Like most people I was astonished by President Bush's acceptance of the absurd and cruel Sharon roadmap for permanent destruction of the Palestinian nation this week.
How could such a thing happen? And why this week? Didn't the Americans have enough trouble in Iraq without adding fuel to the fire?
Ariel Sharon is a wily fellow. He saw his moment - for which he had planning and acting vigorously throughout at least the last year.
Last year about this time Rachel Corrie, an American girl in the International Solidarity Movement ("a Palestinian-led grassroots organization that facilitates the participation of international volunteers in non-violent direct action resistance to the Israeli occupation") was killed by the IDF. Foreign observers, specifically the ISM were a major obstacle to IDF's steady incursions and brutal attacks/reprisals against the Palestinians. They were a growing force and could assure international media coverage (heroic ISM youth versus brutal IDF) as well as provide extensive documentation both photographic and video of these same assaults.
Murdering Rachel Corrie served several purposes - it was a test to see how large the reaction to an American death would be. Happily for Sharon, while the initial media outcry was large, it quickly faded. Particularly after the IDF managed to effectively spread falsehoods and doubt about Rachel's death to the effect that it was an accident. This is simply not true, as both eyewitness accounts - there are about four of them - and photographs illustrate.
The second and even more sinister purpose served by the murder of an ISM volunteer was to discourage expansion of the program. After these event what parent would allow his or her university age progeny to depart to Israel for three months to help the Palestinians. As Rachel's death was successfully labelled an accident - some ISM continued to come.
Unsurprisingly there were two more attacks on ISM members in the next two months in April. Both Tom Hurndall (English) and Bryan Avery (American) were shot in the head. Accidentally, of course. But a clear message was sent to both peace movements and journalists. If you interfere with Israeli actions in Palestine, even as an observer, you are likely to pay for it with your life. Even Americans.
Propitiously, all of these murderous attacks took place while the world and more especially the Americans were watching the theatrics in Iraq. Co-incidental?
After these accidents and still under cover of the hostilities in Iraq, Israel accelerated the building of the wall between Israel and Palestine along ever more aggressively and arbitrary lines, cutting Palestinian farmers off from agricultural lands and penning their cities.
But still why get official endorsement from the United States now?
Sharon wants his deal while Bush is in the White House. The Israelis are justifiably worried that they may not see their backer re-elected in six months. While John Kerry faces the same menaces at home from the Jewish political interest groups as any other American politician, never has Israel had such a pliant President in the White House so surrounded by Likud hawks from the Project for a New American Century (link to PNAC Watch - don't neglect to visit the original for to observe such peace inspirational tracts first hand. With Kerry, Israel - as yet - has no guarantees.
Why does Sharon think he can get away with it?
Together with the British, the Americans are already the perpetrators of the greatest genocide in history. The elimination of the American Indians as a significant social group is not in sheer number of individuals killed the largest attack on a people(s), but in terms of duration, severity and numbers of individual nations eliminated it far exceeds any other. There were over 1,470 official incidents of US Army action against American Indians between 1776 and 1907. The population of indigenous peoples in North America in 1492 is estimated at 5 million or more. By 1800 there were only 600,00 and by 1900 less than 250,000 living.
This is a liquidation of 95% of the population. Hundreds of tribes or peoples just disappeared into the ether. To be able to legitimise the shame of Israeli democracy - Palestinians are not allowed to vote within their own state - and to take the remaining Palestinian territory, this is the kind of decimation that Sharon must aspire to. Probably throughout the Middle East and not just in Israel.
I believe in the [Indian] policy that exterminates the Indians, drives them outside the boundaries of civilization, because you cannot civilize them - Congressman James M. Cavanaugh 1868
The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.... Reckless, revengeful, fiendishly cruel, they rob and murder, not the cowboys, who can take care of themselves, but the defenseless, lone settlers on the plains. Future President Teddy Roosevelt, January 1886Policy towards the Indian was even more brutal than that of Israel's towards the Palestinians. In 1850's California, the settlers were allowed to make Indians server as indenture servants for a period of 15 years. The government fenced them onto reservations, gave their grazing fields to the settlers, leaving them without food. When the hungry Indians raided settler's herds for food, reprisal raids were organised by the local cattle supervisor said "no man who would not kill all the Indians he encountered should go."
