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October 03, 2009
Farewell Marek Edelman
The last living leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has passed on. I read his memoirs of those days many years ago and still today, they haunt me:
It is a long way to the "Umschlag". The Deportation Point, from which the cars leave, is situated on the very edge of the ghetto, on Stawki Street. The tall walls surrounding it and closely guarded by gendarmes are broken at only one narrow place. Through this entrance the groups of helpless, powerless people are brought in. Everyone holds some papers, working certificates, identification cards. The gendarme at the entrance looks them over briefly. "Rechts"--means life, "links"--means death. Although everyone knows in advance the futility of all arguments, he still tries to show his particular helpfulness to German industry, to his German master, and hopes for the magic little order, "rechts". The gendarme does not even listen. Sometimes he orders the passing people to show him their hands--he chooses all small ones: "rechts"; sometimes he separates blondes: "links"; in the morning he favours short people; in the evening he takes a liking to tall ones. "Links", "links", "links".
The human torrent grows, deepens, floods the square, floods three large three-storey buildings, former schools. More people are assembled here than are necessary to fill the next four days' quota, they are just being brought in as "reserves". People wait four or five days before they are loaded into the railroad cars. People fill every inch of free space, crowd the buildings, bivouac in empty rooms, hallways, on the stairs. Dirty, slimy mud floods the floors. One's foot sinks in human excrement at every step. The odour of sweat and urine sticks in one's throat. There are no panes in the windows, and the nights are cold. Some are dressed only in night-shirts or house-coats.
On the second day hunger begins to twist the stomach in painful spasms, cracked lips long for a drop of water. The times when people were given three loaves of bread are long since gone. Sweating, feverish children lie helplessly in their mothers'arms. People seem to shrink, become smaller, greyer.
All eyes have a wild, crazy, fearful look. People look pale, helpless, desperate. There is a sudden flash of revelation that soon the worst, the incredible, the thing one would not believe to the very last moment is bound to happen. Here, in this crowded square, all the continually nursed illusions collapse, all the brittle hopes that "maybe I may save myself and my dearest ones from total destruction"... collapse. A nightmare settles on one's chest, grips one's throat, shoves one's eyes out of their sockets, opens one's mouth to a soundless cry. An old man imploringly and feverishly hangs on to strangers around him. A helplessly suffering mother presses three children to her heart. One wants to yell, but there is nobody to yell to; to implore, to argue--there is nobody to argue with; one is alone, completely alone in this multitudinous crowd. One can almost feel the ten--nay, hundred, thousand--rifles aimed at one's heart. The figures of the Ukrainians grow to gigantic proportions. And then one does not know of anything any more, does not think about anything, one sits down dully in a corner, right in the mud and dung of the wet floor. The air becomes more and more stuffy, the place becomes more and more crowded, not because of the thousands of bodies and the odour of the rooms, but because of the sudden understanding that all is lost, that nothing can be done, that one must perish.
We parrot "Never again," but for the most part, we have forgotten what that means. This year, the United States of America took a mighty step backwards and now teeters on the abyss of hell. The man we call President counts himself amongst the tyrants and evil dictators of the United Nations who close their eyes to the reign of arab terror perpetuated against Israeli citizens in complete mockery of the UN human rights charter as they declined the complete and total rejection of the Goldstone report. Instead, they choose to support and embrace terrorism and the efforts of those who vow to destroy the State of Israel and murder the six million Jews who live there.
What does "never again" mean? It becomes ever more obvious every day that the meaning of those words has been forgotten and how close the world is to coming full circle once again to closing its eyes to the murder of yet another six million Jews. The plan has been announced, the ways and means are being prepared, and nothing, nothing is being done to prevent it.
In April of 2009, Marek Edelman said “Don’t forget that evil can grow bigger."
I fear that warning has come too late, and no one is listening.
Oh. If I may... one final thought, on the recent exchange of freedom of terrorists for a videotape of a smiling Gilad Shalit praising his treatment and pleading for negotiated freedom from hands of the terrorists of hamas. Bravo Bibi, for cowering and negotiating and kowtowing to terrorists, and giving the terrorists of hamas an opportunity to use Gilad to broadcast their propaganda to the world.
