Sunday, February 29, 2004
The letter below was in response to the earlier letter in the South African online newspaper, IOL (Independent OnLine) about anti-semitism.
This is a topic which will, of course, not go away while there are still Jews living in the world - at the moment an estimated 13 million - a very small amount really, by any reckoning of the world's religions which have millions and millions of followers each. Of the estimated 13 million, there must be vast numbers who, like me, consider themselves secular Jews without religion, still calling themselves Jews, but inheriting some of the rich culture from generations past.
Topic: In the news
Oleh Hadash (ohadash@hotmail.com) wrote: Letter Subject: Response:
Nothing to fear but Zionism itself Letter date: 2004-02-22 17:54:49
Marlene Newesri, you sicken me! You are either blind or stupid to argue
that anti- Semitism does not exist! What do you call it when synagogues
are burned, when Jews are assaulted in the streets of Paris, Berlin,
Amsterdam and London - simply for being Jewish? When hate speech is
scrawled on Jewish buildings? When Jewish graves are vandalised and
messages like: "Hitler didn't finish the job, we will!" are spray-painted
on them? No, you argue, the Jews are behind the whole thing! No, it is
Ariel Sharon's double talk!
I suppose this is all a Jewish conspiracy! Decent, civilised people like
Marlene Newesri could never do anything like that. And of course they
never slaughtered Jews by the millions (six million, in fact). No, the
Jews invented this myth, too! (And of course the Jews were behind the
attacks on the World Trade Centre; the Arabs aren't clever/ deceitful
enough to have pulled that one off!)
Well, Ms Newesri, I have news for you. It is people like you, with your
attitudes and ideas, that we need to fear. It is because of people like
you that we need the State of Israel, a state with a clear Jewish
majority. And yes, we are encouraging Jews from around the world to move
to Israel to ensure a Jewish demographic majority. What do you propose?
Allowing our enemies to out-breed us and exploit our democracy to
dispossess us? History has shown us repeatedly that we are not welcome as
a minority in a foreign country. We are always seen as different, as not
wanted. First, you may not live amongst us as Jews. Then, you may not live
amongst us. And finally, you may not live! Is that what you propose, Ms
Newesri?!
Note that the Arabs are quite clear that not one Jew may remain in
"Palestine". Like Europe of the 1930s/40s it has to be "Judenrein" -
cleansed of all Jews. And of course Jews are denied citizenship/property
in all the Arab countries, and in fact millions of Jews were dispossesed
and expelled from their homes (of hundreds or even thousands of years) in
Arab countries, when Israel was formed. No one said anything about that!
But the Arabs scream only about Israel being a racist state. Your double
standards and bigotry would be laughable were they not so serious and
dangerous!
Ms Newesri, I am a proud Jew, and I will not apologise for my desire and
right to live in a free and safe country. I will not hesitate to fight to
defend that country from terrorists who wield bombs, or those like you,
who wield words and twisted ideas. You, in fact, are the more dangerous
type, for you are insidious and use pseudo-logic to stir up primitive,
atavistic hatred.
But we will not yield to your hatred.We have survived for over two
thousand years, we have outlasted the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians,
the Syrians, the Spanish, the Germans and the Arabs.
Am Yisrael Chai
Oleh Hadash
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This is a topic which will, of course, not go away while there are still Jews living in the world - at the moment an estimated 13 million - a very small amount really, by any reckoning of the world's religions which have millions and millions of followers each. Of the estimated 13 million, there must be vast numbers who, like me, consider themselves secular Jews without religion, still calling themselves Jews, but inheriting some of the rich culture from generations past.
Topic: In the news
Oleh Hadash (ohadash@hotmail.com) wrote: Letter Subject: Response:
Nothing to fear but Zionism itself Letter date: 2004-02-22 17:54:49
Marlene Newesri, you sicken me! You are either blind or stupid to argue
that anti- Semitism does not exist! What do you call it when synagogues
are burned, when Jews are assaulted in the streets of Paris, Berlin,
Amsterdam and London - simply for being Jewish? When hate speech is
scrawled on Jewish buildings? When Jewish graves are vandalised and
messages like: "Hitler didn't finish the job, we will!" are spray-painted
on them? No, you argue, the Jews are behind the whole thing! No, it is
Ariel Sharon's double talk!
I suppose this is all a Jewish conspiracy! Decent, civilised people like
Marlene Newesri could never do anything like that. And of course they
never slaughtered Jews by the millions (six million, in fact). No, the
Jews invented this myth, too! (And of course the Jews were behind the
attacks on the World Trade Centre; the Arabs aren't clever/ deceitful
enough to have pulled that one off!)
