A Slave Speaks at Durban

These are the words of Simon Deng, once a Sudanese slave. He is addressing the Durban Conference in NY.


I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today's distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel.

The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler couldn't have been made happier!

   The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

   But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN's anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

   Please hear me out.

   By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

   For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- have been the victims
of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

   In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005.  Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

   The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.

   Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan's conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a "tribal conflict."

It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized.

They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.

   In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is "Israeli crimes" and Palestinian suffering.

My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering.

What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

   Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s.

Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty.

Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves.

We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

   I am a living proof of this crime against humanity!

   I don't like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family's left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word 'no'.
All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

   The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

   But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN's actions.

   My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.

   As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

   I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees' only hope was to reach Israel's side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

   Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?

   In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is "heaven."

   Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.

   So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

   Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We -- a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

   In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream.
In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked.

How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: "This is our people."  I was never able to find an answer to my question.

   On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

   In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel's legitimacy.

   As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan Embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

   I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply continuing to tell the truth! Our truth!

   My Jewish friends taught me something that I now want to say with you.

   AM YISROEL CHAI !

   The people of Israel lives!

   Thank you

An Immoral Union

UK Prime Minister David Cameron wants to rid our streets of drunken teenagers by raising the price of cheap alcoholic drinks to a mandatory level.

However, this appears to break EU laws.

This is the same EU that prevents Britain from expelling convicted Islamic jihadists like Abu Qatada.

Sometimes I think the EU was dreamed up by a satanist cult.

We can openly see that its monetary system is bankrupt.

What lies beneath the surface is far uglier and will ultimately destroy the cultural identity and national pride of its member states.

Sticks in seconds

How powerful is Jew-hatred that it can bind even the most liberal progressives to an antithetical death-cult of terrorism and misogyny.

Tweet by @ZalmiU  March 2012

Hot Mike should Chill Israel

Obama is caught unawares selling out the US missile defense deal to Putin's stooge. "This is my last election ... after my election I have more flexibility" . 
At least that's what GOP candidate New Gingrich believes they were speaking about.

This should be chilling viewing and listening for Israeli observers facing a possible Obama second term with 'more flexibility' for turning his 1967 border screws on the ally whose leader he least likes to deal with; Bibi Netanyahu. We of course know this from another 'hot mike' moment Obama had with Sarkozy.

See the body language in this video. It's classic Obama ... one face for the sleazy dealings with the axis-of-evil, and then straightening himself up for the public and the platitudes he serves them with such telepromptuous finesse.

Weighing-in for Duty

Israel's ambassador Daniel Taub told how his son filled his pockets with coins to qualify for an IDF combat unit.

He was speaking at a fundraiser for the Orot Yehuda High School in Gush Etzion, where three of his own sons had been students.

The phenomenon of today's IDF is that virtually half the officer corps are now observant Jews wearing kippas and the vast majority of youngsters enlisting for  combat units come from the religious Zionist communities in Judea, Samaria and Gush Etzion towns like Efrat where the school is located.

'My son Judah was worried he would be underweight for the combat unit he wanted to serve in, so he filled his pockets with coins' said Taub. 

Then the envoy remarked how ironic it was that his grandfather had done just the opposite to avoid being conscripted into the Polish army.

Palestine: The New Insanity Plea

No sane person shoots guns at little children. And to strap-on a camera to record the cold-blooded execution of an innocent 8-year-old schoolgirl takes mental illness to its outer limits. 

By the same token, mentally stable people would not hijack a planeload of passengers to crash aircraft into buildings filled with thousands of other innocent people. And yet we never see a plea of insanity with these killings. Instead it’s all about Palestine and avenging the children of Gaza.

One can understand such a feeble excuse for insane and inhuman behaviour coming from brainwashed excrement like Mohamed Mehra. And most people are smart enough to know that Bin Laden never cared a damn about Gaza or the Palestinians. These are simply teacher and student in the methods of peddling death to the West and an end to the freedoms we cherish.

It’s far more worrying when the Gaza equivalence is adopted by politicians in a position of power in the democratic world.  For all her backtracking and redactions the bumbling EU Foreign Minister Baroness Ashton should have known better than to string Toulouse and Gaza into the same statement, let alone the same paragraph.  

Such talk only goes to empower even more useful idiots like the Lib-Dem Baroness Jenny Tonge in legitimising suicide bombings against Jews in Israel.   (Is this perhaps a 'Baroness' thing?)

No act by Israel past or future will ever justify or equivalence the deliberate and coldly calculated murder of defenceless Jewish children, whether in Toulouse, Mumbai or Ma’alot.  

It is simply pure evil.

And it’s high time all our politicians started calling it by its real name.
.

A Dachau Story

Rabbi Yosef Wallis, director of Arachim of Israel, talks to Project Witness about his father, Judah Wallis, who was born and raised in Pavenitz, Poland:

“While he was in Dachau, a Jew who was being taken to his death suddenly flung a small bag at my father, Judah Wallis. He caught it, thinking it might contain a piece of bread. Upon opening it, however, he was disturbed to discover a pair of tefillin. Judah was very
frightened because he knew that were he to be caught carrying tefillin, he would be put to death instantly. So he hid the tefillin under his shirt and headed for his bunkhouse.

