Not only does Cameron’s answer go against what he said in The Sun in November 2011 when he wrote:

“We are all living longer so yes, people will have to work longer”

It is also not the first time he has had a rather pathetic jibe at Dennis Skinner

Tomorrow morning thousands of runners will be taking part in the 32nd London marathon. As usual there will be the elite runners and thousands of others many of whom will be taking part to raise money for charity. For most people getting a place in the London marathon means applying to go into the ballot, if your name is chosen you’re in, if not it means either waiting till next year, entering a different marathon or approaching a charity. Charities can ‘buy’ places in the London marathon, in 2010 each place cost a charity £300,  the marathon place is then given to a runner on condition that they raise a certain amount of money for the charity. Often the amount the amount charities ask for is £1500-£2000.(It was reported in The Guardian that charities are allocated 15,000 places and a 2010 article suggests the numbers were the same as recently as 2010)

I have applied for the London marathon eight times over the years but have only got a place twice in 2003 & 2005 the other six times my application was rejected. I have made enquiries about getting a charity place but I decided not too for two reasons. Firstly I don’t want the hassle of raising money and having to ask friends and work colleagues for money. Secondly, I don’t think I should have to raise money to get a place in the London marathon. I am a member of a running club and don’t think that I or any other club runners should have to rely on a charity deciding that we are worthy of one of their places.

I would have no complaint losing out to another club runner or to the many people who make a far greater contribution to their clubs and to athletics then I do, and although I don’t want to run the every year it is frustrating when I watch places in the marathon being taken by people, who are no doubt well intentioned, who may never have done any running before go straight into a marathon – no mucking around with 10km races or half marathons for them – raise money for charity and may never run again. All of this is thought of as normal with no thought being given to those who are missing out. Apart from possibly triathlons mass running events are the only sports events where raising money for charity is considered normal or even a condition of entry. The marathon organisers might argue that in the 32 year history of the race hundreds of millions of pounds have been raised for good causes, but is this what the London marathon is about? Isn’t it a race?

While athletes such as Usain Bolt, Paula Radcliffe and Mo Farah are full time professional runners,club runners are the amateurs who go running because they enjoy keeping fit & training, being outdoors and like the challenge of competing against other runners setting a personal best time. I know that many club runners would love the chance to take part in the London marathon but don’t get a place sometimes year after year.

Newt Gingrich says that if he becomes President he will

“submit to the United Nations a treaty that extends the right to bear arms as a human right for every person on the planet”

Speaking (not surprisingly) to the National Rifle Association who are (not surprisingly) a major donor to his candidacy he added

“Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed, if people everywhere on the planet had the right to bear arms. And far fewer dictators would survive if people had the right to bear arms everywhere on the planet.”

This video is taken from the Young Turks youtube channel who point out that if it  would make a safer world for everyone to carry a gun then by the same logic it would b a safer world if every country had a nuclear weapon “if everybody is armed then nobody will shoot, right?”  

At his recent speech to the American Israel public affairs comittee (AIPAC) Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu read a quote from a letter from the World Jewish Congress to the US war department requesting that the allies bomb Auschwitz. The second paragraph of the letter, dated 9th August 1944, contains the lines:

“Germans are now exhuming and burning corpses in an effort to conceal their crimes. This could be prevented by destruction of crematoria and then Germans might possibly stop further mass exterminations especially since so little time is left to them. Bombing of railway communications in this same area would also be of importance and of military interest.”

The reply said that the war department “appreciates the humanitarian motives which promoted the suggested operation” but added:

“After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources.”

It sounds harsh to say so but attempting to bomb Auschwitz would have been unlikely to succeed in stopping the mass murders being carried out in the camps. It is easy to think of Auschwitz as one large prison camp surrounded by barbed wire fences and watchtowers, however the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum says that

“At its peak in the summer of 1944, Auschwitz covered about 40 sq. km. in the core area, and more than 40 branch camps dispersed within a radius of several hundred kilometers.”

There were seven gas chambers at Auschwitz and although one could hold 2,500 people, the gas chamber at Stammlager measured 17 x 4.5 metres, the chances of hitting these targets was remote. There was no such thing as ‘precision bombing’ in the second world war, a US bombing survey reported in 1945 that any bomb landing within 1,000 feet of its target was regarded to have landed inside the ‘target area’

“While accuracy improved during the war, Survey studies show that…..only about 20% of the bombs aimed at precision targets fell within this target area.”

