soc.culture.scientists

2+2=3D....well, four!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3DvIvbCDsMrSg

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0151,vest,30862,1.html
Oy McVey
=46rom the Irv Rubin Bust to the Stern Gang: The Rich History of Jewish
Terrorism
by Jason Vest


WASHINGTON, D.C.--At a moment when the popular mind-set once again
links the words "Arab" and "Islamic" with all things retrograde and
threatening--including terrorism (cue the new Charlie Daniels anthem
and revel in the poetry: "This ain't no rag, it's a flag/And we don't
wear it on our heads. . . . /We're gonna hunt you down like a mad dog
hound")--it came as a surprise to some that the latest malefactors
accorded POW status in the "War on Terrorism" turned out to be Jewish.

Arrested and charged last week with intriguing to do explosive little
actions on a Culver City, California, mosque and the offices of
Lebanese American U.S. Representative Darrell Issa, Jewish Defense
League chief Irving David

Rubin and JDL member Earl
Leslie Krugel were, according to FBI wiretap transcripts, anything but
circumspect about their devices and desires: Though Rubin lamented the
wanting state of technology in the JDL's possession (not good enough
to "blow up an entire building"), Krugel was adamant that "Arabs need
a wake-up call" and that the JDL needs to do something to one of their
"filthy mosques"--which may explain the five pounds of gunpowder and
pipe-bomb mat=E9riel found at his house. "If the people responsible for
September 11 are the quintessence of evil genius, these guys are at
the Keystone Kops end of the spectrum," says Hussein Ibish,
communications director for the American Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee. "The only reassuring thing about them is their absolute
ineptitude and the fact that they were arrested."

Mainstream Jewish groups were quick to condemn the JDL as well:
Characterizing the activities of the organization--founded in 1968 by
Brooklyn's own, now deceased Rabbi Meir Kahane--as "contemptible," the
Anti-Defamation League's regional director issued a statement
"abhor[ing] and condemn[ing] the potential terrorist plot." The
American Jewish Committee said it "categorically condemns in the
strongest possible terms the alleged JDL plot," and went so far as to
follow up with a personal letter to Republican representative Issa,
decrying "such wanton lawlessness," which is "so clearly contrary to
the fundamental tenets of our faith, and to the basic principles of
justice and liberty that brought our parents and grandparents to
America's shores and that form the bedrock of our national values."

Yet some observers of the current Middle East crisis see more than a
bit of disingenuousness and historical irony here. While both the ADL
and the AJC have condemned the JDL, they've unequivocally backed
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's indiscriminate use of force
against the Palestinians and the cutting of ties with Palestinian
Authority president Yasir Arafat--neither of which is universally seen
as a particularly constructive way to slow the cycles of violence
across Israel and the Occupied Territories.

But what's even more vexing to others is the apparent inability or
unwillingness to discern similarities between the current Palestinian
milieu and Israeli operations of 50-plus years ago, which secured
statehood from colonialist occupiers--as well as similarities between
violent, internecine struggles among disparate underground groups.
"It's peculiar, it's paradoxical, that Sharon and Likud should be the
ones who are trying to equate any authentic resistance in Palestine
with some of the terrorist activities, as terrorism in Israel really
started with Begin and Shamir and later Sharon," says Clovis Maksoud,
the former Arab League ambassador to the United Nations. "It's a very
valid question as to why they see no similarities between themselves
under the British and the Palestinians under their occupation."
Especially, he adds, as the Israeli government supports museums that
honor assassins and terrorists--including one located on a street
named
for a terrorist.

The thoroughfare in question runs between Florentine and Emeq-Yisrael,
and bears the name Stern Street--in honor of Avraham Stern, a 1920s
Zionist and charter member of the Haganah, then a loose-knit Jewish
militia organized as a self-defense mechanism against Arab violence.
Finding the Haganah insufficiently proactive in realizing the goal of
a Jewish state that would encompass "both sides of the River Jordan,"
erstwhile Mussolini follower and early-day ultra-nationalist Ze'ev
Jabotinsky broke with the militia and formed the Irgun, which devoted
itself to terrorist operations against the British. Once an
enthusiastic Irgunist, Stern was appalled when the Irgun decided to
make common cause with the British against the Nazis, and created the
even more underground and more violent Lehi (Lohamei Herut Yisrael, or
Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also known as the Stern Gang,
which held there was no greater threat to the Jews of Palestine than
the mandate's British administrators.

To this end, Stern actually made overtures to the Axis powers;
September 1940 found him in dialogue with an emissary from Il Duce in
Jerusalem, and in January 1941 he dispatched an agent to Vichy-
controlled Beirut with instructions to convey a letter to
representatives of the Reich. In it, Stern held that the
"establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and
totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would
be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German
position of power in the Near East. Proceeding from these
considerations, [the Lehi] in Palestine, under the condition [that]
the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom
movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to
actively take part in the war on Germany's side."

The Germans declined to take Stern up on the offer, but Stern held out
hope as his organization continued to engage in terrorism against the
British. After Stern died in a shoot-out with British police in 1942,
his mantle was picked up by future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak
Shamir. Still, the Israeli underground focused on the British as the
greatest of all evils, and on November 6, 1944, Lord Moyne, the
British minister for Middle East affairs, was assassinated in Cairo by
Eliyahu Beit-Tzuri and Eliyahu Hakim--both members of the Lehi, who
were later arrested, convicted, and hanged. After the state of Israel
was established, the Lehi, displeased with what it considered the too
pro-Arab views of the Swedish UN-appointed mediator for Palestine,
assassinated him; on September 17, 1948, Count Folke Bernadotte--who,
as a neutral diplomat in World War II, had saved thousands of Jews
from Nazi death camps--was shot and killed by Lehi assassins, along
with French colonel Andre Serot, the senior UN military observer,
whose wife's life had been saved by Bernadotte.

The Bernadotte assassination was so outrageous that the nascent
government of David Ben-Gurion had little problem disbanding the Lehi
(though none of the assassins were ever brought to justice). Yet,
despite this history of terror, the Israeli Ministry of Defense
underwrites museums commemorating the Stern Gang and the Irgun--which,
under Menachem Begin, bombed the British headquarters at the King
David Hotel in 1946, leaving 90 dead and 45 wounded (with 15 Jews
among the casualties). Like Lehi, it wasn't until 1948 that the Irgun
was forced out of existence, after its arms-transport ship, the
Altalena, was blown up by the provisional Israeli government--a point
analysts like Ibish say bears remembering.

"There are streets named after the assassins of Moyne and Bernadotte.
They are historical figures not disavowed by the rhetoric of the state
of Israel, nor is there any reflection on the fact that two terrorist
leaders later became distinguished leaders of the republic," Ibish
says. "And now people are saying that Arafat must have his Altalena."
Ibish adds that Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion,
"never moved against the Irgun and the Stern Gang until after the
state was established and secured, which is definitely not true in the
case of the Palestinian Authority. Essentially, the Israelis are
asking the Palestinians to do something they themselves refused to
do."