That same year, 1859, California Governor John B. Weller granted state commissions to companies of volunteers that excelled in killing Indians. Weller commissioned these volunteers in lieu of federal troops since the troops were reported to be on friendly terms with the Yuki. Upon completion of their mission to kill the Indians regardless of age or sex, Governor Weller sent his congratulations to the volunteers for doing "all that was anticipated," and his "sincere thanks for the manner in which it [the campaign] was conducted"Sharon has certainly picked the right partner for genocide. Curiously enough, the only other un-coerced party in the present coalition of the willing now in the Middle East is Britain, who prosecuted similarly successful genocidal policies north of the 49th parallel.
The only good Indian is a dead Indian. No Palestinians, no problem.
How can Sharon fail to see that the end game of this conflagration can only be the loss of Israel as well?
How could Hitler fail to see that war on two fronts would destroy his army? How could Napoleon fail to see that he would lose his army in Russia? So did Bush and Sharon fail to see they would lose Israel in Iraq and an unjust settlement in Palestine. Some dogs are just vicious. They bite all in sight. Wise owners muzzle them.
Fortunately for themselves the peoples of the Middle East have a far greater experience of Europeans and Jews than the unfortunate Indians did. They will not stop defending themselves and their way of life until the last American leaves their country. They will not be so easily or lightly vanquished. The Iraqis had learnt from the first Gulf War not to line up in tanks and APC's for slaughter by airforce and rocket. They dispersed and hid the weapons, waiting to see what the future would bring.
When it became apparent that they could only expect the rape and pillage of their country, they turned against the occupiers and will not turn back again. They are men of courage defending themselves with machine guns and rifles against F16's and tanks. The American soldiers are misplaced time servers in a foreign land which does not want them. In their frustration and fear, they are perpetrating atrocities. Short of nuclear genocide the Americans and their Israeli allies cannot hope to prevail.
But to return to Sharon, why now with the Palestinians?
Sharon's own stranglehold on power is gravely threatened now. His family is being investigated for corruption in a sorry saga of real estate scams. It is clear that Sharon's son did take payoffs to try to influence political policy. How the sons they influenced policy not yet been proven, but one expects it would be via the father. The policies in question did change in favour of those who paid the bribes. Obtaining America's approval on the permanent apartheid plan is a major political coup for Sharon right now.
While this may be a very wily tactic for Sharon, it is very bad for Jews everywhere.
Sharon's background in the army is that of a thug and a murderer - Sharon is not a statesman, but the descendent of Cain, a man who through his actions and his statements dishonours the memory of Jews, living and dead.
The Jewish people do not mourn more than four million (I believe that is the current accepted historical figure) of their own people perished in death camps to see the head of their state and self-proclaimed head of their people practice effective genocide on another people. Stefan Zweig did not write his books to be the bedside reading of Israeli lagerkommandanten, the last living agents of apartheid after the fall of South Africa. Arnold Schoenberg did not write his symphonies to be the soundtrack for armageddon.
The problem with Sharon's apartheid ideas is that he has clearly shown to the international community that one set of rules applies to Jews (and American Jews and by proxy supportive Americans) and another set of rules applies to everyone else.
And by putting these racist ideas into practice - the ideas themselves have been around for a long time - Sharon has awoken the bugbear of anti-Semitism which thankfully had been slumbering in America and abroad since the end of the Second World War.
What can be done to avoid an outpouring of anti-Semitism?
- American and Canadian Jews must denounce Sharon immediately and to repudiate his plan for the Palestinians.
- The American congress should suspend all support of the Israel defense structure as long as those weapons are being used to kill America and other international observers and to raze Palestinian homes.
