Friday, September 01, 2006

Merkel Wimps Out on Israeli Cluster Bombs

Merkel Wimps Out on Israeli Cluster Bombs
Thursday August 31st 2006, 1:36 pm

German Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was spot on when she criticized Israel for its obscene and wanton use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel was quick to jump up and kiss the hem of Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of German Jews, after she angrily complained that mentioning such is antisemitic.

“Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor, has repeatedly complained about what she terms a growing mood against Israel and Jews in Germany,” reports Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Wieczorek-Zeul and Oskar Lafontaine, members of Germany’s Left Party, according to Knobloch, “support the anti-mood against Jews in Germany.” In other words, if a German complains about Israel’s obvious war crimes—and in Germany, considerable parliamentary activity on cluster munitions is underway—he or she is obviously a raving antisemite, an accusation that imputes unspoken comparisons with Hitler and the Nazis.

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Charlotte Knobloch, the president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Wednesday to address Jewish anger over remarks made by overseas development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul about Israel’s offensive in Lebanon,” reports Deutsche Welle. “Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said Wednesday that Germany believed it carries a historical responsibility towards the Jewish state because of the Holocaust, and said all government ministers respected this policy.”

In other words, once again, the Holocaust was used as a cudgel by Jews who apparently believe Israel has the right to mass murder innocent Arabs, for as Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Los Angeles Times last month, there is a “new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare,” that is to say some civilians—Israeli civilians—are more innocent than other civilians, mostly Arabs, who are to be conflated with terrorists out of hand. In effect, the feelings of Germany’s Jews are more important than the lives of Lebanese children and grandmothers. How dare Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul think otherwise. No doubt she is a closet Nazi.

It does not matter that Wieczorek-Zeul and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have lashed “out at human rights abuses regardless who may have committed them.” After all, we’re talking about Israelis here and victims of the Holocaust, an event exploited over the last six decades to shake down not only Germany but virtually every other country that feels somehow responsible for what the Nazis did, a guilt expertly milked to the tune of billions of dollars.

Of course, the Nazis killed nearly 7 million Russian civilians (others put this estimate at 16 million) and thousands of communists, socialists, “degenerate artists,” homosexuals, and Roma were executed or sent to die in concentration camps, but we hear little about these poor souls.

Obviously, UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland often retreats to the secrecy of his closet and dons a Nazi uniform, glimmering with SS-Totenkopfverbande, or death’s head regalia. “What’s shocking, and I would say completely immoral, is that 90% of [Israel’s] cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end,” Egeland said.

UN chief Kofi Annan is also a Nazi fellow traveler, as he criticized Israel’s use of cluster bombs as well. “Those kinds of weapons shouldn’t be used in civilian and populated areas,” said Annan, obviously not understanding that Israel (and the United States in Iraq) use these weapons primarily to kill civilians and inflict terror on populations considered less than civilian, as Dershowitz would have it.

“Up to yesterday night we had figures saying there were 405 locations of cluster-bomb strikes in southern Lebanon,” declared Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon. “Per day, we are receiving an average of 30 new locations of cluster-bomb strikes because we have survey teams going to the field and getting information, and the picture is still emerging more and more.”

Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, “who’s just returned from a visit to southern Lebanon, says the least the Israelis can do is hand over maps of where they dropped these munitions,” but then this would be considered surrendering to Islamofascists and an unforgivable effrontery to Jews around the world who suffered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Dachau, etc., or rather the ancestors of said victims, as most of the actual victims have passed on.

But merely mentioning such crimes in relation to Israel is verboten in Germany. “A German Jewish leader has lashed out at German Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul for demanding a UN inquiry into Israel’s use of cluster bombs against civilians in Lebanon, the daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported in its Wednesday edition,” reports IRNA. “The vice-president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Salomon Korn, accused Wieczorek-Zeul of being biased against Israel…. ‘The demand shows once again that the minister has reacted in a reflexive manner with regard to Israel,’ Korn said.”

Instead of complaining about Lebanese school kids maimed or killed by the uninhibited dispersal of cluster bombs—often painted in bright colors and thus attractive to children—Korn demanded “Wieczorek-Zeul should have first visited Israel to express her ’sympathy’ with the Israelis and not the Lebanese,” who are, recall, conflated with terrorists.

