555 Chomsky on Gaza. Ben-Menashe arson attack. Curriculum focus on Nazi racism

Chomsky on Gaza. Ben-Menashe arson attack. Curriculum focus on Nazi racism

(1) Chomsky on Gaza: What the American Media Won't Tell You About Israel
(2) What Chomsky Won't Tell You About the American Media
(3) Ben-Menashe arson attack
(4) Curriculum focus on Nazi racism, excludes Western examples

(1) Chomsky on Gaza: What the American Media Won't Tell You About Israel

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"
<sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu> Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 14:04:20 -0500 Subject:
Noam Chomsky...What US Media doesn't tell on Israel

What the American Media Won't Tell You About Israel

By Noam Chomsky, Alternet, 04 December 12

http://www.alternet.org/world/noam-chomsky-what-american-media-wont-tell-you-about-israel

The savage punishment of Gaza traces back to decades ago.

An old man in Gaza held a placard that read: "You take my water, burn my
olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my
father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us
all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back."

The old man's message provides the proper context for the latest episode
in the savage punishment of Gaza. The crimes trace back to 1948, when
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled from their homes in terror or
were expelled to Gaza by conquering Israeli forces, who continued to
truck Palestinians over the border for years after the official cease-fire.

The punishment took new forms when Israel conquered Gaza in 1967. From
recent Israeli scholarship (primarily Avi Raz's "The Bride and the
Dowry: Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinians in the Aftermath of the June
1967 War"), we learn that the government's goal was to drive the
refugees into the Sinai Peninsula - and, if feasible, the rest of the
population too.

Expulsions from Gaza were carried out under the direct orders of Gen.
Yeshayahu Gavish, commander of the Israel Defense Forces Southern
Command. Expulsions from the West Bank were far more extreme, and Israel
resorted to devious means to prevent the return of those expelled, in
direct violation of U.N. Security Council orders.

The reasons were made clear in internal discussions immediately after
the war. Golda Meir, later prime minister, informed her Labor Party
colleagues that Israel should keep the Gaza Strip while "getting rid of
its Arabs." Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and others agreed.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol explained that those expelled could not be
allowed to return because "we cannot increase the Arab population in
Israel" - referring to the newly occupied territories, already
considered part of Israel.

In accord with this conception, all of Israel's maps were changed,
expunging the Green Line (the internationally recognized borders) -
though publication of the maps was delayed to permit Abba Eban, an
Israeli ambassador to the U.N., to attain what he called a "favorable
impasse" at the General Assembly by concealing Israel's intentions.

The goals of expulsion may remain alive today, and might be a factor in
contributing to Egypt's reluctance to open the border to free passage of
people and goods barred by the U.S.-backed Israeli siege.

The current upsurge of U.S.-Israeli violence dates to January 2006, when
Palestinians voted "the wrong way" in the first free election in the
Arab world.

Israel and the U.S. reacted at once with harsh punishment of the
miscreants, and preparation of a military coup to overthrow the elected
government - the routine procedure. The punishment was radically
intensified in 2007, when the coup attempt was beaten back and the
elected Hamas government established full control over Gaza.

Ignoring immediate offers from Hamas for a truce after the 2006
election, Israel launched attacks that killed 660 Palestinians in 2006,
most of whom were civilians (a third were minors). According to U.N.
reports, 2,879 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire from April 2006
through July 2012, along with several dozen Israelis killed by fire from
Gaza.

A short-lived truce in 2008 was honored by Hamas until Israel broke it
in November. Ignoring further truce offers, Israel launched the
murderous Cast Lead operation in December.

So matters have continued, while the U.S. and Israel also continue to
reject Hamas calls for a long-term truce and a political settlement for
a two-state solution in accord with the international consensus that the
U.S. has blocked since 1976 when the U.S. vetoed a Security Council
resolution to this effect, brought by the major Arab states.

This week, Washington devoted every effort to blocking a Palestinian
initiative to upgrade its status at the U.N. but failed, in virtual
international isolation as usual. The reasons were revealing: Palestine
might approach the International Criminal Court about Israel's
U.S.-backed crimes.

One element of the unremitting torture of Gaza is Israel's "buffer zone"
within Gaza, from which Palestinians are barred entry to almost half of
Gaza's limited arable land.

From January 2012 to the launching of Israel's latest killing spree on
Nov. 14, Operation Pillar of Defense, one Israeli was killed by fire
from Gaza while 78 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire.