- The current sitting President of the United States withdraw his ill-thought support for the apartheid and inhuman Sharon plan for the destruction of the Palestinian people.
- Americans must press for a fair settlement of the Palestine issue
Alarmism? No, Israel is already being widely paralleled to South Africa, the other pariah state of the second half of this century.
Americans will soon also be unwelcome in most other lands. This suits the Israel lobby - if we may identify that lobby with the Project for a New American Century. They are striving to create a situation where all Americans must live like Israelis: in fear for the strike of the next suicide bomber. The greater the identification, the better for Israel.
For now there is still a chance to reverse this process. Americans you do not have to be reviled the world over. Solve the Palestinian problem fairly (1967 borders, self-government) and withdraw gracefully from Iraq and your nation will again be celebrated in many places, your people protected in their travels, your businesses welcomed.
In the contrary occurence, all over the world - except in the United States - Sharon is creating a plethitude of difficulties for both Jews and their hosts nations. In the recent times of religious tolerance, Jews throughout the world, thanks to hard work and study, have obtained excellent post both government and commerce.
This has not been and should not be an issue.
But under the current situation, as long as international Jews support what happens in Israel, the tolerance will come to an end. In genocide, there is no neutral position as the Swiss found out.
Governments and employers can and will demand of their Jewish employees or representatives if they support the apartheid policies in Israel. And many will still wonder - to whom do their employees' loyalties stand greater, their own state or company or to Israel.
What can the unfortunate Jew answer? He or she will of course say that his/her loyalties are with his or her current state or employer. And often he or she will be telling the truth. But often or at least sometimes not. And how can one establish the turth?
Logically the quandary is thus posed:
- the state policies of Israel are totally unacceptable to civilised man
- it is our duty as a state to oppose these Israeli policies
- many Jews support these policies and other Jews support these policies clandestinely, indeed Jewish advisors led America into this preposterous war
- thus no Jew can be trusted in government any longer, as he may be working against his own state to support the inhuman policies in Palestine
A similar unwelcome fate awaits Jews around the world if this madness cannot be stopped. The situation suits Sharon and his Likud party fine, as they thrive on an atmosphere of hostility and mistrust. An dispossessed Jew is just a new Israeli, ripe for the settlements.
Might does not make right. Might creates terrorism, fear and misery in both persecuted and persecutor.
And the only people able to stop their self-immolation now are themselves. In America, they must put pressure on the Bush administration to stop Israel's hand. In Israel, they must put pressure on Sharon to pursue a more equitable settlement.
We are all held responsible the actions of our leaders. And so must be the Jews.
Jews are such wonderful Americans.
Why would anybody here not love you.
Well, maybe this is why.
You've stolen our wealth.
You've stolen our media.
You've stolen our government.
And now, see below, you raise your
children to be Israelis, not Americans.
You deserve everything that befalls you.
Copyright 2004 News & Record (Greensboro, NC)
February 15, 2004 Sunday ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: GENERAL NEWS; Pg. A1 LENGTH: 1923 words
ACADEMY: MOLDING FUTURE LEADERS;
ORGANIZERS OF THE AMERICAN HEBREW ACADEMY SPARED NO EXPENSE IN CREATING AN ATMOSPHERE FOR STUDENTS TO EMBRACE THEIR FAITH. BUT ITS FOUNDER IS EMBROILED IN A BILLION-DOLLAR FRAUD CASE THAT COULD JEOPARDIZE THE SCHOOL'S FINANCIAL STABILITY.
BYLINE: BY MARGARET MOFFETT BANKS Staff Writer
DATELINE: GREENSBORO
Lior Gilo knows how good she's got it.
The 17-year-old is sitting in a hallway, a school-issued laptop balanced on her knee. She has the world at her fingertips at the American Hebrew Academy, where computerized microscopes, wireless Internet access, interactive chalkboards that project online encyclopedias and Israeli TV in every classroom are part of the school day.
"In the beginning, we were like,
'Oh my God, this stuff is so crazy,"' said Lior, a senior and the student body president. "For me, I'm still amazed."