“In the morning, just before the appel [roll call], while still in his bunkhouse, he put on the tefillin. Unexpectedly, a German officer
appeared. He ordered him to remove the tefillin, noted the number on
Judah’s arm, and ordered him to go straight to the appel.

“At the appel, in front of thousands of silent Jews, the officer
called out Judah’s number and he had no choice but to step forward.
The German officer waved the tefillin in the air and said, ‘Dog! I
sentence you to death by public hanging for wearing these.’

“Judah was placed on a stool and a noose was placed around his neck.
Before he was hanged, the officer said in a mocking tone, ‘Dog, what
is your last wish?’

“’To wear my tefillin one last time,’ Judah replied.

“The officer was dumbfounded. He handed Judah the tefillin. As Judah
put them on, he recited the verse that is said while the tefillin are
being wound around the fingers: ‘Ve’eirastich li le’olam, ve’eirastich
li b’tzedek uvemishpat, ub’chessed, uv’rachamim, ve’eirastich li
b’emunah, v’yodaat es Hashem—I will betroth you to me forever and I
will betroth you to me with righteousness and with justice and with
kindness and with mercy and I will betroth you to me with fidelity,
and you shall know Hashem.’

“It is hard for us to picture this Jew with a noose around his neck,
wearing tefillin on his head and arm — but that was the scene that the
entire camp was forced to watch, as they awaited the impending hanging
of the Jew who had dared to break the rule against wearing tefillin.
Even women from the adjoining camp were lined up at the barbed wire
fence that separated them from the men’s camp, forced to watch this
horrible sight.

“As Judah turned to watch the silent crowd, he saw tears in many
people’s eyes. Even at that moment, as he was about to be hanged, he
was shocked. Jews were crying! How was it possible that they still had
tears left to shed? And for a stranger? Where were those tears coming
from? Impulsively, in Yiddish, he called out, ‘Yidden, don’t cry. With
tefillin on, I am the victor. Don’t you understand, I am the winner!’

“The German officer understood the Yiddish and was infuriated. He said
to Judah, ‘You dog, you think you are the winner? Hanging is too good
for you. You are going to get another kind of death.’

“Judah, my father, was taken from the stool and the noose was removed
from his neck. He was forced into a squatting position and two huge
rocks were placed under his arms. Then he was told that he would be
receiving 25 lashes to his head — the head on which he had dared to
position his tefillin. The officer told him that if he dropped even
one of the rocks, he would be shot immediately. In fact, because this
was such an extremely painful form of death, the officer advised him,
‘Drop the rocks now. You will never survive the 25 lashes to the head.
Nobody ever does.’

“Judah’s response was, ‘No, I won’t give you the pleasure.’

“At the 25th lash, Judah lost consciousness and was left for dead. He
was about to be dragged to a pile of corpses , after which he would
have been burned in a ditch, when another Jew saw him, shoved him to
the side, and covered his head with a rag, so people didn’t realize he
was alive. Eventually, after he recovered consciousness fully, he
crawled to the nearest bunkhouse that was on raised piles, and hid
under it until he was strong enough to come out under his own power.
Two months later he was liberated.

“During the hanging and beating episode, a 17-year-old girl had been
watching the events from the women’s side of the fence. After
liberation, she made her way to the men’s camp and found Judah. She
walked over to him and said, ‘I’ve lost everyone. I don’t want to be
alone any more. I saw what you did that day when the officer wanted to
hang you. Will you marry me?’”

The rest is history. Rabbi Yosef Wallis’ parents (for this couple
became his parents) walked over to the Klausenberger Rebbe and
requested that he perform the marriage ceremony. The Klausenberger
Rebbe, whose kiddush Hashem is legendary, wrote out a kesubah by hand
from memory and married the couple. Rabbi Wallis has that handwritten
kesubah in his possession to this day.

Ken Livingstone in praise of Mohammed

Can there be a more sickening sight than this?  The former Mayor of London who has never fully apologised for racially abusing a Jewish reporter with a concentration camp jibe now seeking re-election with a campaign speech in praise of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) whose last Koranic verses so 'stunned' him to the extent that he pledges to turn London into a beacon for the teachings of Mohammed.
And all this, preached from the pulpit of the former Imam of this mosque - Abu Hamza ... Islam's Dr.Hook.

If this is a serious mayoral candidate, can there be any hope left for London?

The last Englishman to leave ... please turn off the beacon.

An Irish Convert

I got this by email. Apart from the fact that there was never any 'massacre' in Gaza, it makes interesting reading....


