The Jews.

Great, great site, nimn. Thanks

A new member here, a Russian Jew, had posted a greeting here on A2K, and I had asked him how things were these days for Jews in Russia. He said things weren't very good. I said that that was deplorable.

Again, thanks for the link.

>
> Senator John McCain's brother on Jews:
>
> There is a lot of worry popping up in the media just now -- "Can Israel
> Survive?" Don't worry about it. It relates to something that
> Palestinians, Arabs & perhaps most Americans don't realize -- Jews are
> never going quietly again. Never. And if the world doesn't come to
> understand that, then millions of Arabs are going to die. It's as
> simple as that.
>
>
> Throughout the history of the world, the most abused, kicked-around
> race
> of people have been the Jews. Not just during the holocaust of WW-2,
> but for thousands of years. They have truly been "The Chosen People"
> but only in a terrible and tragic sense.
>
> The Bible story of Egypt's enslavement of the Jews is not just a story;
> it is history, if festooned with theological legend and heroic epics.
> In
> 70 A.D. the Romans, who for a long time tolerated the Jews -- even
> admired them as "superior" to other vassals -- tired of their truculent
> demands for independence and decided on an early "Solution" to the
> Jewish "problem". Jerusalem was sacked and reduced to near rubble;
> Jewish resistance was pursued and crushed by the implacable Roman
> War Machine -- see "Masada." And thus began Diaspora, the dispersal
> of Jews throughout the rest of the world.
>
> Homeland destroyed, their culture crushed, they looked desperately for
> the few niches in a hostile world where they could be safe. That safety
> was fragile, and often subject to the whims of moody hosts. The words
> "pogrom," "ghetto," &"anti-Semitism" come from this treatment of the
> first monotheistic people. Throughout Europe, changing times meant
> sometimes tolerance, sometimes even warmth for Jews, but eventually
> it meant hostility, then malevolence. There is not a country in Europe
> or Western Asia that at one time or another has not decided to lash out
> against the children of Moses, sometimes by whim, or by manipulation.
>
> Winston Churchill calls Edward I one of England's very greatest kings.
> It was under his rule in the late 1200s that Wales and Cornwall were
> hammered into the British crown, &Scotland &Ireland were invaded or
> occupied. He was also the first European monarch to set up an effective
> administrative bureaucracy, surveyed and censused his kingdom, and
> established laws and political divisions. But he also embraced the
> Jews.
>
> Actually, Edward didn't embrace Jews; He embraced their money. For
> the English Jews had acquired wealth -- understandable, because this
> people that could not own land or office, could not join the trades and
> professions, soon found out that money was a very good thing to
> accumulate. Much harder to take away than land or a store, was a
> hidden sock of gold and silver coins. Ever resourceful, Edward found
> a way -- he borrowed money from the Jews to finance imperial ambitions
> in Europe, especially France. The loans were almost certainly not made
> gladly, but how do you refuse your King? Especially when he is "Edward
> the Hammer." Then, rather than pay back the debt, Edward simply had
> them expelled. Edward was especially inventive -- he did this twice.
>
> After a time, he invited them back to their English homeland, borrowed
> more money, then expelled them again.
>
> Most people do not know that Spain was one of the early entrants into
> the Renaissance. People from all over the world came to Spain in the
> late medieval period. All were welcome -- Arabs, Jews, other
> Europeans. The
> University of Salamanca was one of the great learning centers of world
> scholars of all nations; all fields came to Salamanca to share their
> knowledge and their ideas. But in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, having
> driven the last Moors from El Grande Espana, were persuaded by
> "righteous"
