Circus of Recycling – Part II

This is the continuation from Part I and will examine the next four additional areas of how and why the United States and the United Nations were pawns for Zionist Judaism’s conquest and occupation of Palestine.
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Self-determination. What does it mean? The fast answer is “the freedom to make your own choices.” Sure that’s a true pure definition… if one lives on an island in the Pacific and no other human beings are on the island. Is that a very comprehensive definition and representation of real life? Not really. The Merriam-Webster dictionary has another definition:  the people of a territorial unit to determine their own future political status. Better? Yes and no. I would imagine this extended definition raises more questions than it answers. The principle of self-determination according to these definitions seem well and good, but the practice of self-determination in life and the world, even within family dynamics, is not so cut-and-dry. Taking these two definitions to a macro-scale or global-scale, and the waters begin to get quite muddy; in some cases, sludge or quicksand.

“The UN Charter clarifies two meanings of the term self-determination. First, a state is said to have the right of self-determination in the sense of having the right to choose freely its political, economic, social, and cultural systems. Second, the right to self-determination is defined as the right of a people to constitute itself in a state or otherwise freely determine the form of its association with an existing state. Both meanings have their basis in the charter (Article 1, paragraph 2; and Article 55, paragraph 1). With respect to dependent territories, the charter asserts that administering authorities should undertake to ensure political advancement and the development of self-government (Article 73, paragraphs a and b; and Article 76, paragraph b).”
Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “self-determination”, accessed April 05, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/topic/self-determination.

A better definition don’t you think? Not really…
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Paris Peace Conference of 1919
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Paris Peace Conference_1919

1919 Paris Peace Conference

After the defeat of the European Central Powers in World War I, the victors of the Allied and Associated Powers met in Paris, France to address and discuss the fate of those beaten nations (peoples) and their territories. The Central Powers primarily consisted of the Ottoman Empire, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. Both the Germans and the Ottomans had colonies in Asia and Africa as well. See world map below.

Two new terms or principles are introduced into future world conferences over nations or “territories” and their defeated peoples:  1) trusteeship, and 2) mandate.

Trusteeship — a defeated nation’s territories and it peoples, that are considered unable to govern themselves, are entrusted to another state which was victorious.
Mandate — a victorious trustee-nation receives a mandate to rebuild the defeated territory creating the necessary foundations for self-determination and independence.

Post WW1 world map

Map of World War I. The Allies are depicted in green, the Central Powers in orange, and neutral countries in grey.

All very simple, right? No. The above world map is of July 1914, at the beginning of World War I. The Paris Peace Conference begins in January 1919. When the some 25 nations around the world — representing a global jury — participating in the post-war conference convened, they were unaware of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916, when the outcome of the war was still far from certain. It was signed by Sir Mark Sykes of Great Britain and François Georges-Picot of France with the assent of imperial Russia. Why is this highly volatile monkey-wrench important? Because as early as November 1915 Sykes and Picot, with the knowledge of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, began negotiating how the Ottoman Empire would be divided up if defeated. Key leaders and nations in East Europe, the Near and Middle East… who had sacrificed their soldiers and resources into the war against the Central Powers — including against fellow Muslim Arabs — and with certain major political “promises” given to them by Western powers for siding with them… were never notified of this secret agreement.

“This secret arrangement conflicted in the first place with pledges already given by the British to the Hāshimite dynast Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, sharif of Mecca, who was about to bring the Arabs of the Hejaz into revolt against the Turks on the understanding that the Arabs would eventually receive a much more important share of the fruits of victory. It also excited the ambitions of Italy, to whom it was communicated in August 1916, after the Italian declaration of war against Germany, with the result that it had to be supplemented, in April 1917, by the Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, whereby Great Britain and France promised southern and southwestern Anatolia to Italy. The defection of Russia from the war canceled the Russian aspect of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the Turkish Nationalists’ victories after the military collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to the gradual abandonment of its projects for Anatolia. The Arabs, however, who had learned of the Sykes-Picot Agreement through the publication of it, together with other secret treaties of imperial Russia, by the Soviet Russian government late in 1917, were scandalized by it, and their resentment persisted despite the modification of its arrangements for the Arab countries by the Allies’ Conference of San Remo in April 1920.”
— Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s. v. “Sykes-Picot Agreement”, accessed April 05, 2016, http://www.britannica.com/event/Sykes-Picot-Agreement.

FaisalPartyAtVersailles

Arab Delegation to Paris

No one from the West bothered to ask the peoples of these “minor” territories or their leaders how they wished themselves to be self-determined or governed.

*Sidenote — For an exceptional more comprehensive perspective of pre, World War I, and post-WWI, watch Al-Jazeera’s World War One Through Arab Eyes.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and the State Department was sympathetic to the Arab cause presented by Emir Prince Faisal, however, the American delegation to Paris, along with heavy support from the U.S. Senate in Congress and a delegation of Jewish Zionists attending — which incidentally included U.S. Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, and officials from the WZO — had already outmaneuvered Wilson and the State Department as well as several prominent American Christian leaders, such as Harry E. Fosdick and Henry S. Coffin, both who firmly opposed Zionism and a state of Israel in Palestine. With the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration, both done privately years before with France and Great Britain, President Wilson tried one more tactic:  send a commission to Palestine to examine the Palestinian Mandate in person.

