Israeli papers are calling it a 'lynching'. Another word might be justice. Those who slaughter civilians aren't entitled to the benefits of Geneva Convention protection - be they al-Nusra or ISIS.
UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) troops move through Israel’s Golan Heights before crossing into Syria, August 31.. (photo credit:REUTERS/BAZ RATNER)
Despite the continuing pretence that Israel is only providing humanitarian
assistance to Syrians, regardless of political affiliation, the truth is now
widely known. Israel has a de facto agreement with the Al Qaeda Al
Nusra Front along the Syrian border.
Military Ambulance
This was highlighted a few days ago in a rather spectacular fashion when
Syrian Druze from the village of Majdal Shams, who live in the Occupied Golan
Heights, attacked an Israeli ambulance conveying 2 Al Nusra fighters to
hospital, killing one and severely injuring another. The reason for this was a recent massacre in
North-West Syria near Idlib.
Meeting between al-Nusra and Israeli army earlier this year
Twenty-thousand Druze live in the Golan Heights as well as 110,000 in Israel. Earlier in the year a Druze Sedki al-Maket,
who photographed a meeting between Al Nusra and the Israeli security services,
was arrested by Israel, which promptly instituted a gag order preventing news about
it being published. http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/israel-supports-isis-and-al-qaeda-in.html
The feeble Israeli explanation beggars belief. Does Israel provide ‘humanitarian medical
assistance’ to fighters from Hamas or Hezbollah? Does it return them to Gaza and Lebanon
afterwards? No, what it does do is hold
up pregnant Palestinian women at checkpoints until they or their child dies. Tony Greenstein
Total of 12 people detained for suspected involvement in ambulance attack that left one Syrian dead and another hurt
Israeli police said Thursday they arrested three more suspects in attacks by
members of the Druze minority on military ambulances transporting wounded
Syrians to the hospital.
In one of two incidents Monday, one Syrian was beaten
to death and a second was hurt in an unprecedented outbreak of violence by
Druze on the Golan Heights that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a
“lynching.”
Two soldiers were also injured in the incident while trying to protect the
wounded Syrians. Both soldiers were also members of the Druze community,
according to a report in Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth Thursday.
Syria’s Druze are traditional allies of President
Bashar aAssad, and have become caught up in the fighting.
“During the night, police and border guards in the
north arrested three more suspects from the Druze community suspected of
involvement in the events,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said in a statement.
She said a gag order had been imposed on all other
details of the investigation.
Police said they carried out a “wave of arrests”
Wednesday, with media saying nine people had been detained.
Monday’s deadly incident took place hours after Druze
in the neighboring Galilee region of Israel blocked and stoned a military
ambulance they suspected was taking Syrian rebels to the hospital.
Both incidents demonstrate the anger felt by Druze
towards the rebels and towards the Israelis, whom they suspect of providing
medical help to the fighters.
Israel does not rule out the possibility that some of
those given medical care are rebels.
Syria has said the two men in the ambulance were
members of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front. Israel says they were civilians.
The Druze are a secretive offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Officials say there are 110,000 of them in northern Israel and another 20,000
on the Golan Heights.
NEW
YORK – The Syrian ambassador to the UN has long complained of a Zionist
conspiracy working with the Syrian rebels to overthrow President Bashar Assad.
Now, a report from the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) reveals that
Israel has been working closely with Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights and
have kept close contact over the past 18 months. The report was submitted to
the UN Security Council at the beginning of the month.
The documents show that Israel has been doing more than simply treating wounded
Syrian civilians in hospitals. This and a few past reports have described
transfer of unspecified supplies from Israel to the Syrian rebels, and
sightings of IDF soldiers meeting with the Syrian opposition east of the green
zone, as well as incidents when Israeli soldiers opened up the fence to allow
Syrians through who did not appear to be injured.
At one point, a small tent city was erected around 300 meters away from the
Israeli sector for about 70 families of Syrian deserters, the report said.
