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An Escalating Afghan Crisis of ‘Profit’ over ‘Life’

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Human Wrongs Watch By Hakim Young, MD*

20 November 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – “My family’s water well has dried up,” 18-year-old Surkh Gul said.

Uri Avnery[/caption]

At this particular moment, Netanyahu does not need any more trouble. A huge corruption affair, concerning German-built submarines, is rolling slowly and inexorably towards him.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew, a Holocaust survivor. The Hungarian governing party plastered his face all over Budapest with a text that barely hid its anti-Semitic intent.

Soros’ sin is his support for human rights associations in his former homeland. He does the same in Israel, though on a much smaller scale. So Netanyahu does not like him either.

This has created an awkward situation. Netanyahu was about to visit Budapest to meet his Hungarian opposite number Victor Orban, who is suspected of being a mild anti-Semite. Netanyahu considers him a right-wing soul-mate.

The Hungarian Jewish community was upset. They demanded that Netanyahu postpone his visit until the Soros posters were removed. Eventually most – but not all – of the posters were indeed taken down, and Netanyahu met with Orban. But the entire episode showed that the interests of the State of Israel and the interests of Jewish communities around the world are not automatically identical, as Zionists would have us believe.

THERE WAS another incident prior to the Hungarian meeting. A few days earlier, at a public event, Orban had lauded Admiral Miklos Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state during World War II, when Hungary cooperated with Nazi Germany like all of Eastern Europe (except Poland, which was occupied).

So how could Orban laud Horthy on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit?

As a matter of fact, Horthy’s role is still hotly debated. A self-declared anti-Semite and enigmatic person, he succeeded where no other European leader did: he saved many hundreds of thousands of Jews by disobeying and cheating Hitler.

One of them was an aunt of mine, who married a Hungarian Jew in Berlin and was deported by the Nazis to Hungary, where she survived, eventually reaching Palestine.

Another was “Tommy” Lapid, a child in Budapest who became a famous personality in Israel. His son, Yair, is now a politician who seeks to supplant Netanyahu. He probably would not exist but for Horthy’s devious actions.

I CANNOT resist interrupting here in order to tell a historical joke.

After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and his entire gang of foreign collaborators declared war on the US. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington was also instructed to submit a declaration of war to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who decided to mock him.

“Hungary, Hungary – are you a republic?” he asked.

“No, sir, we are a kingdom.”

“Really? So who is your king?”

“WE don’t have a king, only a regent, Admiral Horthy.”

“An admiral? So you have a big fleet?”

“No, we have no fleet at all, since we have no coastline.” (Horthy became an admiral during World War I, when Hungary was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire which indeed did have a – small – fleet.)

“Curious. A kingdom without a king and an admiral without a fleet. So why do you declare war on us? Do you hate us?”

“No, we hate Romania.”

“So why don’t you declare war on Romania?”

“Impossible! They are our allies!”

SORRY FOR interrupting myself. Back to Netanyahu.

Just now the Netanyahu government did two things which enraged many Jews throughout the world, and especial in the US.

One concerns the Western Wall (formerly called the Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem. This is the holiest place of Judaism.

Since I am a pious atheist, holy places don’t speak to me. The more so since the Western Wall is not really a part of the Jewish Temple, reconstructed by King Herod some 2000 years ago, but just a supporting wall of the large artificial mound of earth, on which the Temple stood.

The last time I was there was in 1946. The imposing wall was flanked by a narrow lane, which made it seem even higher. After the 1967 war, the entire Arab neighborhood was leveled to make place for a large piazza. The wall was turned over to the ultra-Orthodox, in return for their votes in the Knesset. Men and women were separated, of course.

With the growth of feminism, this became problematical. In the end, a compromise was found: a small part of the wall was set aside for “mixed” prayers of men and women, and also for “Reform” and “Conservative” Jews, who hardly exist in Israel, but constitute the majority among American Jews.

Now, under Orthodox pressure, Netanyahu wants to revoke this compromise, causing great excitement among American Jews.

As if this was not enough, Netanyahu also wants to withdraw the recognition of “Reform” and “Conservative” conversions to Judaism, giving the Orthodox exclusive rights to perform conversions in Israel.

Since there is no separation between state and religion in Israel, a simple law suffices. Indeed, Israeli institutions are becoming more and more religious, so much so, that a new Hebrew word, Hadata (roughly “religiosifiation”), has been invented.

The “Reform” and “Conservative” Jewish institutions in the US do not care about the occupation, about the brutal repression of the Palestinians, about the daily killings. They support the Israeli government through thick and thin. But they care very much about the Wall and about conversions. Like Ivanka Trump, non-Jews often convert in order to marry Jews, so this is an important business.

IT ALL seems like an inherent contradiction, and indeed it is.

Israel is defined officially and legally as a “Jewish and Democratic State”. A new law is about to strike the “Democratic” from the formula, and leave Israel only as a “Jewish State”. It is seen by many as the headquarters of the world Jewish people. Netanyahu has often declared that he considers himself the leader and defender of all the Jews in the world.

If so, can there be a conflict between the interests of the Jews anywhere and the State of Israel?

There can and there has been from the very beginning. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and a Hungarian Jew, had discussions with the anti-Semitic leaders of Czarist Russia and elsewhere, promising to help rid them of their Jews and take them to Palestine. This common interest underlay many curious alliances at various times.

Anti-Semites always preferred the Zionists. Adolf Eichmann wrote in his confession that he saw the Zionists as the “valuable element” of the Jewish people. And so on.

Abraham Stern, called Ya’ir, an underground leader in British Palestine, split from the Irgun and founded a new group (called the “Stern Gang” by the British) whose main policy plank was to cooperate with Nazi Germany against the British, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. He sent emissaries to German embassies but was ignored by Hitler. Eventually he was shot by the British.

In the first Years of Israel, when David Ben-Gurion first visited the US as Prime Minister of Israel, he was admonished by his aides not to bring up the subject of immigration, so as not to irritate the US Jews whose money was needed desperately. Ben-Gurion demurred, but did what they said.

At the time, a friend of mine wrote a humorous piece about a community of hugely rich Jews in a remote part of Africa, who owned all the diamond mines in their country. When Israel needed money to buy flour for next month’s bread, the most talented Zionist propagandist was sent there. Knowing the desperate situation of his country, the man gave the most passionate speech of his life. At the end, no eye in the hall remained dry.

The next day the speaker got a message: we were so moved that we decided to turn all our property over to the natives and come to Israel as pioneers.

THE DECLARED aim of Zionism is to bring all the world’s Jews to Israel. Herzl himself believed that this would indeed happen, and in one passage he wrote that, once most of the Jews had come to the Jewish state, only they would henceforth be called Jews. All the Jews who chose not to come would cease to be called Jews and be just Germans, Americans and so on.

Wonderful, but if that happens, who will compel Donald Trump and his successors to veto all UN resolutions critical of Israel? Who will be left to fight against the movements – like BDS – that preach a boycott of Israel?

Well, life is full of contradictions. As are we.

NETANYAHU’S HUNGARIAN adventures were not over with the Soros and Horthy affairs. Far from it.

While in Budapest, he took part in a closed meeting with the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Some fool forgot to cut the line to the Journalists outside, and so they could listen in to some 20 minutes of Netanyahu’s secret speech.

To his East European soul mates, extreme right-wing semi-democrats all, our Prime Minister poured out his heart: the liberal West European governments are “crazy” when they impose conditions regarding human rights on their aid to Israel. They are committing suicide by letting in masses of Muslims. They don’t realize that Israel is their last bulwark against this Muslim invasion.

In the Bible of Zionism, “Der Judenstaat”, Theodor Herzl wrote: “For Europe we would constitute (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia, serving as an outpost of civilization against barbarism“.

These lines were written 121 years ago, at the height of the colonial era. Repeating them today is, to use Netanyahu’s word, “crazy”.

When Netanyahu and Orban fight against Soros about human rights, Soros is bound to win.