Six years ago, it was little more than one man's dream: Take 100 acres off Hobbs Road and build an elite boarding school - the Jewish Exeter, the Jewish Andover, the Jewish equivalent of New England prep schools famous for producing Fortune-500 CEOs. Hire Frank Lloyd Wright's partner as the campus architect. Import Jerusalem stone for every building. Stock classrooms with technology direct from Silicon Valley.
And above all, nurture future Jewish leaders so they may always retain their Jewish identity.
Today, the academy is considered one of America's top Jewish schools, a place where students receive an Ivy League education in a Jewish-centered setting.
But the school's financial stability might be in jeopardy because of a billion-dollar fraud case, which could be settled this month. Attorneys claim Maurice "Chico" Sabbah of Greensboro built the academy with $104 million "wrongfully diverted" from three Japanese insurers who were clients of Sabbah's Fortress Re reinsurance company. Sabbah has denied the charges, but his lawyers are participating in settlement talks.
Lawyers for the insurers are coy about how they hope to recover the money. Cliff Schoenberg, an attorney for one Japanese company, won't say what his clients want - cash, land, buildings. But what he does say makes clear his position: The Japanese want their money back.
The company is "respectful of the fact (the academy) is an institution that's trying to do good," he said. "That obviously will be taken into account."
Built for success
Springsong Cooper's dorm room is dark, save the florescent light brightening her desk. It's midmorning and she's finishing homework, making use of the one open period that's built into students' schedules every other day.
Springsong, 17, hails from Republic, Wash., population 954. The nearest synagogue is three hours away. Before arriving at the academy, she spoke little Hebrew. She never attended a Jewish service until a week before her bat mitzvah, a ceremony marking the passage from childhood.
And as the only Jewish children in town, Springsong and her younger brother, Lev, had no outlet for Jewish activities and social events. So, they attended Christian camps with friends, sharing their Judaism with others students only on holidays.
"I was always in the position where I felt a little out of place," she said.
It was for children like Springsong that the academy was created.
In 1998, organizers announced plans to turn $8.3 million worth of land into a lavish boarding school, with million-dollar dorms, highly trained teachers, classrooms wired with the latest technology. Architect Aaron Green unveiled a Prairie-style design that's textbook Frank Lloyd Wright, including light-filled classrooms and green roofs.
Trustees would say only that the money - there would need to be lots for their ambitious plan - was coming from a "small group of anonymous donors."
Yet many in Greensboro's tight-knit Jewish community suspected Chico Sabbah was bankrolling the project almost exclusively, something tax and court records later revealed. Between 1997 and 2000, records show, the academy received $99.6 million, most from Sabbah's private charity and an anonymous fund he established.
Sabbah declined to be interviewed for this article but allowed his daughter to give a tour of the normally intensely private school grounds. Few people in Greensboro have visited the campus, heavily guarded by Greensboro police, private security officers and a black metal gate that surrounds the school.
Even fewer people understand why Sabbah built the academy, the nation's only boarding school for non-Orthodox Jews. It was his deep love of his Jewish faith and tradition, and a fear that fewer and fewer young people were embracing it, said his daughter, academy spokeswoman Leeor Sabbah.
"He wanted to create an environment where (students) could feel tied to Judaism," she said. "Part of the vision of Mr. Sabbah is to create an environment to nurture future Jewish leaders of the world."
Springsong, whose interest in Judaism spiked after her bat mitzvah, learned about the academy through a brochure. She said she was reluctant to leave Republic, filled with her family and lifelong friends. But she was more reluctant to leave her interest in Judaism unexplored.
"Something was missing," she said. "I never knew what it was."
For that very reason, Judaism is the heart of campus life. The academy "keeps Kosher," meaning there is strict separation of meat and dairy products, a religious tradition not every Jew observes.
Students must attend Sabbath services on Friday nights, along with daily prayer meetings. Those with shaky Hebrew must practice until they become fluent enough to chant prayers. And juniors spend 12 weeks in Israel, studying and practicing their Hebrew as they explore the country.
