Israel has issued a formal complaint against Germany for blocking it from serving on the UN Security Council in 2018, reports Israel Hayom.

ed note–hard to make heads or tales of this. Germany does something stupid such as giving Israel submarines capable of carrying/launching nuclear weapons, but then blocks Israel from being on the Security Council?

Israel National News

Israel has never held a position on the council, although nations which violate its citizens’ rights and are a security threat to other countries, such as Syria and Iran, have.

The Security Council comprises five permanent and 10 rotating members, elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms and chosen from regional groups. Due to pressures by the Arab League, Israel was removed from the Asian region and placed in the “Western European and others” regional group, explained Israel Hayom.

For years Israel has tried to be part of the council, and it seemed as if its calls were answered when it was scheduled to sit on the council in 2018. But Germany recently decided to vie for the 2018 spot, and it is clear that Israel has no chance of winning against Germany, the report said.

The Foreign Ministry said that Israel and Germany had an agreement in which Germany said it would not run, but the agreement was now being breached.

Israeli Ambassador to Germany Yaakov Hadas has protested to the German Foreign Ministry, Israel Hayom said. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is set to arrive in Israel over the weekend, will be given the same message.

Iran, meanwhile, is set to take over presidency of the UN Conference on Disarmament. Iran will lead the conference from May 27 until June 23, under an alphabetical rotation among the 65 member states.

The United States said that it will boycott meetings of the conference when Iran takes over the body.

Iran, and any nation facing sanctions for its weapons program, should be “barred” from holding formal UN positions, said Erin Pelton, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission at the United Nations.

Iran’s position heading the conference has also angered non-government lobby groups such as UN Watch.

“This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said Hillel Neuer, head of the Geneva-based UN Watch, announcing that the organization would organize protest events involving Iranian dissidents.

“Iran is an international outlaw state that illegally supplies rockets to Syria, Hizbullah, and Hamas, aiding and abetting mass murder and terrorism,” said Neuer.

After the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, the Americans, British, and Soviets had agreed that there would be no separate negotiations with Nazi Germany with respect to its capitulation, and that the Germander surrender would have to be unconditional. In the early spring of 1945, Germany was as good as defeated and the Allies were getting ready to receive its capitulation. The expected unconditional German capitulation vis-à-vis all three Allies would have to be concluded somewhere, but where – on the Eastern Front, or on the Western Front?

If only for reasons of prestige, the Western Allies preferred that this would happen on the Western Front. Secret talks with the Germans, which the British and Americans were holding at that time (i.e. in March 1945) in neutral Switzerland, code-named Operation Sunrise, were useful in that context, not only with an eye on a German surrender in Italy, which had actually led to the talks, but also in view of the coming general and supposedly unconditional German capitulation, of which intriguing details – such as the venue of the ceremony – might possibly be determined in advance and without input from the the Soviets. There were many possibilities in this respect, because the Germans themselves kept approaching the Americans and the British in the hope of concluding a separate armistice with the Western powers or, if that would prove impossible, of steering as many Wehrmacht units as possible into American or British captivity by means of “individual” or “local” surrenders, i.e. surrenders of larger or smaller units of the German army in restricted areas of the front.

The Great War of 1914-1918 had ended with a clear and unequivocal armistice, namely in the form of an unconditional German surrender, which everybody knows went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The Second World War, on the other hand, was to grind to a halt, in Europe at least, amidst intrigue and confusion, so that even today there are many misconceptions regarding the time and place of the German capitulation. The Second World War was to end in the European theatre not with one, but with an entire string of German capitulations, with a veritable orgy of surrenders.

It started in Italy on April 29, 1945, with the capitulation of the combined German armies in southwestern Europe to the Allied forces led by Alexander, the British field marshal. Signatories on the German side included SS General Karl Wolff, who had conducted the negotiations with American secret agents in Switzerland about sensitive issues such as the neutralization of the kind of Italian anti-fascists for whom there was no room in the American-British post-war plans for their country. Stalin had expressed misgivings about the arrangement that was being worked out between the Western Allies and the Germans in Italy, but in the end he gave his blessing to this capitulation after all.