Well, Ms Newesri, I have news for you. It is people like you, with your
attitudes and ideas, that we need to fear. It is because of people like
you that we need the State of Israel, a state with a clear Jewish
majority. And yes, we are encouraging Jews from around the world to move
to Israel to ensure a Jewish demographic majority. What do you propose?
Allowing our enemies to out-breed us and exploit our democracy to
dispossess us? History has shown us repeatedly that we are not welcome as
a minority in a foreign country. We are always seen as different, as not
wanted. First, you may not live amongst us as Jews. Then, you may not live
amongst us. And finally, you may not live! Is that what you propose, Ms
Newesri?!
Note that the Arabs are quite clear that not one Jew may remain in
"Palestine". Like Europe of the 1930s/40s it has to be "Judenrein" -
cleansed of all Jews. And of course Jews are denied citizenship/property
in all the Arab countries, and in fact millions of Jews were dispossesed
and expelled from their homes (of hundreds or even thousands of years) in
Arab countries, when Israel was formed. No one said anything about that!
But the Arabs scream only about Israel being a racist state. Your double
standards and bigotry would be laughable were they not so serious and
dangerous!
Ms Newesri, I am a proud Jew, and I will not apologise for my desire and
right to live in a free and safe country. I will not hesitate to fight to
defend that country from terrorists who wield bombs, or those like you,
who wield words and twisted ideas. You, in fact, are the more dangerous
type, for you are insidious and use pseudo-logic to stir up primitive,
atavistic hatred.
But we will not yield to your hatred.We have survived for over two
thousand years, we have outlasted the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians,
the Syrians, the Spanish, the Germans and the Arabs.
Am Yisrael Chai
Oleh Hadash
Time to get a few things off my chest!!
In one of the longer ongoing scandalous sagas of politics in this dreadfully boring country - politically speaking, the saga of a "Yes, Minister" story is playing itself along.
I am referring to the maintaining of a concentration camp on Manus Island, an island which belongs to Papua New Guinea, and in which there is one, lone asylum seeker, a Palestian whose name is Aladdin Sisalem. The Australian government is driving him mad, and is refusing him asylum on all sorts of spurious grounds, saying he is not their responsibility. Other countries have also refused him asylum.
The Australian government has said that when he is eventually gone from there they still intend to maintain the facility as a deterrent to any future asylum seekers.
So, at a cost of millions to Australians, its government will be keeping this comcentration camp open and ready to receive "guests" in much the same way that Sir Humphry Appleby was persuading Jim Hacker to keep open a brand new hospital in Britain which was fully equipped, fully staffed and ready for patients, but no patients would be admitted, because it would cause too much work for allthe administrators who were running the hospital.
Sound like a lunatic asylum?? That's what it is - only the lunatics are outside the asylum, unfortunately not in it!!
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links to this post
In one of the longer ongoing scandalous sagas of politics in this dreadfully boring country - politically speaking, the saga of a "Yes, Minister" story is playing itself along.
I am referring to the maintaining of a concentration camp on Manus Island, an island which belongs to Papua New Guinea, and in which there is one, lone asylum seeker, a Palestian whose name is Aladdin Sisalem. The Australian government is driving him mad, and is refusing him asylum on all sorts of spurious grounds, saying he is not their responsibility. Other countries have also refused him asylum.
The Australian government has said that when he is eventually gone from there they still intend to maintain the facility as a deterrent to any future asylum seekers.
So, at a cost of millions to Australians, its government will be keeping this comcentration camp open and ready to receive "guests" in much the same way that Sir Humphry Appleby was persuading Jim Hacker to keep open a brand new hospital in Britain which was fully equipped, fully staffed and ready for patients, but no patients would be admitted, because it would cause too much work for allthe administrators who were running the hospital.
Sound like a lunatic asylum?? That's what it is - only the lunatics are outside the asylum, unfortunately not in it!!
Thursday, February 19, 2004
This letter has appeared on a South African on line newspaper called IOL which is Independent OnLine and represents several South African newspapers.
It is such a good letter that I thought it ought to be published much more widely, so my blog is a good place for it to be!!
Topic: In the news
Marlene Newesri (H525631nf@aol.com) wrote:
Letter Subject: Nothing to fear but Zionism itself
Letter date: 2004-02-16 14:57:54
Ambassador Rockwell Schnabel recently made unfounded assertions that
anti-Semitism in Europe has almost reached the level seen in the 1930's.
During a trip to Italy in November of 2003, (Israeli prime minister Ariel)
Sharon told Italian Jews that "the best solution to anti-semitism is
immigration to Israel", but considering Sharon's double- talk, what he
really meant was that "the best solution for immigration to Israel is
anti-Semitism".