The full story is naturally more complex, and uglier.

The first act of Operation Pillar of Defense was to murder Ahmed Jabari.
Aluf Benn, editor of the newspaper Haaretz, describes him as Israel's
"subcontractor" and "border guard" in Gaza, who enforced relative quiet
there for more than five years.

The pretext for the assassination was that during these five years
Jabari had been creating a Hamas military force, with missiles from
Iran. A more credible reason was provided by Israeli peace activist
Gershon Baskin, who had been involved in direct negotiations with Jabari
for years, including plans for the eventual release of the captured
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Baskin reports that hours before he was assassinated, Jabari "received
the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included
mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up
between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip."

A truce was then in place, called by Hamas on Nov. 12. Israel apparently
exploited the truce, Reuters reports, directing attention to the Syrian
border in the hope that Hamas leaders would relax their guard and be
easier to assassinate.

Throughout these years, Gaza has been kept on a level of bare survival,
imprisoned by land, sea and air. On the eve of the latest attack, the
U.N. reported that 40 percent of essential drugs and more than half of
essential medical items were out of stock.

In November one of the first in a series of hideous photos sent from
Gaza showed a doctor holding the charred corpse of a murdered child.
That one had a personal resonance. The doctor is the director and head
of surgery at Khan Yunis hospital, which I had visited a few weeks earlier.

In writing about the trip I reported his passionate appeal for
desperately needed medicine and surgical equipment. These are among the
crimes of the U.S.-Israeli siege, and of Egyptian complicity.

The casualty rates from the November episode were about average: more
than 160 Palestinian dead, including many children, and six Israelis.

Among the dead were three journalists. The official Israeli
justification was that "The targets are people who have relevance to
terror activity." Reporting the "execution" in The New York Times, the
reporter David Carr observed that "it has come to this: Killing members
of the news media can be justified by a phrase as amorphous as
‘relevance to terror activity.' "

The massive destruction was all in Gaza. Israel used advanced U.S.
military equipment and relied on U.S. diplomatic support, including the
usual U.S. intervention efforts to block a Security Council call for a
cease-fire.

With each such exploit, Israel's global image erodes. The photos and
videos of terror and devastation, and the character of the conflict,
leave few remaining shreds of credibility to the self-declared "most
moral army in the world," at least among people whose eyes are open.

The pretexts for the assault were also the usual ones. We can put aside
the predictable declarations of the perpetrators in Israel and
Washington. But even decent people ask what Israel should do when
attacked by a barrage of missiles. It's a fair question, and there are
straightforward answers.

One response would be to observe international law, which allows the use
of force without Security Council authorization in exactly one case: in
self-defense after informing the Security Council of an armed attack,
until the Council acts, in accord with the U.N. Charter, Article 51.

Israel is well familiar with that Charter provision, which it invoked at
the outbreak of the June 1967 war. But, of course, Israel's appeal went
nowhere when it was quickly ascertained that Israel had launched the
attack. Israel did not follow this course in November, knowing what
would be revealed in a Security Council debate.

Another narrow response would be to agree to a truce, as appeared quite
possible before the operation was launched on Nov. 14.

There are more far-reaching responses. By coincidence, one is discussed
in the current issue of the journal National Interest. Asia scholars
Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen describe China's reaction
after rioting in western Xinjiang province, "in which mobs of Uighurs
marched around the city beating hapless Han (Chinese) to death."

Chinese president Hu Jintao quickly flew to the province to take charge;
senior leaders in the security establishment were fired; and a wide
range of development projects were undertaken to address underlying
causes of the unrest.

In Gaza, too, a civilized reaction is possible. The U.S. and Israel
could end the merciless, unremitting assault, open the borders and
provide for reconstruction - and if it were imaginable, reparations for
decades of violence and repression.

The cease-fire agreement stated that the measures to implement the end
of the siege and the targeting of residents in border areas "shall be
dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the cease-fire."

There is no sign of steps in this direction. Nor is there any indication
of a U.S.-Israeli willingness to rescind their separation of Gaza from
the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Accords, to end the illegal
settlement and development programs in the West Bank that are designed
to undermine a political settlement, or in any other way to abandon the
rejectionism of the past decades.

Someday, and it must be soon, the world will respond to the plea issued
by the distinguished Gazan human-rights lawyer Raji Sourani while the
bombs were once again raining down on defenseless civilians in Gaza: "We
demand justice and accountability. We dream of a normal life, in freedom
and dignity."