The Syrian army then sent a letter of complaint to UNDOF, warning them to
evacuate the camp or it would be considered a target, and claiming that
terrorists were using the camp to cross into Israel.
Israel’s health ministry says around 1,000 Syrians have received treatment in
Golan hospitals, but maintains that only civilians are treated. The UNDOF
report, on the other hand, says they have seen Israelis treating civilians as
well as insurgents, including members of al-Qaida and Islamic State.
The report said UNDOF “observed at least 10 wounded persons being transferred
by armed members of the opposition from the Bravo side across the cease-fire
line.”
UNDOF has monitored the Golan Heights buffer zone between Israel and Syria
since 1974. Six countries contributed to the 1,200-strong brigade.
UNDOF peacekeepers have been the target of kidnappings and attacks carried out
by al-Qaida on the Syrian side since September, causing hundreds of troops to
withdraw to across Israeli border.
In peoples’ understandable determination to
uncover the truth of the Nakba and what happened in 1947-8, the massacres of
the 1967 War have barely been covered.
Still from the film Censored Voices shows a former Israeli solider listening back to an interview, censored by the military after the 1967 war.
Palestinian refugees from the 1948 War
A new Israeli film from Mor Loushi delves into
some of the detail. The execution and
mass graves of Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai have been known about for some
time and the deliberate sinking by Israel of the USS Liberty, an American
spy-ship has also been well documented, as has the joint US/Israeli cover-up.
The iconic photo that the Zionists used to whitewash the invasion - 3 soldiers at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall
Israeli Generals Yitzhak Rabin, Moshe Dayan and Uzi Narkis in Jerusalem
The 1967 war occurred because the bluster of
Nasser allowed Israel a golden opportunity.
Having blocked Israeli ships from the Gulf of Aquaba Nasser foolishly
ordered the UN troops in the Sinai to withdraw.
Israel of course took full advantage of this in order to conquer the
Sinai, Golan and West Bank.
“In the operation we had to cleanse the inhabitants. This uprooting of a
villager, rooted in his village and turning him into a refugee, by simply
expelling him, and not one, two or three of them but a real eviction. And when
you see a whole village is led like lambs to the slaughter without any
resistance you understand what is the Holocaust.” — An Israeli
soldier’s testimony in the documentary Censored Voices,
directed by Mor Loushi (2015)
The USS Liberty, a spy ship, was attacked and nearly sunk by Israel because they didn't want the US knowing what their plans were. US President Johnson covered it up. It was only when the US sent planes to defend it that Israel called off the attack
In the wake of the June
1967 war, the Israeli author Amos Oz,
then a reserve soldier in the Israeli army, together with a friend collated
interviews with Israeli soldiers who participated in the war and asked them
about the emotions the fighting triggered in them. The interviews were published
as a book titled Conversations with Soldiers, more popularly referred
at the time by my generation as the ”shooting and crying” book.
General Ariel Sharon at the battle of Abu-Ageila
The military censor (a function that still exists today, held recently by
the present minister of culture, Miri Regev),
erased 70 percent of the evidence since he claimed it would have harmed
Israel’s international image.
An over confident Nasser laughing with Airforce pilots
This month an industrious Israeli filmmaker, Mor Loushi, is showing her new
documentary based on most of this erased material. The atrocities reported by
the soldiers include forced expulsions, like the one quoted above, graphic
descriptions of summary executions of prisoners of war and hints of massacres
of innocent villagers.
Evil repertoire
This 48th commemoration of the 1967 war coincided with the 67th
commemoration of the Nakba,
the ethnic cleansing of Palestine before and after Israel’s founding in 1948.
There is more than a symbolic connection here. The evil repertoire confessed by
the soldiers in the new film reminds us of the atrocities perpetrated 67 years
ago on a much larger, though similarly horrific, scale.
The 1948 atrocities were ignored by the international community and for
a long time the entire Nakba was denied while the Holocaust memory seemed to
provide carte blanche to Israel to continue the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine.
