One of my favorite cyber activists, the Ukrainian Orest Slepokura, landed a sharp letter to the Editor in the Edmonton Sun. It takes on the mass murderer, Baruch Goldstein, who went on a rampage in an orgy of slaughter of praying Palestinians.
Were there apologies - always the smug prerequisite for restitution for a crime? Fat chance?
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Note: Commentary inserted in parentheses at the end is an editorial remark, a routine feature in most of the tabloid- style Sun-chain of newspapers.
I must red-flag my indebtedness here to Michael Hoffman for his research and scholarship in helping me to assemble the facts mashalled in the news item copied below. I expect there will be some fallout from this 'Letter of the Day'.
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Letter of the Day | Orest Slepokura | The Edmonton Sun | May 13, 2001
RE: "NEW Palestinian texts still deny Israel's existence," Mindelle Jacobs, May 8.
Whatever bellicose signals Jacobs catalogues Palestinians sending the Israelis, living as they have been for decades now under brutal Israeli military occupation, are easily matched by signals from the Israeli side. A case in point:
On Purim, Feb. 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born doctor and Israeli Army officer, slaughtered 29 Palestinian worshippers as they knelt in prayer in a mosque in Hebron. Goldstein was subsequently disarmed and killed by Muslim survivors of his massacre. Days later, Israeli troops, commanded by one Ehud Barak, shot dead 20 more Palestinians and injured another 200 who were protesting the massacre.
To add insult to injury, the Israeli government authorized the closing of some of Hebron's busiest city thoroughfares in honour of Goldstein's funeral cortege, and the army provided a guard of honour for Goldstein's tomb.
Israeli journalist Teddy Preuss noted after, that Goldstein's "recorded statements and those of his comrades, however, prove that they were willing
to exterminate at least two million Palestinians at an opportune moment. As their statements abundantly testify, they see the Arabs as nothing more than "disease-spreading rats, lice or other loathsome creatures."
At his funeral, the Jewish supremacist and mass murderer was eulogized by a host of rabbis, including Dov Lior, who has called for using Arab prisoners in medical experiments. These rabbis both lauded Goldstein and vociferously cheered his massacre, then advocated more slaughters of Palestinians. A poll taken a week after the massacre later determined that "at least half of all Israeli Jews would approve of the (Goldstein) massacre, provided that it was not referred to as a massacre."
Israeli reporter, Gabby Baron, reported that Jewish schoolchildren had been "enthused" about the Goldstein slaughter. In 1995, a book co-written by Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, Rabbi Ido Elba and other scholars, entitled Baruch Hagever ("Baruch the Blessed"), was meant to "celebrate" Goldstein and the atrocity he committed. In his contributing essay, Rabbi Elba observed: "it is a mitzvah (divine good deed) to kill every gentile from the nation that is fighting the Jew, even women and children."
Orest Slepokura
(Neither side has a particularly admirable record.)
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Thought for the Day:
"The old canard that the Israelis and Palestinians must settle their differences themselves is just an Israeli- dictated ploy to make sure nobody interferes with their treatment of the Palestinians. It's the same as if the police told a child rape victim, "Go work it out with your rapist."
(American columnist Charley Reese)
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