King-Crane Commission

Many American students, history teachers, or the general public know anything about the King-Crane Commission to Palestine in 1919. The purpose of the commission was to learn, from Syrians and Palestinians living there, the attitudes and real viability for “resettling” their land and homes. After interviewing the inhabitants between June 10 and July 21, 1919, also entitled Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey, the commission reported that if a Jewish state were created in Palestine, it would accomplish only:

“…the gravest trespass upon the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” [and subjecting them] “…to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle [of self-determination] and of the peoples’ rights…”

“…the well-being and development [by the existing inhabitants formed] a sacred trust [where those present peoples should become free and their national governments] should derive their authority from the initiative and free choice of the native populations.”

[The report continues stating that following meetings with Jewish representatives who made it clear that]“the Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine…”

The report ended stating that in order for dispossession to take place, armed force would be required and unavoidable, so the commission urged the Peace Conference to dismiss the Zionist proposals stating “the project for making Palestine distinctly a Jewish commonwealth should be given up.

A digital copy of the entire report can be viewed and read here: King-Crane Commission Report, submitted by Charles R. Crane and Henry Churchill King, 28 August 1919.

President Wilson’s and the King-Crane Commission’s efforts would be heavily suppressed and for naught due to the publicity power wielded by Brandeis, Frankfurter, Chaim Weizmann, the WZO and Yiddish newspapers, further backed by their associated U.S. Senators in D.C. All combined they simply buried the above report.

The en mass immigration of Jews to Palestine commenced. Consequently, the four continents, arguably the world, were pushed on turbulent bloody hyper-convoluted paths for centuries to come.

Inspiration or Coercion?

After the newly formed (Western) League of Nations made it acceptable for Jews to migrate to Palestine, most less-Zionistic Jews at the time felt little need to go. This is clearly evident by a plethora of documented cases, but for the sake of your time I list three below.

U.S. Supreme Court and ZOA vs. Gibson — From 1919 to 1924 Hugh S. Gibson was the U.S. Ambassador to Poland. Most of his work there was to accurately assess Poland’s needs for self-determination in the immediate wake of WWI and how the U.S. could help. Back home in American newspapers were numerous stories of anti-Semitic violence throughout Poland. After investigating the alleged incidents and severities, Gibson reported to William Castle and the State Department that the American news articles of “Polish militarism, anti-Semitism and expansionism” were over estimated and in a personal letter to his mother wrote: “These yarns are exclusively of foreign manufacture for anti-Polish purposes.” (Hoover Institution, HGP, Box 17, f. William R. Castle, 1920 and Hoover Institution, HGP, Box 24, Diaries, f. Mary K. Simons-Gibson, 1919)

When Supreme Court Justice Brandeis and ZOA delegate Frankfurter were made aware of Gibson’s dispatches, they both demanded a meeting with him. Gibson described their meeting this way accusing him that:

“I had done more mischief to the Jewish race than anyone who had lived in the last century. They said… that my reports on the Jewish question had gone around the world and had undone their work… They finally said that I had stated that the stories of excesses against Jews were exaggerated, to which I replied that they certainly were and I should think any Jew would be glad to know it.”
— Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945. Reprint Ed. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2002, p. 20

Hugh_Gibson

Ambassador to Poland, Hugh S. Gibson

Gibson also noted that Frankfurter alluded to him that if he continued writing such reports, Zionists would block his upcoming Ambassador’s confirmation by the U.S. Senate. By May 1924 Gibson was reassigned as U.S. Minister to Switzerland.

1930’s Germany and Zionism — Unlike the inaccurate news reports of anti-Semitic violence in Poland, the rise of the German National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis) certainly gave cause to Jews in Germany to flee for their lives. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took action to help on two separate occasions:  in 1938 and 1943. The British tried to follow suit in 1947. Morris Ernst – International Envoy for Refugees for Roosevelt, and Harry N. Howard – U.S. State Department Near East, both wrote about American-British efforts to welcome in near 1-million Jews from Eastern Europe:

“…active Jewish leaders [in the U.S.] decried, sneered and then attacked me as if I were a traitor. At one dinner party I was openly accused of furthering this plan of freer immigration [into the U.S.] in order to undermine political Zionism… Zionist friends of mine opposed it.” Ernst continued writing that the Jewish leadership in America were “little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.”

“…there was discussion of liberalizing American immigration laws in this period.” Harry Howard states in a 1950 interview, “The Zionists opposed that liberalization on the ground that this would not be a solution as far as they were concerned. They wanted a political, not necessarily a humanitarian, solution — that is, they wanted a state.”

By 1949 the Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion admitted the in-gathering of Jews into Palestine was not going well. He “urged U.S. parents to send their children to Israel for permanent settlement.” And “even if they decline to help us, we will bring the youth to Israel.

In the 1960 July issue of The Spectator magazine, journalist Erskine Childers wrote discussing in detail the talks between FDR, Britain, Ernst, and the Jewish DP’s (Displaced Persons) from Europe…

“…[Zionist sabotaging] was done by seeing to it that Western countries did not open their doors, widely and immediately, to the inmate of the DP camps.”