No wonder then, when in 1967 Israel’s territorial appetite was satisfied
with the occupation of the whole of historic Palestine, as well as large
territories from Egypt and Syria, it was achieved with the help of similar
inhumane ethnic cleansing operations of expulsions and massacres.
There was one difference between the two chapters of atrocity committed in
the two wars. In 1967, Israel was less secure about possible global, and even
American, complacency in the face of its cruel methodologies on the ground
and therefore attempted to hide them from prying eyes. The wall of secrecy
Israel built, however, nearly cracked, when the US navy ship USS
Liberty eavesdropped on the communications between the troops in the
Gaza Strip on 8 June 1967, revealing probably both the summary execution of
Egyptian prisoners of war and Palestinian civilians. The ship was destroyed on
the same day from the air by the Israeli air force.
Later on, the atrocities were substantiated by eyewitnesses and came to the
fore when mass graves were exposed in 1995 in the al-Arish area in Sinai,
straining Egypt’s relations with Israel, as CNN reported at the
time.
The network interviewed, for the first time, relatives and survivors of
these war crimes who recalled the massacre of hundreds. The link between the
unprovoked assault on the USS Liberty and the wish to hide the
massacres and executions was thoroughly
investigated by James Bamford in his 2001 book Body of Secrets.
Thus, the newly released tapes corroborate atrocities already known and told
by those who were their victims (in this case, including 34 American navy
personnel). This was very much in the same way as Israeli documents
declassified in the 1980s corroborated the Palestinian oral history and
testimonies of the Nakba.
Purifying the perpetrators
In both cases, it took a while for the victims’ version to be heard after
years of being brushed aside by Western academia and the media as a figment of
an oriental imagination.
The Israeli eyewitnesses in the new film do not mention names of places or
dates — neither do we know who the Palestinian or Egyptian victims were.
De-naming and dehumanization are two sides of the same coin and thus the new
harrowing testimonies are cautiously presented as an act purifying the
perpetrators rather than honoring the victims.
It is another case of “shooting and crying”: namely the problem is not that
a girl lost her eye, a man’s house was demolished or an unarmed prisoner of war
was executed. The aim is to cleanse the tormented soul of the victimizer and
there is nothing like a good confession to make it all go away.
Names and dates, and even more so real human beings, require not only
acknowledgement but also accountability. Saying sorry is not always enough,
especially when the lesson is not learned. And, thus, year after year since
1967, including in recent weeks, Palestinians, with faces and names, are still
expelled, imprisoned without trial and killed.
Permanent reality
This new film gives the impression that these crimes were the inevitable
outcome of the June 1967 war. But in fact the crimes committed after the war
were much worse in every aspect. The atrocities were not the outcome of the
war, they were part of the means used by Israel to solve the predicament the
new territorial achievement produced for the Jewish State: it incorporated in
1967 almost the same number of Palestinians it had expelled in 1948.
After the war, other means were added in the search for reconciling this
predicament. The aim was still the same: to have as much of Palestine as
possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible. The new strategy, after
the war, was based on the logic that if you cannot uproot people you root them
deeply in their areas of living without any outlet or easy access to the world
around them.
The Palestinians all over Palestine were, since 1967, incarcerated in small
enclaves surrounded by Jewish colonies, military bases and no-go areas that
bisect their geography. In the occupied territories, Israel created a
matrix of control many African National Congress leaders
regard as far worse than the worst of apartheid South Africa. The Israelis
marketed this method to the world as a temporary and necessary means for
maintaining their rule in the “disputed” territories. The “temporary” means
became a way of life and transformed into a permanent reality on the ground,
for which Israel sought international legitimacy through the 1993 Oslo accords – and
nearly got it.
This month as we commemorate the 48th year of the 1967, war we should
remind ourselves once more that this was a chapter in a history of
dispossession, ethnic cleansing and occasionally genocide of the Palestinians.
The “peace process” that began more than two decades ago was based on the
assumption that the “conflict” began in 1967 and will end with Israeli
withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The “conflict” had actually begun in 1948, if not before, and the worst
part of it was not the 1967 military occupation of those parts of
Palestine that Israel had failed to take over in 1948, but rather that the
international immunity for these crimes still continues today.
