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HISTORY

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Chanukah, Antisemitism, & Historical Corroboration by Gerald A. Honigman

By on November 18th, 2019

As I write this, Jews once again face an upsurge in antisemitism worldwide, targeting them as individuals as well as their Jew of the Nations…Israel.

Given that it’s not always the case, it’s nonetheless frequently more acceptable–in a post-Auschwitz world–to simply transfer millennial Jew-hatred and prejudice to the sole, minuscule, State that Jews now possess. 

While, to any knowledgeable and objective observer, the frequently genocidal sins of Arabism are light years worse than any real or imagined sins of the national liberation movement of the Jewish people (Zionism), it’s just the latter and Israel which gets continuously targeted and vilified by practitioners of the double standard supreme…https://ekurd.net/arabism-zionism-journeys-2019-01-12

Whether in the United Nations and other international forums; on “Progressive” campuses, where professors who specialize in using one set of lenses to scrutinize Israel and Zionism, and an entirely different set regarding the rest of the neighborhood usually occupy the bully pulpits of classrooms; in the mainstream media; and so forth, it has become obvious that anti-Zionism is usually nothing more than antisemitism in disguise. 

While criticism aimed at particular policy is fair–as long as the same standards are used for all nations–criticism aimed at the very existence of a viable Jewish State is not. It’s antisemitism…Instead of murdering Jews, the covertly or overtly intended victim is their nation instead.

With that said, and with Chanukah 5780 (2019) fast approaching, what you’re about to see next is something precious to those interested in historical truths–not just wishful thinking, concocted realities, “taqiyya” (“lying for the cause”), religious and theological claims, and so forth…It’s historical corroboration.

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The Other Genocide of Christians: On Turks, Kurds, and Assyrians By Raymond Ibrahim

By on November 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-other-genocide-of-christians-on-turks-kurds-and-assyrians/

“Although there has never been any love lost between Turks and Kurds, once Christians were thrown into the mix, the two hitherto quarreling Muslim peoples temporarily set their longstanding differences aside: “Holy war [jihad] was proclaimed in Kurdistan and Kurdish tribes responded enthusiastically under the planned and concerted direction of the Turkish authorities,” writes Yacoub. Thus, the Kurds “were accomplices in the massacres, and participated in looting for ideological reasons (the Christians were infidels).””

One of the most refreshing aspects of Resolution 296—which acknowledges the Armenian Genocide, and which the House recently voted for overwhelmingly—is that it also recognizes those other peoples who experienced a genocide under the Ottoman Turks.  The opening sentence of Resolution 296 acknowledges “the campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians.”

And that last word—Christians—is key to understanding this tragic chapter of history: Christianity is what all those otherwise diverse peoples had in common, and therefore it—not nationality, ethnicity, or grievances—was the ultimate determining factor concerning who the Turks would and would not “purge.”

The genocide is often conflated with the Armenians because many more of them than other ethnicities were killed—causing them to be the face of the genocide. According to generally accepted figures, the Turks exterminated 1.5 million Armenians, 750,000 Greeks, and 300,000 Assyrians.

As for the latter peoples (the word “Assyrian” also encompasses Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Arameans) half of their population of 600,000 was slaughtered in the genocide. In other words, relative to their numbers, they lost more than any other Christian group, including the Armenians.

Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide (published 2016) underscores that: 1) the Assyrians were systematically massacred, and 2) the ultimate reason for their—and therefore the Armenians’ and Greeks’—genocide was their Christian identity.

The book’s author, Joseph Yacoub, an emeritus professor at the Catholic University of Lyon, offers copious contemporary documentation recounting countless atrocities against the Assyrians—massacres, rapes, death marches, sadistic eye-gouging, and the desecration and destruction of hundreds of churches.

U.S. House Acknowledges Armenian Genocide, the ‘Most Colossal Crime of All Ages’

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Hitler’s Pawn: The Boy Assassin and the Holocaust by Stephen Koch

By on November 9th, 2019

On November 7, 1938, a 17-year-old Jewish boy named Herschel Grynszpan, distraught over the Nazi persecution of his family and thousands of other Polish German Jews, slipped into the German Embassy in Paris and used a gun he’d never fired before to shoot the first diplomat he saw. When the diplomat died two days later from the wounds, Adolf Hitler and his sinister propaganda henchman, Joseph Goebbels, changed the course of history by turning this one rash act of one Jewish teenager into a pretext for the Kristallnacht, the nationwide orgy of mass state-sponsored anti-Semitic criminality, violence, and murder that initiated the Holocaust. Scholarly accounts of the Kristallnacht, the Holocaust, and the Second World War ordinarily devote a few lines—sometimes even a couple of paragraphs—to Herschel’s story, noting how the Nazis exploited his brave but foolish “protest” to ignite the great pogrom.