Many people in Great Britain firmly believe even today that the war against Germany ended with a German surrender in the headquarters of another British field marshal, namely Montgomery, on the Luneburg Heath in northern Germany. Yet this ceremony took place on May 4, 1945, that is, at least five days before the guns finally fell silent in Europe, and this capitulation applied only to German troops that had hitherto been battling Montgomery’s British-Canadian 21^st Army Group in the Netherlands and in Northwest Germany. Just to be on the safe side, the Canadians actually accepted the capitulation of all German troops in Holland the next day, May 5, during a ceremony in the town of Wageningen, a town in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland.[1] In America and also in Western Europe the event on the Luneburg Heath is rightly viewed as a strictly local capitulation, even though it is recognized that it served as a kind of prelude to the definitive German capitulation and resulting ceasefire. As far as the Americans, French, Belgians, and others are concerned, this definitive German surrender took place in the headquarters of General Eisenhower, the supreme commander of all Allied forces on the Western Front, in a shabby school building in the city of Reims on May 7, 1945, in the early morning. But this armistice was to go into effect only on the next day, May 8, and only at 11:01 p.m. It is for this reason that even now, commemoration ceremonies in the United States and in Western Europe take place on May 8.

However, even the important event in Reims was not the final surrender ceremony. With the permission of Hitler’s successor, Admiral Dönitz, German spokesmen had come knocking on Eisenhower’s door in order to try once again to conclude an armistice only with the Western Allies or, failing that, to try to rescue more Wehrmacht units from the clutches of the Soviets by means of local surrenders on the Western Front. Eisenhower was personally no longer willing to consent to further local surrenders, let alone a general German capitulation to the Western Allies only. But he appreciated the potential advantages that would accrue to the Western side if somehow the bulk of the Wehrmacht would end up in British-American rather than Soviet captivity. And he also realized that this was a unique opportunity to induce the desperate Germans to sign in his headquarters the general and unconditional capitulation in the form of a document that would conform to inter-Allied agreements; this detail would obviously do much to enhance the prestige of the United States.

In Reims it thus came to a byzantine scenario. First, from Paris an obscure Soviet liaison officer, Major General Ivan Susloparov, was brought over in order to save the appearance of the required Allied collegiality. Second, while it was made clear to the Germans that there could be no question of a separate capitulation on the Western Front, a concession was made to them in the form of an agreement that the armistice would only go into effect after a delay of forty-five hours. This was done to accommodate the new German leaders’ desire to give as many Wehrmacht units as possible a last chance to surrender to the Americans or the British. This interval gave the Germans the opportunity to transfer troops from the East, where heavy fighting continued unabatedly, to the West, where after the signing rituals in Luneburg and then Reims hardly any shots were being fired anymore. The Germans, whose delegation was headed by General Jodl, signed the capitulation document at Eisenhower’s headquarters on May 7 at 2:41 a.m.; but as mentioned earlier, the guns were to fall silent only on May 8 at 11:01 p.m. Local American commanders would cease to allow fleeing Germans to escape behind their lines only after the German capitulation actually went into effect. It can be argued, then, that the deal concluded in the Champagne city did not constitute a totally unconditional capitulation.[2]

The document signed in Reims ( see image left) gave the Americans precisely what they wanted, namely, the prestige of a general German surrender on the Western Front in Eisenhower’s headquarters. The Germans also achieved the best they could hope for, since their dream of a capitulation to the Western Allies alone appeared to be out of the question: a “postponement of execution,” so to speak, of almost two days. During this time, the fighting continued virtually only on the Eastern Front, and countless German soldiers took advantage of this opportunity to disappear behind the British-American lines.[3]