For the same reasons the chances of hitting the railway line to Auschwitz was small and damage to tracks can be repaired. Railway tracks can be surprisingly resilient, the railway out of Hiroshima was running even after the atomic bomb was dropped on the city in 1945 (Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the Hiroshima bomb on 6th August 1945 and then travelled by train to Nagasaki where he survived the second atomic bomb three days later), when Dresden was bombed on 13-15 February 1945 over 1300 allied planes dropped 3,900 tons of bombs on the city, despite this within three days trains were running to Leipzig 70 miles away.

In his book The Myth of Rescue WD Rubinstein says that

“The bombing of Auschwitz, or any other camp in eastern Europe was, in fact, logistically impossible for the allied bombers before December 1943. Only from that time with the capture of Foggia airbase in southern Italy, did it become logistically possible for the allies to mount any air strike of any kind against Auschwitz. Prior to late 1943 Auschwitz (and the other extermination camps, all situated in Poland were simply to far away for allied bombers, necessarily accompanied by fighter interceptors for protection, to raid”

Professor Yehuda Bauer of the International Center for Holocaust Studies of Yad Vashem (the holocaust museum and memorial in jerusalem) says that:

 ”between the decision to mass-murder the Jewish people in Europe (which was taken sometime in 1941,) and 1944, the Americans and the British could not have done anything militarily, or in any other way, to stop the Germans from killing Jews.”

If any there had been an attempt to bomb Auschwitz before December 1943 it would have meant setting out (presumably from southern England) and avoiding the air defences of occupied France or Belguim flying over Germany and then Czechoslovakia, where they would hope to target buildings spread over a large area in southern Poland.  It would have taken a direct hit, possibly by more than one bomb, to destroy the gas chambers and the chances of this happening with the technology available were very very small.

The mass murder of an entires race whether it be Jews, gypsies or slavs was to evil and preposterous to believe, allied leades were understandably reluctant to believe reports of death camps in eastern Europe. Professor Yehuda Bauer  says that:

“The killing of a whole people was unprecedented in history. It is not really surprising that people had difficulty in accepting the notion that that was happening in Europe.”

However, in April 1944 two prisoners , Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, managed to escape from Auschwitz and told Jewish officials in Slovakia of the gas chambers, crematoriums and conditions at Auschwitz. Their evidence – which became known as the Wetzler-Vrba report - became the first credible report that mass killings were taking place. In a review Alfred Wetzler’s book Escape From Hell historian Sir Martin Gilbert says the Wetzler-Vrba report told

“for the first time the truth about the camp as a place of mass murder”

The report Vrba and Wetzler complied included a map of Auschwitz, details of the gas chambers and crematoriums and they even had a label from a canister of Zyklon gas which was used in the gas chambers.

With this new information and after the capture of Foggia airbase in southern Italy in December 1943 it can be argued that the allies should have bombed Auschwitz but it has to be remembered that at this time not one major Jewish organisation advocated the bombing of Auschwitz mainly because it would mean the death of the thousands of jews imprisoned in the camps, (See The Myth of Rescue p.158) bombing the railway tracks was put forward but not the camps. A. Leon Kubowitzki head of the rescue department of the World Jewish Congress wrote a letter to the War Refugee Board and said:

“The destruction of the death installations cannot be done by bombing from the air, as the first victims would be the Jews who are gathered in these camps”

At a meeting of the Jewish Agency held in June 1944 where the rescue of Jews from the camps was discussed David Ben-Gurion (who later became Israel’s first prime minister) said

“We don’t know what really is the situation in Poland, and it seems that we could not offer (propose ) anything with regard to this matter….The view of the board is that we should not ask the Allies to bomb places where there are Jews.”