(2) What Chomsky Won't Tell You About the American Media - Peter Myers,
December 5, 2012

Chomsky, who is regarded as an expert on the American media, never
mentions the Jewish ownership and management of the major American media.

Benjamin Ginsberg, a Professor of Political Science, does mention it. So
does Alfred Lilienthal, in books such as The Zionist Connection II.

So Chomsky can hardly be unaware of it. Yet he deems it irrelevant and
unmentionable.

Therefore Chomsky is part of the problem.

Nevertheless, one must give him credit for articles such as the above.

(3) Ben-Menashe arson attack

From: "Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics Earth Sciences)"
<sadanand@mail.ccsu.edu>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 11:31:34 -0500

http://www.globalresearch.ca/arson-seen-in-attack-on-ex-israeli-spy/5314118

Arson Seen in Attack on Ex-Israeli Spy

Exclusive: Suspected arson destroyed the Montreal home of ex-Israeli
intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, who says he escaped through a rear
door. It’s unclear if the fire was an assassination attempt to finally
silence a man who has angered the Israeli government, powerful
Republicans and others, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Arson Seen in Attack on Ex-Israeli Spy

By Robert Parry

Global Research, December 04, 2012

Consortiumnews 3 December 2012

Suspected arson destroyed the Montreal home of ex-Israeli intelligence
officer Ari Ben-Menashe, who says he escaped through a rear door. It’s
unclear if the fire was an assassination attempt to finally silence a
man who has angered the Israeli government, powerful Republicans and others.

Ex-Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe says he narrowly
survived a possible assassination attempt Sunday night when his upscale
home in Montreal was set ablaze in what Canadian authorities are
describing as suspected arson. Police cited how quickly the house was
ravaged and noted that a suspicious person was seen fleeing the scene
shortly after the fire began.

In a phone call with me on Monday, Ben-Menashe said that when he
detected the fire, he alerted a woman staying in the house to flee and
then was able to escape through a back door. But he said everything
inside was destroyed, including his passport, personal papers and his
clothing. “Everything is gone,” Ben-Menashe said.

Ben-Menashe said he believed the fire was set with “a Molotov cocktail”
but he had no clear idea who might have tried to kill him. He did
acknowledge that he has a number of enemies around the world resulting
from his past as an Israeli intelligence officer and his more recent
work as an international consultant often working in global hotspots.

Among Ben-Menashe’s enemies are some of his former Israeli superiors who
consider him a traitor for exposing sensitive Israeli secrets and
powerful Republicans, including former President George H.W. Bush whom
Ben-Menashe fingered as involved in national security scandals in the 1980s.

Ben-Menashe, who served in Israeli military intelligence in the 1970s
and 1980s, was arrested in the United States in 1989 for his involvement
in military sales to Iran. He says the Israeli government then urged him
to plead guilty to the U.S. charges, but he refused and began disclosing
Israeli secrets to journalists, including me in early 1990 when I was a
correspondent for Newsweek magazine.

At first, the Israeli government denounced Ben-Menashe as an “impostor”
but after I obtained official Israeli letters of reference describing
his decade-long work within the External Relations Department of the
Israel Defence Forces, Israeli officials changed their story. They
labeled him simply “a low-level translator.” But the letters described
Ben-Menashe’s service in “key positions” and said he handled “complex
and sensitive assignments.”

Despite the evidence that Israeli officials had first lied and then
retreated to a new cover story, the Bush administration and the Israeli
government managed to galvanize friendly journalists who went out of
their way to discredit Ben-Menashe as a compulsive liar. [For details
about one of the key denouncers of Ben-Menashe, see Consortiumnews.com’s
“Unmasking October Surprise ‘Debunker’”.]

However, Ben-Menashe convinced a New York jury that he indeed had been
working on official Israeli business in his transactions with Iran. He
was acquitted in fall 1990. Ben-Menashe also continued to give
interviews and provide testimony about the secret dealings involving
Republicans and the Israeli government.

October Surprise Allegations

Perhaps Ben-Menashe’s most controversial claim was that he and other
Israeli intelligence officers assisted the Republicans in brokering a
deal with Iran’s Islamic regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1980
to hold 52 American hostages until after the U.S. election to ensure
President Jimmy Carter’s defeat. As a result of this so-called October
Surprise caper, the hostages were not released until Jan. 20, 1981,
immediately after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as U.S. President,
Ben-Menashe said.