What was it you said Bibi, to the UN?
"Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium," he said. "A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies the murder of six million Jews while promising to wipe out the State of Israel, the State of the Jews. What a disgrace. What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations."
You said these words Bibi, you, who has sat down with, and negotiated with, and shaken the hand of Abu Mazen, who not only denied the Holocaust, but claimed that the milllion or so Jews he grudgingly admitted might have died were really killed by Jewish Zionists. Forgive me for saying so, but, the last time I looked, you still speak of him as your partner in peace while he still promises his people that they will succeed in destroying Israel.
Once you had an opportunity to view that film and confirm that Gilad was in fact alive, you should never have released even a single solitary terrorist from Israeli prison. That was a despicable act of appeasement and accomplished nothing.
Israel has released thousands of terrorists and received nothing but dead bodies in return. And the thousands Israels has released have caused the deaths of hundreds of other innocent Israelis who would likely be alive today but for the foolish and futile actions of the Israeli government.
In 2007, The Almagor Terrorist Victims Association published a report on the results of Israel's release of imprisoned terrorists in prisoner exchanges. At least 30 recent terror attacks were perpetrated by terrorists who were released from Israeli jails. Those 30 attacks perpetrated by those terrorists freed in those prisoner exchanges killed no fewer than 177 innocent citizens, mostly Israeli Jews. These are their faces:
Look at them, each and every one of the people pictured were brutally murdered by palestinian terrorists after those terrorists were released by the Israeli government from Israeli prisons and for what? For stupid, ineffective and meaningless gestures of goodwill or one-sided negotiations with terrorists who want only to kill Jews.
The terrorists will continue to kill Jews no matter what we do and this exchange will surely encourage more kidnappings of more Israeli soldiers. But then, it's true that there would likely be more kidnappings anyway.
I look at those faces, and I want to cry. I watched Gilad on that video, and I want to cry.
But the bottom line, the final fact, the final truth of the matter, this release of the prisoners got Israel only the tape and not the man. Hamas will never, ever release Gilad Shalit and even now they are planning and plotting and dreaming and hoping for the next kidnapping of the next Israeli soldier. That is what each and every prisoner release has gotten for Israel, the promise of more kidnappings, more videos and more threats to Gilad's health and well being.
I've said it before and I will say it again, and again, and again.
There can only be one solution.
First, Israel must immediate institute the death penalty for terrorist acts, and they must make it retroactive to all those who have been convicted of terrorism. Then, they must schedule executions to commence, taking the list of prisoners the palestinians want released the most, and put them at the top of the execution list.
Then, offer as a goodwill gesture for peace to hold executions in abeyance, provided Gilad Shalit is immediately released, alive and well, as he was in the video. If Hamas is not agreeable, or, if something should happen to Gilad along the way, well, then Israel will have no choice but to commence immediate implementation of the death penalty, until Gilad is returned alive and well, or Israel runs out of prisoners.
That way, the end result is a good one, either way.
What is the worst that could happen? Will Israel be condemned by the international community for executing murdering terrorists? Oh. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt...
Posted by LindaSoG at October 3, 2009 10:55 AM
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Comments
Nuh-uh. Lots of people listening. More each day.
Posted by: Le vrai roi de la France at October 3, 2009 12:07 PM
Thank you for the reminder Linda, it is a sad passing. I agree with Rodger, except for the left coasts where there is only some sense of awakening. I used to see nothing but Obama stickers on car bumpers everywhere, now they are seen only on the die hard leftists bumpers. I had an older (80) dipshit tell me that the reason troops in Afghanistan were getting killed was because they drove too fast there and that it disrespected the people and their elders. Wow, I never knew that!!! I fixed her lawn mower a few weeks ago and ran into her at the local store. Not a clue as to what oppression, repression or suppression really is, but hell, she was bred and born in the Soviet of Washington and has been protected all her life, she's on SSI so why try to reason with a closed mind. I just told her to have a nice day.
Posted by: Jack at October 3, 2009 01:12 PM