> fundamentalists of the time to announce "The Act of Purification." A
> series of steps taken in which all Jews, Arabs and other
> non-Christians
> were expelled from the country, or face the savagery of The
> Inquisition.
>
> From this "cleansing" come the Sephardic Jews -- as opposed to the
> Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, sporadic violence
> and brutality against Jews is common knowledge; "Fiddler" without the
> music and the folksy humor. At times of fury, no accommodation by the
> Jews was good enough, no profile low enough, no village poor enough
> or distant enough.
>
> From these come the near-steady flow of Jews to the United States.
> And despite the disdain of Jews by most "American" Americans, they
> came to embrace the American Dream with both hands, contributing
> everything from new ideas of enterprise in retail and entertainment to
> become some of our finest physicians, lawyers, Scientists &Educators.
> The modern United States, in spite of itself, IS The United States in
> part because of its Jewish blood.
>
> Then the Nazi Holocaust -- the corralling, sorting, orderly eradication
> of millions of the people of Moses. Not something that other realms in
> other times didn't try to do, by the way -- the Germans were just
> better
> organized and had better murder technology.
>
> I stood in the center of Dachau for an entire day, about 15 years ago,
> trying to comprehend how this could have happened. I had gone there
> on a side trip from Munich, vaguely curious about this Dachau. I soon
> became engulfed in the enormity of what occurred there nestled in this
> Middle- and working-class Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen.
> Auschwitz, Sorbibor, and countless others.
>
> How could human beings do this to other human beings, hear their cries,
> their pleas, their terror, their pain, and continue without apparently
> even wincing? I no longer wonder. At some times, some places, ANY sect
> of the human race is capable of horrors against their fellow man,
> whether members of Waffen SS, Serbian snipers, Turkish police in 1920s
> Armenia,
> Mississippi Klansmen. Because even in the United States not all was a
> Rose Garden. For a long time Jews had quotas in our universities and
> in graduate schools. Only a few Jews could be in a medical or law
> school at one time. Jews were disparaged widely. I remember as a kid
> Jewish jokes told without a wince -- "Why do Jews have such big noses?"
>
> Well, now the Jews have a homeland again. A place that is theirs. And
> that's the point. It doesn't matter how many times the United States
> and
> European powers try to rein in Israel: If it comes down to survival of
> its nation, its people, they will fight like no lioness has ever fought
> to save her cubs. They will fight with a ferocity, a determination,
> and a
> skill that will astound us. They have already; in 1948-1956-1967 and
> 1973.
>
> And many will die -- mostly their attackers, I believe. If there were a
> macabre historical betting parlor, my money would be on the Israelis to
> be standing at the end. As we killed the kamikazes and the Wehrmacht
> S of World War II, so will the Israelis erase the suicidal
> attackers, until there are not enough to torment them.
>
> The irony goes unnoticed: While we hammer away to punish those who
> brought the horrors of 9-11 here, we restrain Israelis from the same
> retaliation. Not the same thing, of course -- We are We, They are They.
> While we mourn &seethe at September 11th, we don't notice that Israel
> has a continuing September 11th; sometimes every day.
>
> We may not notice, but it doesn't make a difference.
>
> And it doesn't make any difference whether you are pro-Israeli or you
> think Israel is the bully of the Middle East. If it comes to where a
> new
> holocaust looms -- with or without concurrence of the United States
> and Europe -- Israel will lash out without pause or restraint at those
> who would try to annihilate their country.
>
> The Jews will never go quietly again. Never. Never again.
>
> Joe McCain