——-

*AUTHOR: Uri Avnery is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.  He is an Israeli journalist, writer, peace activist, a former Knesset member, and the founder of Gush Shalom. 

Go to Original – uriavnery.com in avnery-news.co.il/ Learn more about Gush Shalom.

Uri Avnery’s Websites: http://www.Avnery-news.co.il http://www.gush-shalom.org http://www.Uri-Avnery.de [email protected]

Read more articles by Uri Avnery published in Human Wrongs Watch:

Eyeless in Gaza

The Bizarre Case of Bashar

The Four-Letter Word

The New Wave

A Curious National Home

Whoso Confesseth and Forsaketh

Greetings for Diana Buttu

The Visitation

Parliamentary Riffraff

A Curious National Home

One, Two, Three – Rejoice!

The Israeli Macron

Palestine’s Nelson Mandela

CUI BONO?

The Tunic of Nessus

University of Terror

The Israeli National Riddle

The Most Moral Army

Perhaps the Messiah Will Come

The Cannons of Napoleon

The Great Rift

That’s How It Happened

Respect the Green Line!

President Kong

Being There

Confessions of a Megalomaniac

Yes, We Can

Anti-Semitic Zionists

Don’t Send Him!

Remember Naboth

The Call of the Nation

Oh My God, Trump!

The Shot Heard All Over the Country

The Orange Man

Petty Corruption

Those Funny Anti-Semites

“Us” and “Them”

The Other Gandhi

Squaring the Circle

The Case of Soldier A

My Terrorist, Your Terrorist

The Great BDS Debate

The Last Trump

Holy Water

When God Despairs

A Lady With A Smile

Optimism of the Will

The Pied Piper of Zion

Extreme, Extremer, Extremest

The Widening Gap

A Bribery Case

Imagined Nations

A Lonely Lawyer

King Bibi

Seashore Thoughts

The Reign of Absurdiocy

The Cats of Ariel

Adolf, Amin and Bibi

Weep, Beloved Country

The Settlers’ Prussia

Nasser and I

The Ministry of Fear

“Don’t Talk Zionism!”

The Real Menace

The Face of a Boy

The Molten Three

The Magician’s Apprentice

Jewish Terrorists

Divide et Impera

Sheldon’s Stooges

The Treaty

To Be Greek

The Second Battle of Trafalgar

War Crimes? Us???

Isratin or Palestrael?

BDS, the New Enemy

The Real Naqba

The Map on the Wall

Who Will Save Israel?

A Day and Night-mare

A Boy Called Bibi

Cats in a Sack

“There Are Still Judges…”

National Unity

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb?

The Israeli Salvation Front

The Messiah Hasn’t Come

For Whom to Vote?

The Speech

An Expensive Speech

Anti-What?

The Casino Republic

Over Bottled

Zionists All

Galant’s Gallant Act

Waving in the First Row

Half of Shas

The Rock of our Existence

Splendid Isolation

My Glorious Brothers

Can the Duke Become King?

The Plebiscite

The Son of my Eyes

The Unholy City

Wine, Blood and Gasoline

Is ISIS Coming?

Muhammad, Where Are You?

Two Speeches

Ah, If I Were 25

Scotland on the Euphrates: The Obsolescence of the Nation-State

God Wills It!

The War for Nothing

Eyeless in Gaza

Meeting in a Tunnel

Who Is Winning?

A Shameful Chapter

No, We Can’t!

2017 Human Wrongs Watch ” data-medium-file=”" data-large-file=”" class=”wp-image-101842 alignleft” src=”https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/afghanistan.jpg” alt=”" width=”197″ height=”258″ />

Surkh Gul with her daughter.
Photo by Dr Hakim

“Ours too,” echoed 13-year-old Inaam.

A distressed Surkh Gul lamented, “We have to fetch water from the public well along the main road, but that water is muddy, not fit for drinking. I get bottled water for my two-year-old daughter. At least someone in the family should stay healthy.”

Inaam chipped in, “Fortunately, for now, the water that we fetch from a nearby mosque is clean.”

A U.S. and Afghan Geological Survey of Kabul Basin’s water resources found that about half of the shallow groundwater supply wells could become dry by 2050 due to declining recharge and stream-flows under projected climate change.

For years, the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees has also highlighted this water crisis to the Afghan government.

But, the U.S./NATO/Afghanistan coalition and mainstream media have been so occupied with the business of a failed ‘war on terror’ that basic human development and needs are glossed over or ignored.

Because of worsening security, Surkh Gul’s husband and in-laws left Afghanistan to seek asylum in Europe, abandoning her and her daughter in Kabul. Surkh Gul can’t find any job. She stopped schooling when she got married, and though she re-enrolled herself in school this year, she couldn’t attend classes on many days.

“I have to take care of my daughter and find some income sewing ‘odds and ends’ for people in the neighbourhood.”

It’s no wonder that on some days, she feels like she’s going mad. Sometimes, when she visits us, we can tell she’s stressed and moody: she speaks in edgy bursts, her voice is harsh and her eyes are restless, underlined by tear stains.

Uri Avnery[/caption]

At this particular moment, Netanyahu does not need any more trouble. A huge corruption affair, concerning German-built submarines, is rolling slowly and inexorably towards him.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew, a Holocaust survivor. The Hungarian governing party plastered his face all over Budapest with a text that barely hid its anti-Semitic intent.

Soros’ sin is his support for human rights associations in his former homeland. He does the same in Israel, though on a much smaller scale. So Netanyahu does not like him either.

This has created an awkward situation. Netanyahu was about to visit Budapest to meet his Hungarian opposite number Victor Orban, who is suspected of being a mild anti-Semite. Netanyahu considers him a right-wing soul-mate.

The Hungarian Jewish community was upset. They demanded that Netanyahu postpone his visit until the Soros posters were removed. Eventually most – but not all – of the posters were indeed taken down, and Netanyahu met with Orban. But the entire episode showed that the interests of the State of Israel and the interests of Jewish communities around the world are not automatically identical, as Zionists would have us believe.

THERE WAS another incident prior to the Hungarian meeting. A few days earlier, at a public event, Orban had lauded Admiral Miklos Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state during World War II, when Hungary cooperated with Nazi Germany like all of Eastern Europe (except Poland, which was occupied).

So how could Orban laud Horthy on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit?

As a matter of fact, Horthy’s role is still hotly debated. A self-declared anti-Semite and enigmatic person, he succeeded where no other European leader did: he saved many hundreds of thousands of Jews by disobeying and cheating Hitler.

One of them was an aunt of mine, who married a Hungarian Jew in Berlin and was deported by the Nazis to Hungary, where she survived, eventually reaching Palestine.

Another was “Tommy” Lapid, a child in Budapest who became a famous personality in Israel. His son, Yair, is now a politician who seeks to supplant Netanyahu. He probably would not exist but for Horthy’s devious actions.

I CANNOT resist interrupting here in order to tell a historical joke.

After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and his entire gang of foreign collaborators declared war on the US. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington was also instructed to submit a declaration of war to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who decided to mock him.

“Hungary, Hungary – are you a republic?” he asked.

“No, sir, we are a kingdom.”

“Really? So who is your king?”

“WE don’t have a king, only a regent, Admiral Horthy.”

“An admiral? So you have a big fleet?”

“No, we have no fleet at all, since we have no coastline.” (Horthy became an admiral during World War I, when Hungary was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire which indeed did have a – small – fleet.)

“Curious. A kingdom without a king and an admiral without a fleet. So why do you declare war on us? Do you hate us?”

“No, we hate Romania.”

“So why don’t you declare war on Romania?”

“Impossible! They are our allies!”

SORRY FOR interrupting myself. Back to Netanyahu.

Just now the Netanyahu government did two things which enraged many Jews throughout the world, and especial in the US.

One concerns the Western Wall (formerly called the Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem. This is the holiest place of Judaism.