However, the text of the surrender in Reims did not conform entirely to the wording of a general German capitulation agreed upon previously by the Americans and the British as well as the Soviets. It was also questionable whether the representative of the USSR, Susloparov, was really qualified to co-sign the document. Furthermore, it is understandable that the Soviets were far from pleased that the Germans were afforded the possibility to continue to battle the Red Army for almost two more days while on the Western Front the fighting had virtually come to an end. The impression was thus created that what had been signed in Reims was in fact a German surrender on the Western Front only, an arrangement that violated the inter-Allied agreements. In order to clear the air, it was decided to organize an ultimate capitulation ceremony, so that the German surrender in Reims retroactively revealed itself as a sort of prelude to the final surrender and/or as a purely military surrender, even though the Americans and the Western Europeans would continue to commemorate it as the true end to the war in Europe.[4]

General Keitel signs Germany’s unconditional surrender in Berlin (right)

It was in Berlin, in the headquarters of Marshal Zhukov, that the final and general, political as well as military, German capitulation was signed on May 8, 1945 or, put differently, that the German capitulation of the day before in Reims was properly ratified by all the Allies. The signatories for Germany, acting on the instructions of Admiral Dönitz, were the generals Keitel, von Friedeburg (who had also been present in Reims) and Stumpf. Since Zhukov had a lower military rank than Eisenhower, the latter had a perfect excuse for not attending the ceremony in the rubble of the German capital. He sent his rather low-profile British deputy, Marshal Tedder, to sign, and this of course took some luster away from the ceremony in Berlin in favour of the one in Reims.[5]

As far as the Soviets and the majority of Eastern Europeans were concerned, the Second World War in Europe ended with the ceremony in Berlin on May 8, 1945, which resulted in the arms being laid down the next day, on May 9. For the Americans, and for most Western Europeans, “the real thing” was and remains the surrender in Reims, signed on May 7 and effective on May 8. While the former always commemorate the end of the war on May 9, the latter invariably do so on May 8. (But the Dutch celebrate on May 5.) That one of the greatest dramas of world history could have such a confusing and unworthy end in Europe was a consequence, as Gabriel Kolko writes, of the way in which the Americans and the British sought to achieve all sorts of big and small advantages for themselves – to the disadvantage of the Soviets – from the inevitable German capitulation.[6]

During speech at World Jewish Congress in Budapest,  Guido Westerelle also assures that his government’s  position on the  Syrian  uprising is  strongly influenced by IsraHell security interests.

Haaretz

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerelle said during a special address on Monday to the World Jewish Congress that his government’s position on the Syrian uprising was strongly influenced by Israel’s security interests.

“There’s no doubt that in the international community and Germany we want to overcome the atrocities of the regime of Assad and support free and democratic opposition in Syria,” he said during the speech, opening the second of the three-day plenary assembly. “But we do not want to act in a way that could have lethal weapons ending up in the wrong hands. So when we say we support the opposition in Syria, we mean the opposition that wants to live in a new democratic and tolerant Syria because some forces have announced in a clear way that they are close to Al-Qaida. Damascus for them is a stopover on the way to Jerusalem, and we need to be aware of this.”

Westerelle, who received a standing ovation following a powerful declaration of support for Israel and a strong denunciation of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, urged hundred of delegates attending the conference not to “underestimate the threat” of a violent flare-up in the whole region because of the conflict in Syria.

“So our first goal is to support a democratic new Syria and the people of Syria,” he said, “but second is to prevent any kind of conflagration, which also could be a serious threat to our friend and partner Israel. If we don’t balance both aspects, that’s not wise. That is the guideline of our policy.”

Although not specifically addressing events of recent days, the German foreign minister declared, “Israel has the legitimate right to defend itself.” He also said that Germany “cannot and will not accept an Iranian nuclear weapon.”

“Iran must now seriously engage to give the negotiation process a chance to succeed,” said Westerelle. “We will not accept talks for the sake of talks.”

Noting that Germany was “firmly committed to protecting and nourishing Jewish life in our societies and to countering anti-Semitism across the globe,” Westerelle said that “anti-Semitism has no place neither in Berlin nor in Budapest nor anywhere else in Europe or in the world.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban opened the WJC conference on Sunday night promising that acts of anti-Semitism would not be tolerated in his country any longer. But organization officials expressed disappointment with his address, which they said avoided any reference to the virulently anti-Semitic Jobbik party, the third largest party in the Hungarian parliament today, and promised little concrete action.