You should really consider introducing a new character named Morty Mouse...make him a diamond merchant or something...that'd unthaw old Walt :wink:

OK infrablue, I missed the sarcasm :wink:

someone once told me that the pun wasn't the lowest form of humor, it was sarcasm. Anyone know what man of letters said that?

Glad to see you, Steve.

Yes the Jews surely have a tragic history. And how much more tragic is it that they of all people, treat Palestinian Arabs like vermin.

Steve
Those vermin as you call them and the rest of the Arab world has been bound and determined to destroy the state of Israel from it's inception. How would you treat people who want to sweep you into the sea?
It took 1500 or so years but finally the Jews have learned that turning the other cheek earns you a kick in the ass. The only way to win is to deal from strength.
You look at the Jewish past and flippantly say it is tragic. And I look at it and see Murder, Massacre, Expulsions, Genocide, Pogoms, Gas chambers, ovens and cruelty beyond imagination. I also see that anti-Semitism is alive and well in Europe and elsewhere and recognize that what has gone before could very easily be repeated. .

Who in the world would welcome the imposition of an ethnically bigoted state on them by foreign imperialist powers? What the Arabs objected to from the very beginning was the partitioning of Palestine into two states. The truth of the matter is, it was the Zionist who drove Arabs into the sea as part of their ethnic cleansing during their war of independence in 1948.


The Exodus Of Jaffa's Residents Via Boats, May1948

The "drive the Jews into the sea" rhetoric is from the PLO's first leader, Ahmed Shukairy, dating around it's inception in 1964. That language was not used in 1948 by the Arabs.

KIRKPATRICK BLASTS UN'S ANTI-SEMITISM
The Jerusalem Post
Reminiscing on her four-year tenure at the United Nations under Ronald Reagan, former US Ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick said this week that while serving at the international body, "I felt for the first time in my life that I could understand how the Holocaust happened."

Kirkpatrict, who headed the US mission to the UN from 1981-1985, criticized the UN's "nearly unbelievably insulting and outrageous" treatment of Israel during a keynote speech at the Zionist Organization of American 2002 Justice Louis D. Brandeis Award Dinner, held Sunday evening in New York.

"The United Nations hasn't really improved much in the years since I was there, and it hasn't really improved much at all with respect to Israel," said Kirkpatrick. She said that when she first began attending Security Council and General Assembly sessions as America's ambassador, "I was very deeply shocked by the simple anti-Semitism that pervaded the place." The anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment she was exposed to at the world body was "mysterious," and "very, very strange," she said.

"We need to speak out about the calumny spoken at the UN," she said, noting that in addition to condemning anti-Jewish hatred emanating from Arab countries, Western European nations, such as France, should be taken to task for failing to halt anti-Semitism at home."

"We must tell the truth. We must tell the world about what happens that is dangerous to the people of Israel and the Jews of the world."

Kirkpatrick praised Israel for taking risks for peace numerous times during its half-century history. "The state of Israel has taken more risks for peace than any state in the world, and has received very few rewards for those risks for peace," she said.

ZOA president Morton Klein made the case against the creation of a Palestinian state in his speech. "If a Palestinian state is established, it will be the first time in history that a state is established not to benefit the people of that state but to destroy
another state," he said.
-------
Wow.

Anti-Semitism is still on the rise, sadly.

Could it be, Sofia, that the above quote is from the Jerusalem Post; Oct 29, 2002; article on page 02 ?

What do you make of the UN's treatment of anti-Semitism?

They left anti-Semitism out of their recent resolution against religious intolerance....then, because their feet are being held to the fire, they start a conference on it... I am finding some really harsh information about the UN and Jews.

Dropping off another--from a Jewish perspective (OK, written by a Jewish person)

an excerpt--
-----
It is not just an issue of anti-Israel bias; it is difficult to ignore an anti-Jewish bent in many instances. For 50 years the UN has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets -- including xenophobia -- but had consistently refused to do the same against anti-Semitism until 1993, and then, only under intense US pressure.

Instead, the General Assembly established two Special Committees and two "special units" in the Secretariat devoted exclusively to Israeli practices, costing millions of dollars yearly. These produce anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist pamphlets, booklets, papers and films, which are even distributed in the UN's six official languages to school children around the world.