Since I am a pious atheist, holy places don’t speak to me. The more so since the Western Wall is not really a part of the Jewish Temple, reconstructed by King Herod some 2000 years ago, but just a supporting wall of the large artificial mound of earth, on which the Temple stood.

The last time I was there was in 1946. The imposing wall was flanked by a narrow lane, which made it seem even higher. After the 1967 war, the entire Arab neighborhood was leveled to make place for a large piazza. The wall was turned over to the ultra-Orthodox, in return for their votes in the Knesset. Men and women were separated, of course.

With the growth of feminism, this became problematical. In the end, a compromise was found: a small part of the wall was set aside for “mixed” prayers of men and women, and also for “Reform” and “Conservative” Jews, who hardly exist in Israel, but constitute the majority among American Jews.

Now, under Orthodox pressure, Netanyahu wants to revoke this compromise, causing great excitement among American Jews.

As if this was not enough, Netanyahu also wants to withdraw the recognition of “Reform” and “Conservative” conversions to Judaism, giving the Orthodox exclusive rights to perform conversions in Israel.

Since there is no separation between state and religion in Israel, a simple law suffices. Indeed, Israeli institutions are becoming more and more religious, so much so, that a new Hebrew word, Hadata (roughly “religiosifiation”), has been invented.

The “Reform” and “Conservative” Jewish institutions in the US do not care about the occupation, about the brutal repression of the Palestinians, about the daily killings. They support the Israeli government through thick and thin. But they care very much about the Wall and about conversions. Like Ivanka Trump, non-Jews often convert in order to marry Jews, so this is an important business.

IT ALL seems like an inherent contradiction, and indeed it is.

Israel is defined officially and legally as a “Jewish and Democratic State”. A new law is about to strike the “Democratic” from the formula, and leave Israel only as a “Jewish State”. It is seen by many as the headquarters of the world Jewish people. Netanyahu has often declared that he considers himself the leader and defender of all the Jews in the world.

If so, can there be a conflict between the interests of the Jews anywhere and the State of Israel?

There can and there has been from the very beginning. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and a Hungarian Jew, had discussions with the anti-Semitic leaders of Czarist Russia and elsewhere, promising to help rid them of their Jews and take them to Palestine. This common interest underlay many curious alliances at various times.

Anti-Semites always preferred the Zionists. Adolf Eichmann wrote in his confession that he saw the Zionists as the “valuable element” of the Jewish people. And so on.

Abraham Stern, called Ya’ir, an underground leader in British Palestine, split from the Irgun and founded a new group (called the “Stern Gang” by the British) whose main policy plank was to cooperate with Nazi Germany against the British, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. He sent emissaries to German embassies but was ignored by Hitler. Eventually he was shot by the British.

In the first Years of Israel, when David Ben-Gurion first visited the US as Prime Minister of Israel, he was admonished by his aides not to bring up the subject of immigration, so as not to irritate the US Jews whose money was needed desperately. Ben-Gurion demurred, but did what they said.

At the time, a friend of mine wrote a humorous piece about a community of hugely rich Jews in a remote part of Africa, who owned all the diamond mines in their country. When Israel needed money to buy flour for next month’s bread, the most talented Zionist propagandist was sent there. Knowing the desperate situation of his country, the man gave the most passionate speech of his life. At the end, no eye in the hall remained dry.

The next day the speaker got a message: we were so moved that we decided to turn all our property over to the natives and come to Israel as pioneers.

THE DECLARED aim of Zionism is to bring all the world’s Jews to Israel. Herzl himself believed that this would indeed happen, and in one passage he wrote that, once most of the Jews had come to the Jewish state, only they would henceforth be called Jews. All the Jews who chose not to come would cease to be called Jews and be just Germans, Americans and so on.

Wonderful, but if that happens, who will compel Donald Trump and his successors to veto all UN resolutions critical of Israel? Who will be left to fight against the movements – like BDS – that preach a boycott of Israel?

Well, life is full of contradictions. As are we.

NETANYAHU’S HUNGARIAN adventures were not over with the Soros and Horthy affairs. Far from it.

While in Budapest, he took part in a closed meeting with the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Some fool forgot to cut the line to the Journalists outside, and so they could listen in to some 20 minutes of Netanyahu’s secret speech.

To his East European soul mates, extreme right-wing semi-democrats all, our Prime Minister poured out his heart: the liberal West European governments are “crazy” when they impose conditions regarding human rights on their aid to Israel. They are committing suicide by letting in masses of Muslims. They don’t realize that Israel is their last bulwark against this Muslim invasion.

In the Bible of Zionism, “Der Judenstaat”, Theodor Herzl wrote: “For Europe we would constitute (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia, serving as an outpost of civilization against barbarism“.

These lines were written 121 years ago, at the height of the colonial era. Repeating them today is, to use Netanyahu’s word, “crazy”.

When Netanyahu and Orban fight against Soros about human rights, Soros is bound to win.

——-

*AUTHOR: Uri Avnery is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.  He is an Israeli journalist, writer, peace activist, a former Knesset member, and the founder of Gush Shalom. 

Go to Original – uriavnery.com in avnery-news.co.il/ Learn more about Gush Shalom.

Uri Avnery’s Websites: http://www.Avnery-news.co.il http://www.gush-shalom.org http://www.Uri-Avnery.de [email protected]

Read more articles by Uri Avnery published in Human Wrongs Watch:

Eyeless in Gaza

The Bizarre Case of Bashar

The Four-Letter Word

The New Wave

A Curious National Home

Whoso Confesseth and Forsaketh

Greetings for Diana Buttu

The Visitation

Parliamentary Riffraff

A Curious National Home

One, Two, Three – Rejoice!

The Israeli Macron

Palestine’s Nelson Mandela

CUI BONO?

The Tunic of Nessus

University of Terror

The Israeli National Riddle

The Most Moral Army

Perhaps the Messiah Will Come

The Cannons of Napoleon

The Great Rift

That’s How It Happened

Respect the Green Line!

President Kong

Being There

Confessions of a Megalomaniac

Yes, We Can

Anti-Semitic Zionists

Don’t Send Him!

Remember Naboth

The Call of the Nation

Oh My God, Trump!

The Shot Heard All Over the Country

The Orange Man

Petty Corruption

Those Funny Anti-Semites

“Us” and “Them”

The Other Gandhi

Squaring the Circle

The Case of Soldier A

My Terrorist, Your Terrorist

The Great BDS Debate

The Last Trump

Holy Water

When God Despairs

A Lady With A Smile

Optimism of the Will

The Pied Piper of Zion

Extreme, Extremer, Extremest

The Widening Gap

A Bribery Case

Imagined Nations

A Lonely Lawyer

King Bibi

Seashore Thoughts

The Reign of Absurdiocy

The Cats of Ariel

Adolf, Amin and Bibi

Weep, Beloved Country

The Settlers’ Prussia

Nasser and I

The Ministry of Fear

“Don’t Talk Zionism!”

The Real Menace

The Face of a Boy

The Molten Three

The Magician’s Apprentice

Jewish Terrorists

Divide et Impera

Sheldon’s Stooges

The Treaty

To Be Greek

The Second Battle of Trafalgar

War Crimes? Us???

Isratin or Palestrael?

BDS, the New Enemy

The Real Naqba

The Map on the Wall

Who Will Save Israel?

A Day and Night-mare

A Boy Called Bibi

Cats in a Sack

“There Are Still Judges…”

National Unity

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb?

The Israeli Salvation Front

The Messiah Hasn’t Come

For Whom to Vote?

The Speech

An Expensive Speech

Anti-What?

The Casino Republic

Over Bottled

Zionists All

Galant’s Gallant Act

Waving in the First Row

Half of Shas

The Rock of our Existence

Splendid Isolation

My Glorious Brothers

Can the Duke Become King?

The Plebiscite

The Son of my Eyes

The Unholy City

Wine, Blood and Gasoline

Is ISIS Coming?

Muhammad, Where Are You?

Two Speeches

Ah, If I Were 25

Scotland on the Euphrates: The Obsolescence of the Nation-State

God Wills It!