Meanwhile, “Germany’s powerful and influential Central Council of Jews removed the head of the Jewish community in the north German city of Luebeck from office for strongly criticizing the 34-day Israeli war in Lebanon, the Hamburg-based daily Die Welt reported on Thursday,” reports IRNA. “Rolf Verleger who was chairman of the Jewish community in Luebeck, was dismissed from office after writing an open letter to the Central Council of Jews in which he lashed out at Israel’s brutal and murderous policies in Lebanon and the Palestinian-run areas.”

In the letter, Verleger lambasted Israel for its target killings, the collective punishment and discriminatory policies of other people and the massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon.

He urged the Central Council of Jews not to remain silent towards Israel’s atrocities.

The Central Council of Jews is seen as a die-hard defender of the Zionist regime as it automatically equates any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.

In addition, Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, the daughter of the late German Jewish leader Heinz Galinski, “lashed out at Germany’s powerful Central Council of Jews, accusing it of being nothing more than a mouthpiece of Israel,” reports IRNA. “Evelyn Hecht-Galinski expressed her outrage over continued attempts by the Central Council of Jews to stifle any criticism of Israel in Germany…. ‘As a German Jew, I am ashamed of Israel. Target killings, humiliating the Palestinian population, land dispossessions, destroying infrastructure, border checkpoint harassments, building the wall, blowing up houses, bombing UN monitors,’” Hecht-Galinski wrote for Stern magazine.

Obviously, Rolf Verleger and Evelyn Hecht-Galinski are self-hating Jews, for as “Natan Sharansky made clear, where Israel is criticized illegitimately, that is anti-Semitism,” writes Fiamma Nirenstein. “Israelis have difficulty understanding the nature of the polemical attacks used against the Jewish state. By being tarred as an apartheid, colonial, racist state, the enemy is merely employing anti-Semitic canards against Israel,” thus all criticism of Israel—beyond a tourist taking an Israeli restaurateur to task for bad dining experience or complaining about a rude hotel concierge—is antisemitism.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, Third New International Edition, antisemitism is defined as “opposition to Zionism” and “sympathy for the opponents of Israel,” most notably the Palestinians and more recently the people of Lebanon, who are less innocent than Israelis because they attempted to defend their country against invasion.

“Ken Jacobson, the associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Merriam-Webster to retain the definition,” notes Wikipedia, after the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee complained to Merriam Webster directly over the inclusion of the spurious entry. “Zionism is the national expression of the Jewish people,” he told the New York Times, “and to deny that, it seems to me, most often reflects anti-Semitic views.” In other words, if you complain about Israel killing Palestinian school children or targeting Lebanese apartment buildings in the middle of the night, you are denying the “national expression of the Jewish people.”

Fearful of denying this “national expression of the Jewish people”—in reality translated as stealing Arab land and invading neighboring countries—and angering the Jews of Germany, Angela Merkel wimped out.

“Merkel and Knobloch, in the first meeting of its kind since the council’s president took office, discussed the situation of the Jewish community in Germany, the state of affairs in the Middle East and Germany’s cooperation with the United Nations in stabilizing Lebanon for over an hour.”

In short, the German head of state kissed Knobloch’s heinie and begged for forgiveness, never mind the cluster bombs and merciless Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

Of course, this was to be expected, as Merkel is essentially a German version of a neocon, fully in support of Israel’s invasion and mass murder campaign in Lebanon.

“At a press conference in Germany [on July 13], Chancellor Angela Merkel lined up behind US President George Bush in supporting Israel’s expanding war of attrition in the Middle East. On the same day that Israeli fighter planes bombed Lebanon’s main airport, Bush and Merkel stood shoulder to shoulder to declare their solidarity with Israel,” writes Stefan Steinberg. “Merkel … raised the issue of the intensified fighting in the Gaza Strip and laid the entire blame for the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the expansion of its aggression into Lebanon on the Palestinians. The main issue, she said, was for Palestinian and Lebanese militants to return their captured prisoners and cease rocket attacks on Israel,” in other words, the Palestinians and Lebanese must accept Israeli domination and ethnic cleansing without resistance.

It would seem the question now is how long it will be before Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul is bounced.




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