“It is incredible that so grave and grim a campaign has received so little attention in accounts of the Palestine struggle — it was a campaign that literally shaped all subsequent history. It was done by sabotaging specific Western schemes to admit Jewish DPs.”

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image courtesy of Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers

Hate Attacks on Iraqi Jews Faked? — By 1949-50 Iraqi Jews were either being coerced out of the country or due to economic conditions willing to consider immigration to Palestine, or both. Due to the ancient history of exiles and the Jewish Diaspora, Zionists had fervent inspirations to persuade Iraqi Jews to Palestine. Many Iraqi Jews were not that motivated to leave their current homes. Rabbi Sassoon Khadourie, Chief Rabbi of Iraq, spoke about covert Zionist bombings during Operation Ezra and Nehemiah to Israel from Iraq. Although counterarguments spoke of Sassoon being a propaganda puppet for pro-British Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, in his last weeks and days before dying in 1971 Rabbi Khadourie never recanted his statements. However, the former CIA operative Wilbur Crane Eveland to the Middle East, specifically Iraq in 1950-53, reappraised his life and work in his book Ropes of Sand he writes about the synagogue bombings as…

“…attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews”

“Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel… most of the world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the Zionists had ‘rescued’ really just in order to increase Israel’s Jewish population.”

Both of these men are joined in agreement by many authors and journalists. Naeim Giladi, a Jewish-Iraqi author, describes the consensus of his colleagues reappraisals…

“I write about what the first prime minister of Israel [Ben-Gurion] called ‘cruel Zionism.’ I write about it because I was part of it. Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel. Jews killed Jews.”

“…[Zionist] Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors.”

As can be expected inside the political game of counter-intelligence and disinformation, Zionist organizations and prominent members cried then and will cry today ‘forms of anti-Semitism.‘ I invite YOU to decide after examining all the relevant information now available.

Now for a brief respite from endless strife, I give some comic relief for you…

Alright, now back to business. We can laugh and enjoy life afterwards.
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The Modern Israeli Lobby on Harry S. Truman
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She is a prolific author, noted educator and academic, and has achieved prominence as a historian of the United States and its Jewish Americans. Naomi W. Cohen has been published several times over, but in her 2003 book The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948, she writes:

“Although Brandeis participated in the negotiations with England leading to the Balfour Declaration, his primary focus after [World War I] shifted from political to “pragmatic” or “practical” Zionism. Active behind the scenes and with his lieutenants throughout the decade, he encouraged American Jewish investment in the physical upbuilding of Palestine. That emphasis, also adopted by the ZOA, well suited the shift of world Zionism into its second phase, “Palestinianism”.” (p. 7)

As Europe began sliding back to political, ethnic, and economic turmoil in the 1920’s and 30’s, general American sentiment wanted nothing to do with their constant problems. In contrast to that U.S. sentiment, however, were American Zionist activists, Cohen explains, and their leaders maneuvering to divert polarizing Zionism into covert Palestinianism:

“…the retreat to Palestinianism wasn’t all bad. Coping with antisemitism, which increased in the 1920s, and with the grim conditions spawned by the Great Depression of the 1930s, American Jews dared not risk any major outbursts about Jewish statehood from their non-Jewish fellow Americans. Within American Jewish circles, Palestinianism, far less strident than political Zionism, permitted the spread of a “quiet” Zionism in synagogues and Jewish schools.” (p. 8)

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AZEC Madison Square Garden rally, NY Sept 1945

Special interest groups, otherwise known as lobbies, play an important and controversial role in American politics and legislation. American Zionism recognized this tool early on and by 1943 was one of the most well-funded lobbies in the U.S. due in no small part to Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. He created the American Zionist Emergency council (AZEC) and by the middle of WWII when buying a 5-pound bag of flour was 0.25-cents, the AZEC had a budget of $500,000. Its fundraising umbrella was the United Jewish Appeal which gained financial resources of $14 million in 1941 and $150 million by 1948 — four times more than the Red Cross received in donations from all Americans; in today’s dollars:  $1.5 billion. In 1945 when Hillel Silver was made aware of a British move against Zionism…

“AZEC booked Madison Square Garden, ordered advertisements, and mailed 250,000 announcements — the first day. By the second day they had organized demonstrations in 30 cities, a letter-writing campaign, and convinced 27 U.S. Senators to give speeches.”

“Grassroots Zionist action groups were organized with more than 400 local committees under 76 state and regional branches. AZEC funded books, articles and academic studies; millions of pamphlets were distributed. There were massive petition and letter writing campaigns. AZEC targeted college presidents and deans, managing to get more than 150 to sign one petition.”
— Against Our Better Judgement, by Alison Weir, CSI Publishing, San Bernadino, CA: 2014, p. 37

This level of organization and swift action would make any of today’s wealthy Washington D.C. lobbies green with envy. If political leverage is the goal, then understanding the ropes and pulleys of our U.S. government and how to activate them for specific interests, then 1940’s AZEC’s and their UJA umbrella is a superb blueprint to follow.