In 1938, Europe was on the cusp of a political transformation. Western Europe’s worst fear—and it was a truly terrible fear—was the threat of another world war. After the murderous horrors of the first one, a second, even worse one loomed as madness that could kill millions, bringing the end of civilization. Europeans high and low went into deep denial, desperately convincing themselves that Hitler was somehow a normal, if distasteful, politician who could be handled and appeased. The Munich pact, long since a byword for diplomatic cowardice and disgrace, had been signed a mere month before the Kristallnacht, and for one fleeting month, the pact had been celebrated with delirious mass relief. Apart from Jews and others who had taken Hitler’s measure, the Munich Agreement was greeted by euphoric waves of joyful people—people by the hundreds of thousands literally dancing in the streets.

With the Kristallnacht, that dancing stopped. On November 9–10, when Hitler ripped off his mask of legitimacy and normality to reveal the true face of his fundamentally criminal regime, the pipe dream of a rational, appeasable Hitler died a swift, sickening death. Plenty of appeasers kept busy, but for most, the truth was clear: Hitler would stop at nothing. The fearsome return of war was probable, unavoidable, even inevitable.

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What Germany’s Foreign Minister Gets Wrong about the Berlin Wall By Jakub Grygiel

By on November 9th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/berlin-wall-europe-did-not-defeat-communism-by-itself/

‘Europe’ did not defeat Communism by itself.

Historical revisionism as an academic divertissement is corrupting, muddling the intellects of generations. For instance, ignoring or obscuring the fact that Soviet socialism (like its sister, National Socialism) was a murderous tool in the hands of large bureaucratic states run by thugs — and thus a target of popular opprobrium and of often bloody opposition — results in a young population that is not ashamed of wearing hats with a red star or of voting for aging socialists known for their fondness toward the USSR. Historical ignorance leads to the resurrection of ideas that have failed and have caused millions of deaths.

But historical revisionism is also used for foreign-policy purposes. Proffered by the highest echelons of a nation’s executive, it is more immediately dangerous, because it lays the foundation for a political posture that ignores key facts and tries to build a diplomatic or security architecture that is hostile to the very order it wants to protect. The most recent and worrisome example of such revisionism comes from the heart of Europe, Berlin, in the words of the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas.

Maas released a short article commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. A heady and joyful event, the fall of the Wall was a victory against oppressive Communist regimes propped up by brute power. More broadly, the annus mirabilis of 1989 was a culmination of decades of sacrifice by the oppressed nations in Central and Eastern Europe, supported by the free nations of Western Europe and by the deep and long commitment of the United States to fight the evil ideology of Communism. For Maas, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a victory over “walls and borders,” admittedly in the name of freedom and rule of law, but he is vague about who in particular the opponent was. The socialist paradise of the proletariat, which built the Wall and the Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Adriatic and was responsible for 100 million dead, remains unnamed as the enemy.

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The 1932 and 1939 Project: How the New York Times Covered up Murder and Genocide By Richard Moss

By on November 6th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/the_1932_and_1939_project_how_the_new_york_times_covered_up_of_murder_and_genocide.html

With the launching of the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” the paper of record seeks to reframe American history.  Formerly we had foolishly assumed the birth of the nation to be July 4, 1776, with the writing of the Declaration of Independence.  But no, the paper of record has another date in mind. 

It turns out to be 1619, with the importing of the first African slaves to America.  That moment, the Times believes, more accurately depicts the founding of the nation and its underlying precepts.  We now learn that our Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, or our disingenuous claim that “all men are created equal” do not define the nation.  Rather, it is that America is a uniquely racist and exploitative enterprise, a criminal operation, morally stained in its DNA, founded as it is on the institution of slavery.  Furthermore, we are to understand that all the advances and benefits that have accrued to our nation in its 243-year history, come not from our religious underpinnings, individual and private property rights, free markets, and our constitutional system of limited government, but rather — you guessed it — slavery.