The War for Nothing

Eyeless in Gaza

Meeting in a Tunnel

Who Is Winning?

A Shameful Chapter

No, We Can’t!

2017 Human Wrongs Watch ” data-medium-file=”" data-large-file=”" class=”wp-image-101843 aligncenter” src=”https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/afghanistan2.jpg” alt=”" width=”367″ height=”206″ />

.

Heavy piling and digging for a new well at the rented house Zekerullah stayed in. Photo by Dr Hakim

“Last year, the 28-metre-deep well in the house we rented dried up. The rich landlord hired well-diggers, whose cranes and shafts are everywhere these days. They dug 70 metres below ground to reach the dropping water table,” Zekerullah recounted.

As such, Zekerullah had immediately understood the threat which an oil pipeline poses to the water resources of the Standing Rock community. On behalf of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, he sent a video message in solidarity with Standing Rock’s ‘water protectors’. “The oil companies and the U.S. government are just thinking about money,” Zekerullah concluded.

Other than token words, little is being done to address climate change or to save the people of Kabul from running out of a basic requirement of life, water. Instead, to extract profitable minerals like copper, the elite are ready to compromise on water protection.

Trump had suggested that Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth can be a good justification for the continued U.S. war. He was in discussion with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, ex-World Bank staff about this war-mineral business opportunity.

In 2013, the Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage  and an Afghan resident ‘requested’ for an investigation of the World Bank’s management, oversight and funding of the copper mine at Mes Aynak just outside of Kabul. Supported by 110,000 Afghan signatories, the ‘requesters’ stated that the World Bank’s negligence

in not ensuring that environmental safeguards are in place, imminently endangers the health of the population living there, the quantity and safety of their water supply and (…) the Kabul River….”.

The mine will cause ‘’heavy losses’’ to community members and to the culture and history of Afghanistan.

A Panel evaluated the ‘Request’ and concluded that it does not recommend an investigation” of the World Bank.

Uri Avnery[/caption]

At this particular moment, Netanyahu does not need any more trouble. A huge corruption affair, concerning German-built submarines, is rolling slowly and inexorably towards him.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew, a Holocaust survivor. The Hungarian governing party plastered his face all over Budapest with a text that barely hid its anti-Semitic intent.

Soros’ sin is his support for human rights associations in his former homeland. He does the same in Israel, though on a much smaller scale. So Netanyahu does not like him either.

This has created an awkward situation. Netanyahu was about to visit Budapest to meet his Hungarian opposite number Victor Orban, who is suspected of being a mild anti-Semite. Netanyahu considers him a right-wing soul-mate.

The Hungarian Jewish community was upset. They demanded that Netanyahu postpone his visit until the Soros posters were removed. Eventually most – but not all – of the posters were indeed taken down, and Netanyahu met with Orban. But the entire episode showed that the interests of the State of Israel and the interests of Jewish communities around the world are not automatically identical, as Zionists would have us believe.

THERE WAS another incident prior to the Hungarian meeting. A few days earlier, at a public event, Orban had lauded Admiral Miklos Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state during World War II, when Hungary cooperated with Nazi Germany like all of Eastern Europe (except Poland, which was occupied).

So how could Orban laud Horthy on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit?

As a matter of fact, Horthy’s role is still hotly debated. A self-declared anti-Semite and enigmatic person, he succeeded where no other European leader did: he saved many hundreds of thousands of Jews by disobeying and cheating Hitler.

One of them was an aunt of mine, who married a Hungarian Jew in Berlin and was deported by the Nazis to Hungary, where she survived, eventually reaching Palestine.

Another was “Tommy” Lapid, a child in Budapest who became a famous personality in Israel. His son, Yair, is now a politician who seeks to supplant Netanyahu. He probably would not exist but for Horthy’s devious actions.

I CANNOT resist interrupting here in order to tell a historical joke.

After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and his entire gang of foreign collaborators declared war on the US. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington was also instructed to submit a declaration of war to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who decided to mock him.

“Hungary, Hungary – are you a republic?” he asked.

“No, sir, we are a kingdom.”

“Really? So who is your king?”

“WE don’t have a king, only a regent, Admiral Horthy.”

“An admiral? So you have a big fleet?”

“No, we have no fleet at all, since we have no coastline.” (Horthy became an admiral during World War I, when Hungary was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire which indeed did have a – small – fleet.)

“Curious. A kingdom without a king and an admiral without a fleet. So why do you declare war on us? Do you hate us?”

“No, we hate Romania.”

“So why don’t you declare war on Romania?”

“Impossible! They are our allies!”

SORRY FOR interrupting myself. Back to Netanyahu.

Just now the Netanyahu government did two things which enraged many Jews throughout the world, and especial in the US.

One concerns the Western Wall (formerly called the Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem. This is the holiest place of Judaism.

Since I am a pious atheist, holy places don’t speak to me. The more so since the Western Wall is not really a part of the Jewish Temple, reconstructed by King Herod some 2000 years ago, but just a supporting wall of the large artificial mound of earth, on which the Temple stood.

The last time I was there was in 1946. The imposing wall was flanked by a narrow lane, which made it seem even higher. After the 1967 war, the entire Arab neighborhood was leveled to make place for a large piazza. The wall was turned over to the ultra-Orthodox, in return for their votes in the Knesset. Men and women were separated, of course.

With the growth of feminism, this became problematical. In the end, a compromise was found: a small part of the wall was set aside for “mixed” prayers of men and women, and also for “Reform” and “Conservative” Jews, who hardly exist in Israel, but constitute the majority among American Jews.

Now, under Orthodox pressure, Netanyahu wants to revoke this compromise, causing great excitement among American Jews.

As if this was not enough, Netanyahu also wants to withdraw the recognition of “Reform” and “Conservative” conversions to Judaism, giving the Orthodox exclusive rights to perform conversions in Israel.

Since there is no separation between state and religion in Israel, a simple law suffices. Indeed, Israeli institutions are becoming more and more religious, so much so, that a new Hebrew word, Hadata (roughly “religiosifiation”), has been invented.

The “Reform” and “Conservative” Jewish institutions in the US do not care about the occupation, about the brutal repression of the Palestinians, about the daily killings. They support the Israeli government through thick and thin. But they care very much about the Wall and about conversions. Like Ivanka Trump, non-Jews often convert in order to marry Jews, so this is an important business.

IT ALL seems like an inherent contradiction, and indeed it is.

Israel is defined officially and legally as a “Jewish and Democratic State”. A new law is about to strike the “Democratic” from the formula, and leave Israel only as a “Jewish State”. It is seen by many as the headquarters of the world Jewish people. Netanyahu has often declared that he considers himself the leader and defender of all the Jews in the world.

If so, can there be a conflict between the interests of the Jews anywhere and the State of Israel?

There can and there has been from the very beginning. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and a Hungarian Jew, had discussions with the anti-Semitic leaders of Czarist Russia and elsewhere, promising to help rid them of their Jews and take them to Palestine. This common interest underlay many curious alliances at various times.

Anti-Semites always preferred the Zionists. Adolf Eichmann wrote in his confession that he saw the Zionists as the “valuable element” of the Jewish people. And so on.

Abraham Stern, called Ya’ir, an underground leader in British Palestine, split from the Irgun and founded a new group (called the “Stern Gang” by the British) whose main policy plank was to cooperate with Nazi Germany against the British, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. He sent emissaries to German embassies but was ignored by Hitler. Eventually he was shot by the British.

In the first Years of Israel, when David Ben-Gurion first visited the US as Prime Minister of Israel, he was admonished by his aides not to bring up the subject of immigration, so as not to irritate the US Jews whose money was needed desperately. Ben-Gurion demurred, but did what they said.

At the time, a friend of mine wrote a humorous piece about a community of hugely rich Jews in a remote part of Africa, who owned all the diamond mines in their country. When Israel needed money to buy flour for next month’s bread, the most talented Zionist propagandist was sent there. Knowing the desperate situation of his country, the man gave the most passionate speech of his life. At the end, no eye in the hall remained dry.