The academy offers what it calls a "dual curriculum," which includes traditional and Jewish-centered course work. Students enroll in seven classes a semester, three more than the average Guilford County student taking a block-style schedule. Hebrew-language and Judaic study courses are mandatory, as is the two-hour study hall Sunday through Thursday nights .
It all makes for long school days - squeezing in religious observances, sports and classroom studies, which happen around teardrop-shaped tables designed to inspire debate. Dori Chandler, one of 22 day students, often doesn't come home until after 6 p.m., said mother Marilyn Chandler.
Chandler, head of Greensboro's thriving Jewish federation, likens the curriculum to the International Baccalaureate program, a rigorous slate of college-prep courses taken by top students.
"She studies all the time," Chandler said of her daughter's life after school.
The academy's academic standards are so high that a student who succeeds there "can walk into any college and be socially, academically and theologically light-years ahead of their peers," said Marc Kramer, head of RAVSAK, an association of U.S. Jewish day schools.
He credits a slow, measured plan for growth for the school's success. Instead of opening with 800 students, the academy's long-term goal, officials are gradually increasing enrollment, building dorms and classrooms as needed.
Most of all, he credits Chico Sabbah, who never strayed from his original goal: building the best Jewish school money could buy.
"It's absolutely unique as an educational experience for the American Jewish community," said Kramer, whose organization represents 25,000 students. "He just stuck to his guns. I think it's heroic."
Each of the five $1.7 million dorms includes spacious rooms for roughly 20 students. Because administrators believe in strict supervision of students, each dorm includes a 2,200-square-foot apartment for house parents, with four bedrooms and granite countertops. The headmaster will live on campus, too - in a $472,000 house being built this year.
Visitors aren't allowed to drive far past the entrance gate; gas-powered vehicles aren't allowed on campus for environmental and security reasons. Students either walk or ride electric-powered golf carts along the winding, wooded paths between buildings. They're driven off-campus in a school-owned shuttle.
And talk about supervision: Teachers have technology to monitor students' use of the Internet in their classroom by viewing the images on their screens.
As for Springsong - she's become quite well-versed in Hebrew, though she's reluctant to call herself fluent. She adores attending the mandatory services and treasures her three months in Israel, where she soaked up Jewish culture and, albeit briefly, considered becoming a rabbi.
"None of these things would have been available to me back home," she said.
Weathering the lawsuit storm
Sabbah, 75, made his fortune through Fortress Re - the "Re" stands for reinsurance. He and partner Kenneth Kornfeld managed an aviation-reinsurance "pool," a risk-sharing insurance group, for three Japanese companies. Those companies paid premiums to Fortress Re, which was expected to use that money to pay claims if any airplanes crashed.
On Sept. 11, 2001, one day after the academy opened, terrorists crashed four airplanes, all insured by Fortress Re's pool.
The Japanese companies say in multiple lawsuits that Sabbah and Kornfeld spent the money they were supposed to save for such an event. Fortress Re shareholders deny the charge. But in December, an arbitration panel found Fortress Re guilty of defrauding one of the companies, Sompo Insurance Co., and ordered Fortress Re to pay $1.1 billion.
Fortress Re has paid $265 million to Sompo and the two other Japanese companies. All three expect to receive hundreds of millions more through a settlement, which could be reached in late February, said Sompo attorney Schoenberg. It's unclear whether Sabbah and Kornfeld will use their personal fortunes to pay the settlement.
Schoenberg said "there's no accusation that the American Hebrew Academy acted improperly," only that Fortress Re gave the academy "illicitly gotten gains" the Japanese want back.
His tone changes when he mentions multimillion-dollar geothermal wells buried under the soccer field - the largest of their kind in the United States and the source of the academy's water.
"It appears that's where they spent all the pool members' money," he said.
The settlement does inspire thoughts of an "incongruity," as one British insurance publication wrote in November: "the Japanese owning the first ever American Hebrew boarding school." But it's unlikely the Japanese will take over the school; there won't be a Sompo Academy in Greensboro, Schoenberg said.