Harvesting American Christianity

Today, Jews and Christians have a convenient interest in the other’s historical background. The relationship has certain mutual dynamics which are readily exploitable. This was no less true in the decades before, during, and after World War II. Hillel Silver, Louis Brandeis, AZEC, and other Zionists, including Felix Frankfurter, recognized this avenue toward a stronger Israel in Palestine as a significant long-term role. Heading up this push would be the original American Palestine Committee founded by Emanuel Neumann, later known in 1946 as the American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC). The primary goal of the ACPC was to harness a group of prominent Christian Americans in moral and political support of Zionism…

“The initial impetus was given late in 1942 by prominent Protestants such as Reinhold Niebuhr, S. Ralph Harlow, Henry A. Atkinson, Daniel A. Poling, and Paul Tillich. Working with them as liaison with the Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs were Milton Steinberg and Philip Bernstein, who enjoyed the full cooperation of Stephen S. Wise and Emanuel Neumann.

The Christian Council emphasized the need to destroy racial and religious discrimination and to demand justice for the Jewish people everywhere, but it considered Zionist objectives in Palestine the paramount goal and the basic solution to Jewish national homelessness. The council strove to gain the sympathy of churchmen and clergy by organizing conferences, arranging seminars, and publishing literature. The influence it exerted was out of proportion to its relatively limited membership.”
— Encyclopaedia of Zionism and Israel (ed. Patai), accessed April 10, 2016, http://www.iahushua.com/Zion/zionhol10.html

While American Protestant and Catholic leaders and their followers were being cuddled by Zionists at home, the reality in 1947-48 Palestine was bloody and covert. Palestinian Christians and Muslims, their institutions, churches, and mosques were attacked by Israeli militants. Citing a June 1948 report from the Haganah/IDF operations:

“The Christian “exodus” from the Holy Land can be traced to 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by the creation of the State of Israel. With hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed and at least half of the indigenous population displaced to refugee camps internally or in neighboring countries, Christians and Muslims — whose roots in the Holy Land stretched back for centuries — suffered the same fate.”
— What sparked the Christian exodus from the Holy Land?, Institute for Middle East Understanding, 2012, accessed April 10, 2016, http://imeu.org/article/christians-in-the-holy-land-under-israeli-siege

This sort of harassment, attacks, and human-rights violations by Zionist-Israeli operations on Palestinians still continue to this day along with America’s political Right and U.S. military support.

President Harry Truman is Bought

Truman_with_Senators_McGrath_and_Green

Truman with Senators McGrath and Green, c. 1948

Howard McGrath was the Chairman of the Democratic Party from 1947-49 and bluntly informed Abraham Feinberg and other Zionist supporters that President Truman cannot possibly win the 1948 election against Dewey unless he sees the American people, stating:

“The President [Truman] has to make a trip from coast to coast. He wants to do it by train, he wants to see the people, and there is no money.”

“I [Feinberg] had to get back to New York and I got up. I was the youngest of the group, and maybe for that reason the brashest. I said, “Howard, the President has done a great deal for my people. I feel that we owe him a great deal. We certainly owe him a chance, and I will pledge on behalf of Ed Kaufmann and myself that within two weeks we’ll have $100,000 towards this [train]trip.”

“I [Feinberg] had already got the commitments for the $100,000 from people around the country, all of whom understood that without Truman, Israel would have had very difficult days and times trying to even come into existence. As that train went into towns where there were Jewish communities, I arranged that a Jewish delegation would ask to see the President and be received on the train and that, in as many cases as possible, they would bring him donations above these original commitments. So, the trip was a triumphant trip from his point of view as a politician, forgetting the money, He was right when he said, “If I see the people, I can be elected.” And that made the difference. He often said, “If not for my friend Abe, I couldn’t have made the trip and I wouldn’t have been elected.”
— Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, “Abraham Feinberg Oral History Interview” by Richard McKinzie, August 23, 1973. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/feinberg.htm – Accessed April 17, 2016, sections 22-24

Zionist Militarism and Conquest of Palestine

By 1952 Feinberg was found by the CIA to be smuggling arms into Israel for Jewish fighters against Palestine, and by 1970 also found by the FBI to be a long-term Soviet spy inside the U.S. and Washington D.C. government. With this type covert aid since 1946 to Israeli fighters, 33 massacres of Palestinian men, women, and children commenced:

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When Israel’s War of Nationalism had officially ended (1944-1952), 750,000 Palestinians were horribly expelled and in those 33 villages in the slide show above, Red Cross workers first on the scenes of atrocities stated the aftermath “reminded them of Nazi S.S. troops they had seen in Athens, Greece.
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Pressuring the U.N. General Assembly
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During the spring of 1947 after Britain was exhausted with problems and conflicts of increased Jewish immigrations into Palestinian lands, Great Britain dumped the problem onto the United Nations. A committee was formed known as the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to propose resolutions. It consisted of 11 member nations. Two initial solutions were proposed, both rejected by the Arab coalition who proposed a third solution:  a single secular democratic state in Palestine with citizens receiving equal rights. Zionists vehemently rejected it. By the fall of ’47 when it became clear Resolution 181 did not have the required two-thirds vote to pass,  Zionists members began an intense campaign to sway U.N. delegates to vote for the passing of R-181.