One can only hope that those with the power to effect change in the
world will understand, as did the soldier quoted in the opening of this piece,
that there is more than one holocaust and that everyone, regardless of their
religion or nationality, can be either its victim or its perpetrator. The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and
director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of
Exeter.
Six Day War atrocities: Veteran's
account of captives in Egyptian uniforms being shot in the desert adds fuel to
scandal; 'A prisoner was given a shovel and started to dig. Then he was fired
at'
Gabriel Brun, a Jerusalem journalist who served as a signals sergeant- major
in the 1967 Six-Day War, described yesterday how he saw fellow Israeli soldiers
shoot dead five prisoners of war in Egyptian uniforms.
His story added fuel to an escalating scandal sparked by a retired
brigadier-general, who confessed to executing 49 Egyptian prisoners during the
1956 Suez war. Egypt, with whom Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979, has
demanded a full account. The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was
chief of staff during the 1967 war, has ordered an investigation.
"What I saw happened on the morning of 7 June, the third day of the war,"
Mr Brun, who was then 24, told the Independent.
"I was at El Arish
airfield in the Sinai desert, attached to the headquarters of an armoured
division. I saw 120 to 150 Egyptian soldiers sitting with their hands tied
behind their backs in a makeshift hangar made of sandbags. About 20 yards away
I saw a trestle table with two men sitting behind it, their faces masked with
khaki handkerchiefs. Individual prisoners were pushed out of the group, brought
before this table and apparently interrogated. Some were sent back. "I was about 30 or 40 yards away, so I couldn't hear what was said. I
saw one man questioned, then marched about 200 yards into the desert by two
military policemen. "He was given a shovel and started to dig. After about 15 minutes, I saw
the shovel thrown out. Then each of the two soldiers fired a round into the
hole. Another guy was brought and shot, falling into the same hole. A third
prisoner was brought to cover up the grave, then was marched back. "I saw five prisoners killed in this way. Earlier I had heard 10
similar shots. I interpreted those to mean that another five were
executed."
Mr Brun said an officer explained to him afterwards that the victims were
Palestinian "terrorists", who were wanted for murdering Israelis and
had tried to get away by merging with the fleeing Egyptians. The interrogators
were officers in army intelligence.
Arye Biro, 69, the retired brigadier who admitted killing 49 Egyptian PoWs
in the 1956 war, said on Wednesday he was not proud of what he had done, but
did not feel like a war criminal. "I have ached over what I did," he
said, "but under the same circumstances I think I would do it again."
Mr Biro commanded a paratroop company which dropped in the Mitla Pass, one
of the two main routes from central Sinai to the Suez Canal.
"We were hundreds of kilometres behind enemy lines," he said.
"Egyptian planes were flying over us unhindered. Egyptian troops were
pouring into the area, and the prisoners were shouting, 'Just you wait, the
Egyptian army will slaughter you'."
The paratroops were ordered to head south. According to Mr Biro, they had no
transport for the prisoners and feared they would reveal the Israelis'
position. So he and a lieutenant ordered the prisoners to lie face down, then
shot them.
"They didn't cry out," he said dispassionately. "It was all
over in a couple of minutes."
The paratroops' brigade commander was General Ariel Sharon, now an
opposition Likud MP. He was not in the Mitla Pass at the time of the
executions. But the battalion commander, Rafael Eitan, was. Mr Eitan, who rose
to chief of staff, is now a hard-right candidate for prime minister. Asked if
Mr Eitan ordered the killings, Mr Biro replied: "Ask him."
According to Meir Pa'il, a military historian and retired colonel, Moshe Dayan,
who was chief of staff in 1956 and defence minister in 1967, reprimanded Mr
Eitan for the killings during a meeting with battalion commanders.
Michael Bar-Zohar, an author and former Labour MP who handled Dayan's public
relations after the 1967 war, said: "In every one of our wars, Israeli
soldiers have killed PoWs. The high command did not want it, but it was
tolerated up to a point. I know of only one case - in the 1982 Lebanon War -
where an officer was court-martialled for killing a prisoner.
