rudolph Kastner was the de facto head of the Jewish Agency’s Rescue Committee in Hungary. He failed to warn Hungary’s Jews after learning of Nazi plans to exterminate them.
The Kastner trial was in fact a libel case brought by the Israeli government for the benefit of Kastner against Malchiel Gruenwald who had accused Kastner of collaborating with the Nazis.
The Nazis had allowed Kastner to save 1,684 Hungarian Jews including 388 important Jews from his hometown of Kluj, Hungary. These rescued Jews were transported by train first to Bergen-Belsen then to Switzerland. Kastner failed to warn and may have led others to lie to the unsaved, remaining Jews of Kluj. The unsaved, near 20,000, were told the Nazis were truthful when claiming Jews were going to Kenyermeze and/or work camps. Nearly all were killed at Auschwitz.
Hecht, pages 75-76
Judge Halevi: (slowly and distinctly) Did you tell anybody in Kluj what you knew about the extermination that was going on in Auschwitz?...
Judge Halevi: (sternly) That was not my question. Did you tell anyone that the Germans were preparing the deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz?...
Judge Halevi: Why didn't you inform the Jews of Kluj of what you knew? I want to hear your answer, Dr. Kastner.
Kastner: (faintly) I told them everything I knew — when I was in contact with them — later I was in contact only with my father-in-law. And I dared give only one clear hint. He had to know that there was deportation and that extermination would follow.
Judge Halevi: Then why didn't the Jews of Kluj know about all that?
Kastner: Your Honor asks me —
Kastner: Your Honor, I think that my colleagues in Kluj, including my father-in-law, did not do all in their power — did not do all that could have been done — all that they had to do.
Kastner: On the other hand, Your Honor, I am sorry to say that the witnesses from Kluj who testified here — in my opinion, I don't think they represent the true Jewry of Kluj. For it is not a coincidence that there was not a single important figure among them. (78) Cross-examination of Kastner in C.C. 124/53 in the D.C. Jerusalem.
Hecht, pages 113-116
Excerpts from Judge Benjamin Halevi’s verdict:
The masses of Jews from Hungary’s ghettos obediently boarded the deportation trains without knowing their fate. They were full of confidence in the false information that they were being transferred to Kenyermeze… They (the Nazis) were able to deport the Jews to their extermination by the help of Jewish leaders. The false information was spread by Jewish leaders…
119
The Nazi succeeded in bringing the Jewish leaders into collaboration with the Nazis at the time of the catastrophe…
Eichmann did not want a second Warsaw. For this reason, the Nazis exerted themselves to mislead and bribe the Jewish leaders…
Collaboration between the Jewish Agency’s Rescue Committee and the Exterminators of the Jews was solidified in Budapest and Vienna. Kastner’s duties were part and parcel of the general duties of the S.S. End
Gruenwald’s trial took place in 1954. Judge Halevi in June 1955 issued his verdicts in favor of Gruenwald except that he was fined $1 for falsely accusing Kastner of taking a Nazi bribe.
Kastner was assassinated in March 1957. The Israeli Supreme Court in January 1958 reversed Halevi’s verdicts of innocence except in Gruenwald’s accusation that Kastner helped Nazi Kurt Becher escape punishment after the war.
Hecht, pages 123-124
Here are a few final samples of (Israeli Attorney General Chaim) Cohen's political philosophy, as offered to the (Israeli) Supreme Court judges (in 1957/58):
"If in Kastner's opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few.
"He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millions. In fact, if that's how he saw it, rightly or wrongly, that was his duty."
Said Cohen:
"If you don't like it, if it doesn't coincide with your own philosophy, you may criticize Kastner and say his policy was a mistaken one. But what does all this have to do with collaboration? 161
. . . It has always been our Zionist tradition to select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine [the Weizmann Blueprint]. Are we therefore to be called traitors?" End Note: See Wyman, pages 245-249. It appears negotiations by Saly Mayer and others were significant in getting the Kastner train’s 1,686 Hungarian Jews out of Bergen-Belsen and transported to Switzerland, 318 in August and 1,368 in early December 1944.