After leveling his October Surprise accusations in 1990-1991 – and
providing investigative journalist Seymour Hersh information about
Israel’s nuclear program for his book The Samson Option – Ben-Menashe
was essentially a man on the run from both the Israeli government and
the U.S. administration of George H.W. Bush.

Ben-Menashe sought refuge in Australia, arriving in spring 1991, still
carrying his Israeli passport. After obtaining Ben-Menashe’s Australian
immigration records, journalist Marshall Wilson reported that
Ben-Menashe requested what amounted to political asylum.

Dated May 15, 1991, Ben-Menashe’s 25-page declaration stated: “My case
is an unprecedented case of political persecution by two governments. It
was an attempt by Israel and the United States to cover up their
relations with Iran since 1979.”

Ben-Menashe detailed the curious circumstances of his 1989 arrest while
on a private visit to the U.S. and added: “I was not willing to keep
quiet and be discredited by pleading guilty to the bogus charges. I did
not accept my government’s proposal to do so. Any arms sales to Iran
that I was involved in was solely in the capacity of being an employee
of the Israeli government. Everything I did was authorised by the
appropriate authorities in the Israeli and United States governments.

“Since I did not go along with the program and decided I would
truthfully defend myself in court, I was disowned by the Israeli
Government and will be prosecuted for breaking the Official Secrets Act
if I return. … I will be prosecuted … behind closed doors, ‘for
national security reasons,’ and I will never again see the light of day.”

But Ben-Menashe said his case had other implications. “As an aftermath
of my [1990] trial a new scandal has broken directly involving the
President of the United States [George H.W. Bush],’’ Ben-Menashe wrote,
“about the President being involved in an arms-for-hostage release delay
deal [with Iran] in 1980. I am a central witness on that issue.

“Democratic members of the US Congress are going to speak to me about
that and other issues involving US sales of unconventional weapon
systems to Iraq, all connected to the present [George H.W. Bush]
administration of the US,’’ Ben-Menashe told Australian immigration.
“Paradoxically speaking I am now being punished for being acquitted.”

Later in May 1991, Ben-Menashe faced an apparent plan by George H.W.
Bush’s administration to divert him from Los Angeles Airport to Israel
when he was en route to Washington to testify to Congress about his
allegations. If he had been turned over, his fate would likely have been
similar to that of technician Mordechai Vanunu, who disclosed Israel’s
secret nuclear weapons program and then was kidnapped in Rome and
returned to Israel for trial and imprisonment.

A Last-Minute Tip

However, before Ben-Menashe’s flight, I received a tip from a U.S.
intelligence source about the plan and checked with congressional
investigators who were expecting to interview the Israeli. When they
couldn’t get a clear commitment from the Bush administration about
Ben-Menashe’s safe passage, I called him in Australia as he was about to
leave for the Sydney airport.

I suggested that he delay his flight, which he did. Later, I was
informed by congressional investigators that they finally had extracted
assurances from the Bush administration that Ben-Menashe would be
allowed to proceed to Washington and he rescheduled his flight. Though
he was not diverted to Israel, he was taken aside by U.S. authorities in
Los Angeles and subjected to some harsh questioning.

That evening, I picked Ben-Menashe up at Dulles Airport and was
surprised how shaken he was. I drove him to my home in Arlington,
Virginia, and he asked if he could spend the night in my guest room,
thinking that he was under surveillance and fearing for his life. With
some hesitation, I consented.

Months later, when pro-Israeli journalists escalated their character
assassination of Ben-Menashe, one New Republic writer Steven Emerson
criticized my ethics for allowing Ben-Menashe to stay over in my house,
which struck me as a curious accusation not only because there is no
such ethical standard but because the fact had never been made public.
The reference led me to believe that Ben-Menashe had not been paranoid
when he worried about being under surveillance or for his safety.

Although substantial evidence has emerged to support Ben-Menashe’s
claims, Republicans and the Israeli government continued to deny the
October Surprise story and U.S. congressional investigations in the
early 1990s confronted a stonewall of Republican obstruction.
Ultimately, the investigations concluded that solid evidence of a GOP
conspiracy was lacking. [For the latest details on this controversy, see
Robert Parry’s new book, America’s Stolen Narrative.]