One Dr Schmorek added:

“We cannot take upon ourselves the responsibility of a bombing which would cause the death of a single Jew”

Could the allies have done more to save jews? Professor Yehuda Bauer says they could have done so by amongst other things

“providing havens in neutral countries, and by promising the neutral countries that they would pay for any Jewish refugees who would enter countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Turkey….The Allies could have dropped leaflets on German cities together with the bombs, informing the German population that they would be held responsible after the war for murdering the Jews. The Poles asked the British to do that for Poles and Jews in 1943, but the British refused. The British said that they were not in the business of dropping leaflets, but of dropping bombs”

Even if  had all the gas chambers in the camps had been destroyed this does not mean the murder of the jews would have stopped, the nazis would have just reverted to shooting their victims. Had those being murdered in the gas chambers been British or American the reaction of the allies may have been different particularly if they had been soldiers held as prisoners of war. It is easy to say that  a decision not to bomb Auschwitz was down to ant-semitism, the phrase used by the US war department that an attack would require “diversion of considerable air support” and “would not warrant the use of our resources” does sounds very dismissive, but there were many reasons why Auschwitz was not bombed but it is easy to ignore these reasons and guarantee yourself a round of applause in front of an AIPAC audience.

“I do know the first verse, I know the whole of God Save the Queen but I’m not known for my singing ability.”

The Daily Mail is making a big deal of what it describes as ‘plastic Brits‘ – athletes who have moved from another country to Britain and now represent the GB team, they even claim that it “has become one of the hottest topics of the 2012 Games” ( ‘hottest topics’? Are you sure?).

Conservative MPs are never ones to miss jumping on a patriotic bandwagon and Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said

“If you are going to represent Britain at the Olympics then I think it is sensible to know the words of the National Anthem.”

Oh really? Presumably he means in the same way that John Redwood, former Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, learnt the words of the Welsh national anthem?.

Redwoods tenure as Welsh secretary was described by welsh nationalist MP as “The most bizarre political appointment since Caligula* made his horse a Senator“.

It is a bit rich for the Daily Mail to complain about this. Let us also not forget that it was the Daily Mail that was instrumental in bringing South African born Zola Budd to Britain so she could run in the 1984 Olympics (South Africa was banned from the Olympics because of apartheid) and they didn’t complain he being a “plastic brit” .Writing in 2003, when Budd was in London to compete in the London Marathon,  Ian Woolridge of the Mail says that when the Mail’s then editor David English found out that she had a British grandfather he said

“Brilliant, because of the British family connection she shall run for us”.

By “us” he meant the Daily Mail. He also claims English said

“I can pick up this phone and get her a British passport in two days”

which he did, she was in Britain within a week but

“the large sum of money involved did not bring her happiness. Nor did it bring her much money since most of it was filched by her father, Frank.”

*Caligula was Roman emperor from 37 AD to 41 AD

Last week the National Secular Society and an ex-councillor won a high court ruling which said that it was unlawful for councils to include prayers as part of a council meeting.

The practice of Bideford council in Devon to have prayers on meeting agendas was challenged and Mr Justice Ouseley concluded

”The saying of prayers as part of the formal meeting of a council is not lawful under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972, and there is no statutory power permitting the practice to continue.”

However the ruling (which applied to councils in England and Wales) has been overturned, Communities secretary Eric Pickles has signed a general power of competence which means that councils can do anything a private citizen can do as long as it is not illegal, so prayers can be included on council agendas. Pickles said that the high court ruling had been “illiberal” and “should be seen as a wake-up call” he added:

“the public sector has been used to marginalise and attack faith in public life. We are striking a blow for localism over central interference, for freedom to worship over intolerant secularism, for Parliamentary sovereignty over judicial activism, and for long-standing British liberties over modern-day political correctness.”

Pickles also said

“Public authorities – be it Parliament or a parish council – should have the right to say prayers before meetings if they wish.”

However what Eric Pickles says about public prayers goes against what The Bible says. Matthew chapter 6 verse 1 (Matthew 6:1) contains the Sermon on the Mount given by Jesus who, it is safe to say, is more of an authority on christianity then Eric Pickles, the Good News Translation of Matthew 6:1 says:

 

“Make certain you do not perform your religious duties* in public so that people will see what you do. If you do these things publicly, you will not have any reward from your Father in heaven.”

(* The New King James Version says “charitable deeds” not “religious duties” – see below.)

Matthew 6:5-6

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full.  But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.”

Eric Pickles is very keen on promoting christianity but not so keen on reading what Jesus actually said, he should be telling councillors to seek out a quiet corner to say their prayers not to say them at
public meetings.