The intense hostility that Israel faces in the UN and the anti-Semitic reverberations are illustrated by two events that occurred at the Commission on Human Rights in 1991 and 1997. During the 1991 session, the Syrian Ambassador repeated the Damascus Blood Libel that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make Matzoth. The Western democracies could not be stirred to challenge this age-old anti-Semitic libel (which the Ottoman Sultan as the ruler of Syria, denounced when it surfaced in the 1840s). It took intense US pressure to procure a challenge to this libel in the record, and then only months after the Syrian representative emphasized to the Commission, "it's true, it's true, it's true."

On 11 March 1997, the Palestinian representative charged, in a chamber packed with 500 people including the representatives of 53 states and hundreds of non-governmental organizations, that the Israeli Government had injected 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus. Despite the repeated interventions of the Governments of Israel and the US, and UN Watch, this modern Blood Libel stands unchallenged and unrefuted on the UN record. No appropriate action by any UN body or official has been taken to date.

The Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, a Czech, agreed to place on the record his letter to the Ambassador of Israel, sharing his "concern as to the charge made" against Israel -- "an allegation made without evidence, on the basis of a newspaper article ... proved completely false." The Chairman reneged on his agreement after he was called to task by a delegation of Arab Ambassadors and received no support from other regional groups -- including Western Europe.

Blood Libels are vicious and persistent carriers of anti-Semitism. The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were but a fiction of the Czarist police in the 1890s. Yet they are a well of anti-Semitic pollution -- published today in thousands of copies world-wide. The Damascus Blood Libel was raised 150 years later in the Commission on Human Rights. The latest PLO Blood Libel bears the imprimatur of the UN record and has yet to be removed by consolidated action of the Commission or by any UN agency or official on the public record. (Nor was there any rebuke in 1992 to a UN document circulated in the Commission by the PLO observer, which stated that Israelis "celebrating ...Yom Kippur, are never fully happy even on religious occasions unless their celebrations, as usual, are marked by Palestinian blood.")

The treatment of Israel in the UN is often dismissed as realpolitik -- the power of Arab numbers -- and recently, as a reaction to Israel's Likud government and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yet even during the hopeful days of the Rabin/Peres peace negotiations there were the usual anti-Israel resolutions passed each year in the UN General Assembly and 5 in the Commission on Human Rights.

Since the Oslo accords, 259 Israelis have been killed and 5000 injured by Palestinian terror attacks. During the same period, 34 resolutions deploring Israel were passed at the UN, but not one against the terror attacks. The unique treatment of Israel cannot be explained on purely political grounds. Though anti-Semitic canards can go unchallenged in the UN, the mere reference in the 1997 Commission on Human Rights to an allegedly blasphemous reference to Islam, by a UN expert and from an academic source, brought a rebuff by consensus by the Chair, and the deletion of the offending sentence.

The viciousness with which Israel is attacked, and the reluctance of even democratic states to defend Israel or to accord it the same latitude for mistakes and wrongs that it freely and reciprocally accords other states, has a special quality and origin.

There is ample justification for the conclusion of Professor Anne Bayefsky of York University, Canada, writing of the UN Human Rights system: "It is the tool of those who would make Israel the archetypal human rights violator in the world today. It is a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. It is a sanctuary for moral relativists. In short, it is a scandal."

The infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution was passed in 1975 when Yitzhak Rabin was Prime Minister. Describing the circumstances of the passage of the resolution, a representative in the chamber stated that "hatred was crawling on the floor." Although the resolution was rescinded in 1991, anti-Semitism in UN fora is still a force to be reckoned with, bearing in mind that 25 Member States voted against repealing the resolution and 13 abstained.

Anti-Semitism is not dead. Although anti-Semitic incidents have declined and a multi-cultural acceptance has produced wider tolerance in many states including the US, a 2000-year-old virus has mutated, and lives on, often in a disguised form. And the existence and achievements of the Jewish state in an area of relative backwardness stimulate anti-Semitism and furnish a respectable cover. Once anti-Semitism had a religious basis but, with the declining significance of religion in the West, anti-Semitism in church circles has relatively little standing as such.