But
instead of addressing it he's made a furious attack on Labour, two of whose MPs
rounded on him in the Commons yesterday.
He
accused the opposition of 'going out every day scaring and frightening people'
and 'deliberately misrepresenting' the government's fit-for-work schemes.
And
he attacked Labour because the party introduced the work capability assessment
in 2007, before the Coalition expanded it.
Jacqueline Harris, from Kingswood, Bristol. Her family say she took her own life after being refused benefits
MP
Marie Rimmer asked him: "May I ask again why the Government are refusing
to publish - even though the Information Commissioner has instructed them to do
so - the up-to-date statistics relating to the number of people who have died,
having been found fit for work at their face-to-face assessment?"
The petition was started by ex-welfare advisor Maggie Zolobajluk, 63
Mr
Duncan Smith replied: "I find it absurd that Opposition Members
deliberately try to misrepresent what happens under such schemes.
"I
remind the honourable lady it was her Government who introduced the employment
support allowance and the work capability assessment, and at no stage did they
say that that led to people committing suicide.
Mark Wood, 44, with complex mental health issues starved to death after being sanctioned
"People
in that situation are often in a very delicate and difficult position, and I
find it disgraceful that she is going round making such allegations."
Under pressure:
200,000 people have joined a petition against Iain Duncan Smith
That
made MP Debbie Abrahams thunder: "Does the Secretary of State think that
he and his Department are above the law?
"Why
does he refuse to publish the details of the number of people who have died
within six weeks of their claims for incapacity benefit and employment and
support allowance, including those who have been found fit for work?"
But
Mr Duncan Smith said: "I find it unbelievable that she, the honourable
lady and others have spent all their time trying to make allegations about
people going about their work.
"It
is a crying shame that Labour members want to go out every day scaring and
frightening people. It is no wonder they lost the election."
He
also claimed his department 'doesn't collate the numbers' at all - appearing to
fly in the face of his own officials' advice.
Maggie Zolobajluk
Movement: The
petition was started by ex-welfare advisor Maggie Zolobajluk, 63
His
civil servants have openly admitted they collect the data, have published it
before, and are planning to publish more in the future. Read
the full ruling here.
The
Coalition's welfare changes saw people told to find work despite having chronic
illnesses - some of whom died before getting their benefits back.
Petition
founder Ms Zolobajluk said: "I could see what was happening in the
community. It was so predictable. These cuts came in and left people feeling
helpless."
The
request to release the figures was made under the Freedom of Information Act by
campaigner Mike Sivier.
He
asked how many people who died between November 2011 and May 2014 had been
found 'fit for work', or told they could move towards getting work.
The sister of a mentally ill man who starved to death in David Cameron's
constituency after his benefits were wrongly cut has accused the Government of
"killing the very vulnerable", as official figures emerged suggesting
dozens of people could have died in similar circumstances.
Freedom of Information requests by the Disability News Service revealed that
the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has investigated decisions made
about welfare payments following the deaths of 60 people since 2012 – the first
time the DWP has tacitly admitted there could be a link.
However, campaigners believe the number of deaths could be far higher,
claiming the changes to benefit rules have amounted to "passive
euthanasia".
A public meeting in Witney in Oxfordshire on Thursday will hear from the
sisters of two men who died after their benefits were cut, Mark Wood, 44 and
David Clapson, 59. Mr Wood, who had a number of mental health problems, was
found starved to death last year after his benefits were reduced to £40 a week
because he was deemed fit for work. A government review later found that this
decision had been a mistake.
The Prime Minister has said his death was "tragic" and pledged to
"help find the answers to make sure that lessons are learnt".
However, Mr Wood's sister Cathie Wood, 49, said she felt that members of the
Government believed "these people aren't worth having around".
"They must, in their secret hearts, think that," she said.