A Life of Intrigue

When published in 1992, Ben-Menashe’s memoir, Profits of War, provided
further details about the cloak-and-dagger operations conducted by U.S.
and Israeli intelligence.

{photo} Ex-Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe. (Photo from his
memoir, Profits of War.)
{end}

A Jew who was born in Iran and who emigrated to Israel as a teenager,
Ben-Menashe explained how his background proved valuable to Israeli
intelligence after the Shah of Iran, a close Israeli ally, was
overthrown in 1979. As Israel tried to rebuild some relationship with
Iran, Ben-Menashe was able to reconnect with some of his friends from
his youth who were rising inside the new revolutionary government.

Ben-Menashe said those contacts led him into a role as an intermediary
on military sales to Iran during the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis in 1980
and placed him near the decision by Prime Minister Menachem Begin to
throw in Israel’s lot with Republican Ronald Reagan in his campaign to
unseat President Jimmy Carter. Over the next several years, Ben-Menashe
remained a key middleman in the arms transactions that were crucial to
Iran in its long war with Iraq.

Yet, by the early 1990s, after his arrest and acquittal, Ben-Menashe had
become a man without a country. On Oct. 23, 1991, he was informed that
his refugee application in Australia had failed. A departmental officer
declared that “there appears to have been ample opportunity for one
government or another [the U.S. or Israel] to have taken action against
Mr Ben-Menashe if his political importance made him of real interest to
them.” [See here and here.]

Ben-Menashe appealed the finding, but on Dec. 12, 1991, the Refugee
Status Review Committee confirmed the adverse ruling. A letter signed by
its Chairman said in part: “The applicant’s fear of the consequences of
breaking Israeli law does not warrant international protection. … The
applicant has, therefore, not established a well-founded fear of
persecution were he to return to Israel.’’ [See here, here, here and here.]

However, the decision was not unanimous, as Austrialian journalist
Marshall Wilson reported. One member of the panel added, “I request a
meeting to discuss aspects of this case, particularly the matters of
what constitutes persecution given this extraordinary mix of
international conspiracies and intrigue and the laws under which the
applicant could be charged should he return to Israel.

“I believe the applicant has been an intelligence operative of the
Israeli Government and has been involved in various arms deals. The
American use of Israel to sell arms to Iran during the Iran-Iraq War is
attested to by a number of sources. The delay in the release of the
American hostages also is now widely accepted as true.’’

In the end Ben-Menashe left Australia of his own free will without
further resort to the courts. He eventually settled in Canada, married a
Canadian woman, received citizenship and built a new life as an
international consultant.

Ben-Menashe stood by his sworn testimony about the October Surprise
machinations and other allegations, but his credibility continued to
come under assault. It didn’t seem to matter even when some Israeli
officials confirmed that Ben-Menashe, indeed, had been involved in
important clandestine operations for Israel.

For instance, American journalist Craig Unger was told by a senior
intelligence official, Moshe Hebroni, that “Ben-Menashe served directly
under me. … He had access to very, very sensitive material.” [Village
Voice, July 7, 1992] In the Israeli daily, Davar, reporter Pazit Ravina
wrote, “in talks with people who worked with Ben-Menashe, the claim that
he had access to highly sensitive intelligence information was confirmed
again and again.”

Now, in investigating the mysterious fire that could have killed
Ben-Menashe — and that succeeded in destroying many of his personal
papers – the authorities in Canada may have to determine if the fire
resulted from some new enemy or an enemy from Ben-Menashe’s past,
someone who preferred that the former Israeli spy finally be silenced.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy
his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an
e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

(4) Curriculum focus on Nazi racism, excludes Western examples

From: william Carlotti <williamccarlotti@msn.com>
To: Mary Whalen <marywhalen@twinfield.net>
CC: "markmooney@twinfield.net" <markmooney@twinfield.net>,
"patjohnson@twinfield.net" <patjohnson@twinfield.net>,
"joannafowler@twinfield.net" <joannafowler@twinfield.net>
Subject: TUNNEL VISION HUMANITIES
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 12:34:08 -0500

Dear Ms. Whelan,

In reviewing my letter of November 11, 2012, I noticed that several of
the links that I provided were not working so I am resending the letter
with the links corrected so that you can properly access them.

Since it is now the beginning of the fourth month that the focus of the
class continues on the Holocaust, it seems appropriate that you provide
a copy of the syllabus or curriculum you are following for this
Humanities class that will place it in its historical context. Your
response to my inquiry was that the historical context for the Holocaust
was covered in the 9th Grade (when Anthony was not attending Twinfield)
and that further will be covered in the 11th grade.