—————————————————————————–

The New King James Version of the above are as follows

Matthew 6:1

“Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven”

Matthew 6:5-6

And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. ⁶ But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

There has been a lot of anger directed towards Russia and China because both countries vetoed a United Nations security resolution condemning Syria’s crackdown on anti government protesters. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said  “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty” she added that Russia and China had “neutered“ the security council.

Few would disagree that something has to be done to stop the violence in Syria but let us remember that it was only last December that it was the United States that was casting votes vetoing UN resolutions which criticised Israeli settlement building on Palestinian land. This time it was Russia condemning the United States for being isolated. Vitaly Churkin Russia’s UN ambassador called for negotiations and then made no attempt to disguise who he was referring to when he said said “There is one delegation” which believes things will “miraculously” sort themselves out on their own. This is of course not the first time that the US has vetoed resolutions condemning Israel aljazeera reports that

“since 1972 the United States has been the single, solitary veto on 42 Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli violations of international law or human rights.”

Another would have been added had a Palestinian bid for statehood gone to a vote but

“US diplomats managed to secure enough abstentions from the Security Council’s 15 members to deny the Palestinians [the required] nine votes, thus saving the US from having to veto.”

At Prime ministers question time yesterday (18th January) David Cameron refered to Labour MP Dennis Skinner as a ‘Dinosaur‘. Dennis Skinner had asked if Cameron was going to appear before the Leveson inquiry into Press ethics (a perfectly reasonably question) Cameron finished his answer by saying:

I often say to my children, ‘No need to go to the Natural History Museum to see a dinosaur. Come to the House of Commons at about half past twelve.’

David Cameron (left) & George Osborne

It can be argued that this was not a reference to Skinners age (he is 80 next month) but to his ideology, he is a member of Labour’s socialist Campaign Group of MP’s  and is often described as ‘old Labour’.
But there is something not right about Cameron, an ex public schoolboy born with a silver spoon in his mouth, saying something like this to Skinner a former mineworker and Cameron does have previous on this issue, he once accused Dennis Skinner of not living in the real world but living in ‘dinosaurland’and in June 2010, after Dennis Skinner had said there should be no increase in the Civil List, (money the government gives to the royal family) chancellor George Osborne (another ex public schoolboy)  replied that Skinner should consider early retirement to save costs. That  would actually increase spending, Dennis Skinner would be paid his pension and his replacement would get the full MPs salary. Osborne’s reply also goes against what his own party leader wrote in The Sun in November 2011 when Cameron said

“We are all living longer so yes, people will have to work longer”

Both Cameron and Osborne received rousing cheers from conservative back benchers for their responses.

If Skinner had been in his twenties or thirties would Cameron have called him a dinosaur? I don’t think so. Would he have described Tony Benn (who has similar left wing views to Skinner) as a dinosaur? No. Dennis Skinner can take whatever David Cameron and the rest of the Tories can throw at him but he deserves better, he has been an MP since 1970 and was a miner for 21 years before joining parliament.  He started in the coal mines when he was 17 (at the same age David Cameron was at Eton and about to go to Oxford University and join the Bullingdon club) and only left when he became MP for Bolsover. He is younger then the queen (born in 1926) but can anyone imagine Cameron saying

No need to go to the Natural History Museum to see a dinosaur. Just watch the queen’s speech on Christmas day.

No, me neither.

While Cameron and Osborne both had privileged backgrounds; (Cameron is the grandson of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet is a descendent of King William IV and a fifth cousin of the queen, Osborne is the heir to the Osborne Baronetcy) Dennis Skinner’s father was sacked from his job as a miner after the General strike in 1926. Skinner is not scared of rebelling against his own party (for example he has voted against trident, against detention for 90 days and against the Iraq war) Osborne’s only act of rebellion came when he changed his name from Gideon to George saying “It was my small act of rebellion” – and I thought Che Guevara was a rebel.

Stephen Lawrence was  an 18 year old black student who was attacked and killed by a gang of up to six white youths in Eltham in south east London in April 1993, before stabbing him while he waited for a bus they shouted racist abuse at him and his friend who was also attacked but survived. The original police investigation was was dogged by incompetence and there was an underlying feeling of cynicism and racism towards the victims.  Two men have just been convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence but up to four other involved in the attack have still not been convicted.

With the guilty verdict of two men for murdering teenager Stephen Lawrence in London in April 1993 many people are paying tribute to his parents Doreen & Neville Lawrence for their perseverance ensuring their son got justice after eighteen years of campaigning (although at least three men involved in the murder have still not been convicted).