"It worked; he died. They say they want to protect the very vulnerable,
and they are killing the very vulnerable. I think it is a really huge, hidden
scandal and there are going to be more people who die this winter."
Mr Wood, who had been "desperately trying to be independent", was
reclusive, and only told his family that his benefits had been cut shortly
before he died. The coroner said his death was probably partly caused by his
being "markedly underweight and malnourished".
A DWP report into his case,due out in June, has been delayed. Officials now
say it will not be ready until next year. Ms Wood said she suspected it would
not be revealed until after the general election.
Mr Clapson, a former soldier and a Type-1 diabetic, died in July after his
benefits were cut. He had no food in his stomach, £3.44 in the bank and no
money on his electricity card, leaving him unable to operate his fridge where
he kept his insulin. MPs are to look into his death after a petition calling
for an inquiry gathered more than 210,000 names.
"I feel [benefit] sanctions are cruel and harsh on the weak and
vulnerable, which my brother had become through no fault of his own," his
sister Gill Thompson said. "My brother didn't create [a fuss], he just
walked away … he wasn't one for a scene. My brother has gone, there is nothing
can be done to bring him back. All I want now is lessons to be learnt and no
one else to die, and his passing not to be without meaning."
In 2013, some 871,000 people were sanctioned by the DWP, losing some or all
of their benefits for weeks or months. John Pring, of the Disability News
Service, said the admission the DWP had looked into 60 cases since 2012 was
significant. "It does seem to be the first kind of solid evidence that the
DWP do seem to accept there's some link between mistakes they make in their
procedures and the deaths of people," he said.
Mr Pring suspected there were "a lot more" cases, saying he knew
of more than 60 from inquest reports alone. The true number, he said, could be
anything from about that to several thousand.
John McArdle, from campaign group Black Triangle, has compiled a list of 70
people who died after their benefits were cut, including many mentally ill and
disabled people. He said this was likely to be "the tip of the
iceberg". "These people are being cut loose and it's a policy that
amounts to passive euthanasia. These are very vulnerable people who require our
support, care and love," he said.
Thursday's meeting was organised by the Green Party, of which Mr Wood was a
member. Stuart Macdonald, prospective Green parliamentary candidate in Witney,
said: "Mark Wood was told that he didn't deserve to have any more money.
He felt [£40 a week] was what he deserved … and it was his fault if he couldn't
manage. He had more money from his sister but he gave that away to charity
because he didn't feel he deserved it."
A DWP spokeswoman said Mr Clapson had not appealed against the removal of
his benefits or sought hardship payments. Of Mr Wood's case, she said:
"The coroner attributed Mr Wood's eating disorder and food phobia as the
likely cause of his death." She said the DWP spent £94bn a year on
working-age benefits "to ensure that a safety net is in place to support
some of the most vulnerable people in society".
White Supremacy and anti-Semitism Combine to
Make a Mass Murderer
The cold eyes of a racist murderer
"The Scottsboro Boys" meet with their attorney Samuel Leibowitz
This is a report from the Deep South Daily. It shows how the local white political
establishment is still in bed with out and out racists, who now go by the title
of Council of Conservative Citizens.
Dylann Roof has issued a deeply racist and anti-Semitic manifesto:
Members of the South Carolina Council of Conservative Citizens protesting in 1999. Kim Truett/AP
But
Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even
worse there. From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues
facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.
…
The
other reason is the Jewish agitation of the black race.
…
Jews
Unlike many White
naitonalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European
jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but
their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity,
then they wouldnt cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White,
and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like
niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The
other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for
24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able
to see plainly what is going on.
I dont pretend to understand
why jews do what they do. They are enigma.
…
How about we protect the White race and stop
fighting for the jews.
John Hill, with the South Carolina Council of Conservative Citizens, speaks during a news conference
Lovely stuff.
Historically the white supremacists were also anti-Semitic and that
persisted up to and including the time of Joe McCarthy.