The next day the speaker got a message: we were so moved that we decided to turn all our property over to the natives and come to Israel as pioneers.

THE DECLARED aim of Zionism is to bring all the world’s Jews to Israel. Herzl himself believed that this would indeed happen, and in one passage he wrote that, once most of the Jews had come to the Jewish state, only they would henceforth be called Jews. All the Jews who chose not to come would cease to be called Jews and be just Germans, Americans and so on.

Wonderful, but if that happens, who will compel Donald Trump and his successors to veto all UN resolutions critical of Israel? Who will be left to fight against the movements – like BDS – that preach a boycott of Israel?

Well, life is full of contradictions. As are we.

NETANYAHU’S HUNGARIAN adventures were not over with the Soros and Horthy affairs. Far from it.

While in Budapest, he took part in a closed meeting with the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Some fool forgot to cut the line to the Journalists outside, and so they could listen in to some 20 minutes of Netanyahu’s secret speech.

To his East European soul mates, extreme right-wing semi-democrats all, our Prime Minister poured out his heart: the liberal West European governments are “crazy” when they impose conditions regarding human rights on their aid to Israel. They are committing suicide by letting in masses of Muslims. They don’t realize that Israel is their last bulwark against this Muslim invasion.

In the Bible of Zionism, “Der Judenstaat”, Theodor Herzl wrote: “For Europe we would constitute (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia, serving as an outpost of civilization against barbarism“.

These lines were written 121 years ago, at the height of the colonial era. Repeating them today is, to use Netanyahu’s word, “crazy”.

When Netanyahu and Orban fight against Soros about human rights, Soros is bound to win.

——-

*AUTHOR: Uri Avnery is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.  He is an Israeli journalist, writer, peace activist, a former Knesset member, and the founder of Gush Shalom. 

Go to Original – uriavnery.com in avnery-news.co.il/ Learn more about Gush Shalom.

Uri Avnery’s Websites: http://www.Avnery-news.co.il http://www.gush-shalom.org http://www.Uri-Avnery.de [email protected]

Read more articles by Uri Avnery published in Human Wrongs Watch:

Abe, Izzy & Bibi

Eyeless in Gaza

The Bizarre Case of Bashar

The Four-Letter Word

The New Wave

A Curious National Home

Whoso Confesseth and Forsaketh

Greetings for Diana Buttu

The Visitation

Parliamentary Riffraff

A Curious National Home

One, Two, Three – Rejoice!

The Israeli Macron

Palestine’s Nelson Mandela

CUI BONO?

The Tunic of Nessus

University of Terror

The Israeli National Riddle

The Most Moral Army

Perhaps the Messiah Will Come

The Cannons of Napoleon

The Great Rift

That’s How It Happened

Respect the Green Line!

President Kong

Being There

Confessions of a Megalomaniac

Yes, We Can

Anti-Semitic Zionists

Don’t Send Him!

Remember Naboth

The Call of the Nation

Oh My God, Trump!

The Shot Heard All Over the Country

The Orange Man

Petty Corruption

Those Funny Anti-Semites

“Us” and “Them”

The Other Gandhi

Squaring the Circle

The Case of Soldier A

My Terrorist, Your Terrorist

The Great BDS Debate

The Last Trump

Holy Water

When God Despairs

A Lady With A Smile

Optimism of the Will

The Pied Piper of Zion

Extreme, Extremer, Extremest

The Widening Gap

A Bribery Case

Imagined Nations

A Lonely Lawyer

King Bibi

Seashore Thoughts

The Reign of Absurdiocy

The Cats of Ariel

Adolf, Amin and Bibi

Weep, Beloved Country

The Settlers’ Prussia

Nasser and I

The Ministry of Fear

“Don’t Talk Zionism!”

The Real Menace

The Face of a Boy

The Molten Three

The Magician’s Apprentice

Jewish Terrorists

Divide et Impera

Sheldon’s Stooges

The Treaty

To Be Greek

The Second Battle of Trafalgar

War Crimes? Us???

Isratin or Palestrael?

BDS, the New Enemy

The Real Naqba

The Map on the Wall

Who Will Save Israel?

A Day and Night-mare

A Boy Called Bibi

Cats in a Sack

“There Are Still Judges…”

National Unity

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb?

The Israeli Salvation Front

The Messiah Hasn’t Come

For Whom to Vote?

The Speech

An Expensive Speech

Anti-What?

The Casino Republic

Over Bottled

Zionists All

Galant’s Gallant Act

Waving in the First Row

Half of Shas

The Rock of our Existence

Splendid Isolation

My Glorious Brothers

Can the Duke Become King?

The Plebiscite

The Son of my Eyes

The Unholy City

Wine, Blood and Gasoline

Is ISIS Coming?

Muhammad, Where Are You?

Two Speeches

Ah, If I Were 25

Scotland on the Euphrates: The Obsolescence of the Nation-State

God Wills It!

The War for Nothing

Eyeless in Gaza

Meeting in a Tunnel

Who Is Winning?

A Shameful Chapter

No, We Can’t!

2017 Human Wrongs Watch ” data-medium-file=”" data-large-file=”" class=”wp-image-101844 aligncenter” src=”https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/afghanistan3-1024×576.jpg” alt=”" width=”367″ height=”206″ />

.

Mes Aynak is the site of ancient ruins that have been compared to Pompeii.
Photo from the film ‘Saving Mes Aynak’

We have ample evidence of the lack of transparency and integrity in such enterprise in many parts of the world. In the recently leaked 13.4 million documents called the ‘Paradise Papers’, Glencore, a huge Anglo-Swiss mining and commodity trading company involved in copper and other mining in conflict-ridden DR Congo, had made a loan to a corrupt Israeli billionaire middle man with close ties to the DR Congo government, asking him to negotiate for mining rights.

The eyes of potential investors and benefactors, corporations and governments alike, are fixed on ‘profit’, not on the potentially disastrous pollution and depletion of the water supply to Mes Aynak and Kabul residents! This does not auger well for Surkh Gul, Inaam, the estimated 6 million residents of Kabul.

Crises like these have roots in our capitalistic belief that a ‘bottom-line’ policy of generating ‘profit and growth’, private or government, is good for a country’s economy, and that this would benefit everyone. But math, science, evidence and experience prove that this predatory ‘profit’ is inequitably directed to the pockets of the ‘1%’, many of whom are corrupt, leaving the vast majority of people deprived even of their basic human needs.

Such profit is often secured from wars, and from exploiting Mother Earth and Nature. Wars have destroyed many irrigation and water retention systems. Only 2% of Afghanistan is forested, her trees extensively cut down through logging.

Kabul’s life-threatening water crisis will not illicit any action unless we dismantle our oligarchic practices and understand that when fellow human beings like Surkh Gul and Inaam don’t have access to water, each of us will hurt too, if not now, then eventually. We, Mother Nature and the human family, are all related.

We can empathize, just as Inaam did with villagers in Zambia, whose drinking water, rivers, streams and underground aquifers have been contaminated by a London-listed copper mine. Inaam remembers the photos or turbid water he saw in the nonviolence class at the Borderfree Street Kids School he attends.

Uri Avnery[/caption]

At this particular moment, Netanyahu does not need any more trouble. A huge corruption affair, concerning German-built submarines, is rolling slowly and inexorably towards him.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew, a Holocaust survivor. The Hungarian governing party plastered his face all over Budapest with a text that barely hid its anti-Semitic intent.

Soros’ sin is his support for human rights associations in his former homeland. He does the same in Israel, though on a much smaller scale. So Netanyahu does not like him either.

This has created an awkward situation. Netanyahu was about to visit Budapest to meet his Hungarian opposite number Victor Orban, who is suspected of being a mild anti-Semite. Netanyahu considers him a right-wing soul-mate.

