Jeez....

This is Stomach churning!

I mean, this site calls for a strong disposition but sometimes, even site-veterans like me have simply got to retch at what we see...

Even the blindest could differentiate between self-defence and genocide. The lefties are beyond blind, of course.

Posted by: voletti at December 8, 2004 8:00 AM

Many years ago one famous writer said that Europe would never forgive Jews for what it did to them during the Holocaust, and most certainly Germany will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.

By equating Israel’s actions with the Nazis they don’t just falsely accuse Israel with monstrous crimes, they don’t just deny their right to self defence, but they also minimise what they, and their grandparents did….

My Grandfather lost his entire family in the Holocaust. They all died in Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. My Grandfather never hated the Germans, he never hated anybody; I never heard him saying a wrong thing about the Germans, and never talked about the Holocaust. I’ve always thought that if anybody had the right to hate Germans my Grandfather did have the right to hate them, but he never did, and neither did we. But now I’m beginning to have second thoughts.

So I’ll just finish a sentence above: By equating Israel’s actions with the Nazis they don’t just falsely accuse Israel with monstrous crimes, they don’t just deny their right to self defence, but they also minimise what they, and their very grandparents did and they are also robbing my family of the memory of our loved ones who perished in the Holocaust.

Posted by: gloria at December 8, 2004 8:40 AM

This seems to be a bit of a paradox. On one hand the Germans (and presumably the rest of Europe) have feelings towards Israel that are less than admirable. But on the other hand Europeans are displaying more and more negative feelings towards Islam in general, and Muslims living among them in particular. (And I can testify that this is the case with my European friends) Is this just a case of pollster spin? I am beginning to think it might be.

Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at December 8, 2004 9:08 AM

Dear Gloria,

as a patriotic citizen of Germany I am truly ashamed of this poll.

So first of all I would be happy if you would accept my appologize for the sad outcome.

I do not think that there's a pollster spin working.
In Germany there only exists one large newspaper which is dealing correctly with the struggle between Israel and the Arabs.

It seems to be paradox but this outcome is due to the fact that mass media in Germany just shows
stone throwing palestinian children fighting against the martial strength of Zahal.
Not only the tiny gang of ultra- rightists are blaming Israel but also the commentators of the leftist mass media who belong to the so-called "68ers", among them Mr.Fischer, Mr. Schröder (Yes, the chancellor himself) and a lot more persons of the political establishment.

Mr.Fischer had very good relations to Mr.Arafat, by the way.
I think there will be a turning-around of this situation when Jihad comes closer to Europe.

Many friends of mine have been serving as Kibuzzim and they told everyone the real threat that Israel suffers every day when they came home.

Posted by: nippon at December 8, 2004 9:40 AM

Gloria, Voletti:

50 % ? Is the glass half full or half empty?

As wrong as it may be, for Germans (accusing Israel) I believe it is more ignorance than anything else. You'll find ambivalence towards Israel all over Europe and the children of the perpetrators are uneasy with the chip on their shoulders...
Same thing here in Australia: 'It's the Jooos...' Amazing!
It's all based on 'believe'- and not knowing what the realities are on the ground. The media should play a better part in educating people, but it doesn't...

I guess there is only so much we can do to enlighten people around us... Prejudice and Jewhaters you find plenty everywhere, and I will never be able to understand why and how people take a side for the Phallustinians. Like Sheik Canuck says: As the problem with Islam grows, people will begin to understand what Israel is all about! We are working on it, be positive!

Posted by: Terminator at December 8, 2004 9:53 AM

Dear Nippon,

I’m sorry if I offended anybody from Germany. I shouldn’t have generalised the way I did, I just got a bit carried away after reading that article. I know that there are many many Germans, who don’t think like that. Sorry again.

Terminator,

It is true that the media all over Europe accuses Israel with all sorts of crimes (and not just in Germany). I hope you are right, and people soon will understand more about what’s Israel is up against, but right now it’s not looking good.