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Philippine U.N. delegate Gen. Carlos Romulo

As this 1982 New York Times magazine article describes (p. 6 and previous), delegates from Liberia, Greece, Cuba, Costa Rica, Haiti, and the Philippines were targets of high value. Liberia stood to lose Harvey Firestone’s increased rubber expansion plan which made up the bulk of the Liberian economy. Wives of a number of Caribbean nation delegates received mink coats from Macy’s — offended, the wife of Cuban delegate returned hers. President Jose Figueres of Costa Rica reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti had been promised economic aid but it became conditional on their partition vote of yes. Seven different bills for the Philippines were in deliberation in the U.S. Congress at the time and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, ten Senators, and Truman’s domestic advisor Clark Clifford strongly advised President Manuel Roxas that their bills would take the highest priority if the Philippine delegate reversed his position against the partition resolution. Just months earlier the delegate from the Philippines General Romulo made a passionate speech against partitioning saying…

“…it is clear to the Philippine Government that the rights conferred by mandatory power, even if subsequently confirmed by an international agreement, do not vitiate the primordial right of a people to determine the political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of its native land.

We cannot believe that the majority of this General Assembly would prefer a reversal of this course. We cannot believe that it would sanction a solution to the problem of Palestine that would turn us back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic doctrines of theocratic governments.”
— United Nations General Assembly, A/PV. 124, 26 November 1947 https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/1BCE87E6077A1A0685256CE70075D5BE Accessed April 18, 2016

Count Folke Bernadotte a few months before his death (Getty Images)

Count Folke Bernadotte months prior to murder (Photo by Frank Scherschel//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Twenty-four hours later during voting, the Philippine delegate (not General Romulo) voted for the partition resolution. Three days later the General Assembly adopted R-181 (II). Immense Zionist pressure during these weeks leading up to November 29, 1947 are held in high esteem by Zionists and radical Israelis today.

Within just months of the U.N. partition adoption, Israeli forces expelled over 413,000 Palestinian people from their homes. Fighting soon erupted and the U.N. had another Nazi-Juden problem, but under a different guise:  “Israel Independence.” A U.N. committee requested again the expert negotiating services of Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, who had previously and successfully rescued thousands of Jews from Nazi concentration camps, to bring a ceasefire to the Arab-Israeli conflict. However, two months after his first and only proposal for peace, Bernadotte was assassinated September 17, 1948 by Jewish-Lehi terrorists. This Sept. 1995 Washington Report reviews the details of Bernadotte’s efforts and murder.

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Next in Part III we conclude the origins, occupation, and conquest of Palestine by comparing WWII refugee camps in Europe into new ones in Palestine, and finally examine the popular U.S. media and public perception post-1953 up to our present day to end the 3-part series. Meanwhile, please feel free to share your thoughts about this widely unknown subject of almost 70-years of Israeli occupation in Palestine.

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Religious Imperialism Alive Still

obama_syriaA few months ago I got lured into what I thought was a discussion and dialogue over American-Syrian foreign policy.  My college friend had an obvious hatred for President Obama and Democratic policies.  The discussion, turned heated debate, was regarding the treatment of Syria by President Obama and Syria’s perceived lack of respect for American threats against Assad’s regime and his use of chemical weapons on Syrian citizens.  My conservative college friend’s stance on Syria, Islāmic regimes, and basic American foreign policy in the Middle East was one of ‘enforced power‘ applied through America’s alliance with Israel.

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New Israeli army on parade – 1949

In my attempt to give more historical background to America’s long Israeli support in matters of Middle Eastern conflicts, including our MASSIVE costly mistake in invading Iraq for WMD’s, I stressed how prudent and utterly cautious the U.S. should be when involving itself in Middle Eastern matters so soon after invading Iraq.  I eventually let him know that the 1949 U.N. creation of the nation of Israel was a horrible blotch on the U.S. and Western nation’s historical political record in the eyes of Palestinians, Syrians, and Islāmic nations in the region.  It is the major reason the area has seen so much violence and blood-shed for the last 65-years toward Israel and Western powers.

My friend blew his top and began using Biblical passages – as if they were God-ordained entitlements – that Israel “belonged there” for several millennia.  That’s when I knew I was facing an all too common Christian-Zionist misconception of the region’s history which is TOO OFTEN naïvely understood and ignorantly proclaimed by conservative (Puritan?) American politics.  Here are at least 10 reasons why their belief is based in gross fabrication as inspired from the work of Dr. Juan Cole from the University of Michigan.