Westerelle called on European governments to invest more in Holocaust education and research and “to stand up against anti-Semitism when it comes along in a subtle way.” Combating anti-Semitism, he stressed, was not only about protecting Jews but also about preserving common values. “It is about standing up for democracy, for individual freedom, for human rights and for human dignity,” he said. “We are tolerant citizens. Tolerance is wise; tolerance in the face of intolerance is historic foolishness. At this meeting here in Budapest we stand together: For our values, for tolerance and against anti-Semitism.”

The German foreign minister said the bond between his country and Israel derived from more than just history. “We belong to the same community of values,” he stated. “Israel is the only sustainable and functioning democracy in the Middle East. We belong to the same community of values, the community of democrats.”

His identification with Israel, the German foreign minister recounted, was forged on his first visit to the country as a young student, when he climbed to the top of Mt. Tabor in the Galilee. It was then, he said, that “I realized just how small Israel is, and I came to understand what security means for Israel.”

At the same time, Westerelle urged Israel to renew negotiations on a peace treaty with the Palestinians, warning that the window of opportunity for a two-state solution was closing. “I know that a renewed commitment for peace requires courage and entails hard choices for both sides. But time is running out,” he said. “The longer the conflict takes, the harder it will become to reach a solution.”

He said recent political changes in the Arab world presented a “historic opportunity for Israel to live among democracies: The historic opportunity to make peace among free peoples. In my view, the response for Israel to this change should be a renewed commitment for peace.”

Nothing can guarantee Israel’s long-term security better, he said, “than peace with its neighbors and peace with the Palestinians.”

Introduction by GA: In the following short comment, Dr. Gabi Weber, one of the most important pro Palestinian activists in Europe,  explains why she decided to appeal to the German Administrative court against Freiburg University. This is a very important court case and Dr. Weber deserves our attention and  support.

http://othersite.org/gabi-weber-the-truth-will-set-us-free/

Motto of the University of Freiburg, “Die Wahrheit wird euch frei machen” (The Truth Will Set You Free – John 8,32) University Building, West Side

THE TRUTH WILL SET US FREE?

By Dr. Gabi Weber
I was brought up in a country that believed itself to be open and tolerant. Indeed after the Second World War Germany undertook to transform guilt into responsibility.

For me, it was always clear that our commitment to those “inviolable and inalienable human rights(1)” as well as freedom of speech (2), were the most precious values and lessons to be drawn from our problematic past.

This is why, three months ago, I was dismayed to discover that Freiburg University, one of our oldest German universities, banned an event hosting renowned Paris University Professor Christophe Oberlin who was scheduled to talk about plastic surgery in Gaza.

Freiburg University hosts all kinds of political events, especially and regularly events organized by notorious Israeli Hasbara outlets such as the German Israeli Society and the Zionist Anti-Deutsche. And, if this is not enough, invitations to German Israeli Society events are often publicised by the university, its official bodies and its departments.

But for some reason, for Freiburg University, freedom of speech and tolerance seems to end when it comes to the plight of the Palestinian people. The same university, which provides a platform for the  German Israeli Society and the Zionist Anti-Deutsche will not provide a platform for Freiburg Cafe Palestine – a humanitarian non-political organization dedicated to the suffering of the Palestinian. In fact, the same university banned Cafe Palestine’s event hosting a prestigious French academic.

The official motto of the university,‘The Truth Will Set You Free’ is engraved in shiny gold letters above one of the university’s entrances, yet the university itself is clearly terrified of the truth being told within its walls.

We have decided to raise the issue at the Administrative Court, in the hope that this might lead the university to reflect on, and admit to its dreadful decision. But what if Cafe Palestine loses this court case? Well, then we would have to consider it as a crucial learning experience from which we would have learned that powerful elements within our society have changed their attitude towards truth, freedom, tolerance, universal justice and intellectual exchange. If this should prove to be the case, then the sooner we all face up to this change, the better.