Posted by: gloria at December 8, 2004 10:00 AM

Actually it could easily be a pollster spin or just plain bad sampling. For example, how large was the sample size, what are the confidence intervals around the 51%, how were the questions phrased, what criteria were used to sample participants etc. etc. The terrible thing is that polls like this can also convince people of a certain "fact" since the majority already believe that "fact". It's actually surprising the lack of quality criteria that go into making these polls.

As far as things are concerned in the Netherlands, I'd be surprised if even a small portion of the ethnic Dutch sympathise with the Palestinians and are anti-Israel. That being said some members of that small group are vociferous including the wife of the former Dutch head of the European bank, Gretta Duisenberg. Duisenberg, however, was a moron who was rightly ridiculed, among others by Theo van Gogh. Maybe the Dutch are just simply not anti-Semitic by nature and the Germans are but somehow I doubt it.

On the other hand, as Nippon mentioned, I often hear that German or other far-rightists defend the muslims/Palestinians because they have a common enemy, the Jews. Are the far rightists so anti-semitic and so stupid that they can't see the Jews pose no threat whatsoever to Europe and the muslims a serious threat. What's going on there?

Posted by: Arhopala at December 8, 2004 10:20 AM

It should be a major goal of German policy -- and that of all intelligent and morally aware Germans -- to undo this travesty. Never mind that the Israeli army has been, if anything, far too delicate and magnanimous in its behavior, and has again and again taken unnecessary casualties (as when it so often has refrained from firing on suspicious enemies who, whether women or teenagers, have turned out to be terrorists), or as in Jenin, where the failure to bomb from the air, and to risk the lives of Reservists, led to unnecessary Israeli casualties. (One hopes that in this respect, the American army will never model itself on the Israelis, and use its superior technology whenever it can -- to protect its own troops, rather than worry overmuch about the enemy). And never mind what this says about German understanding of exactly how the German army -- not the S.S., not the Gestapo, but the regular army -- so often behaved.

No, the main problem here is that this horrifying statistic shows just how successful the effort, in the first place by pro-Arab and pro-Muslim forces, to dominate much of the German -- and European -- media. The BBC, Agence France Presse (which still refuses to fire those involved in the "Mohammad Dura" fabrication), The Guardian, RFI (even with Alain Menargues having been fired for his too-obvious antisemitism), have all contributed to a climate, pushed by the Euro-Arab dialogue boys behind the scenes, in which two pre-existing mental conditions, or pathologies, which by now overlap, have been appealed to, fanned, and exploited for the purposes of preventing Europeans from seeing where the real danger comes from. For it is not mighty Israel that is slowly taking over Europe. It is not the United States, so inarticulate, so maladroit in some ways, yet so good-hearted and generous, and to be forgiven because again and again it has proven right in its foreign policies, and in two world wars and one Cold War, has played a decisive role in protecting Western Europe, and in liberating Eastern Europe. However much one longs for a more fluent presentation, however much one might wish American diplomats to have a little more Talleyrand, and a little less Fred Flintstone, in their presentation, American policy has been far more correct, even in the folly, as it now is, of the American "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project in Iraq.

Antisemitism and anti-Americanism are deplorable wherever these pathologies are to be found; in Germany they are -- given history -- absolutely intolerable and unacceptable. And that is why every thinking German -- Marian Donhoff and her generation of old-fashioned anti-Nazi liberals have gone, and they do not seem to have been replaced with a sufficient number of younger Germans. Well, they had better appear, and soon.

Because Germany -- not the Germany of Adolf Hitler, but another Germany (let's stick with Heine, Goethe, Lichtenberg, and Karl Kraus for the moment)is just as much in danger of being islamized as is France, or Holland, or England.

And misrepresentation of the relentless Jihad agaainst Israel, and the completely false image of Israel that the European media have presented, are part of the softening-up process which keeps people from understanding not only the opposition to the tiny Infidel state of Israel, but the more general plans, as set out in Qur'an and hadith and sira, for the conquest of the world, through the final subjugation of all non-Muslims. It sounds fantastic, and it is fantastic -- but isn't what is happening all over Western Europe at the moment, with its Muslim populations, something scarcely believable? And who, a few decades ago, would have predicted it?