  1. The ancient geographical history of Judaism begins in Mesopotamia, loosely modern-day Iraq and Syria, not Jerusalem or the Levant.
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    The actual settlement of Jerusalem and its surrounding region was founded between 3000 to 2600 BCE by a Semitic people (possibly Canaanites), the common ancestors of modern Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Jordanians.  However, outside of Old Testament passages, Judaism as a state or kingdom did not exist in or around Jerusalem.  To date, there has been no archeological evidence found of a “Kingdom of David” or of Solomon’s Temple claimed in the Bible during this period.
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  2. The settlement of Jerusalem was named in honor of Shalim, (salem) from the Canaanite religious pantheon, found on inscriptions in Syria.  According to the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (1999), the word Jerusalem means “built-up place of Shalim.”  Modern Judaism wrongly translates the word as City of Peace, and has romanticized its historical context as their own at the exclusion of Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, and Jordanians.
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  3. Exodus-262x300Strictly from Biblical sources, i.e. not from additional independent sources, Judaism asserts that the prophet Moses led slaves inside ancient Egypt.  Judaism asserts slave labor and a major slave revolt by Jews in ancient Egypt followed by a mass exodus into the Sinai Peninsula.  Judaism also asserts a Jewish invasion of Palestine by fleeing slaves from Egypt.  Yet no Egyptian records or evidence during the reign of Ramses II, as recorded at Luxor, exists to support any of these claims.  Furthermore, the only archeological evidence of a monotheistic worship happening inside Jerusalem doesn’t take place until around 1000 BCE.  All evidence prior to 1000 BCE clearly demonstrates common Canaanite deities were worshiped.  And even in this case, as noted in #4 below, substantial evidence of a monotheistic religion beginning in Jerusalem doesn’t begin happening until after 900 BCE as a small sect or population!
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  4. There is no definitive proof that Jerusalem was even inhabited between 1000 and 900 BCE.  No archeological evidence of glorious palaces, great states or kingdoms, or recognized kings of the region by Assyrian tablets, which record even the minutest events throughout the Middle East, has been discovered.  But once again, strictly from Biblical sources only, Judaism asserts these buildings, kings, and states existed.  The independent archeological records simply are not there.
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  5. Finally, with much exhaustion, a Jewish group known as the Hasmoneans did rule Jerusalem briefly between 168 and 37 BCE.  This is a grossly different time span (almost a 2,200 year difference) from what Zionist Judaism claims:  3000 BCE to present?  Yet even during this period (168 – 37 BCE) the reign over Jerusalem was with the significant help of Parthia.  The archeological and historical sources clearly show the Assyrians ruled Jerusalem and the region in 722 to 597 BCE when the Babylonians conquered it.  They lost it in 539 BCE to the Achaemenids of ancient Iran and ruled until Alexander the Great took the entire Levant in the 330’s BCE.  Alexander’s descendants, the Ptolemies, ruled until 198 BCE when his other descendants, the Seleucids, took it.  Enter the well-known King Herod of Parthian heritage from 37 to 6 BCE, at which time the Romans conquered all of Palestine.  The Romans and then later the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium, or later Constantinople, or modern Istanbul) reigned from 6 BCE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sassanian Empire conquered Jerusalem.  They ruled until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.  But wait!  The fighting and conquering isn’t over!
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    Beginning in 637 CE, the Muslim Arabs put siege to Jerusalem and conquered it a year later.  They ruled until 1099 CE when all the European Crusaders took it.  It is at this point when the Jewish and Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem fought side-by-side but were horrifically murdered in mass by Christian Crusaders.  The Gesta Francorum, the chronicle of the First Crusade, states “[our soldiers] were killing and slaying [women and babies alike] even to the Temple of Solomon, where the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles”  The estimated genocide is calculated today to be between 10,000 to 25,000 lives.
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    Saladin

    Saladin

    Upon the incursions and invasions of the European Crusaders, the great Sultan Saladin led his Egyptian and Syrian Muslims against the Christian armies, conquering much of the Levant and freeing Muslim slaves, then put siege to Jerusalem in 1187 CE and conquered it less than a month later.  Saladin, in unprecedented military fashion of the time recognizing the historical significance of Jerusalem to so many, allowed non-combatant Christians to leave and allowed Jews the choice to return.  Muslims ruled Jerusalem until the end of World War I, or in sum for about 1,192 years!
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    To conclude #5, advocates of Zionist Judaism did not found Jerusalem.  Judaism as a firm stable known religion or as a kingdom did not begin until around 200 BCE.  And the Hasmonean dynasty only ruled Jerusalem (in part) for about maybe 170 years.
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  6. Perhaps the most notable part of Jerusalem’s history is in 136 CE after the Bar Kochba revolt against Roman authority failed.  Some of the Jews in Jerusalem remained, but firmly under the rule of Rome and then Byzantium.  Many converted to Christianity to escape the harsh oppression.  After 638 CE and the Arab Muslim invasion, 90% of Jerusalem converted to Islam!  Thereafter, the entire region was almost exclusively Muslim for the next 1,300 plus years.  Palestinians are the legitimate descendants of Jerusalem, Eastern Israel, and the region!
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  7. In 1947 the virtual city and region of peace was completely turned upside down.  Despite the above historical and archeological chronicle of Judaism, the United Nations enacted the Partition Plan for Palestine following World War II and Jewish Holocaust.  This plan for the State of Israel developed from the post-war British political and military withdrawal from Palestine as well as wide Western sympathy for Jews and the Holocaust.  Suddenly, it seemed, the U.N. and West completely forgot what European Crusaders did to Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem in 1099 CE in the aftermath of the First Crusade.  Naturally, Palestine breaks out into civil war shortly after Resolution 181 (II) of the United Nations General Assembly implementing the partitioning of Palestine.  All out war followed between Arab militias and Jewish militias eventually leading to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.  Because of Western powers and alliances with Zionist Israel, and dare I say ignorance, the region has seen very little peace ever since.  Today tensions, violence, and terrorism trickle over into other contemporary conflicts from Western nations over-meddling in the Middle East, i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan, based indirectly on religious imperialist differences.
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    1967 Six Days War

