ZGram - 9/7/2001 - "Slowly the tables are turned..."

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 7, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Today, three dissimilar and yet related items.

One is a yammering letter to the National Post <letters@nationalpost.com> |
September 7, 2001 by Leo Adler, national affairs director, Friends of Simon
Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, about the rage  directed at him
and others like him in Durban, South Africa.

For once, this dishonest organization that has made a cushy living by
vilifying, criminalizing and bankrupting people they don't like have gotten
a taste of what it feels like to be themselves exposed and held up for
hatred and contempt.  The letter speaks for itself.

[START]

 Disaster in Durban | Leo Adler

 The World Conference against Racism is becoming a farce. As Arab nations
demonize Israel, other issues are ignored. It is as if the whole world were
in a state of blissful tolerance -- except Israel.

 The failure and hypocrisy on display in Durban was foreseen by the Simon
Wiesenthal Center. As a UN-accredited non-governmental organization, it was
involved in every preparatory meeting leading up to the WCAR -- except for
the Asian regional conference that took place earlier this year in Tehran.
The Center's representative, Dr. Shimon Samuels, had been active for three
years in the European Network Against Racism, an umbrella group for over
860 anti-racist NGOs in the European Union. Yet he was deliberately blocked
from going to Teheran. It was at that meeting that objectionable language
castigating Israel was originally put forward.

 Despite the gloomy outlook, the Simon Wiesenthal Center decided to come to
Durban and fight for human rights. Unfortunately, a majority of NGOs took
the Arab nations' lead and focused their attention on Israel. Some NGOs
gave out pamphlets containing anti-Semitic cartoons, blocked Jewish
delegates from speaking and helped create what one European delegate
described as "a feeling [of] racism."

 To their credit, at least a dozen major international human rights groups,
some of whom have at times criticized Israel, had the courage to
disassociate themselves from a NGO Forum resolution declaring Israel to be
a "racist apartheid state." But they were in a minority.

 We refuse to give up on the idea that nations and NGOs can meet in good
faith to address the problems of racism and intolerance. Hopefully, when
governments see the shambles that has unfolded in Durban, they will ensure
that future conferences are not dominated by narrow-minded partisan
interests.

[END]

=====

The second Letter to the Editor was written by Ian Macdonald, a retired
Canadian diplomat and trade expert on the Middle East for years.  Macdonald
refers to an article by Corinna Schuler ("Fry defends decision.." Sept. 5,
2001, Globe and Mail) who makes reference to "Canada and other allies of
Israel".

[START]

Canada may well be a vassal of Israel, as is the United States, but it is
certainly not an ally, not politically, not militarily and not spiritually.


Most knowledgeable Canadian Christians and Muslims, because of Israeli
desecration of the Holy Land and unforgivably cruel subjugation of the
native Palestinians, on the contrary, see Israel as
the enemy.

The media, of course, in the service of their co-religionists and
with heads well into the sand, fastidiously conceal or ignore the ominous
reality of growing Gentile resentment.  If history is any guide, they do so
at their peril.

Ian V.  Macdonald

[END]

The third item comes from the opposite end of the world - from a courtroom
where, for the first time in postwar history, an accused murderer and
torturer of Germans stands trial.  Here is one brief account:

 POLAND: WHEN GERMANS WERE MALTREATED

 Witnesses recount postwar atrocities in Polish camps

Calgary Herald June  14, 2001

Roger Boyes Times of London OPOLE, POLAND --

German women were  drowned in latrines and prisoners were buried alive
during postwar internment  in Poland, according to witnesses at the trial
of a Polish camp  commandant.

Czelaw Geborski, a stooped, snowy-haired pensioner of 76, is  accused of
murdering German women who, after the Second World War, were  herded into
deportation camps prior to being expelled from Silesia.

His  trial is the first to be held in post-communist Europe for crimes
committed  against Germans. About 14 million of them [German people] were
expelled from  territory that is now part of Poland and the Czech Republic;
two million  [German people] died mainly of hunger, exhaustian [sic] and
disease as they  trekked westward.

The revelations, coupled with the disclosure that Polish villagers took
part in a bloodthirsty massacre of Jews during the war, have  forced Poland
to reassess its image of itself as one of the primary victims  of Hitler.
The Silesian atrocities occurred in 1945 and 1946, after the end  of the
war.

 The Soviet Union laid claim to what was once eastern Poland  and, in
return, Poles gained territory in the west. Germans living there were
thrown out. Once resettled in Germany, they formed powerful political
associations that kept alive memories of camps such as Lamsdorf (now known
as  Lambinowice) 30 kilometres from Opole.  [The German town of Oppeln]

 Geborski, sitting in the dock next  to his often embarrassed lawyer,
interrupted loudly as the witnesses tried to  reconstruct everyday life in
the camp.

"It was like a holiday camp!" he  barked out, banging his stick on the
floor. "They all had their own beds and  three modest meals."

[END]

=====

Thought for the Day:

"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a
featherbed."

(Thomas Jefferson)