Israel has made no secret of its great concerns over its demography and to
maintain the "Jewish character" of its state, which leads one to believe
that conditions must be nurtured to encourage Jewish emigration, no matter
how unfavorable they may be.
This analytical conclusion (which does not require a great mind) is
arrived at since the Israeli Minister of Absorption in June of 2003 stated
that immigration to Israel had fallen sharply. Mike Rosenberg, who is
Director of The Jewish Agency, and also responsible for immigration to
Israel, did not beat around the bush when he said that "adverse conditions
for Jews elsewhere in the world would push them toward Israel".
"There is still a very great reservoir of
potential immigrants for Israel," he said. "Our job is to create the
conditions to harness it."
With frankness such as this, one cannot help but wonder how many incidents
of alleged "anti- Semitism" are wilfully created in order to encourage
such immigration by using fear tactics. Those same conditions were
harnessed in Iraq in 1950 when Zionist agents threw bombs at a synagogue
in Baghdad and other Jewish targets in order to pressure Jews into
emigrating to Israel.
Based on the above, the final and most logical conclusion is that there is
nothing to fear but Zionism itself.
Marlene Newesri
New York
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links to this post
It is such a good letter that I thought it ought to be published much more widely, so my blog is a good place for it to be!!
Topic: In the news
Marlene Newesri (H525631nf@aol.com) wrote:
Letter Subject: Nothing to fear but Zionism itself
Letter date: 2004-02-16 14:57:54
Ambassador Rockwell Schnabel recently made unfounded assertions that
anti-Semitism in Europe has almost reached the level seen in the 1930's.
During a trip to Italy in November of 2003, (Israeli prime minister Ariel)
Sharon told Italian Jews that "the best solution to anti-semitism is
immigration to Israel", but considering Sharon's double- talk, what he
really meant was that "the best solution for immigration to Israel is
anti-Semitism".
Israel has made no secret of its great concerns over its demography and to
maintain the "Jewish character" of its state, which leads one to believe
that conditions must be nurtured to encourage Jewish emigration, no matter
how unfavorable they may be.
This analytical conclusion (which does not require a great mind) is
arrived at since the Israeli Minister of Absorption in June of 2003 stated
that immigration to Israel had fallen sharply. Mike Rosenberg, who is
Director of The Jewish Agency, and also responsible for immigration to
Israel, did not beat around the bush when he said that "adverse conditions
for Jews elsewhere in the world would push them toward Israel".
"There is still a very great reservoir of
potential immigrants for Israel," he said. "Our job is to create the
conditions to harness it."
With frankness such as this, one cannot help but wonder how many incidents
of alleged "anti- Semitism" are wilfully created in order to encourage
such immigration by using fear tactics. Those same conditions were
harnessed in Iraq in 1950 when Zionist agents threw bombs at a synagogue
in Baghdad and other Jewish targets in order to pressure Jews into
emigrating to Israel.
Based on the above, the final and most logical conclusion is that there is
nothing to fear but Zionism itself.
Marlene Newesri
New York
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Mannie De Saxe
PO Box 1675
Preston South
Vic 3072
Australia
Phone: 61 3 9471 4878
email: josken@zipworld.com.au
13 February 2004
President Mbeki
Re: HIV/AIDS
It appears that your continued reluctance to address the biggest crisis in South Africa since the end of the apartheid era in 1994 is leading the country to disaster.
It is decimating the population, reducing the working ability of those who are lucky enough to still have jobs, and is complicating the health system to the extent that it is becoming unworkable.
There is an election due in the next two months and it is anticipated that your policies on HIV/AIDS will be working against you when people go to cast their votes.
Those of us who are able to lobby against your policies on this issue of life and death will do what we can to ensure that there are voters in South Africa who are aware of the direction in which you are leading the country.
It is already too late for many thousands of those who have died of AIDS, but it is not yet too late for those who still only have HIV and have not yet progressed to the later stages of this terrible disease.
You have been quoted as saying you do not know of anyone who has HIV or AIDS, and it is not possible to believe that this is the case in a country where one in five (at least) of the population is HIV positive.
Let us hope that you will act to do something about drugs for those with HIV/AIDS before it is too late for countless thousands of sick people.
Mannie De Saxe, Lebian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, M.H.Sc. (HIV Studies)
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PO Box 1675
Preston South
Vic 3072
Australia
Phone: 61 3 9471 4878
email: josken@zipworld.com.au
13 February 2004
President Mbeki
Re: HIV/AIDS
It appears that your continued reluctance to address the biggest crisis in South Africa since the end of the apartheid era in 1994 is leading the country to disaster.
It is decimating the population, reducing the working ability of those who are lucky enough to still have jobs, and is complicating the health system to the extent that it is becoming unworkable.
