Israel asks Spain to stop funding group that reported IDF 'crimes' in Gaza

[subsuelo]

Israel on Thursday asked the government of Spain to halt its funding for the human rights group Breaking the Silence, which has been critical of the Israel Defense Forces' conduct during January's Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Similar requests have been made of Britain and The Netherlands.

Senior Foreign Ministry officials have said that at this stage the ministry has no intention to take action concerning other non-governmental organizations that receive funding from foreign governments. There is no intention, the ministry stressed, to act against organizations working for peace or coexistence.

During the past year, Spain has provided tens of thousands of euros to fund patrols run by Breaking the Silence in Hebron.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1104513.html">Haaretz

[Violet_Crumble]

1. I hope Spain politely asks Israel to bugger off...

Talk about reeking of desperation. It looks like Breaking The Silence is a bit of a thorn in the Israeli govt's side...

[ensho]

2. agree

Israeli govt. is so arrogant

[IndianaGreen]

3. Spain has a socialist government and socialists see Zionism as another form of racism

Lenin made quite clear his views on anti-Semitism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ1jlbS0bTg

Anti-Semitism means spreading enmity towards the Jews. When the accursed tsarist monarchy was living its last days it tried to incite ignorant workers and peasants against the Jews. The tsarist police, in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists, organized pogroms against the Jews. The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews.

In other countries, too, we often see the capitalists fomenting hatred against the Jews in order to blind the workers, to divert their attention from the real enemy of the working people, capital. Hatred towards the Jews persists only in those countries where slavery to the landowners and capitalists has created abysmal ignorance among the workers and peasants.

Only the most ignorant and downtrodden people can believe the lies and slander that are spread about the Jews. This is a survival of ancient feudal times, when the priests burned heretics at the stake, when the peasants lived in slavery, and when the people were crushed and inarticulate. This ancient, feudal ignorance is passing away; the eyes of the people are being opened.

It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations.

The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.

Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations.

Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital.

Zionism, however, is a reactionary movement that divides the working class along religious lines.

Zionism and anti-Semitism

Zionism cynically regards any criticism, as sounded and justified as it may be, against its crimes, as anti-Semitism. Zionism cynically regards any criticism, as sounded and justified as it may be, against its crimes, as anti-Semitism. This, in turn, helps to confuse the progressive struggle against Zionism with the reactionary forces behind anti-Semitism. Both Zionism and anti-Semitism benefit from that confusion. It would not be the first time that Zionism and anti-Semitism have collaborated against Jews and other people.

Contrary to Zionist propaganda, Zionism is not the answer to anti-Semitism. It is a form of anti-Semitism itself. Zionism began with the fear of West European petty-bourgeois Jews of a flood of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. They collaborated with anti-Semites on more than one occasion for a common goal: to cleanse Europe from its Jewish inhabitants (mostly poor workers) and keep them away from collaborating with the growing workers' movement, and particularly with Bolshevism.

Similar to anti-Semitism, Zionism claims that Jews are inherently different from their non-Jewish neighbours and that they cannot and should not integrate with them. So Zionism gives the anti-Semitic answer to the Jewish question: the Jews should be evacuated from Europe to a place far away.

Zionism and imperialism

Zionism in practice meant two things in the past. First of all, it promoted "Jewish" colonialism in Palestine, starting with a group of adventurers who took over Palestinian land in order to build a kind of "White settler" colony on it, and then they imported ordinary Jews as workers and soldiers to be exploited on that same stolen land. Secondly, it also embodies the practice of keeping the local workforce divided along ethnic lines, with “Jews versus Arabs”, fighting each other constantly rather than uniting against their common oppressors. This situation produced a unique opportunity for imperialism, which is the main reason why it survives until today.

Jews of the world: denounce Zionism!

Written by Dekel Avshalom in Israel
Thursday, 25 June 2009

http://www.marxist.com/jews-denounce-zionism.htm

[LeftishBrit]

5. Spain certainly doesn't have a Leninist government

Modern Europaean socialism is nothing like Leninism.

Also, Breaking the Silence is not anti-Zionist. These are Israeli soldiers who have fought for Israel, and are attempting to expose and abuses perpetrated in their name, and prevent such abuses in the future. Unless you consider that e.g. all who have taken part in anti-war demonstrations are anti-American (or anti-British, etc.), then this does not make them anti-Israel.

[IndianaGreen]

6. I never said Spain had a Leninist government, you are the one that did

An I am quite familiar with the many variants of socialism in Europe, nor did I mention Breaking the Silence. I merely commented as to why Zapatero's government would reject Israel's request.

[LeftishBrit]

7. I was talking about Breaking the Silence, as it was the topic of the thread

As regards the rest - all I was saying is that I doubt that Zapatero's decisions have anything whatsoever to do with Leninist ideology, or with strong anti-Zionist ideology. Neither does Breaking the Silence.

[Violet_Crumble]

8. Yeah, that's what I was talking about too...

I've got no idea what Indy's post had to do with what I posted or why it was a reply to what I said, but Zionism etc has zero to do with my hope that the Spanish govt tells Israel to bugger off...