And for me, 
I surely would have to reassess my own attitude towards the education of my three German-Palestinian children. I would have to think very seriously about teaching them that they had better remain silent, not only about the suffering of their own Palestinian people, but also about injustice and human rights in general.

(1) Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 1, 2

(2) Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 5

Press Release Cafe Palestine Freiburg e. V.

http://othersite.org/press-release-cafe-palestine-freiburg-versus-university-of-freiburg/

The German Interior Ministry confirmed the initiation of the processes required for granting asylum to the MKO terrorists. The ministry said it is being examined whether the MKO members are qualified to receive visas.

One hundred members of the terrorist group, who have been expelled from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, situated in Iraq’s Diyala province, are currently based in Camp Liberty, a former United States military installation in Baghdad.

The members of the MKO have assassinated thousands of civilians in different Iranian cities over the past years.

The assassinations by the MKO include those carried out against former Iranian President Mohammad-Ali Rajaei, former Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, as well as tens of other government authorities in bombing operations.

The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where it received the support of Iraq’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up a camp near the Iranian border.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz (BfV), has been grilled over paying a neo-Nazi informer linked to a far-right terrorist group a wage of almost a quarter of a million dollars.

ed note–and how much is the US Gov paying their white nationalist/white supremacist/Christian Identity cousins here in America with their websites and internet radio programs who are collecting names, IP addresses and other sorts of useful information, to say nothing of the manner by which they keep all discussion of the problem involving organized Jewish power on an obnoxious, racist level meant to dissuade otherwise intelligent people from getting involved in the anti-Israel debate?

presstv.ir

The head of a parliamentary committee tasked with investigating a string of murders allegedly carried out by the German neo-Nazi group, the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), confirms the account, The Associated Press reported. 

Lawmaker Sebastian Edathy said on Monday that the report correspond to the information submitted to his committee. 

Edathy said the payments, made over 18 years and totaling €180,000 ($240,000), were paid to a man identified as Thomas R.

German-language weekly Bild am Sonntag first reported the payments, and prompted German opposition politicians together with anti-Nazi campaigners to level strident criticism at the BfV. 

In late October 2012, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said over 100 neo-Nazis are still at large, and are hiding somewhere in the country. 

Friedrich told German-language newspaper Die Welt that despite measures to crack down on far-right extremists in the wake of a probe into serial killings blamed on neo-Nazis, dozens of suspects had been able to get away. 

“The Federal Crime Office estimates that as of mid-September, 110 rightwing extremists with outstanding arrest warrants have gone underground,” he said. 

“Again and again you have seen there can be a revolving door in the rightwing extremist scene between violent and terrorist elements,” Friedrich said. “We must gird ourselves against this.” 

German law enforcement agencies have warned that attacks by neo-Nazi extremists on foreigners, prominent politicians, and police officers are a growing threat.

ed note–please take notice of the fact that much of the book–by the author’s own admission–is based upon his ‘imagination’, and yet those who dare to suggest that much of it is fictional will be called ‘anti-Semitic’ for doing so, and in some parts of the world, will be thrown into prison.

bloomberg.com

Here is a new genre in Holocaust memoirs: Otto Dov Kulka, a distinguished Jewish professor specializing in Nazi history, waited till his sixties before recording his own stay in Auschwitz as a boy.

In “Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death,” the book these recordings have become, Kulka insists that this is not autobiography, rather “fragments of memory and imagination” retrieved from the mind of a 10-year-old child.

The effect is powerful and haunting. The scene is the cosily-named “family camp” the Nazis established at Auschwitz- Birkenau from 1943-44, where Kulka was sent with his parents from the Theresienstadt concentration camp, or ghetto.

“Family camp” is of course a euphemism for mass extermination. Miraculously, when nearly everyone has been gassed or marched away as the front line approaches and the crematoria are destroyed, he survives.