The Hungarian Jewish community was upset. They demanded that Netanyahu postpone his visit until the Soros posters were removed. Eventually most – but not all – of the posters were indeed taken down, and Netanyahu met with Orban. But the entire episode showed that the interests of the State of Israel and the interests of Jewish communities around the world are not automatically identical, as Zionists would have us believe.

THERE WAS another incident prior to the Hungarian meeting. A few days earlier, at a public event, Orban had lauded Admiral Miklos Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state during World War II, when Hungary cooperated with Nazi Germany like all of Eastern Europe (except Poland, which was occupied).

So how could Orban laud Horthy on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit?

As a matter of fact, Horthy’s role is still hotly debated. A self-declared anti-Semite and enigmatic person, he succeeded where no other European leader did: he saved many hundreds of thousands of Jews by disobeying and cheating Hitler.

One of them was an aunt of mine, who married a Hungarian Jew in Berlin and was deported by the Nazis to Hungary, where she survived, eventually reaching Palestine.

Another was “Tommy” Lapid, a child in Budapest who became a famous personality in Israel. His son, Yair, is now a politician who seeks to supplant Netanyahu. He probably would not exist but for Horthy’s devious actions.

I CANNOT resist interrupting here in order to tell a historical joke.

After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and his entire gang of foreign collaborators declared war on the US. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington was also instructed to submit a declaration of war to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who decided to mock him.

“Hungary, Hungary – are you a republic?” he asked.

“No, sir, we are a kingdom.”

“Really? So who is your king?”

“WE don’t have a king, only a regent, Admiral Horthy.”

“An admiral? So you have a big fleet?”

“No, we have no fleet at all, since we have no coastline.” (Horthy became an admiral during World War I, when Hungary was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire which indeed did have a – small – fleet.)

“Curious. A kingdom without a king and an admiral without a fleet. So why do you declare war on us? Do you hate us?”

“No, we hate Romania.”

“So why don’t you declare war on Romania?”

“Impossible! They are our allies!”

SORRY FOR interrupting myself. Back to Netanyahu.

Just now the Netanyahu government did two things which enraged many Jews throughout the world, and especial in the US.

One concerns the Western Wall (formerly called the Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem. This is the holiest place of Judaism.

Since I am a pious atheist, holy places don’t speak to me. The more so since the Western Wall is not really a part of the Jewish Temple, reconstructed by King Herod some 2000 years ago, but just a supporting wall of the large artificial mound of earth, on which the Temple stood.

The last time I was there was in 1946. The imposing wall was flanked by a narrow lane, which made it seem even higher. After the 1967 war, the entire Arab neighborhood was leveled to make place for a large piazza. The wall was turned over to the ultra-Orthodox, in return for their votes in the Knesset. Men and women were separated, of course.

With the growth of feminism, this became problematical. In the end, a compromise was found: a small part of the wall was set aside for “mixed” prayers of men and women, and also for “Reform” and “Conservative” Jews, who hardly exist in Israel, but constitute the majority among American Jews.

Now, under Orthodox pressure, Netanyahu wants to revoke this compromise, causing great excitement among American Jews.

As if this was not enough, Netanyahu also wants to withdraw the recognition of “Reform” and “Conservative” conversions to Judaism, giving the Orthodox exclusive rights to perform conversions in Israel.

Since there is no separation between state and religion in Israel, a simple law suffices. Indeed, Israeli institutions are becoming more and more religious, so much so, that a new Hebrew word, Hadata (roughly “religiosifiation”), has been invented.

The “Reform” and “Conservative” Jewish institutions in the US do not care about the occupation, about the brutal repression of the Palestinians, about the daily killings. They support the Israeli government through thick and thin. But they care very much about the Wall and about conversions. Like Ivanka Trump, non-Jews often convert in order to marry Jews, so this is an important business.

IT ALL seems like an inherent contradiction, and indeed it is.

Israel is defined officially and legally as a “Jewish and Democratic State”. A new law is about to strike the “Democratic” from the formula, and leave Israel only as a “Jewish State”. It is seen by many as the headquarters of the world Jewish people. Netanyahu has often declared that he considers himself the leader and defender of all the Jews in the world.

If so, can there be a conflict between the interests of the Jews anywhere and the State of Israel?

There can and there has been from the very beginning. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and a Hungarian Jew, had discussions with the anti-Semitic leaders of Czarist Russia and elsewhere, promising to help rid them of their Jews and take them to Palestine. This common interest underlay many curious alliances at various times.

Anti-Semites always preferred the Zionists. Adolf Eichmann wrote in his confession that he saw the Zionists as the “valuable element” of the Jewish people. And so on.

Abraham Stern, called Ya’ir, an underground leader in British Palestine, split from the Irgun and founded a new group (called the “Stern Gang” by the British) whose main policy plank was to cooperate with Nazi Germany against the British, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. He sent emissaries to German embassies but was ignored by Hitler. Eventually he was shot by the British.

In the first Years of Israel, when David Ben-Gurion first visited the US as Prime Minister of Israel, he was admonished by his aides not to bring up the subject of immigration, so as not to irritate the US Jews whose money was needed desperately. Ben-Gurion demurred, but did what they said.

At the time, a friend of mine wrote a humorous piece about a community of hugely rich Jews in a remote part of Africa, who owned all the diamond mines in their country. When Israel needed money to buy flour for next month’s bread, the most talented Zionist propagandist was sent there. Knowing the desperate situation of his country, the man gave the most passionate speech of his life. At the end, no eye in the hall remained dry.

The next day the speaker got a message: we were so moved that we decided to turn all our property over to the natives and come to Israel as pioneers.

THE DECLARED aim of Zionism is to bring all the world’s Jews to Israel. Herzl himself believed that this would indeed happen, and in one passage he wrote that, once most of the Jews had come to the Jewish state, only they would henceforth be called Jews. All the Jews who chose not to come would cease to be called Jews and be just Germans, Americans and so on.

Wonderful, but if that happens, who will compel Donald Trump and his successors to veto all UN resolutions critical of Israel? Who will be left to fight against the movements – like BDS – that preach a boycott of Israel?

Well, life is full of contradictions. As are we.

NETANYAHU’S HUNGARIAN adventures were not over with the Soros and Horthy affairs. Far from it.

While in Budapest, he took part in a closed meeting with the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Some fool forgot to cut the line to the Journalists outside, and so they could listen in to some 20 minutes of Netanyahu’s secret speech.

To his East European soul mates, extreme right-wing semi-democrats all, our Prime Minister poured out his heart: the liberal West European governments are “crazy” when they impose conditions regarding human rights on their aid to Israel. They are committing suicide by letting in masses of Muslims. They don’t realize that Israel is their last bulwark against this Muslim invasion.

In the Bible of Zionism, “Der Judenstaat”, Theodor Herzl wrote: “For Europe we would constitute (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia, serving as an outpost of civilization against barbarism“.

These lines were written 121 years ago, at the height of the colonial era. Repeating them today is, to use Netanyahu’s word, “crazy”.

When Netanyahu and Orban fight against Soros about human rights, Soros is bound to win.

——-

*AUTHOR: Uri Avnery is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.  He is an Israeli journalist, writer, peace activist, a former Knesset member, and the founder of Gush Shalom. 

Go to Original – uriavnery.com in avnery-news.co.il/ Learn more about Gush Shalom.

Uri Avnery’s Websites: http://www.Avnery-news.co.il http://www.gush-shalom.org http://www.Uri-Avnery.de [email protected]

Read more articles by Uri Avnery published in Human Wrongs Watch:

Abe, Izzy & Bibi

Eyeless in Gaza

The Bizarre Case of Bashar

The Four-Letter Word

The New Wave

A Curious National Home

Whoso Confesseth and Forsaketh

Greetings for Diana Buttu

The Visitation

Parliamentary Riffraff

A Curious National Home

One, Two, Three – Rejoice!

The Israeli Macron

Palestine’s Nelson Mandela

CUI BONO?