ISRAEL IS A REFUGE, BUT A REFUGE UNDER SIEGE
Through making a film about the Israeli-Arab conflict, artist Nicky Larkin found his allegiances swaying
by Nicky Larkin
Independent (Ireland)
March 16, 2012

I used to hate Israel. I used to think the Left was always right. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. Now I see why Israel has to be hard. Now I see the Left can be Right -- as in right-wing. So why did I change my mind so completely?
Strangely, it began with my anger at Israel's incursion into Gaza in December 2008 which left over 1,200 Palestinians dead, compared to only 13 Israelis. I was so angered by this massacre I posed in the striped scarf of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation for an art show catalogue.
Shortly after posing in that PLO scarf, I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine. I wanted to talk to these soldiers, to challenge their actions -- and challenge the Israeli citizens who supported them.
I spent seven weeks in the area, dividing my time evenly between Israel and the West Bank. I started in Israel. The locals were suspicious. We were Irish -- from a country which is one of Israel's chief critics -- and we were filmmakers. We were the enemy.
Then I crossed over into the West Bank. Suddenly, being Irish wasn't a problem. Provo graffiti adorned The Wall. Bethlehem was Las Vegas for Jesus-freaks -- neon crucifixes punctuated by posters of martyrs.
These martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. Like Jesus in the old Sacred Heart pictures.
But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of "non-violent resistance". It was their motto, repeated over and over like responses at a Catholic mass.
Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she sat forward angrily in her chair as she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.
This aggression continued in Hebron, where I witnessed swastikas on a wall. As I set up my camera, an Israeli soldier shouted down from his rooftop position. A few months previously I might have ignored him as my political enemy. But now I stopped to talk. He only talked about Taybeh, the local Palestinian beer.
Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street -- Tel Aviv's most fashionable quarter, a street where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier.
He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about 20 Arab teenagers filled with ecstasy tablets and sent running towards the base he'd patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.
The pills in their bloodstream meant they felt no pain. Only a headshot would take them down.
Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz.
Israel is a refuge -- but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. And as I made the effort to empathise, to look at the world through their eyes. I began a new intellectual journey. One that would not be welcome back home.
The problem began when I resolved to come back with a film that showed both sides of the coin. Actually there are many more than two. Which is why my film is called Forty Shades of Grey. But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.
An Irish artist is supposed to sign boycotts, wear a PLO scarf, and remonstrate loudly about The Occupation. But it's not just artists who are supposed to hate Israel. Being anti-Israel is supposed to be part of our Irish identity, the same way we are supposed to resent the English.
But hating Israel is not part of my personal national identity. Neither is hating the English. I hold an Irish passport, but nowhere upon this document does it say I am a republican, or a Palestinian.
My Irish passport says I was born in 1983 in Offaly. The Northern Troubles were something Anne Doyle talked to my parents about on the nine o'clock News. I just wanted to watch Father Ted.
So I was frustrated to see Provo graffiti on the wall in the West Bank. I felt the same frustration emerge when I noticed the missing 'E' in a "Free Palestin" graffiti on a wall in Cork. I am also frustrated by the anti-Israel activists' attitude to freedom of speech.
Free speech must work both ways. But back in Dublin, whenever I speak up for Israel, the Fiachras and Fionas look at me aghast, as if I'd pissed on their paninis.
This one-way freedom of speech spurs false information. The Boycott Israel brigade is a prime example. They pressurised Irish supermarkets to remove all Israeli produce from their shelves -- a move that directly affected the Palestinian farmers who produce most of their fruit and vegetables under the Israeli brand.
But worst of all, this boycott mentality is affecting artists. In August 2010, the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign got 216 Irish artists to sign a pledge undertaking to boycott the Israeli state. As an artist I have friends on this list -- or at least I had.
I would like to challenge my friends about their support for this boycott. What do these armchair sermonisers know about Israel? Could they name three Israeli cities, or the main Israeli industries?
But I have more important questions for Irish artists. What happened to the notion of the artist as a free thinking individual? Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? Could it be due to something as crude as career-advancement?
Artistic leadership comes from the top. Aosdana, Ireland's State-sponsored affiliation of creative artists, has also signed the boycott. Aosdana is a big player. Its members populate Arts Council funding panels.
Some artists could assume that if their name is on the same boycott sheet as the people assessing their applications, it can hardly hurt their chances. No doubt Aosdana would dispute this assumption. But the perception of a preconceived position on Israel is hard to avoid.
Looking back now over all I have learnt, I wonder if the problem is a lot simpler.
Perhaps our problem is not with Israel, but with our own over-stretched sense of importance -- a sense of moral superiority disproportional to the importance of our little country?
Any artist worth his or her salt should be ready to change their mind on receipt of fresh information. So I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your scarf. I did.
Nicky Larkin's 'Forty Shades of Grey' will premiere in Dublin in May;

Today's UN

Imagine this was Britain ...

How long would David Cameron and William Hague let one fifth of the country sleep in shelters?

Purim in Jerusalem

Great to be in the eternal capital of our people first time for me on Purim.
Here it is celebrated the day after the rest of Israel and the diaspora.
So lots of fun on the streets tomorrow.