    1967 Six Days War

    The 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 along with the Hague Regulations of 1907 explicitly forbids occupying powers (i.e. Britain or Jewish Europeans) to alter the lifestyles of non-combatant civilians who are occupied.  It furthermore explicitly forbids the immigration of people from the occupiers’ country into the occupied territory (i.e. Palestine).  Western nations of the U.N., including the United States, sat idle as the newly formed State of Israel removed Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, usurped Palestinian property and settled on their property, annexed districts of Jerusalem, all in gross violation of International Law.  Ironically, to state mildly, the Nazis began the same violations in 1938 and 1939 Europe.
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  8. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

    Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

    Past and present Israeli governments have not been united, much less consistent, about how East Jerusalem and the West Bank should be settled and managed once they were taken over.  Comically, this is reminiscent of Judaism’s long history of sectarian division and fragmentation going all the way back to 37 CE.  The Judaization of Galilee, a region in northern Israel, was implemented throughout the 1960’s and ‘70’s but with limited success.  Prime Minister and Nobel Prize winner Yitzhak Rabin was primarily responsible for bringing Israelis to peaceful coexistence with Palestine through the Oslo Peace Accord in 1993 and granting Palestinians their right to become a recognized state and withdrawing Jews from Gaza and Jericho.  For these proceedings Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Jewish-Zionist elements in 1995, specifically Yigal Amir, and elements that are now associated with current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.  As late as 2000, rhetoric and hints of Palestinian assurances by post-Rabin Israeli officials have been given but fourteen years and counting none have materialized.
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  9. The archeological record and linguistic history of Jerusalem and Levant show who has the most legitimate claim to sovereignty from best to least, in chronological order, by the  number of years settled:
      1. Muslims – they ruled it and built it for at least 1,191 years.
      2. Egyptians – ruled it as a vassal state for several centuries in the 2nd millennium BCE.
      3. Italians – ruled it for about 445 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.
      4. Iranians – ruled for 205 years under the Achaemenid Empire, for three years as a Parthian-Hasmonean vassal state, and for 15 years under the Sassanids.
      5. Greeks – ruled it for over 160 years, counting the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek empires.  If this period is counted as Egyptian and Syrian, that adds significantly to an Egyptian claim while introducing a Syrian one!
      6. Byzantines (Greeks/Turks) – ruled it for 188 years, however if one considers the heir to be Greece and add the time Hellenistic dynasties ruled, that gives Greece almost 350 years of ruling Jerusalem.
      7. Iraq– the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires ruled Jerusalem for 183 years, though adding the Ayyubid Empire (Saladin’s dynasty) who were Kurds from Iraq, ruled for 730 years bringing the total reigning years up to that point to a whopping 913 years!
      8. Jews – finally we arrive to the people who have the LEAST claim for Jerusalem.  The Hasmoneans ruled as a vassal state under Parthia for 131 years.
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  10. In the end, the only real claim Judaism has for Jerusalem and a state of Israel is based subservient to Persians, Greeks, and Romans when they ruled Palestine.  To make assertions to inhabit Jerusalem and the Palestinian region based on Biblical history, is like Americans claiming the European continent as legitimately theirs because of their ancestors, or Mexico claiming the southwest United States as their own because prior to the 18th century CE it belonged to them.  Spain could then lay claim of southwest America prior to them!  Yet, in a post-WWII world, by pandering to the West’s sympathies and political imperialism, Zionist-Jews robbed western Palestine and expelled Palestinians from their legitimate homeland while the “civilized” Western nations turned their heads.
Christian Biblical Fundamentalism

My conservative college friend no longer acknowledges me.  Because I questioned and disagreed with his political, religious, and social positions, he no longer speaks to me.  In fact, many of my former college and seminary friends – yes, I attended three years of seminary in Jackson, MS – no longer speak to me much less listen to me.  My more moderate college friends and my current liberal friends enjoy having these types of discussions and examinations.  Why they do, compared to the far-right fundamentalists, I cannot specifically answer.  I can speculate, but without any level of communication it is impossible to figure his or the far-right’s obstinacy.

teaparty2For the last twenty-three years, my once biblical fundamentalism has been increasingly deprogrammed and deconstructed until finally there was no intellectual basis for it whatsoever.  It eventually became all together Pagan or non-religious until I finally determined my current “title” or label:  Freethinking Humanist.

I recently read a post from one of my favorite bloggers, 500 Questions, where he examines whether the canonical Bible is divinely inspired (click here for that post).  He delves into the power and persuasion of memetics or the transfer of information or stories socially over the span of many generations.  If popular and useful enough, the meme can take on a life of its own becoming seemingly factual.  It is an excellent post if you have a chance to read it!

My now former conservative friend is a microcosm of a larger global problem:  religious extremism or literalism.  When I study all the world’s various faiths and social systems, I am appalled by how much of humanity’s history is filled with religious conflict and imperialism.  More striking is how much of it has been born from the Abrahamic religions.  If historians compiled the top ten worst moments in human history so far, half of them would be religiously based with the Crusades of Jerusalem topping all of them.  Two to three more would be politically-religiously based.