I would also appreciate a copy of the syllabus or curriculum for the 9th
grade and 11th grade for this subject that provides the historical
context for the Holocaust that Anthony missed and that he will be
receiving in the 11th grade.

The historical context for the Holocaust that I cited as an example was,
"As the children in your class are submerged in the Nazi era as the icon
of atrocity, the lynching, segregation and racism taking place at the
same time in the United States and in the United States armed forces as
the lasting effects of the African Slave Trade is ignored; the French
assault on the people of Algeria and of Viet Nam taking place at the
same time is ignored; Italy’s slaughter of innocents in their invasion
of Libya taking place at same time is ignored; England’s brutal
colonialist decimation of the people of India and of Rhodesia taking
place at the same time is ignored; and the butchering of 10,000,000 of
the people of the Congo by King Leopold that took place barely forty
years earlier is ignored."

Since the matter of home schooling has become a significant practice in
Vermont, I assume that such syllabi are available so that home schoolers
can meet the Vermont Department Of Education requirements. In fact, the
guidelines for home schooling History require that the History course
"18-Explain how events that took place in one culture related to
important global events at the same time." See these History guidelines
of Vermont's Department of Education at
http://education.vermont.gov/new/pdfdoc/pgm_homestudy/suggested_skills/grades_9-12.pdf

Without the horrible historical context in which it occurred, the
Holocaust is not a lesson, but an exception that not only belies, but
actually smothers and ignores the horrible historical context in which
occurred, and serves as the means to blame "the other".

Again, is the syllabus or the curriculum for this 10th grade course at
Twinfield part of the curriculum for all of Vermont High Schools?

With regards,

William C. Carlotti

December 4, 2012

Twinfield Union School

Plainfield, Vermont
Dear Ms. Fowler and Ms. Whelan,

It is now several months since the beginning of the school term that
Anthony has been bringing home material and assignments about the ten
year period of the Nazi rule of Germany with specific reference to the
focus of the Nazis’ assault on the Jewish population which has become
known as the Holocaust.

The material is, however, not placed in its historical context.

While the United States fought the government of Germany, United States
armed forces were segregated. Its civilian population was segregated
into different schools, in different housing, in employment, in every
facet of American life, even in public rest rooms and water fountains.

During the period between the 1930s and 1940s, the period of the Nazi
rule of Germany, the regular historical lynching of African Americans in
the United States proceeded at a significant pace (about 10 a year).
In the same period, 120,000 Japanese Americans were placed in 10
concentration (internment) camps and were deprived of all of their
property.

In contrast, Germans in the United States organized themselves into the
German American Bund whose object it was to promote a favorable view of
Nazi ruled Germany. The Bund freely held rallies, published newspapers,
demonstrated and were politically active against President Franklin D.
Roosevelt

The marriage between African Americans (coloreds) and European Americans
(whites) was called “miscegenation” and “Miscegenation Laws” --i.e. laws
criminalizing the marriage between “coloreds” and “whites”--- existed in
almost all of the States of the United States during the whole time of
the Nazi led German government. The last of these laws in the United
States were not repealed until 1967 when the United States Supreme Court
ruled –even though the laws had been enforced for some 350 years---
ruled them unconstitutional.

Every one of the “master race” practices of Nazi Germany mirrored the
practices in the United States with regard to African Americans and its
indigenous population. While African Americans were segregated, the
indigenous were forced into “reservations” through a combination of
brutal force supported in Indian Removal Laws and a “peace process” that
produced nearly 125 “Peace Treaties” that were subsequently violated by
the United States government.

The historical “superior race” thesis was included in the United States
1921 Immigration Laws that determined that Eastern and Southern
Europeans (including Jewish Europeans) came from an inferior human
“stock” as established by “eugenics” research that determined they had
such as “defective germ plasma” and had to be limited immigrants to the
United States so as not to create an inferior stock of Americans.

The “science of eugenics” with its “superior race” thesis was a part of
the experimentation and sterilization programs in the United States that
concentrated on “mental defectives” and in Vermont and elsewhere in the
United States on the indigenous population and the poor. Prominent
amongst these programs was the Tuskegee Program syphilis experiment that
began in 1932 and lasted for some 40 years among African Americans.
Margaret Sanger’s birth control efforts amongst the poor were enhanced
by her participation in the “eugenics science” movement.