Eichmann’s “Blood for Cargo” Proposal
One of the witnesses called in the Kastner trial was Joel Brand. Brand like Kastner was from Kluj and worked for the Agency’s Recue Committee in Hungary. Brand testified Adolf Eichmann told him he would spare a million Jews and send them out of Hungary alive and unhurt in exchange for ten thousand trucks and one thousand tons of tea and coffee. The proposal exchanges would be made in increments of 100,000 Hungarian Jews for 1,000 trucks and supplies. All the winterized trucks with their trailers would go to the Eastern Front.
Theories were that the Germans were hoping to divide the allies, make peace with the West, and/or ally with the West against Stalin’s Russia.
Hecht, p. 139
The Proposal
Brand: …Then I became full of hope and went on – ‘The local Jews and our friends abroad may perhaps muster sums of money, if lives are to be saved.’
120
“Eichmann answered, ‘Go on then. Go ahead to Switzerland, to Turkey, to Spain, wherever you please; so long as you can produce cargo!’
“’What sort of cargo do you want?’ I asked.
“‘Anything at all,’ Eichmann said. ‘For example – trucks. Ten thousand trucks are worth a million Jews to me.’ He paused a moment and added: ‘Tea and coffee, too, and soap. One thousand tons of tea and coffee. All these I am in need of.’
“To this I replied, I haven’t the vaguest idea where all these cargoes are to be obtained. Who on earth will treat this offer seriously? Which official body will believe that delivery of the trucks will in fact induce you to spare a million Jews?’
“Eichmann answered that he was willing to offer one hundred thousand Jews in advance, and on receiving the proportionate payment, he would release another ten percent. ‘Pick them anywhere you want,” he said, ‘Hungary, Auschwitz, Slovakia – anywhere you want and anyone you want…’
“Eichmann received me on the 15th, for the last time, and told me, ‘You are to set out now.
Today we begin to deport twelve thousand per day, but these shall not be exterminated during negotiations. But you, Brand, have to return in a week or two. I can’t put your Jews on ice and preserve them forever. If it turns out that the negotiations demand some more time, we’ll be considerate. You, however, have to return. Quickly. Your return, coupled with the verbal acceptance of my offer, will inspire me to cease the gassing, and lay down the advance payment of one hundred thousand immediately. ’ End
The Nazis had arrested an envoy from Nathan Schwalb and Saly Mayer in Switzerland to the Budapest Rescue Committee and confiscated the money and letters he was carrying, over 50,000
dollars and 270,000 Swiss francs. These were all given to Brand in apparent hopes of furthering negotiations on Eichmann’s proposal.
The Nazis sent Joel Brand to make this offer to the Jewish Agency in neutral Istanbul. He reached Istanbul on 5/19th aboard a German diplomatic plane. The Agency’s Rescue Committee in Istanbul immediately informed the British of Brand’s arrival and eventually sent Brand to British Syria to meet Agency official Moshe Sharett. The British arrested Brand on June 7th in Aleppo, Syria after which on June 11th he met with Sharett in the company of British officers.
Sharett already knew everything. Brand remained in British custody for four and half months.
The Jewish Agency in alliance with the British did nothing. The arrest of Brand was the end of this proposal.
Hecht, pages 108-109
Defense attorney Shmuel Tamir speaking in his closing arguments:
“And why did they (Israeli government institutions) knowingly cover up the collaboration of Kastner with the Nazis? There is only one answer. They had no choice. They had to protect Kastner for fear he would reveal all the facts known to him about another collaboration – the Jewish Agency collaboration with the British – which sabotaged the rescue of Europe’s Jews and contributed to their annihilation…”
Hecht, p. 144
The last lines of Brand’s testimony, as they appear on page 676 of the Protocol (court transcript), read: “Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry’s official leaders ever 121
since. All these things shall haunt me until my dying day. It is much more than a man can bear.”
199 (199) Protocol, C.Ç. 124/53 in the D.C. Jerusalem.