Also being credited is the Daily Mail, on 14th February 1997 under the headline MURDERERS the Mail named and published photographs of each of the suspects and accused them of being the killers of Stephen Lawrence adding “if we are wrong let them sue us”

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has recorded a video  in which he says the “headline had almost subconsciously been brewing in my mind for some time” and decided to run with it when “the coroner’s jury had taken just thirty minutes to decide unanimously that Stephen had been unlawfully killed – the victim of a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths“

Neville and Doreen Lawrence have acknowledged the help the Mail played in publicising the case, Doreen Lawrence said ”If the Mail hadn’t been publicising what was happening around Stephen and getting it out there, a lot of people wouldn’t have known about the injustice around him as a young man” and Neville Lawrence said

“The fact that the Mail – which is a very influential newspaper – went out on a limb for us showed how committed you were to the case. Not a lot of editors would have done that. Not a lot would have chanced it.“

The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times all praise the Daily Mail for its role in securing the convictions.  But while Paul Dacre describes the two convictions as “a glorious day for Neville and Doreen Lawrence……for the police……for British Justice……for the politicians……for British newspapers” Doreen Lawrence was more restrained ”How can I celebrate when my son lies buried?”

The Daily Mail can also take some credit for the setting up of the MacPherson Inquiry in 1999 (a public inquiry into the original Police investigation) which found the Police investigation into the murder to have been incompetent and officers had committed fundamental errors which meant that nobody stood trial for the murder for nearly two decades; the inquiry also found the Metropolitan Police to be ‘institutionally racist’. One outcome of the inquiry was the scrapping of the 800 year old double jeopardy law which meant that a person could not be put on trial for the same crime twice.

However it is also true to say that the Daily Mail, while sympathetic to the Lawrence family, did originally not believe the story was worth much coverage. A Guardian leader column published the day after the Mail’s front page accusation against the five men in 1997 claimed

“the Mail’s coverage of the shameful killing had been somewhat peripheral. The murder was only mentioned in three stories in the last year before the inquest, only six the previous year, and just 20 since the murder was committed”.

The Guardian goes on to say

“while hoping the guilty would be caught, [the Mail] was quick to sneer at the supporters campaigning for the Lawrence family: ‘What is not helpful is the gusto with which the more militant of the anti-racist organisations have hijacked this human tragedy…….is there not also something contemptible about professional protesters who capitalise on grief to fuel confrontation?”

Peter Bottomley, member of Parliament for Eltham at the time of the murder, also spoke about media indifference to the murder speaking to the BBC news channel he said ”Some of the police reaction did have a racist bias to it and they weren’t the only ones” he then says that a white woman had been shot in Hertfordshire and the shooting received national coverage but when Stephen Lawrence was murdered “there was no [media] reaction at all” andwhen he asked why “the media said to me in effect ‘you know what it’s like in south east london’…the media jumped to the same conclusion that perhaps some of the police had”

It later turned out that Neville Lawrence had worked as a plasterer on Paul Dacre’s London home when it was being redecorated but Dacre denies this was the reason the Mail launched a campaign for justice he says that it was “the sickening sight on the TV news of those men strutting and staggering as they left the court… swearing, F-ing and blinding in defiance, it was the catalyst.”

With an election approaching in 2012 President Obama and Republican Presidential candidates have been attempting to prove that they support Israel more then their rivals.  On 20th December the United States blocked a United Nations resolution criticising Israel’s settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories. Israeli newspaper Haaretz said:

“Fourteen frustrated members of the UN Security Council pointed a finger at the United States Tuesday for blocking any condemnation of Israel’s accelerated settlement construction in Palestinian territory.”

British UN ambassador Mark Lyall (who also spoke for EU members France, Germany and Portugal) said:”Israel’s security and the realization of the Palestinians’ right to statehood are not opposing goals…..but they will not be achieved while settlement building and settler violence continues.” South Africa’s UN ambassador Baso Sangqu said Israeli settlement construction was “the main impediment for the two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and that settler attacks against Palestinian civilians increased 50 percent this year. Haaretz also add that:

“While the United States was not mentioned by name, the diplomats anger was clearly directed at Washington which vetoed a resolution in February backed by the 14 other council members that would have demanded an immediate halt to all settlement building.”

