Benny Morris on a visit to Sweden

The Israeli professor of history Benny Morris will hold an open lecture in Gothenburg on Tuesday. Morris is both loved and hated for his historic research on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has revealed truths uncomfortable for both Israeli and Arab official versions of history. This will be interesting!

Gothenburg: Tuesday October 16

Time: 6.15 PM – 8.00 PM
Göteborg University, Room: Linnésalen in Mediahuset (=Media house),
Open lecture: Recent Israeli-Palestine history (Camp David, the intifadas).
Seminariegatan 1B Göteborg

Stockholm: Wednesday Oktober 17

Time: 2.30 PM-3.30 PM
Stockholm University, Dep. for Middle Eastern Studies
Invites to an open discussion with Benny Morris
Place: Kräftriket House 3 Room 3:239

For trade: Alliance minister for Opposition policy

In yesterdays SvD and DN Peter Eriksson says that his first hand choice in the next elections will be an alliance between the Green Party and the Social Democratic Party, that is without the Left Party. The reason is that Peter Eriksson has been touched by a little common sense, and realized which unpleasant characters that the Left Party consists of, which is reflected in their politics.

I willingly admit that I have earlier voted for the Green Party, for the simple reason that they have the best environmental policy, and environmental issues are the most important ones. Unfortunately a sound environmental policy often goes hand in hand with unsound policies in other areas, and this is an international phenomenon. With lunatics such as Per Gahrton in the party, I no longer can vote green with a good conscience. Since more than a year I have been a member of the Liberal Peoples Party.

Peter Eriksson comments on the energy policy that is needed in order for the world not to go down the pan:

–It takes political decisions. We're talking about a gigantic change, rather like when we took the step from an agricultural to an industrial society.

He's quite right there. On the other hand he overestimates the previous governments environmental policy in his comment on the "climate package" with increased taxes on carbon dioxide that the Alliance for Sweden has presented:

–There's a difference between moving ahead against the wind, like we did, and standing still when there is no wind, like they do now.

There is no reason why a sound environmental policy should be monopolized by foreign political maniacs. Therefore the Alliance for Sweden hereby wishes to do a trade:

For trade: Alliance minister for Opposition policy

We have: A Minister who went astray into the wrong political block. Shows all signs of fitting the Social Democrats like hand in a glove:

• Bribable
• Dismisses the islamist threat with the words"And far away in the mountains of Waziristan sits – so I'm told – a sheik and urges hatefully to violent terror against all the forces of openness, democratization and globalization that threat to undermine the nostalgic world of his closed ideas." (The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, December 19 2006)
  
• Wants to continue to shower the Palestinians with money
• Gladly makes business with nasty regimes, such as Sudan and Russia

We want: An environmental policy worthy of the name. Like the Green Partys, preferably even better.

English version

This English version of my Swedish blog has just been released. Earlier posts have been translated, but the dates differ from the Swedish version. To go to the Swedish blog, follow the link to the right.

Dead week?

For the moment I'm in California, and therefore I'll probably not write anything until next week, unless som really hot topic turns up. On request I'll soon launch an English verion of the blog. Keep your eyes open!

Boycott Iran!

Today there are reports about Iran's president Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University. Tickets to the event apparently disappeared like butter in sunshine. So, what did he have to say to enrich the students? Well, he informed them that there are no homosexuals in Iran. It would probably be premature to contradict him on that point without having proof for the opposite (in that case Bulten i Bo [infamous Swedish blog stalker] would probably appear out of nowhere and demand evidence for the existence of Iranian gays and/or lesbians)...let's just state that the two Iranian boys in the below picture, 16 and 18 years old, who were executed in the city of Maashad for being homosexual, might have been the last gays in Iran.

Further he informed us that Iran's nuclear technology program solely has peaceful purposes. A couple of months ago I listened to the member of parliament for the party Moderaterna, and member of the Council of Europe Göran Lindblad. He told us that he, at a meeting with the IAEA, had met a French expert in nuclear technology who explained what differs civilian nuclear technology from military, and that Iran's program is 100% military.

Ahmadinejad also admitted that the Holocaust might have happened. There was such an uproar over some cartoons in the Danish Jyllands-Posten a while ago, anybody remembers? Since it was so obvious that Jews were behind this horrible provocation, an international cartoon contest was announced in Iran on the Holocaust topic. Now Ahmadinejad claims that he only wonders what the Holocaust, if it really happened, has to do with the Palestinians.

On April 24 2006 Ahmadinejad said in a speech that the Jews of Israel should return to their fatherlands in Europe. Many, among them islamologist Jan Hjärpe, thought that Ahmadinejad made a good point there. For those who are aware that half of Israel's Jewish population has it's roots in Muslim countries, and that Ahmadinejad's Israeli presidential colleague at the time of his speech, Moshe Katsav, himself is a refugee from Iran, the comment made no sense at all.

Not a day too soon!