“Probing memory,” as Kulka calls his account, gives his book a misty quality, though there are concrete incidents. He was pulled free from an electric fence. He was a patient in the camp hospital, run by Josef Mengele.

He saw punishments and executions, organized with due order, and it is episodes like these that inspired Kafkaesque feelings in his young self: that these were the rules of the game, “a perplexing order that was somehow justified.”

A quasi-poetic detachment deepens feeling, as when Kulka speaks of what he has seen as “the immutable law of the Great Death,” something that “transcends the sphere of history.”

Crematoria Culture

Instead the camp becomes a metaphor for the central tragedy of life.

A few hundred yards from the crematoria, culture goes on.

The Jews sing in choirs, stage concerts and plays, the young are taught about the Greek and Persian wars, and Kulka plays tunes from Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” on his harmonica.

In the mornings the inmates skirt piles of corpses stacked behind the barracks, so that the boy encounters music, history and death together. In such places the book reads like a poisoned dream. The inmates know what awaits them.

Irony and black jokes abound, whether about escaping through the smokestacks of the crematorium, or in mock- discussions about “the solution to the German question.”

Kulka’s mother perished and his father survived. Afterwards, in visits to Israel together, the father persists in asking “Where was God?”, only to be told by a Rabbi: “That question is one that it is forbidden to ask.”

Kulka’s Kafka

Later an answer comes in one of Kulka’s many dreams. In it he sees that God was there in the camp all along, grieving.

God appeared “as a kind of mysterious emanation of pain” and later as an earthly figure: “He was alive, shrunken, hunched forward with searing pain, as in the twisted posture of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker.” A figure on the scale of his creatures, in the form of a human being who came and was there…”

For Kulka the dreams keep coming. In one, Mengele turns up as a tour guide at Auschwitz, something everyone accepts as natural. Though continuing with his academic work on the Nazi period, he finds it hard to see plays or films (he has never seen “Shoah”) for fear of feeling that “it was not like that.”

Three poems survived the flames of the family camp at Auschwitz, and are reproduced here. One of them is “We, The Dead, Accuse!” whose last verse reads: “And then we’ll emerge, in awful ranks, A skull on our skulls and bony shanks; and we’ll roar in the faces of all the people We, the dead, accuse!”

Memory Mist

Only in a coda does the mist of memory dissipate and the sinister truth emerge about Kulka’s camp. To placate international concerns, in mid-1944 Adolf Eichmann allowed Red Cross representatives to visit the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Remarkably they were satisfied, and informed that there would be no further transfers East. Thus reassured they asked no questions about the welfare of those already sent to Auschwitz- Birkenau, and dropped a request to visit the “family camp.”

Meanwhile the inmates were being instructed to write postcards to friends and relatives abroad. Three weeks later almost everyone there was gassed, and the camp destroyed.

The famous photograph in which August Schreitmueller’s sculpture ‘Goodness’ surveys the city

February 14th is Valentine’s Day when we all remember the ones we love. It’s also in the middle of three days when, in 1945 the German city of Dresden was bombed by the Anglo-Americans. On a visit to Germany with my friend Dr. Francis Clark-Lowes I visited the city. We trod the tourist route so my guess is that we saw what Dresden wanted us to see. But it was only in the Altmarkt that we saw any public memorial to the bombing. It was a partially obscured metal plate on the ground which marked the spot where, to cope with disposing of the bodies, the citizens of Dresden had set up a huge funeral pyre. The inscription read:

“After the air-raids of 13/14 February 1945 on Dresden, it was at this place that the bodies of 6865 people were burned.”

Then engraved in stone

“Germany brought war to the world and here it was brought back to Germany.”

Not 50 meters away in the Kreuzkirche was an exhibition – “The Yellow Star” about the fate of Dresden’s Jews – and through it passed a long stream of visitors all shaking their heads in the now-obligatory expression of Holocaust-horror and dutifully inscribing their “never agains” in the visitors book.

So how is it that not fifty meters from where 6865 of their own citizens were incinerated, the citizens of Dresden chose only to remember their Jews?