[LeftishBrit]

4. I hope Spain just ignores the request - it probably will.

Breaking the Silence are an admirable group, and provide us with hope for the future of Israel.

[Lakrosse]

9. frankly, who the hell is Spain to get into this?

where are they investigating Sudan, China with Tibet, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries who abuse human rights far more than Israel? Just who are they to do this anyway.

Why doesn't Zapatero learn English already, which he doesn't speak, unlike even Aznar, and go take care of his own country.

[Howardx]

10. yawn

perhaps you should check with the other hasbarites to avoid repetition.

[bemildred]

11. Spain is as good as anybody.

It just makes sense to speak Spanish in Spain.

[Lakrosse]

12. yes but Zapatero is no diplomat

by not only lacking to speak the international lingua franca, but for allowing the trying other countries in their self-defense business in which he or his country has no role or stake.

Why doesn't Israel investigate Franco's role with Hitler? Or the fact Zapatero allows memorials of the Blue Division to still exist in Spain?

[bemildred]

13. Well I would totally support Israel investigating Franco's role with Hitler.

And that other stuff too.

[Howardx]

14. they can investigate this

During the war, Spain became an unlikely haven for several thousand Jews. They were mainly from Western Europe, fleeing deportation to concentration camps from occupied France, but also Sephardic Jews from Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. Trudy Alexy refers to the "absurdity" and "paradox of refugees fleeing the Nazis' Final Solution to seek asylum in a country where no Jews had been allowed to live openly as Jews for over four centuries." <7>

Throughout World War II, Spanish diplomats of the Franco government, as well as diplomats from Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal and the Vatican, extended their protection to Eastern European Jews, especially in Hungary.

In the first years of the war, "Laws regulating their admittance were written and mostly ignored."<8> Once the tide of war began to turn, and Count Francisco Gómez-Jordana succeeded Franco's brother-in-law Serrano Súñer as Spain's foreign minister, Spanish diplomacy became "more sympathetic to Jews", although Franco himself "never said anything" about this.<8> Around that same time, a contingent of Spanish doctors traveling in Poland were fully informed of the Nazi extermination plans by the Gauleiter Frankel of Warsaw, who was under the misimpression that they would share his views about the matter; when they came home, they passed the story to Admiral Luís Carrero Blanco, who told Franco.<9>

Diplomats discussed the possibility of Spain as a route to a containment camp for Jewish refugees near Casablanca, but it came to naught due to lack of Free French and British support.<10> Nonetheless, control of the Spanish border with France relaxed somewhat at this time, <11> and thousands of Jews managed to cross into Spain (many by smugglers' routes). Almost all of these survived the war.<12> The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee operated openly in Barcelona.<13>

Shortly afterwards, Spain began giving citizenship to Sephardic Jews in Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania; many Ashkenazic Jews also managed to be included, as did some gentiles. The Spanish head of mission in Budapest, Ángel Sanz Briz, may have saved thousands of Ashkenazim in Hungary by granting them Spanish citizenship, placing them in safe houses, and teaching them minimal Spanish so they could pretend to be Sephardim, at least to someone who did not know Spanish. The Spanish diplomatic corps was performing a balancing act: Alexy conjectures that the number of Jews they took in was limited by how much German hostility they were willing to engender.<14>

Toward the war's end, Sanz Briz had to flee Budapest, leaving these Jews open to arrest and deportation. An Italian diplomat, Giorgio Perlasca, who was himself living under Spanish protection, used forged documents to persuade the Hungarian authorities that he was the new Spanish Ambassador. As such, he continued Spanish protection of Hungarian Jews until the Red Army arrived. <15>

Although Spain effectively undertook more to help Jews escape deportation to the concentration camps than many neutral (Switzerland, Turkey) and Allied countries did,<15><16> there has been debate about Spain's wartime attitude towards refugees. Francoist Spain, despite its aversion to Zionism and "Judeo"-Freemasonry, does not appear to have shared the rabid anti-Semitic ideology promoted by the Nazis. Certainly, about 25,000 to 35,000 refugees, mainly Jews, were allowed to transit through Spain to Portugal and beyond. About 5,000 Jews in occupied Europe benefitted from Spanish protection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain_in_World_War_II

[bemildred]

15. Good for them.

Not often you read something good about Franco.

[Howardx]

16. true

this is interesting

"There is however another tantalizing opinion, or merely a rumor, which will probably never be proven one way or another. This is that Franco was a Marrano or Converso, and was thus the descendant of Jews forcibly converted to Christianity during the 14th and 15th centuries.

Some speculate that even Franco thought he was Jewish and many claim that Franco and Bahamonde (his mother's maiden name) are both Jewish names. This theory is espoused by Franco biographer, Paul Preston.

Could it be that as a result of the then worst calamity to befall the Jewish people since the fall of the Second Temple made it possible for tens of thousands of Jews to survive the most recent calamity? This is one answer we will probably never receive but one which has an interesting irony in the annals of Jewish history and persecution

http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/sephardiperspective/entry/the_irony_of_spain_s