Hitler exploited anti-Semitism with deadly consequences for Jews and the world. But racial anti-Semitism has been tabooed after the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials. Now the existence of the state of Israel permits anti-Semitism to assume a political form, safe from challenge as intolerance or racism. How many times one hears: #####"I like Jews but I can't stand Zionism," or "I have nothing against Jews, but I don't like Israel." The existence and achievements of Israel offer a visible and irresistible target for dormant anti-Semitic feelings aroused by a focus on Israel's mistakes and misdeeds, which are characteristic of every state including the US.#####

Some Arab states appear to have now found a way to accomplish a purpose that the unrepealed PLO Charter, pledging the destruction of Israel has not achieved.

Wars with Israel have been disasters and are much too problematic to repeat. The attempt to bring Israel to its knees through sanctions and boycotts at the Security Council faces a US veto. However, these Emergency Special Sessions of the UN General Assembly, in which all but 3 states have joined in a collective denunciation, show the possibility of a slow but sure de-legitimization of Israel and the hope of some for its eventual strangulation.

Israel stands at the precipice of being treated at the UN as South Africa during apartheid. It is certainly not comparable, considering that Israeli Arabs are citizens, vote and sit in the Knesset. The challenge to Israel's right to exist as an equal state may soon move from the PLO Charter to the UN. The adjourned Emergency Special Session of the General Assembly is a harbinger of worse to be attempted.

The world faces a dilemma. The UN exists, and there is no present alternative. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former US Ambassador to the UN warned long ago, "the UN is a dangerous place."

----

source: Encyclopædia Britannica

World > Europe
from the June 22, 2004 edition

Anti-Semitism rising, Jews in France ponder leaving

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

SARCELLES, FRANCE – On a sunny summer's day in this middle-class suburb north of Paris it is not hard to imagine yourself in Israel: Jewish bookshops and kosher grocery stores line busy streets full of men wearing skullcaps and religious women wearing head scarves. A giant menorah stands atop the synagogue. But Sarcelles has been plunged into the midst of a painful debate about the future of Jews in France as a rising plague of anti-Semitic incidents fuels fears for their safety and prompts a new drive by the Israeli authorities to bring potential citizens to the Jewish state.

"Jewish life is vibrant in Sarcelles," says Marc Djebali, who heads a federation of local Jewish associations. "We are trying to expand our community center because Jewish life is developing, not slowing down."

Others take a darker, even apocalyptic view, predicting ever more violent conflict with their Muslim neighbors of North African descent.

"There is no future for Jews in France," laments Daniel Haik, one of the syna- gogue's administrators. "We suffered one ethnic cleansing when we were forced to leave Tunisia and we are on the verge of another."

Sarcelles is at the eye of the storm not least because it is home to one of the largest and most-organized concentrations of Jews in France, some 15,000-strong according to community leaders. In an offhand comment to an Israeli reporter in Jerusalem, an official of the Jewish Agency - a quasigovernmental Israeli body encouraging Jews to immigrate - last week referred to the agency's new focus on France as the 'Sarcelles First' plan.

That wordplay on the "Gaza First" plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip does not reflect any official policy to empty Sarcelles of Jews, insists Arieh Azoulay, chairman of the Jewish Agency's immigration and absorption committee. But France "is very clearly a priority for us," he says, and he hopes to attract up to 15,000 French Jews to Israel within two years.

Setting sights on Israel

Until three years ago, some 1,000 French Jews "made aliyah," or immigrated to Israel, each year. But that figure rose when the Palestinian intifadah began to spill over into Muslim-Jewish community relations in France, and this year 3,000 Jews are expected to make aliyah.

The Jewish Agency has set its sights on France, home to about 500,000 Jews, partly because it is the second largest reservoir of potential immigrants after the United States, and partly because most French Jews already have relatives in Israel, says Mr. Azoulay.