Both DN and SvD report that Israel has decided to regard the Gaza strip as a "hostile entity".

- This move will prepare the groundwork for sanctions against Gaza, such as the interruption of gas, electricity and water supply, which will occur in a gradual process, said an unnamed Israeli government official.

It's about time! Let someone else supply the Gaza strip. The entire world (except for the oil-rich Arab countries) stands in line to shower the Palestinians with economic aid. The Palestinians are the No. 1 receivers of foreign aid per capita throughout history, without ever having been close to the economic bottom layer. And the consequences? Well, have a look at the following graph from CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).

These statistics do not mean that foreign aid causes violence; but they do raise questions about the effectiveness of using foreign donations to promote moderation and combat terrorism. The graphs reveal that the increased budgetary aid to the Palestinian government after the start of the second Intifada in September 2000 was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the number of Palestinian homicides in 2001 and 2002. After mid-2002, Israeli countermeasures against suicide bombers began to reduce the number of Israeli dead. By August 2003, the first portion of the security barrier was in place, leading to a rapid decline in homicides in 2003. The appointment of Salam Fayyad, a moderate technocrat, to the finance ministry in late 2002 also resulted in reduced aid as Israeli tax revenue was restored to the Palestinian government. While Israeli countermeasures reduced the number of Israeli victims, Palestinian factional violence took an ever increasing toll. When including Palestinian victims of Palestinian violence as well as Israeli victims, the correlation between aid and homicides continues beyond 2003.

Is anyone surprised? Can it be so simple that it takes money to acquire weapons, like for example the rockets that rain over Sderot every day, fired from the Gaza strip?

There are no longer any Jews in the Gaza strip. The long Jewish presence there was broken for the first time in 61 C.E., when the Romans expelled the Jews from the Gaza strip. They returned, but disappeared again in 1799, when Napoleon's forces brought with them a plague. Jews returned again in the 19th century, but were deported by the Turks during World War I. After the war Jews returned once more, but had to flee during the Arab persecutions of Jews in 1929. In 1946 the kibbutz Kfar Darom was founded, but the Jews had to flee again when the Gaza strip was occupied by Egypt in 1948. Israel occcupied the strip in the Six-Day War 1967, and the building of Jewish settlements started three years later. All these were evacuated in 2005.

The news values of nazis

All nazis aren't equally interesting in news reporting. If this is caused by the preferences of the editorial staffs, or of the news consumers, or both is best left unsaid. Yesterday SvD reported that a gang of nazis has been arrested in Israel.

Picture of the Israeli nazi gang.

A similar case was news bill material in Metro about a year ago. The nazis are Russians who immigrated to Israel and received citizenship in accordance with the Law of Return, which guarantees Israeli citizenship to Jews and persons with at least one Jewish grandparent.

It's obvious that the law leads to absurdities, but its purpose is honorable, and to abolish it would be madness. Israel's primary raison d'être is to protect Jews from the persecutions they are exposed to in Christian and Muslim countries. Similar Laws exist in Armenia, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Lebanon, Poland, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Serbia, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine.

Jackie Arklöf - ironic nazi.

The irony of nazis of Jewish origin as a phenomenon is hardly unnoticed by anyone, but it is not at all unique. Who doesn't remember the Swede Jackie Arklöf, who was a nazi and far from the Aryan ideal? And sure I can understand that it is amusing to revel in these absurd phenomena, even if they are marginal. Blond nazis with blue eyes are not as hot news material.

Unfortunately nazis aren't a marginal phenomenon in the Levant. They did de facto get an absolute majority in the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Read for example an excerpt from Hamas Charter, where the Jews (here only called "the Enemy") are accused of being behind both World Wars:

"Article Twenty-Two: The Powers which Support the Enemy
The enemies have been scheming for a long time, and they have consolidated their schemes, in order to achieve what they have achieved. They took advantage of key elements in unfolding events, and accumulated a huge and influential material wealth which they put to the service of implementing their dream. This wealth [permitted them to] take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there. They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith and the like. All of them are destructive spying organizations. They also used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein. As regards local and world wars, it has come to pass and no one objects, that they stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They collected material gains and took control of many sources of wealth. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state. They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary. There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it"

Fatah's lively youth movement.

Hezbollah have the same salute...

...as do Arafat's supporters.

This party got more than half of the votes. The second largest party, Fatah, isn't much better. The Hitler salute has been adopted by their youth movement, as well as by Hezbollah.

After World War II many nazis found a refuge in Arab countries. Worst was Syria, where Alois Brunner is still believed to live and prosper.

But Nazism had a stronghold in the Arab countries even before the war. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, assisted in recruiting Muslims in the Balkans to the SS during the war.

On June 1-2 1941 several hundreds of Jews were murdered in Baghdad in a nazi (Arab) pogrom, known as the Farhud.

There are more examples that all have one thing in common - they occurred long before there was a single Palestinian refugee.