Meanwhile, trustees are moving forward - building an $11.6 million athletics center and pool, aggressively recruiting students, advertising jobs for teachers and house parents.
Sabbah's lawyers won't discuss the pending settlement or what that settlement might mean for the academy. Leeor Sabbah said its future will be unchanged regardless of the outcome of her father's legal problems, with one exception: Leaders are seeking high-dollar donors in America and abroad.
"My father isn't the only one who feels strongly about Jewish education," she said of "endowment opportunities" being created for donors. "There's no concern, just a realignment of finances."
In a 2002 interview for Forbes magazine with Greensboro writer Ed Cone, Sabbah said the school had $50 million in the bank, which would cover 10 years of operating expenses. He also told Cone he would leave his estate to the academy. What is left unspoken is that Sabbah, the school's primary benefactor, might not have as many millions to donate once the settlement is complete.
So, the academy's first-ever development campaign begins as expectations for the school, and the stakes for its future, have never been higher.
Contact Margaret Moffett Banks at 373-7031 or [email protected]
Posted by: GOYISCHE KOP | 16 April 2004 at 11:17 PM
You two deserve each other. What a pair of maroons. No wonder no one visits your weblog except for a massive anti-Semite.
Posted by: Mar | 18 April 2004 at 04:15 AM
And Muslim-Americans are raising their children to murder other Americans! And white-KKK-NAZI-Americans are teaching their children HATE and racism and to murder all non-white people!
Let's see raise your children to believe in God, and Justice, and Human Rights, and NOT TO MURDER, or raise them to be terrorists? I guess that is a tough choice for the likes of you, a fecking racist Jew-hating bigot!
AND FURTHER MORE RACHEL CORIE WAS NOT MURDERED!
Rachel Corrie, One Year Later
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 13, 2004
The one-year anniversary of the demise of Rachel Corrie has not passed without fanfare. Rachel’s mother and others on the Left have observed the cosmic event by condemning alleged Israeli (and U.S.) intransigence in the investigation of the death. In the Boston Globe of March 18, 2004, Rachel Corrie's mother wrote:
Rachel was an unarmed peace activist trying to prevent the demolition of the home of a Palestinian pharmacist, his wife, and three children. She believed that nonviolent direct action against the Israeli occupation would make Palestinians, and also Israelis and Americans, more secure. Rachel stood there to protect a home and family in Gaza because the United States and Israel rejected a UN proposal to send international human rights monitors there. International activists went instead. Rachel stood there protesting illegal home demolitions that the United States opposes on the record yet fails to stop – destruction that we support with billions in annual military aid to Israel for bulldozers, Apache helicopters, F-16s, and more.
She went on to demand that the United States run its own investigation into her daughter's death, and reject the conclusions from Israel's own official investigation, which concluded that Corrie had been struck accidentally by a bulldozer operator who was unable to see her, blaming Corrie herself for blocking the bulldozer in the middle of its operation. In other statements, the Corrie family has been far more bellicose, denouncing Israel for maintaining an “illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.”
What are we to make of this new Corrie family jihad?....
[owner: I have been obliged to cut off an excessively long reprint. in this case, i am obliged to say in this case it is insulting and inflammatory lies. the pictures of rachel corrie's death clearly show murder. she was easily visible to the bulldozer driver who recklessly drove over her. apparently the author of these posts supports spending billions on instruments of war to destroy what is left of the palestinian territories. the rhetoric is suspiciously similar to that of a camp seargent. not a particularly bright one. LGF written all over these posts.
strangely, the arab nations, most europeans, american blacks, a good part of the american white right wing fringe as well as the majority of the left are all incensed and/or disgusted by israeli and american actions in palestine and iraq. not a lot of allies left for these policies.
but all of these disparate groups must be wrong. it is a KKK-black-muslim-european-communist conspiracy against israel.]
Posted by: Riain Barton | 11 May 2004 at 08:25 AM