When asked to explain the US position State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland  said:

“We declined to join that statement for all of the usual reasons……our longstanding policy remains that we don’t recognize the legitimacy of the continued Israeli settlements, but we don’t think statements in the UNSC are the way to pursue the goal of getting these parties back to the table.”

The current UN security council presidentis Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin and according to Haaretz “Clearly referring to the United States, Churkin said dismissively that one delegation believes things will “miraculously” sort themselves out on their own.

The Palestinian delegation at the UN said they were

“encouraged by the latest positions of the international community with regards to the Palestinian right to self-determination and Israel’s illegal settlement policy” and urged the US to “to join the international community in supporting a meaningful right to self-determination for the Palestinians, and to firmly stand by its policy against Israel’s illegal settlement activities.”

US support for Israel is of course well known, despite being a first world country Israel is the largest recipient of US overseas aid and much of that ‘aid’ is military equipment. To give a few recent examples; The Wall Street Journal reports that US military aid to Israel was due to jump to $3 billion in 2011 up from $2.78 billion in 2010 which was itself a record high. Obama has also requested from Congress $205 million to fund Iron Dome a rocket defence shield which will shoot down missiles fired from Gaza or Lebanon.

The US is already committed to a ten year $30 billion package of military aid to Israel signed by George W. Bush in 2007. “Uniquely, officials said, the….deal allows Israel to spend 26.3 percent of the aid on arms from Israel’s domestic defence industry; the rest of the money must be spent on American equipment.” Although the US was also selling weapons to Saudi Arabia Israel received promises that it “will keep its “qualitative edge” regionally in military technology”. In true Orwellian double speak “Officials called the aid a long-term investment in peace” and presumably managed to keep a straight face whilst saying it.

Israel can rely on the United States for protection from UN resolutions criticising its policies,  since 1972 the US has been the single solitary veto against 42 UN security resolutions condemning Israel. This would have become 43 if a Palestinian bid for statehood had gone to a vote but

“US diplomats managed to secure enough abstentions from the Security Council’s 15 members to deny the Palestinians nine votes, thus saving the US from having to veto”.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “thanked Obama for…….speaking out against any UN bid to declare a Palestinian state.”

On the 21st September 2011 Obama made a speech at the United nations where, amongst other things, he said ”the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own.” But as far a Palestinian ambitions went that was about it. Under the headline ”Obama gets a Kosher seal of Approval” Haaretz said the speech was ”probably the warmest pro-Israel speech ever given at an annual UN General Assembly meeting by any U.S. president, bar none”, Israel’s far-right foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman“was literally gushing with praise”

Writing for Aljazeera MJ Rosenberg  claims that

“This [Obama] administration has been the most one-sided supporter of everything Israel asks for since 1948. There is no competition. Not even George W Bush comes close….Since 2009, 1,600 Palestinians (overwhelmingly civilians and over 400 children) have been killed by the Israeli army. Thirteen Israelis have been killed over the same period. Despite that, Obama devoted 120 words of his speech to Israeli suffering (even going so far as to cite the Holocaust) and not one word to Palestinian suffering.”

He added that “Israel’s thuggish far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told reporters that: “I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.”

Palestinians were (obviously) not happy, a protest was held in Ramallah outside the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas protesting against Obama’s opposition to their bid for statehood, the protestors held up signs saying “Obama the hypocrite” and another claiming Obama was siding with “killers against victims”

However Obama’s UN speech was still not good enough for some people,in recent weeks Republican Party candidates have been queing up to show their support for Israel and condemning President Obama for not supporting Israel enough during his presidency. Governor Mitt Romney said that

“In his inaugural address to the United Nations, the President chastised Israel……He’s publicly proposed that Israel adopt indefensible borders. He’s insulted its Prime Minister.” He then added ”I will travel to Israel on my first foreign trip……I want the world to know that the bonds between Israel and the United States are unshakable.”

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann accused Obama of “weakness” which has “emboldened the Palestinians“, she added

“A Bachmann administration will recognize that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, My administration will fully recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital. My administration will also recognize Israel’s 1980 annexation of the Golan Heights and any settlements, which Israel, as a sovereign state, chooses to annex.”