Others have refuted the ideologic and political 1619 Project, so I will not retrace ground covered elsewhere. It makes more sense to declare a new project that I will describe as the “1932 and 1939 Project,” not as a new timeline and birthdate for the founding of the nation but rather as the origin of the despairingly predictable leftist propaganda machine that the media have become.  Why 1932 and 1939?  These are the years that the NY Times chose to ignore, cover up, and whitewash for ideological purposes what were among the worst genocides of the 20th century — the Ukraine famine and the Holocaust.

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Remembering Bukovsky, 1942-2019 A farewell to a titan. Michael Ledeen

By on November 5th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/remembering-vladimir-bukovsky-michael-ledeen/

Vladimir Bukovsky, one of the greatest dissidents in the history of the Twentieth Century, has died in England at the age of 76. For those of us who knew him, and were fortunate enough to work with him, his passing marked a profoundly sad day. 

For years, Bukovsky was a constant advocate for imprisoned anti-Communists, locked up because of their alleged mental infirmities. He smuggled their court documents to the West, along with documents purporting to show his own mental derangement. Instead of charging him with anti-Communism or crimes against the state, he was “diagnosed” with mental illness and placed in a psychiatric institution. 

Bukovsky was swapped for Chilean Communist Party Chief Luis Corvalan in 1976, and he resumed his studies at Stanford University, where the school administration played a nasty trick on him. A group of Soviet scholars was touring the West, advocating, as usual, for peace. Bukovsky recognized some of the better-known scholars from his years in Soviet jails; they had been among his torturers. He made this point to those who had invited the Soviets to Palo Alto, and urged them to call off the visit, but they were not put off from their peace mission.

Shortly thereafter, Bukovsky left the United States. It was a turning point in his meanderings. Although he was very fond of President Ronald Reagan and CIA Director William Casey, he found himself at odds with a culture that was hostile to his own deep-seated anti-Communism. Luke Harding writes in The Guardian:

His autobiography, published in English in 1978 as To Build a Castle and in Russian under the title And the Wind Returns, gives a vivid portrait of life in Soviet jail. He wrote: “Strange things happened to time. On the one hand it seemed to pass with preternatural speed, beggaring belief. The entire daily routine with its ordinary, monotonously repetitive events – reveille, breakfast, exercise, dinner, supper, lights out, reveille, breakfast – fused into a sort of yellowish-brown blur, leaving nothing for the mind to cling to.

“On the other hand the same time could crawl with agonising slowness: it would seem as if a whole year had gone by, but no, it was still the same old month, and no end was in sight.”

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Ilhan Omar’s Anti-American, Pro-Islamic Polemic on the Armenian Genocide The implications of Omar’s “present” vote. Raymond Ibrahim

By on November 4th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/ilhan-omars-anti-american-pro-islamic-polemic-raymond-ibrahim/

Earlier this week the House voted overwhelmingly (405-11) in favor of formally recognizing the Armenian Genocide, which was perpetrated by Ottoman Turks.  Among those miniscule few to vote “present,” thereby abstaining from voting, was Minnesotan Democrat, Ilhan Omar.   Her logic was expressed in a tweet:

A true acknowledgement of historical crimes against humanity must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and Native American genocide, which took the lives of hundreds of millions of indigenous people in this country.

Such a statement is disingenuous on several levels.  For starters, since when did resolutions that deal with specific events—in this case, the Armenian Genocide—need to chronicle “earlier mass slaughters” throughout history?

One also wonders if the resolution was about, say, condemning the transatlantic slave trade or treatment of Natives—or anything else that depicts Americans negatively—would Omar have then abstained, arguing that a “true acknowledgement of historical crimes against humanity must include” the Armenian Genocide? (This is a rhetorical question.)

Incidentally, whatever America did to African slaves and Natives in the past, it has at least since tried to make reparations to both—not to mention was part of the Western drive to abolish slavery altogether.  This is much more than can be said about the Muslim world: it still persecutes its natives (Christians)—those exposed in Omar’s Somalia are instantly slaughtered—and was forced by Western powers to (formally) abolish slavery.

But the main point is this: if, as Omar contends, “earlier mass slaughters” should be mentioned, surely it should be those that are connected to the one highlighted in the resolution—in this case, ones that may possibly show patterns and precedents concerning the events surrounding the Armenian Genocide.  What’s to be learned from a resolution that includes a myriad of unrelated atrocities throughout the millennia other than that “all people are equally guilty”? (Which, of course, is one of Omar’s objectives, to relativize Islamic atrocities.)