The attached article from the San Francisco Chronicle of November 9,
2003 entitled “Eugenics and the Nazis--the California Connection”
covers some of the elements of the intertwined relationship between the
“superior race” of the United States and the “master race” of Nazi led
Germany and the collaboration of its academic and “scientific”
establishments. The whole of the “superior race eugenics science” in the
United States was simply transposed into the “master race” thesis of the
Nazis in Germany.

See
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php

If it is intended that the required reading of Elie Wiesel’s “Night” is
to support a description of the horror that such a regime creates, it
certainly does its job. As a historical document, however, Noam Chomsky
has called its author “a terrible fraud”.

The attached article entitled, “Truth and Fiction In Wiesel’s Night”
cites similar responses by Norman Finkelstein in his “The Holocaust
Industry”, Lewis Lapham of Harper’s magazine and by Raul Hilberg a
preeminent scholar of the Nazi era and a Vermont resident.

To require that the children answer some thirty-eight questions during
the reading of this 108 page book (about one question for every 3 pages)
is to go beyond instruction and into indoctrination and then another 6
questions after reading the book borders on propagandizing.

I lived through the period in question and I can remember the conjured
up, fabricated stories about Nazis making lampshades out of Jewish skin
and making soap out of Jewish fat that was part of the massing of
American sentiment to a justifiable war against Nazi led Germany.

In fact, at the time I asked my mother how someone could make soap out
of fat and her response was that it was too horrible to talk about. It
wasn’t until I was about 20 years old that I found out that it was
common in rural areas of the south to make soap out of pork fat and lye.

Elie Wiesel’s “Night” is similar to such conjured stories but differs
from them in that it presents the distortions and fabrications as an
account of Wiesel’s personal experiences. It is this posture of Wiesel
that evokes the harsh “fraud” from Chomsky and the ascerbic “resident
clown of the Holocaust industry” from Finkelstein.

Harold Pinter, in the text of his acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize
For Literature in October of 2005, deals with the matter of truth.
According to Pinter:

“…truth in drama is forever elusive….There are no hard distinctions
between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and
what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can
be both true and false.”

Pinter then distinguishes between himself as a writer and himself as a
citizen and writes,“I believe that these assertions still make sense and
do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer
I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What
is true? What is false?”

Wiesel’s defense of the conjured fabrications in “Night’ with the
statement that “memory is a sacred act” can stand if we examine it with
Pinter’s explanation of the “exploration of reality through art”.

In such a situation it would be included with a myriad, even a genre, of
such explorations of the Nazi era in the cinema and in literature---for
instance, literature become cinema such as Schindler’s List by Thomas
Kenealy, Sophie’s Choice by William Styron are excellent examples “of
exploration of reality through art”.
It is in their act as citizens asking, “What is true?” What is false?’
in “Night’ that Chomsky, Finkelstein, Lapham, Hilberg and others have,
in one way or another, labeled Wiesel as a fraud.

As the children in your class are submerged in the Nazi era as the
icon of atrocity, the lynching, segregation and racism taking place at
the same time in the United States and in the United States armed forces
as the lasting effects of the African Slave Trade is ignored; the French
assault on the people of Algeria and of Viet Nam taking place at the
same time is ignored; Italy’s slaughter of innocents in their invasion
of Libya taking place at same time is ignored; England’s brutal
colonialist decimation of the people of India and of Rhodesia taking
place at the same time is ignored; and the butchering of 10,000,000 of
the people of the Congo by King Leopold that took place barely forty
years earlier is ignored.

This last, of the Belgian King Leopold’s atrocities in the Congo, is
available in a documentary entitled King Leopold’s Ghost on the internet at
http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=H5h-oUfHN6I

In truth, it is in the inordinate concentrated focus on the Nazi era
Holocaust that the horrible reality of the historical context in which
it took place becomes not only smothered but completely ignored and
leads us inexorably to blame “the other”

William C. Carlotti,
November 11, 2012

(1) The California Connection—Eugenics and the Nazis;
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis-the-California-2549771.php#page-3

(2) Internet Links to the History of Eugenics Across America
http://www.csus.edu/cshpe/eugenics/history.html

(3) From Eugenics To Designer Babies
http://www.csus.edu/cshpe/symposium05/index.html

(4) Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel’s Night