Eichmann’s Story Part 2
by Adolf Eichmann
Life Magazine, Vol. 49, No. 23, December 5, 1960, pages 146-148, at:
https://books.google.com/books?id=900EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA146#v=onepage&q&f=false
Original source: Former SS Dutchman Willem Sassen tape-recorded interviews with Eichmann in Argentina between 1951 and 1959.
Nazi who had millions of Jews killed…-
Only Heinrich Himmler could turn off the liquidation machine. It was in 1944, the year of the assassination attempt on Hitler, then Reichsführer Himmler took over as commander of the Reserve Army, that he authorized me to propose an exchange: one million Jews for 10,000
winterized trucks with trailers. The world Jewish organization could decide for itself what Jews it wanted to choose. We asked only that they get us 10,000 trucks. Thanks to Himmler's directive, I could assure them, on my word of honor, that these trucks would be used only on the Eastern front. As I said at the time, "When the 10,000 winterized trucks with trailers are here, then the liquidation machine in Auschwitz will be stopped."
In obedience to Himmler's directive I now concentrated on negotiations with the Jewish political officials in Budapest. One man stood out among them, Dr. Rudolf Kastner, authorized representative of the Zionist movement. This Dr. Kastner was a young man about my age, an ice-cold lawyer and a fanatical Zionist. He agreed to help keep the Jews from resisting deportation and even keep order in the collection camps if I would close my eyes and let a few hundred or a few thousand young Jews emigrate illegally to Palestine. It was a good bargain. For keeping order in the camps, the price of 15,000 to 20,000 Jews - in the end there may have been more - was not too high for me.
Except perhaps for the first few sessions, Kastner never came to me fearful of the Gestapo strong man. We negotiated entirely as equals. People forget that. We were political opponents trying to arrive at a settlement, and we trusted each other perfectly. When he was with me, Kastner smoked cigarets as though he were in a coffeehouse. While we talked he would smoke one aromatic cigaret after another, taking them from a silver case and lighting them with a little silver lighter. With his great polish and reserve he would have made an ideal Gestapo officer himself.
Dr. Kastner's main concern was to make it possible for a select group of Hungarian Jews to emigrate to Israel. But the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian fascist party, had grown strong and stubborn. Its inspectors permitted no exceptions to the mass deportations. So the Jewish officials turned to the German occupation authorities. They realized that we were specialists who had learned about Jewish affairs through years of practice.
Immensely idealistic Zionists - …As a matter of fact, there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist leaders who were 122
fighting what might be their last battle. As I told Kastner: "We, too, are idealists and we, too, had to sacrifice our own blood before we came to power."
I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thousand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood, that is, human material that was capable of reproduction and hard work.
"You can have the others," he would say, "but let me have this group here." And because Kastner rendered us a great service by helping keep the deportation camps peaceful, I would let his groups escape. After all, I was not concerned with small groups of a thousand or so Jews.
At the same time Kastner was bargaining with another SS official, a Colonel Kurt Becker.
Becher was bartering Jews for foreign exchange and goods on direct orders from Himmler…
Men under Becher's command guarded a special group of 700 Jews whom Kastner had requested from a list. They were mostly young people, although the group also included Kastner's entire family. I did not care if Kastner took his relatives along. He could take them wherever he wanted to.
The gentleman’s agreement - …This is how most of the illegal emigrations were arranged: a group of special Jews was taken into custody and brought together in a place designated by Kastner and his men, where they were put under SS guard to keep them from harm. After the Jewish political organizations arranged transportation out of the country, I instructed the border police to let these transports pass unhindered. They travelled generally by night. That was the
"gentleman's agreement" I had with Kastner.
After leaving Hungary, the Jews could then travel through neutral foreign countries or stay hidden, usually in Romania, until the necessary steamships arrived to take them on board. When they reached Israel, the ships waited off shore until a few courageous Jews helped the passengers land against the orders of the British mandate authorities. Since the refugees had no valid papers, the Jewish organization must have spent enormous sums of money to bribe Romanian officials, who did not do these favors for nothing. All this went on with Himmler's permission. I would never have dared to dance to my own waltz. If I demanded rigid obedience from my own subordinates, I had to be just as rigid in carrying out my own superior's orders. Otherwise I would have been a bad SS commander, and I think I was a good SS commander.