Governor Rick Perry said that

“American-Israel policy…[is]…a deeply personal issue for me. I feel a special connection to Israel, dating back nearly 20 years when I first visited the Holy Land……I walked in the footsteps of the heroes of Masada, a fortress of defiance symbolizing their loyalty to freedom more than life itself.” (* See Below).

Former House of Representatives speaker Newt Gingrich said that the Palestinians were an “invented” people and sees no difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority

“These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, ‘If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?”

(Palestinian textbooks do not say this Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports “Three researchers…..said the example Gingrich cited in the Dec. 10 Republican debate does not exist in the texts. Gingrich’s office did not respond to two emailed requests for further comment.” )

If anyone can bare to read it there is a long list of statements by Republican Presidential candidates at the The Israel Project website. Apart from a couple of quotes by Congressman Ron Paul  who asks “Why do we have this automatic commitment that we’re going to send our kids and send our money endlessly to Israel?” and says he believes in “a non-interventionist foreign policy“  all candidates speak of how much they love Israel and that Obama has let Israel down.

__________________________

* Masada is an ancient fortress over looking the Dead Sea. The legend is that a group of Jews left Jerusalem and in 68CE overcame the Roman soldiers at Masada, they were later joined by other Jews from Jerusalem and attacked the Romans in the surrounding area. In 72CE the Romans laid siege to Masada and rather then be captured the 960 Jews in the fortress committed a mass suicide. The Israeli Tourism ministry website says that Masada “symbolize[s] human endurance” where “Jews chose death over captivity“. This is probably the version of events that Rick Perry meant when he spoke of the ‘heroes of masada‘. The reality is very different.

There is only one source for the Masada legend, the book “Flavius Josephus’s Books of the History of the Jewish War against the Romans” (usually shortened to ‘The Jewish War‘) written by Josephus in about 75CE. (Josephus was himself Jewish and had taken part in the revolt against the occupying Romans before joining the Roman side.) The Jews he describes at Masada did arrive from Jerusalem but were actually expelled from the city by other Jews (stopping off at Ein Gedi on the way where they murdered 700 other jews). Few of those who died at Masada actually committed suicide, each man killed his wife and children, lots were then drawn and ten men chosen to kill the survivors, lots were drawn again to decide who would kill the other nine. The last man was to set fire to the fortress and then kill himself.

Haaretz writes that Nachman Ben-Yehuda of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has written two books on “what he calls the manipulation of Masada to suit a fledgling Jewish state desperately short of heroes.” Archaeological digs did not begin in earnest until the 1960s, when it was overseen by Yigal Yadin, a fervent nationalist. “I won’t say there was outright lying about the findings,” Ben-Yehuda said. “But those archaeologists knew exactly what to emphasize and what to play down.”

According to Ben-Yehuda

“When we carefully examine ……. the Great Revolt [against Roman rule] and Masada, a portrait of heroism …… is simply not provided. On the contrary. The narrative conveys the story of a doomed (and questionable) revolt……….of large-scale massacres of the Jews, of different factions of Jews fighting and killing each other, of collective suicide (an act not viewed favourably by the Jewish faith) by a group of terrorists and assassins whose “fighting spirit” may have been questionable.”

He also says

“If truth be told, what he[Josephus] describes is not a story of bravery, nor is it pleasant…….they were brigands who, en route to the fortress killed 700 Jews in nearby Ein Gedi. How come that never gets mentioned in the narratives?” Ben-Yehuda is ”scathing about Professor Yadin’s conclusions, and says these were systematically modified to support the story of Josephus…..the Sixties excavators were disappointed that they found so little to confirm the last stand and mass suicide”

However not everyone gets the message, when Masada became a UNESCO world heritage site in 2001 education minister Limor Lavant said that “”Here we have a heritage of courage, of choosing a terrible death rather than submitting to slavery”

For a real and more modern ‘Masada Story’ look no further then Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In his bookThe Fateful Triangle Noam Chomsky explains that when the Israeli army overran the Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in south Lebanon after 5 days of fighting, the Israeli Soldiers

“are reported to have “found many of the defenders had committed suicide, a grisly Palestinian replay of the fate of the ancient Jewish warriors of Masada”"

(The Fateful Triangle (1999)p.313 (The quote: “found many of the defenders…..” is from The Baltimore Sun 28th June 1982))