Well, Bat Ye'or did. And Charles Dufourcq did. And so did anyone who truly undertsood Islam, and Jihad, and dhimmitude.

No time to waste. So here's the task: take back the German media. Report fairly on Israel, and on the United States, second only to Israel in the misreporting it has to endure (but the United States is powerful, and not yet surrounded by mortal enemies, and can withstand such gross injustices in the world media a bit better, for a lot longer, than tiny Israel can). And start doing something about the primitive belief-system which has so much in common with certain other belief-systems.

If you are German, or know someone in Germany, then help the cause. Read, and then translate, and then distribute, the brilliant essay of Ibn Warraq which describes fourteen features which distinguish Fascism as a belief-system, and then describes how Islam exhibits precisely the same features.

You can find the essay at www.secularislam.org. Or, you can simply google "Ibn Warraq" and "Islam" and "Fascism." You may be too young to have joined the White Rose in Munich. Your parents or grandparents may not have been heroes -- indeed, they may have done things you prefer not to look into too closely. But at the very least, you can preserve not only Germany, but the rest of Europe, by making sure that as many people as possible understand Islam as a belief-system -- and not what those who conduct those evenings of smiling Taqiyya and Tu Quoque would have you believe.

Posted by: Hugh at December 8, 2004 10:30 AM

Bat Ye'or goes into exquisite detail about this phenomenon in "Islam and Dhimmitude". For those of you who haven't read this book yet, it's time to catch up on some reading.

Posted by: Mike at December 8, 2004 10:36 AM

Hugh,

The wisdom behind your writing is often overwhelming.
And who could express it better :" The US, so inarticulate, so maladroit, yet so good hearted and generous..." How true!!

And Israel? Is Israel doing a better job at PR?

The US that invented it, is doing a most miserable job to sell it's mission to the world. And Israel seems to have given up to even try...

This is why Jihad watch is so important. I am confident that this may be still a 'grassroots-movement'- but once the ball starts rolling we may be able to bring about some change...

Posted by: Terminator at December 8, 2004 11:30 AM

"In Germany there only exists one large newspaper which is dealing correctly with the struggle between Israel and the Arabs."
Posted by: nippon

Nippon, Can you tell me which paper this is, so I can read it sometime?

Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at December 8, 2004 2:53 PM

Obviously the Germans are right, the vasr majority of the world agrees that the Israelis are conducting a criminal campaign of Genocide in the occupied Palestinan lands, yet most of you idiots are to blind to realize this. No wonder why most of the world hates this country, idiots like you are ruining its image.

Posted by: u r all retards at December 8, 2004 4:49 PM

u r the idiot

The Germans have the nerve to call the Israelis Nazis when nazi violence has always been perpetrated against Jews? What about the mass extermination of Israeli civilians by suicide bombers? It would be far more accurate to describe the palestinians as the true Nazis. The intafadeh is the new Holocaust, and once again, (sorry to any Germans who support Israel) it seems that the German people are siding with the Jew-haters.

Posted by: vrkbarracuda at December 8, 2004 6:11 PM

"The survey also found that 68 percent of Germans believe that Israel is waging a "war of extermination" against the Palestinians, while some 32% disagreed with such a statement."

Stupidity, ignorance, and simple malice do not suffice as an explanation for this. This is evidence of demonic influence.

Posted by: montfort at December 8, 2004 8:36 PM

Dear Sheik Canuck (swt):

"Die Welt" and "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung".

"Welt" belongs to the Springers.
FAZ is also a conservative newspaper, but it is a bit "lame".

With regards

Posted by: nippon at December 9, 2004 3:12 AM

There is one very useful "secret weapon" we clear thinking Germans have in our armoury: Call these people what they are "anti-semitic"... they truly are but they don't realise. I'm regularly ashamed to be German these days - the problem is that you have to fight both wings, left and right. People like Nippon and I need to confront our compatriots with the facts... they are indoctrinated even by the main-stream politicians and have to be made aware of it. If that requires calling these people (and there are a lot of them out there for sure) anti-semitic so be it.

Posted by: disillusionised_german at December 11, 2004 8:54 AM