By the same token, my relationship with Dr. Kastner was strictly correct...
All my own agreements with the Jewish officials were more or less side-transactions to the exchange of the million Jews for 10,000 winterized trucks with trailers. Becher and I were twice ordered to Himmler in Berlin to discuss it. Whether Himmler settled the actual terms of the exchange or whether he left it to me, I do not remember. When I think back though, it seems to me that Himmler may have authorized the offer for an "appropriate number," and I set the figure at 10,000 to one million because I was an idealist and wanted to accomplish as much as possible for the Reich.
123
It was clear to me that for lack of numbers I could never have squeezed a million Jews out of Hungary. But it was obvious that Jews were piled on Jews in Auschwitz and the various concentration camps. So I assumed that we could easily produce a million Jews. Jews from Hungary supplemented with Jews from Germany, from Austria, from wherever they wanted to take them. It would be a tragedy if the international Jewish community was not able or willing to accept them.
Motorize the divisions - … I do remember Himmler specifically saying to me, "Eichmann, motorize the 8th and 22nd Cavalry Divisions". This indicated the personal concern of Himmler, who was soon to take over the Reserve Army, in receiving those trucks. They were far more important than the lives of individual Jews. What did he care about a million Jews? His concern was his divisions. He apparently did not want to motorize these two divisions, but rather to equip them for use as a sort of fast-moving task force. It was for this that he gave instructions to Lieut.
General Oswald Pohl, who was in charge of the concentration camp system, to kill no more Jews, to save them up, more or less.
After I received Himmler's authorization I told my assistant Krumey to bring me Joel Brand, a Hungarian Jew whom we had chosen to send to Palestine to take a proposal to the Jewish leaders. Brand left on his trip some time before the grain was high, as an old country boy I remember the time well. Krumey brought him to Vienna, had him furnished with the proper papers and shipped him by plane to Istanbul, because Turkey was still neutral. When he got as far as Syria, he was arrested by the British, interrogated, and imprisoned in Cairo. The Jewish leaders never accepted our proposal.
I knew at the time that Brand was being held by the British because Kastner was giving me constant reports. But when I let Brand leave the country, I had made sure his family stayed in Budapest so that I could have a guarantee of his return. Then as the weeks went by I said to Kastner, "Kastner, you know what we agreed. Brand's family stays here because he must return.
Why doesn't he come back?"…
Meanwhile the deportations had to continue in spite of our pending deal. But the Jews were to a certain extent "put on ice, held in a camp ready to be moved at any time. Suppose Brand had come back and told me, "Obersturmbannführer, the matter is settled. Five or ten thousand trucks are on their way. Give me a half million or a million Jews. You promised me that if I brought you a positive report, you'd send 100,000 Jews to a neutral country as a deposit." Then it would have been easy for us to ship the Jews off.
If the deal had succeeded, I believe I could have arranged to ship the first 20,000 Jews in two days via Romania to Palestine or even via France to Spain. If there had been any delay it would have come from the side of the receivers. The plain fact was that there was no place on earth that would have been ready to accept the Jews, not even this one million… End
According to German records between 5/15 thru 6/7/1944, the day Brand was arrested by the British, 289,357 Hungarian Jews were transported to Auschwitz at 12,000 per day. (Source: 124
http://konfliktuskutato.hu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=288:hungarian-
jews-in-auschwitz-birkenau&catid=36:english See section 8.) Thoughts: Any cargo given to Germany would aid her war effort but weigh the military value of the requested commodities against the value of one million Jews. I submit exchanges could have begun as proposed with later modifications replacing thousands of trucks with thousands of tons of humanitarian aid. Alternately, Brand could have been allowed to immediately return to Budapest with an agreement never meant to be honored, but 100,000 Jews may have been saved.