The Tunic of Nessus

University of Terror

The Israeli National Riddle

The Most Moral Army

Perhaps the Messiah Will Come

The Cannons of Napoleon

The Great Rift

That’s How It Happened

Respect the Green Line!

President Kong

Being There

Confessions of a Megalomaniac

Yes, We Can

Anti-Semitic Zionists

Don’t Send Him!

Remember Naboth

The Call of the Nation

Oh My God, Trump!

The Shot Heard All Over the Country

The Orange Man

Petty Corruption

Those Funny Anti-Semites

“Us” and “Them”

The Other Gandhi

Squaring the Circle

The Case of Soldier A

My Terrorist, Your Terrorist

The Great BDS Debate

The Last Trump

Holy Water

When God Despairs

A Lady With A Smile

Optimism of the Will

The Pied Piper of Zion

Extreme, Extremer, Extremest

The Widening Gap

A Bribery Case

Imagined Nations

A Lonely Lawyer

King Bibi

Seashore Thoughts

The Reign of Absurdiocy

The Cats of Ariel

Adolf, Amin and Bibi

Weep, Beloved Country

The Settlers’ Prussia

Nasser and I

The Ministry of Fear

“Don’t Talk Zionism!”

The Real Menace

The Face of a Boy

The Molten Three

The Magician’s Apprentice

Jewish Terrorists

Divide et Impera

Sheldon’s Stooges

The Treaty

To Be Greek

The Second Battle of Trafalgar

War Crimes? Us???

Isratin or Palestrael?

BDS, the New Enemy

The Real Naqba

The Map on the Wall

Who Will Save Israel?

A Day and Night-mare

A Boy Called Bibi

Cats in a Sack

“There Are Still Judges…”

National Unity

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb?

The Israeli Salvation Front

The Messiah Hasn’t Come

For Whom to Vote?

The Speech

An Expensive Speech

Anti-What?

The Casino Republic

Over Bottled

Zionists All

Galant’s Gallant Act

Waving in the First Row

Half of Shas

The Rock of our Existence

Splendid Isolation

My Glorious Brothers

Can the Duke Become King?

The Plebiscite

The Son of my Eyes

The Unholy City

Wine, Blood and Gasoline

Is ISIS Coming?

Muhammad, Where Are You?

Two Speeches

Ah, If I Were 25

Scotland on the Euphrates: The Obsolescence of the Nation-State

God Wills It!

The War for Nothing

Eyeless in Gaza

Meeting in a Tunnel

Who Is Winning?

A Shameful Chapter

No, We Can’t!

2017 Human Wrongs Watch ” data-medium-file=”" data-large-file=”" class=”wp-image-101845 aligncenter” src=”https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/afghanistan4.jpg” alt=”" width=”364″ height=”191″ />.

Drinking water in a Zambian village contaminated by a copper mine.
Photo by The Guardian.

I asked Inaam why governments and big businesses don’t respond to such images and human tragedies.

Inaam answered, “Because they’re only concerned about their own profit. They never think for the people.”

I thought, “Don’t I have a responsibility to create a kinder and fairer world for children like Inaam and Surkh Gul’s daughter to live in?”

I fear for the decent survival of Afghans, our Earth and the human family, as we have become so attracted to ‘profit’ that we mistake it for ‘progress’. Such ‘profit and progress’ has no respect for science or life, so it may very well lead to our species’ eventual extinction. Stephen Hawking warns us that we may need to vacate to another planet in the next 100 years. More than 15,000 scientists have warned us that our current ways of living could destroy us.

If our ‘thinking as usual’ and ‘business as usual’ continue, we will leave no historical traces at Mes Aynak or Kabul except for mining and digging machines, in a parched desert of war ruins.

Surkh Gul, her daughter and Inaam will have to flee for their lives, but where to, on our warming and warring Earth?

——-

Uri Avnery[/caption]

At this particular moment, Netanyahu does not need any more trouble. A huge corruption affair, concerning German-built submarines, is rolling slowly and inexorably towards him.

Soros is a Hungarian Jew, a Holocaust survivor. The Hungarian governing party plastered his face all over Budapest with a text that barely hid its anti-Semitic intent.

Soros’ sin is his support for human rights associations in his former homeland. He does the same in Israel, though on a much smaller scale. So Netanyahu does not like him either.

This has created an awkward situation. Netanyahu was about to visit Budapest to meet his Hungarian opposite number Victor Orban, who is suspected of being a mild anti-Semite. Netanyahu considers him a right-wing soul-mate.

The Hungarian Jewish community was upset. They demanded that Netanyahu postpone his visit until the Soros posters were removed. Eventually most – but not all – of the posters were indeed taken down, and Netanyahu met with Orban. But the entire episode showed that the interests of the State of Israel and the interests of Jewish communities around the world are not automatically identical, as Zionists would have us believe.

THERE WAS another incident prior to the Hungarian meeting. A few days earlier, at a public event, Orban had lauded Admiral Miklos Horthy, the head of the Hungarian state during World War II, when Hungary cooperated with Nazi Germany like all of Eastern Europe (except Poland, which was occupied).

So how could Orban laud Horthy on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit?

As a matter of fact, Horthy’s role is still hotly debated. A self-declared anti-Semite and enigmatic person, he succeeded where no other European leader did: he saved many hundreds of thousands of Jews by disobeying and cheating Hitler.

One of them was an aunt of mine, who married a Hungarian Jew in Berlin and was deported by the Nazis to Hungary, where she survived, eventually reaching Palestine.

Another was “Tommy” Lapid, a child in Budapest who became a famous personality in Israel. His son, Yair, is now a politician who seeks to supplant Netanyahu. He probably would not exist but for Horthy’s devious actions.

I CANNOT resist interrupting here in order to tell a historical joke.

After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and his entire gang of foreign collaborators declared war on the US. The Hungarian ambassador in Washington was also instructed to submit a declaration of war to the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who decided to mock him.

“Hungary, Hungary – are you a republic?” he asked.

“No, sir, we are a kingdom.”

“Really? So who is your king?”

“WE don’t have a king, only a regent, Admiral Horthy.”

“An admiral? So you have a big fleet?”

“No, we have no fleet at all, since we have no coastline.” (Horthy became an admiral during World War I, when Hungary was a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire which indeed did have a – small – fleet.)

“Curious. A kingdom without a king and an admiral without a fleet. So why do you declare war on us? Do you hate us?”

“No, we hate Romania.”

“So why don’t you declare war on Romania?”

“Impossible! They are our allies!”

SORRY FOR interrupting myself. Back to Netanyahu.

Just now the Netanyahu government did two things which enraged many Jews throughout the world, and especial in the US.

One concerns the Western Wall (formerly called the Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem. This is the holiest place of Judaism.

Since I am a pious atheist, holy places don’t speak to me. The more so since the Western Wall is not really a part of the Jewish Temple, reconstructed by King Herod some 2000 years ago, but just a supporting wall of the large artificial mound of earth, on which the Temple stood.

The last time I was there was in 1946. The imposing wall was flanked by a narrow lane, which made it seem even higher. After the 1967 war, the entire Arab neighborhood was leveled to make place for a large piazza. The wall was turned over to the ultra-Orthodox, in return for their votes in the Knesset. Men and women were separated, of course.

With the growth of feminism, this became problematical. In the end, a compromise was found: a small part of the wall was set aside for “mixed” prayers of men and women, and also for “Reform” and “Conservative” Jews, who hardly exist in Israel, but constitute the majority among American Jews.

Now, under Orthodox pressure, Netanyahu wants to revoke this compromise, causing great excitement among American Jews.

As if this was not enough, Netanyahu also wants to withdraw the recognition of “Reform” and “Conservative” conversions to Judaism, giving the Orthodox exclusive rights to perform conversions in Israel.

Since there is no separation between state and religion in Israel, a simple law suffices. Indeed, Israeli institutions are becoming more and more religious, so much so, that a new Hebrew word, Hadata (roughly “religiosifiation”), has been invented.