Jews were prominent in support of Black civil
rights. In the seminal case of the
Scottsborough Boys when 9 Black teenagers were charged with raping two
white women, it as the Communist Party
which sent Samuel
Leibowitz, a Jewish attorney, down
to Alabama to defend them.
Dylann Roof, the Charleston gunman whose racist ideology was influenced by the Council of Conservative Citizens
It was only gradually, as the same racists
became Zionists, that they played down their anti-Semitism in support of Israel
– because, like our own home-grown racists, they came to understand that there
was no more racist state than Israel when it came to dealing with Arabs and
Blacks (there is a particular hatred in Israel for Black asylum seekers, who
have been incarcerated in a desert prison camp, and for the Falashas, the Black
Ethiopian Jews).
"The Scottsboro Boys"
But even today, prominent Southern racists like
the President of Christians United for Israel John Hagee are out and out anti-Semites. Hagee is notorious for having said that god
sent Hitler to drive the Jews to Israel and that Hitler was nothing more than god’s hunter.
"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."
Mississippi
Republican leaders attend a rally in Blackhawk, Mississippi in July 2003. The
rally was put on by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist
organization. The event was attended by over 500 people, including a former GOP
National Chairman. From left-to-right: MS GOP campaign strategist Chip
Reynolds, former state senator Robert Huggins, Ray Martin, then-Republican
gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour, John Thompson, and CCC Senior
Co-ordinator Bill Lord.
Mississippi Republican leaders attend a rally in Blackhawk, Mississippi in July 2003. The rally was put on by the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist organization. The event was attended by over 500 people, including a former GOP National Chairman. From left-to-right: MS GOP campaign strategist Chip Reynolds, former state senator Robert Huggins, Ray Martin, then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Haley Barbour, John Thompson, and CCC Senior Co-ordinator Bill Lord.
A surprising
number Mississippi politicians have ties to the white supremacist
organization that radicalized Dylann Roof, the gunman who killed nine black
churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday night. A list of
state leaders with ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC)
includes U.S. Senator Roger Wicker and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.
“Mississippi
is toting a load of fat blacks on welfare,” the Council’s website once read.
“Though disgust is a natural reaction when some blubbery welfare queens buys
her pork chops and cream pies with food stamps, remember that the government is
subsidizing this gluttony.”
“If
the South seizes upon queer marriage and beheads that serpent, then a new era
for States Rights will commence,” the Council wrote. “By the Grace of God,
queer marriage may be the petard upon which Brown v. Topeka (the 1954 U.S.
Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools), and all other
pernicious civil rights regulations, will be blasted down the memory hole.”
Constant
headlines from CCC websites led gunman Dylann Roof to commit the Charleston
church massacre, he revealed in a manifesto:
“[The
Trayvon Martin case] prompted me to type in the words “black on White
crime” into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first
website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages
upon pages of these brutal black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this
moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing
up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got
ignored?”
So
who exactly are the Mississippi politicians who have ties to the white
supremacist organization? The list of politicians in Mississippi who have
participated in CCC events, compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2004, includes 23
Mississippi current and former Mississippi politicians. Of the 23 listed, 15
still hold elected office in Mississippi today.
Let’s
start with the former governor.
During
his first gubernatorial run in 2003, Haley Barbour spoke at the
Blackhawk Rally in Blackhawk, Mississippi. The rally, held by Mississippi CCC
Chairman Bill Lord, was to raise money to provide busing for white-only
academies —like the Carroll
Academy. The Southern Poverty Law Center goes into more detail on these
fundraisers:
The
CCC is the direct descendant of the segregationist White Citizens Councils of
the 1950s and 1960s, having been largely built on the earlier councils’ mailing
lists. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of
Education, ordering desegregation of the nation’s public schools, sparked
the growth of the White Citizens Councils, which declared, “We will not be
integrated. We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of sixty
centuries.” The councils’ first order of business after the court decision was
to create private, all-white schools that came to be known as segregation, or
seg, academies. By 1975, at least a half million white students had withdrawn
from public schools to avoid mandatory desegregation.