Such actions may have proven the proposal was a ruse, but no action was taken.
No attempt was made to take advantage of this proposal. I submit the Israeli government had reasons for defending Kastner. Humane considerations were not in the calculations of the Jewish Agency. The Agency’s relationship with Britain and the future state of Israel were more valued than one million unimportant Jews.
The Horthy Offer 07/18/1944
On 07/7/1944 Hungary’s Regent Miklos Horthy, under pressure from neutral countries and Allied promises of punishment for all who participated in atrocities, halted deportations to Auschwitz. By 7/9th, 437,402 had already been deported to Auschwitz. The Germans acquiesced likely due to their deteriorating military position. Subsequently on 7/18th, Horthy offered to permit emigration of all Jewish children under ten who possessed visas to other countries and all Jews of any age who had Palestine certificates (Wyman, p. 238). The Germans did not acquiesce to this offer closing Hungary’s borders, but not before mainstream American Zionists showed their true values.
Wyman, p. 253
…With the announcement of the Horthy offer, which appeared to release all Jews who had Palestine certificates, the Bergonsites accelerated their drive (to open Palestine to Jewish refugees) … And they went to Congress with resolutions calling on the President to urge Britain to open emergency camps in Palestine, where tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews could be sheltered in safety until the war ended. They could then, if necessary, be returned to Hungary or sent elsewhere.
The Bergsonites saw the “shelters plan” as a way to open Palestine for the immediate emergency without getting the matter entangled in the politically difficult issues of the (British 1939) White Paper and Jewish statehood. Those questions they concluded could wait until after the war. This position paralleled that of the WRB (War Refugees Board). It had earlier decided to stay away from the controversy over the Zionists’ Palestine resolution, but wanted pressure put on Britain to open Palestine at least as a temporary haven.
The Palestine shelters resolution quickly picked up important bipartisan backing in Congress…
But the proposal soon collapsed, largely because of opposition from the State Department and Zionist organizations. (80)
125
The State Department asserted that passage of the legislation would anger Arabs and set off unrest in the Middle East. The Zionists persuaded key members of Congress including Tom Connally and Sol Bloom (chairmen of the relevant Senate and House committees), not to act on it. They told legislators that the plan was unnecessary because the few Jews who might get to Palestine from Hungary could enter under the remaining White Paper quota. Moreover, the Zionists strenuously opposed any plan to send Jews to Palestine with the understanding that they might have to leave after the war. Such a concession, legitimized by the approval of Congress, might establish a precedent that could impair the Jewish claim to Palestine. (81) End
Note: The 1939 White Paper quota was for just 50,000 Jews at 10,000 per year.
Thoughts: I submit American Zionists valued the future state of Israel over the lives of the then remaining hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews.
Hecht, p. 15
In August, 1937 Dr. (Chaim) Weizmann, as leader of World Zionism, addressed a Zionist convention in London... (He) had this to say:
"I told the (1937 Peel/ Palestine) British Royal Commission that the hopes of Europe's six million Jews were centered on emigration. I was asked, 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?' I replied, 'No.' - - The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not.
They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world. - - Only a branch shall survive. - -
They had to accept it…”4
(4) The New Judea (official organ of the Zionist Organization of England) XIII (April, 1937).
126
An Open Letter to America’s war plutocrats
and their war mongers in Congress
2015 10 01
Re-edited
Salutations:
I will publicly advocate your assassinations if Congress ever again successfully votes for unprovoked, American aggression in another unjust war.
Americans have killed two million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis while from North Vietnam to the Islamic State we offered no viable alternative.
We got into our wars with lies. The first Tonkin Gulf incident was provoked. The second incident did not happen. There were no WMDs in Iraq and no connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda or 9/11.
I wish for you redemption, but I will not wait for your redemption if you needlessly kill again.
The next unjust, American war will be civil war, and you will be the legitimate targets of all good people who value truth, justice, and freedom.
Sincerely,
John F Scanlon
San Diego CA
Please share this with your Congressmen.
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I would like to present the second book from my series. For Eirinn
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