ZGram - 2/21/2002 - "After all, ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing"

irimland@zundelsite.org irimland@zundelsite.org
Thu, 21 Feb 2002 19:07:29 -0800


Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

=46ebruary 21, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The German people are stirring, and the mainstream media are slowly echoing
what the man in the street has long said.  That a paper like the
=46rankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung would run a commentary like this is nothing
short of revolutionary.  If you observe the politically correct bows to the
powers that be in this article, you will note that they are a bit
reluctantly performed.

Read "Words and Their Meanings" by Karl-Peter Schwarz:

[START

 The Czech prime minister is at odds with his own statements. He speaks his
mind, but then claims either not to have meant what he said or not to have
said what he meant. A mere four weeks have passed since he described the
ethnic Germans of Czechoslovakia in 1938 as Adolf Hitler's "fifth column"
and claimed their expulsion after World War II had saved them from worse.
The statement sparked outrage first from the Austrian government, then from
the German opposition and, finally, even from the government in Berlin, in
spite of its particular desire for harmony. But almost as soon as he had
more or less placated the Social Democratic Party and Alliance 90/The
Greens with a highly original reinterpretation of his own words, Milos
Zeman let rip again.

 On Monday, the Israeli daily Haaretz published an interview with him
containing further explosive material. As confirmed by the paper, Mr. Zeman
compared the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat with Hitler. Quite apart from
being insulting nonsense, this statement, like Mr. Zeman's equating
Austrian populist J=F6rg Haider with Hitler, also plays down the evils of
Nazism. The Czech prime minister called on Israel not to negotiate with the
Palestinians, despite the European Union's efforts to relaunch dialog in
the Middle East. Finally, he suggested that if necessary, the Israelis
could solve the Palestinian conflict in the Czech manner -- by deporting
the Palestinians.

 Mr. Zeman denied making the comments, but only after EU foreign ministers
condemned them and demanded a statement from the Czech government, and only
after his remarks had triggered a diplomatic earthquake that the Czech
media are calling the country's biggest foreign policy crisis since 1989.
Mr. Zeman's denial, which he also sent to the EU, is awkward and
self-contradictory. Although he speaks English fluently, he says he did not
know the meaning of the verb "to expel." He feels misunderstood, says his
words were distorted by the Israelis and claims he never compared Mr.
Arafat with Hitler. But this has been proved wrong, now that the BBC has
broadcast an interview with Mr. Zeman in which he drew a similar
comparison. Just one month ago, Mr. Zeman described the 1945 expulsion of
some 3  million Germans from Czechoslovakia as punishment for "treason."
But what  kind of treason have the Palestinians, whose deportation Mr.
Zeman has now  advocated, committed? Or could it be that the Sudeten
Germans were not  being punished at all? While those who expelled them
claimed to be  executing a "historic verdict," their primary motive was
probably not the  desire to punish a crime collectively, but rather to
seize a golden  opportunity to settle the German question in Bohemia and
Moravia once and  for all by applying what we now call "ethnic cleansing."

 Mr. Zeman's remarks make it clear that the attitude taken by a country's
political leadership toward its own crimes is by no means without
significance for both the present and future. The heart of the problem lies
in the fact that the prime minister of a state that belongs to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization and wants to join the EU is now suspected of
supporting the deportation of entire ethnic groups as a legitimate means of
resolving conflicts. In the past, Prague has always been defensive about
its past, preferring to explain the "demographic transfer" of 1945 in terms
of cause and effect: First came the atrocities committed by the Nazi
occupiers and then -- as a "logical" consequence of these and allegedly
with the blessing of the Potsdam Conference -- the expulsion of the ethnic
Germans.

 Mr. Zeman is to retire from politics after the June elections. Yet it
would  be wrong to assume that his departure will put right all that is
wrong with  German-Czech relations. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kavan
recently refused  to describe the decrees behind the expropriations and
expulsions as unjust.  But if collective disenfranchisement, expropriation
and deportation are not  unjust at all times and irrespective of the
circumstances, then what is  there to stop them being declared "legal and
legitimate" in certain cases  -- whether in Israel or elsewhere?

Negotiations on the Czech Republic's admission to the EU have not yet
touched on those decrees, which affect the laws of the EU "only" to the
extent that Czech restitution legislation, which is in turn based on them,
discriminates against the country's German minority. Yet the sanctioning of
deportation as a means of resolving conflicts by the prime minister of a
candidate for admission to the EU must surely give cause to reconsider.
After all, it contradicts the ethical foundations upon which the European
Union was established.

The EU therefore ought to call on the Czech  leadership to adopt an
unequivocal stance on this issue. But Brussels and  Berlin are so anxious
to avoid any further complications that they do not  want to know what
exactly Mr. Zeman said and meant.

[END]

( Source:  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 20, 2002 )

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

" Given the Political Zionists have controlled the media for a couple of
hundred years, why would we believe that everything we've heard/read about
Adolph Hitler in the Zionist-controlled media was true?"

( Jackie  -- Sent to the Zundelsite )