The
Carroll and Calhoun academies, which both were founded in 1968 and offer
classes from kindergarten through high school, are revered by the CCC. The
CCC’s longtime national field coordinator, Bill Lord, who was president of
Carroll Academy for 14 years in the 1980s and 1990s, called them “the miracle
of the century.” In 2004, Lord wrote in the Citizens Informer that
the academies create “an atmosphere free of social experiments” for those who
want to “associate with persons of like persuasion,” presumably meaning other
whites. According to his biographical profile, Lord helped organize both
Carroll and Calhoun academies, as well as six others in Arkansas and Tennessee.
The
CCC works hard to support the schools, holding barbecue fundraisers that bring
in substantial donations. In 1999, for instance, the CCC reported that it had
raised over $100,000 for Calhoun Academy. The group also prominently features
activities taking place at the academies in its publications. The CCC’s
April-June 2010 Citizens Informer, for example, ran a photo of the
Carroll Academy Lady Rebels basketball team along with congratulations for
having won a championship.
In
February 2010, Carroll Academy hosted a CCC meeting that featured Jeppi
Barbour, brother of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, describing a petition drive
for a ballot proposal the would require voters to show ID before voting.
Kay
Cobb, then a Mississippi Supreme Court presiding justice, also attended that
rally.
In
2012, while Gov. Barbour was considering a run for the White House, he
effectively derailed his ambitions when he made national headlines for praising the original White Citizen’s Council.
Another
national figure, Senator Roger Wicker, was a Congressman when he spoke at a
Council event in Byhalia, Mississippi in 2000. Present at that rally was CCC
CEO Gordon Baum and President Tom Dover. Wicker refused to comment.
But
most of the state leaders contacted by the SPLC about their associations with
the CCC who did comment expressed bewilderment.
Rep.
Gary Chism, who spoke at multiple CCC meetings from 2001-2003, said that he had
never read the group’s materials; he thought the Council’s purpose was
simply to “preserve some of the symbols” of the Old South.
Rep.
Bill Denny was even more confused. He thought it was a “business group.”
Then Rep.
Joey Fillingane, now a state senator, who attended a “Save Our Heritage Rally”
in 2000, said at the time that he was not aware that the event was sponsored by
the CCC. He was invited by a local preacher to what seemed to be “a revival
meeting of sorts,” he said.
Rep.
John Moore told the SPLC that they should investigate the NAACP instead, adding
that he did not see the CCC as a “KKK-style organization.”
The
other leaders contacted refused comment, including former Rep. Jack Gadd,
who was the only Mississippi Democrat identified by the SPLC as a member of the
Council.
Dylann
Roof, the Charleston gunman whose racist ideology was influenced by the Council
of Conservative Citizens.
These leaders
shouldn’t have been so confused by the goals of the CCC. After all, Republicans
had been making negative headlines for years for their associations with the
group. A report in the Miami Herald in 1999 shocked political
observers when it was revealed that 17 Mississippi lawmakers had attended
Council events between 1997 and 1998.
The
attempt to deny knowledge of the CCC’s racist leanings has been tried before.
After then-U.S. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi gave a speech to the Council’s
national board, welcomed its leaders to Washington, and posed for photos with
them, he claimed that he didn’t know what the Council was about.
After
the SPLC published the report in 2004, the Council ceased to publish the names
of its speakers and attendees to protect the identities of the politicians it
associates with. But it has continued to tease events with state leaders,
including an unnamed Mississippi Supreme Court Justice.
Today,
a cached version for the official website of the Council shows a story at the
top entitled, “CofCC deeply saddened by Charleston spree killing.” In that
posting, the Council notes that notes that 25% of Roof’s Facebook
friends were black and writes that “it is unclear what caused Roof to go
on the shooting spree.”
Others
recent stories on the CCC website include, “White females attacked
with concrete block in racial hate crime,” “15 more black on white murders,”
“Two black men execute white man while yelling racial slurs in residential
Vancouver neighborhood,” “Another white baby murdered by black gangsters,” and
“The Truth About Interracial Rape.”