In light of what I’ve written here, in an age where geneticists and modern genetics have determined time and again that all of humanity has less than a 1% difference with each other, it is appalling that religious extremism and imperialism still exists.  Ninety-nine percent of us have the same tools genetically to live in peace and prosper together!  Everything outside of that 1% is taught to us (truthfully or falsely) by our parents, family, and community.  What does that say about potential change and world peace?

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**Nov. 22nd, 2014 — More Information:

AOBJ-Alison Weir“Few Americans today are aware that US support enabled the creation of modern Israel. Even fewer know that US politicians pushed this policy over the forceful objections of top diplomatic and military experts. As this work demonstrates, these politicians were bombarded by a massive pro-Israel lobbying effort that ranged from well-funded and very public Zionist organizations to an “elitist secret society” whose members included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.”

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Alison Weir’s organization:  IfAmericansKnew.org

John Crewdson’s October 2007 Chicago Tribune article

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Live Well * Love Much * Laugh Often * Learn Always

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Can America Now Be Truly Brave?

LGBT supporters in France

In an unprecedented show of great unity today, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council voted 23 in favor, 19 opposed, and three abstentions passing a resolution ending all violence in the world based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  This resolution is a HUGE step toward a planet with more patience, tolerance, love, and simple human integrity — something that patriarchal Middle Eastern countries and obviously those with much more violent intolerant religious Islāmic zealots — must take heed at the risk of increased isolation from the rest of the world’s nations.  And the United States cannot by any means pretend hypocritically that they are fully onboard with the rest of the world.  America too could just as easily risk the same isolation from truly freer nations that certain Middle Eastern countries could face or have faced.  With much gratitude and excitement, here is the CNN news article…

U.N. Council Passes Gay Rights ResolutionJill Dougherty CNN Foreign Affairs

I am very curious to know what the U.S. vote was in light of the fact that here, America as a whole does not offer the pursuit of happiness to all or protect fully its own LGBT population.  Can America now be truly more brave and join the rest of the nations being highly courageous in the fight for simple human rights?  This American believes wholeheartedly it can.

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Canaanites Killed & Removed From Native Lands

Modern day Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

This short blog was inspired by Silk over at her site Silk Road Visions – And Writings In the Sand.  The true finishing of this subject is at her WordPress blog — use the link provided below.

I have often wondered why after World War 2 the Allied powers removed the Palestinians to give their land to the Israelis, who had been homeless since, well your guess or research might be as good as mine.  Since about the 11th century BCE Israel has not existed as a nation as we define a nation today.  Hebrew-speaking people have been among the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Sassanians, and Byzantines subject to these empires, but during those many centuries they were not a kingdom with borders in the terms of today’s United Nations — for a quick overview:  Zionism and the British Mandate.

Why did the Israelis deserve their own nation with borders anymore than say….the Native American Indians?  America’s Manifest Destiny wasn’t too unlike Hitler’s “Final Solution” for the Jews.  Was it because of the atrocities they suffered at the hands of the Nazis?  Yes, the Jews suffered treatment as subhuman and put in concentration camps for systematic extermination by Hitler’s SS.  This is certainly a noble reason for the United States to fight and die in Europe — we did the same thing (well, in principle) in Iraq against Saddam Hussein in 2003 with Operation Iraqi Freedom.  President Hussein was known to have exterminated many of his Muslim enemies inside Iraq.  He had also  fought a long war against his neighbor Iran and those fellow Muslims.  However, I have always questioned WHY the United States does not do the same for other atrocities in any other nation around the world?  Point and case, the killing of Tibetans and the removal and exile of the Dali Lama by the Chinese communists.  Why didn’t we go to war against China for the sake of those Tibetans and their destroyed monasteries?  Was it because Tibet and Buddhism had no crude oil to supply the energy-hungry and booming victorious economies?  And if my religious biblical history serves me correctly, did not the land around Jerusalem belong to Canaan and its native people, and before them the Akkadians who took it from nomadic tribes in the 24th century BCE?

A volatile multi-relgious Jerusalem where everyone believes they belong there.

It seems to me that if the Western Hemisphere of nations (formerly under Greek then Roman rule historically) follow this U.N. logic, then the United States along with member nations of the U.N. must return lands taken by conquerors going back to pre-written languages BEFORE the “Bibles” of the Hebrews, Egyptians, Samaritans, and so on and so on, ad infinitum!  Indeed, at some point this logic becomes ludicrous and  is not a legitimate foundation anytime, anywhere.  More recently and more easily rectifiable the question becomes What justification did the non-Arab nations of the U.N. have to throw-out the Palestinians in 1947-1949?  I am very curious to read your thoughts and comments about this question and justification, or lack of justification.

As I mentioned at the outset, this blog was inspired by the wonderful blogger Silk at Silk Road Visions.  I strongly urge you to hop over there and read this excellent perspective on how in my humble view Western Imperial arrogance will always fuel radical jihadists, or simply sustain fragile relations with any Islamic nation.

The Karmic Wheel * America, Christianity and the State of Israel.

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