Meanwhile, rising anti- Semitism has fed "anxiety that could increase aliyah," he adds. "The atmosphere means France is a priority because aliyah is a response to local situations."

Local Jewish leaders have reacted angrily to news of the agency's decision to woo Jews to Israel without consulting them. "I am surprised and shocked by this," Roger Cukierman, head of the Council of Representative Jewish Institutions in France, said on Europe 1 radio last Sunday.

"We have to keep calm and not panic" in the face of anti-Semitic incidents, he added, praising the French government's commitment to combating racism.

Taking their cue from President Jacques Chirac, French politicians have spoken out strongly against anti-Semitism in recent months, clearly shaken by attacks on synagogues, desecrations of Jewish graves, and violent assaults on Jews.

Earlier this month, Justice Minister Dominique Perben announced that authorities had counted 180 anti-Semitic incidents so far this year, though suspects were arrested in only 35 cases. He pledged an "even firmer and more dissuasive judicial response."

Suffering harassment

Sarcelles, a collection of high-rise apartment blocks 10 miles north of Paris where a large proportion of residents are of North African origin, has suffered only one major anti-Semitic attack: one of the town's five Jewish schools was burned down two years ago. Nobody was ever charged.

Locals complain that Jews are vulnerable to repeated harassment when they leave their district.

Schoolchildren are roughed up or robbed on their way home, school buses are often stoned, and identifiably Jewish men are insulted as "dirty Jews." Few of these incidents are ever punished.

"I take my skullcap off when I go down towards the station," in an area more heavily populated by Arab immigrant families, says Rafael Hazout, a young kosher butcher. "People look at you as if you are an animal. So as not to make trouble I take it off, and I'm left alone."

Most Arabs and Jews in Sarcelles get along, insists the local rabbi, Laurent Berros. "The trouble comes from a few criminals and young hooligans. Compared with other places, Sarcelles has few problems, far fewer than there might be."

That may be because there is safety in numbers, suggests Mr. Djebali. If his community center does not have enough room, he explains, it is because Jewish families are moving to Sarcelles from neighboring towns where they are more isolated and feel less secure.

"We cannot meet the demand for housing," he says. "With the rise in anti-Semitism in places like Saint Denis," a nearby working-class suburb, "Jews feel safer in an area where they are in the majority."

This voluntary ghettoization, says Rene Smadja, manager of Erev, a kosher pizzeria, reflects "a very profound unease in the Jewish community," and a sense that French society and the French state no longer cares about its Jewish citizens. "Our foster mother is not taking care of us any more," he complains. "We can go to the police" when Jews are attacked, "but what good does that do?"

France as foster mother

That sense is deepened, he and other Jewish residents of Sarcelles say, by the fact that most French people sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israelis in the conflict that pits them against each other.

And when young Muslims attack Jews as surrogate Israelis, they believe, French society stands aside.

"It seems that French people see anti-Semitism as ordinary," worries Djebali. "We get the feeling that we are being told, 'If you want to complain, go and complain to [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon.' "

In that atmosphere, he suggests, more and more Sarcelles Jews will begin thinking seriously about emigrating to Israel, whatever the risks of pulling up sticks.

"The mood now is one of weariness," Djebali explains. "We are tired of being on the front line all the time. People are saying, 'Thank God Israel exists. We are even ready to put up with bad-tempered Israelis.' "

There have been at least three attacks on Jewish institutions the last few days in France and Belgium.

The heightened tensions in France, in particular, has prompted Betar, the right wing youth movement, to call for volunteers.

Former French PM Calls Balfour Declaration "Historic Mistake"
18:11 Jun 20, '04 / 1 Tammuz 5764


A former French Prime Minister, and currently a leading member of the European Parliament, has called Great Britain's Balfour Declaration that paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel as a "historic mistake." Michel Rocard, who is said to be in the running for president of the European Parliament for the coming two and a half years as part of a political deal, spoke about Israel in a lecture last week in Alexandria, Egypt. Israel is a "unique and abnormal condition," he said, "because it was created with a promise, and [because] millions of Jews gathered from all around the world, creating an entity that continues to pose a threat to its neighbors until today."