The “Reform” and “Conservative” Jewish institutions in the US do not care about the occupation, about the brutal repression of the Palestinians, about the daily killings. They support the Israeli government through thick and thin. But they care very much about the Wall and about conversions. Like Ivanka Trump, non-Jews often convert in order to marry Jews, so this is an important business.

IT ALL seems like an inherent contradiction, and indeed it is.

Israel is defined officially and legally as a “Jewish and Democratic State”. A new law is about to strike the “Democratic” from the formula, and leave Israel only as a “Jewish State”. It is seen by many as the headquarters of the world Jewish people. Netanyahu has often declared that he considers himself the leader and defender of all the Jews in the world.

If so, can there be a conflict between the interests of the Jews anywhere and the State of Israel?

There can and there has been from the very beginning. Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism and a Hungarian Jew, had discussions with the anti-Semitic leaders of Czarist Russia and elsewhere, promising to help rid them of their Jews and take them to Palestine. This common interest underlay many curious alliances at various times.

Anti-Semites always preferred the Zionists. Adolf Eichmann wrote in his confession that he saw the Zionists as the “valuable element” of the Jewish people. And so on.

Abraham Stern, called Ya’ir, an underground leader in British Palestine, split from the Irgun and founded a new group (called the “Stern Gang” by the British) whose main policy plank was to cooperate with Nazi Germany against the British, on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. He sent emissaries to German embassies but was ignored by Hitler. Eventually he was shot by the British.

In the first Years of Israel, when David Ben-Gurion first visited the US as Prime Minister of Israel, he was admonished by his aides not to bring up the subject of immigration, so as not to irritate the US Jews whose money was needed desperately. Ben-Gurion demurred, but did what they said.

At the time, a friend of mine wrote a humorous piece about a community of hugely rich Jews in a remote part of Africa, who owned all the diamond mines in their country. When Israel needed money to buy flour for next month’s bread, the most talented Zionist propagandist was sent there. Knowing the desperate situation of his country, the man gave the most passionate speech of his life. At the end, no eye in the hall remained dry.

The next day the speaker got a message: we were so moved that we decided to turn all our property over to the natives and come to Israel as pioneers.

THE DECLARED aim of Zionism is to bring all the world’s Jews to Israel. Herzl himself believed that this would indeed happen, and in one passage he wrote that, once most of the Jews had come to the Jewish state, only they would henceforth be called Jews. All the Jews who chose not to come would cease to be called Jews and be just Germans, Americans and so on.

Wonderful, but if that happens, who will compel Donald Trump and his successors to veto all UN resolutions critical of Israel? Who will be left to fight against the movements – like BDS – that preach a boycott of Israel?

Well, life is full of contradictions. As are we.

NETANYAHU’S HUNGARIAN adventures were not over with the Soros and Horthy affairs. Far from it.

While in Budapest, he took part in a closed meeting with the leaders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Some fool forgot to cut the line to the Journalists outside, and so they could listen in to some 20 minutes of Netanyahu’s secret speech.

To his East European soul mates, extreme right-wing semi-democrats all, our Prime Minister poured out his heart: the liberal West European governments are “crazy” when they impose conditions regarding human rights on their aid to Israel. They are committing suicide by letting in masses of Muslims. They don’t realize that Israel is their last bulwark against this Muslim invasion.

In the Bible of Zionism, “Der Judenstaat”, Theodor Herzl wrote: “For Europe we would constitute (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia, serving as an outpost of civilization against barbarism“.

These lines were written 121 years ago, at the height of the colonial era. Repeating them today is, to use Netanyahu’s word, “crazy”.

When Netanyahu and Orban fight against Soros about human rights, Soros is bound to win.

——-

*AUTHOR: Uri Avnery is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.  He is an Israeli journalist, writer, peace activist, a former Knesset member, and the founder of Gush Shalom. 

Go to Original – uriavnery.com in avnery-news.co.il/ Learn more about Gush Shalom.

Uri Avnery’s Websites: http://www.Avnery-news.co.il http://www.gush-shalom.org http://www.Uri-Avnery.de [email protected]

Read more articles by Uri Avnery published in Human Wrongs Watch:

Abe, Izzy & Bibi

Eyeless in Gaza

The Bizarre Case of Bashar

The Four-Letter Word

The New Wave

A Curious National Home

Whoso Confesseth and Forsaketh

Greetings for Diana Buttu

The Visitation

Parliamentary Riffraff

A Curious National Home

One, Two, Three – Rejoice!

The Israeli Macron

Palestine’s Nelson Mandela

CUI BONO?

The Tunic of Nessus

University of Terror

The Israeli National Riddle

The Most Moral Army

Perhaps the Messiah Will Come

The Cannons of Napoleon

The Great Rift

That’s How It Happened

Respect the Green Line!

President Kong

Being There

Confessions of a Megalomaniac

Yes, We Can

Anti-Semitic Zionists

Don’t Send Him!

Remember Naboth

The Call of the Nation

Oh My God, Trump!

The Shot Heard All Over the Country

The Orange Man

Petty Corruption

Those Funny Anti-Semites

“Us” and “Them”

The Other Gandhi

Squaring the Circle

The Case of Soldier A

My Terrorist, Your Terrorist

The Great BDS Debate

The Last Trump

Holy Water

When God Despairs

A Lady With A Smile

Optimism of the Will

The Pied Piper of Zion

Extreme, Extremer, Extremest

The Widening Gap

A Bribery Case

Imagined Nations

A Lonely Lawyer

King Bibi

Seashore Thoughts

The Reign of Absurdiocy

The Cats of Ariel

Adolf, Amin and Bibi

Weep, Beloved Country

The Settlers’ Prussia

Nasser and I

The Ministry of Fear

“Don’t Talk Zionism!”

The Real Menace

The Face of a Boy

The Molten Three

The Magician’s Apprentice

Jewish Terrorists

Divide et Impera

Sheldon’s Stooges

The Treaty

To Be Greek

The Second Battle of Trafalgar

War Crimes? Us???

Isratin or Palestrael?

BDS, the New Enemy

The Real Naqba

The Map on the Wall

Who Will Save Israel?

A Day and Night-mare

A Boy Called Bibi

Cats in a Sack

“There Are Still Judges…”

National Unity

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bomb?

The Israeli Salvation Front

The Messiah Hasn’t Come

For Whom to Vote?

The Speech

An Expensive Speech

Anti-What?

The Casino Republic

Over Bottled

Zionists All

Galant’s Gallant Act

Waving in the First Row

Half of Shas

The Rock of our Existence

Splendid Isolation

My Glorious Brothers

Can the Duke Become King?

The Plebiscite

The Son of my Eyes

The Unholy City

Wine, Blood and Gasoline

Is ISIS Coming?

Muhammad, Where Are You?

Two Speeches

Ah, If I Were 25

Scotland on the Euphrates: The Obsolescence of the Nation-State

God Wills It!

The War for Nothing

Eyeless in Gaza

Meeting in a Tunnel

Who Is Winning?

A Shameful Chapter

No, We Can’t!

2017 Human Wrongs Watch ” data-medium-file=”" data-large-file=”" class=” size-thumbnail wp-image-101846 alignleft” src=”https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Dr_Hakim_Young-afghanistan-singapore-150×150.jpg” alt=”" width=”150″ height=”150″ />*AUTHOR: Dr Hakim, (Dr. Teck Young, Wee) is a medical doctor from Singapore who has done humanitarian and social enterprise work in Afghanistan for more than 10 years, including being a mentor to the Afghan Peace Volunteers, an inter-ethnic group of young Afghans dedicated to building non-violent alternatives to war.

He is the 2012 recipient of the International Pfeffer Peace Prize and the 2017 recipient of the Singapore Medical Association Merit Award for contributions in social service to communities.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 20 November 2017: TMS: An Escalating Afghan Crisis of ‘Profit’ over ‘Life

2017 Human Wrongs Watch


Source: https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2017/11/21/an-escalating-afghan-crisis-of-profit-over-life/


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