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The “Most Colossal Crime of All Ages” A new U.S. resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide has Turkey outraged. Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 31st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/most-colossal-crime-all-ages-raymond-ibrahim/

An ugly truth of history has just been acknowledged.  On October 29, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (405 to 11) in favor of Resolution 296, which acknowledges the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks during WW1.  (Unsurprisingly, Ilhan Omar was among the very few to abstain; her disingenuous logic will be addressed later.)

In order to become official policy, however, the resolution needs to be approved by both houses of Congress, and then signed by the president.  The Senate is currently not scheduled to vote on the measure.

It is at any rate a step in the right direction.  According to the book Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide,

At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Indeed, Turkey is currently outraged at this resolution; its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called it “worthless” and the “biggest insult” to the Turkish people. 

Such willful denial borders the surreal considering how well documented the Armenian genocide is.  As the International Association of Genocide Scholars says, “the Armenian Genocide is not controversial, but rather is denied only by the Turkish government and its apologists.”

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1776, not 1619 America’s Founding was not defined by slavery and white supremacy—quite the contrary. Arthur Milikh

By on October 29th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/new-york-times-1619-project

For decades, much of academia, the liberal activist class, and the public school system have operated on the premise that America is fundamentally racist. The latest manifestation of this outlook is the 1619 Project, rolled out last month by the New York Times. Claiming that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” it “aims to reframe the country’s history” by making 1619—the year slavery was first introduced by the British to Virginia—the year of “our true founding.”

This narrative is akin to the Jacobins’ alteration of the calendar to make their revolution the decisive turning point in human history. Just as they would save France from the monarchy, so, too, will the Times save America from white supremacy. The Times encourages public schools to adopt an accompanying curriculum that spreads the 1619 Project’s message to young Americans. Its goal is to brand our founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—as immoral and thus unworthy of our allegiance.

To make America’s Founding contemptible, one must hide, ignore, and distort the Founders’ writings and thoughts. Irresponsibly omitted from this narrative is the fact that not a single major Founder endorsed slavery. On the contrary, the Founders unambiguously saw slavery as evil. George Washington said, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it,” and Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence calls the slave trade an “execrable commerce” and an affront “against human nature itself.” Gouverneur Morris called slavery a “nefarious institution” and “the curse of heaven,” and John Jay said, “It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. . . . To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.”

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VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY R.I.P.

By on October 28th, 2019

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky was a Russian-born British human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissident movement. He was a prolific writer. His last book was”Judgement in Moscow” described below:

“The movers and shakers of today have little interest in digging for the truth. Who knows what one may come up with? You may start out with the Communists and end up with yourself.” —Vladimir Bukovsky

Bukovsky’s Judgment in Moscow, called “stunning” by Richard Pipes and “a massive and major contribution” by Robert Conquest, has been published for the first time in English. Margaret Thatcher gave a grant to support the writing of the book, and the initial publication in Russia was paid for by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. The book has an introduction by Edward Lucas and an afterword by David Satter.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, legendary Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky had the opportunity to steal thousands of classified documents from the Soviet archives. Judgment in Moscow is about the secrets exposed by those documents. It reveals the inner workings of the Soviet regime and the complicity of many in the West with that regime.

Judgment in Moscow was an international bestseller published in nine languages, but has only now been published in English for the first time. It was previously at Random House, but Bukovsky refused to rewrite parts of the book which accused prominent Westerners of behind-the-scenes dealings with the Soviets. In this edition, the author quotes correspondence with his editor, who says, “I don’t disagree, but I simply can’t publish a book that accuses Americans like Cyrus Vance and Francis Ford Coppola of unpatriotic — or even treacherous — behavior.”

“Vladimir Bukovsky uses the Kremlin’s own documents to show how the Soviet Union provided a false face to the world and how Soviet leaders used Western leaders as dupes or willing actors. Judgment in Moscow provides the written Nuremberg trial the Soviets never got when the USSR fell.” —Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History (Pulitzer Prize)

“An essential warning of the dangers of collaborating with authoritarian regimes.” — Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and author of Winter is Coming

“The most important work to appear for decades on the Soviet empire and its aftermath.” — Edward Lucas, former senior editor of the Economist, from the introduction

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