You will note he said it is an entity that poses a treat to it's neighbors. Not that it's neighbors pose a threat to it'. That typifies the French attitude towards Israel. and if I were to venture a guess his attitude towards Jews in general.

Well, au, we know that you think anything critical about Israel is anti-semistic.

In 2002, Michel Rocard accused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of "producing world-wide anti-Israelism":
"You are producing world-wide anti-Israelism and people like me, who have fought anti-Semitism since they were very young, are powerless to hold back the torrent of anger and hatred to which you have opened the floodgates."

"You are waging a war that you cannot win," Rocard continued. "Each action by (the Israeli army) creates a dozen new terrorists (...) Well, there are two million Palestinians (...) How many will you have to kill? Several hundred thousand? Half a million?"

Walter
I take it than that you agree with his statement that Israel is a threat to it's neighbors and as made obvious by his statement that Israel should not exist.

As to anti-Semitism I said "and if I were to venture a guess his attitude towards Jews in general."

Regarding Anti-Semitism it is alive and well. It only lie dormant for the last few decades because of the horrors of the holocaust. I guess enough time has past for it's awakening. That is what makes the existence of Israel so vital.

Walter--

I didn't hold Kirkpatrick upto be a paragon of virtue--or even someone who spoke for me.

Some writings of Jewish people, as well as others, will be brought here to enhance or spark dialogue about the issue.

You were also correct about the source. Is the Jerusalem Post not allowed to address anti-Semitism?

I was glad to see that the UN has decided to hold a conference on the rise in anti-Semitism. As I was going through articles to bring the "good news" about the conference, I saw that the UN was bowing to pressure, due to them omitting anti-Semitism from their annual religious intolerance commission.

Then, I started finding a lot of articles accusing the UN of institutional anti-Semitism. This is why I brought the articles above. All in all, very sad stuff.

Saudi Prince Blames "The Jews"

October 14, 2001. The millionaire Saudi prince whose gift of $10 million for World Trade Center relief was returned by Mayor Giuliani said yesterday that "Jewish pressures" prompted the rejection. His statement was based solely on his anti-Jewish prejudice.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal saw his donation to the Sept. 11 relief fund rejected Thursday, after Giuliani said he didn't want the money because of statements the prince made about U.S. foreign policy.

Bin Talal said yesterday that the Jews, and not his own words, influenced the mayor's snub. Which is to say that even if he didn't release that statement his gift would have still been refused.

"The whole issue is that I spoke about their position [on the Middle East conflict] and they didn't like it because there are Jewish pressures and they were afraid of them," Bin Talal told the newspaper Okaz.

Yesterday, the mayor's office issued a statement scoffing at the prince's assertion and saying that the mayor made the decisions because he strongly disagreed with the prince.

"This is absolutely absurd on the face of it," Giuliani's office said. "As everyone knows, when the mayor heard about what the prince said he instantly refused to accept the check. The prince's comments can only be born of one thing, a lack of conviction."

The prince tried to make his huge donation after visiting recovery workers at the site of the World Trade Center wreckage. At the time he called the Sept. 11 terrorist attack "a tremendous crime" and said terror boss Osama bin Laden "does not belong to Islam."

But later he issued a statement that outraged Giuliani.

"At times like this one, we must address some of the issues that led to such a criminal attack," he said. "I believe the government of the United States of America should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause."

The Palestinian cause being "the total expulsion or extermination of the Jews in Israel and the transformation of that country into a Moslem Palestinian state."

Giuliani said that statement effectively blames the United States for provoking the Sept. 11th. attack and refused the check.
----
Old, but noteworthy. The Jews are currently being blamed for everything under the Saudi Arabian sun by our friends, the Sauds.