There is an election due in the next two months and it is anticipated that your policies on HIV/AIDS will be working against you when people go to cast their votes.
Those of us who are able to lobby against your policies on this issue of life and death will do what we can to ensure that there are voters in South Africa who are aware of the direction in which you are leading the country.
It is already too late for many thousands of those who have died of AIDS, but it is not yet too late for those who still only have HIV and have not yet progressed to the later stages of this terrible disease.
You have been quoted as saying you do not know of anyone who has HIV or AIDS, and it is not possible to believe that this is the case in a country where one in five (at least) of the population is HIV positive.
Let us hope that you will act to do something about drugs for those with HIV/AIDS before it is too late for countless thousands of sick people.
Mannie De Saxe, Lebian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne, M.H.Sc. (HIV Studies)
Friday, February 13, 2004
Well, we had a few choice items on television news tonight - Thursday 12 February 2004!
We had the shadow minister of foreign affairs saying something was "un-Australian". He couldn't possibly have been referring to the fact that the Australian Labor Party introduced the first concentration camps into Australia in 1992. Nor could he have been referring to the one person - a Palestinian - left in the Manus Island "detention centre" when there is nobody else housed there. Nor could he have been talking about how the Labor government has supported the dictatiorial powers given to ASIO by the Federal government with the support of the ALP!
Now let's concentrate on the government for a moment! The prime minister has suddenly seen the light over parliamentarians' superannuation, when the new opposition leader Mark Latham raised it as an election issue - after all, John Howard has got to take the moral high ground away from the opposition. We also have Amanda Vanstone defending keeping Manus Island detention centre open even when -and if - the Palestinian man is removed from there. It is a deterrent, she says, for those planning future illegal boatloads of refugees. Sound like an episode of "Yes, Minister" when Sir Humphrey Appleby was defending the keeping open of a brand new empty hospital which was fully staffed and equipped, but had no patients!!
On top of all this from local Australian politics, we also had the spectacle of the Israeli government more or less stating they will do everything in their power not to have Mordechai Vanunu released after the end of his 18 year jail sentence - which is imminent, because he may spill the beans on Israel's nuclear capabilities - 18 years after being out of the nuclear working environment!
So, we go from outrage to outrage, one country after another!
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We had the shadow minister of foreign affairs saying something was "un-Australian". He couldn't possibly have been referring to the fact that the Australian Labor Party introduced the first concentration camps into Australia in 1992. Nor could he have been referring to the one person - a Palestinian - left in the Manus Island "detention centre" when there is nobody else housed there. Nor could he have been talking about how the Labor government has supported the dictatiorial powers given to ASIO by the Federal government with the support of the ALP!
Now let's concentrate on the government for a moment! The prime minister has suddenly seen the light over parliamentarians' superannuation, when the new opposition leader Mark Latham raised it as an election issue - after all, John Howard has got to take the moral high ground away from the opposition. We also have Amanda Vanstone defending keeping Manus Island detention centre open even when -and if - the Palestinian man is removed from there. It is a deterrent, she says, for those planning future illegal boatloads of refugees. Sound like an episode of "Yes, Minister" when Sir Humphrey Appleby was defending the keeping open of a brand new empty hospital which was fully staffed and equipped, but had no patients!!
On top of all this from local Australian politics, we also had the spectacle of the Israeli government more or less stating they will do everything in their power not to have Mordechai Vanunu released after the end of his 18 year jail sentence - which is imminent, because he may spill the beans on Israel's nuclear capabilities - 18 years after being out of the nuclear working environment!
So, we go from outrage to outrage, one country after another!
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
It really is truly amazing how bigoted and narrow-minded people can be! A person has written a letter to the Sunday Age Sunday Life magazine on 8 February 2004 complaining about the fact that Tom Kennealy had an "uncouth response" to Patrick White's description of him as a "little nun-fucker".
The letter-writer says it is a stain on the reputation of both writers.
It is nothing of the sort. It shows that Kennealy and White were part of the real world, and the letter-writer who is complaining is totally out of touch with reality.
Patrick White certainly did and said things which did not endear him to many people, but it is hardly a stain on his character when he uses strong language which is very descriptive and is the sort of comment anyone could make who is part of the world around them, as are we all.
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The letter-writer says it is a stain on the reputation of both writers.
It is nothing of the sort. It shows that Kennealy and White were part of the real world, and the letter-writer who is complaining is totally out of touch with reality.
Patrick White certainly did and said things which did not endear him to many people, but it is hardly a stain on his character when he uses strong language which is very descriptive and is the sort of comment anyone could make who is part of the world around them, as are we all.
