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The Neverending Voyage of the Landshut

I have posted this twice before and I will go on posting it on every suitable occasion until somebody finally pays notice.

On October 13, 1977, flight LH 181, the Lufthansa Boeing 737-200 "Landshut" with 91 people on board, several children and five crew members among them, was hijacked by Palestinian Arab terrorists on a trip from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt/Main, an event that marked a new level of terrorist brutality and government response.

The hijacking was the means to the end of freeing eleven Baader-Meinhof/Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) terrorists from prison. Crew and passengers had to fly several sectors to various airports in the Mediterranean and the Middle East under threat of death by guns or explosives. Because Yemeni authorities had blocked Aden airport, captain and first officer, facing the fact of being almost out of fuel, managed to land, in a maneuvre of unique aeronautical mastership, the 30 meter long jet safely on a sand strip nearby. At Aden it was, that Captain Jürgen Schumann was forced to kneel down in the aisle, in front of his passengers and the crew, and executed. After the cold-blooded murder of his captain, Jürgen Vietor, the first officer, had to fly the 737, which had just undergone a gruelling emergency landing, solo to touch down safely at Mogadishu, Somalia, an airport, that had before, literally and metaphorically, not been on his, a Boeing 737 pilot's, map. Both men had a military background, Captain Schumann had been a Starfighter-, Vietor a navy pilot. At Mogadishu airport, passengers and crew were forced to undergo an ordeal of almost twenty more hours before an elite unit of German federal police, the GSG 9, finally and successfully raided the plane, killing three of the four terrorists and only hurting one of the hostages. The heads of the Baader-Meinhof gang at Stammheim prison commited suicide only hours later, Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the German employers' association who had been held hostage by the RAF for the same purpose, was found the next day. He, too, had been mudered -- execution style.


The Landshut in Rome. Italy refused to comply with German wishes and let the aircraft take off.

The odyssey of the Landshut

On October 12, 2007, the Frankfurter Rundschau published a remarkable interview performed by Mark Obert with Jürgen Vietor, which I luckily happened to save, as it is now offline. I translate a few excerpts here.

[...]

Are you frequently asked whether you never made the attempt to overpower Mahmud [the leader of the terrorists]

Sometimes.

Do you consider it a reproach?

No, I always tell precisely what happend aboard. One has to understand: We couldn't risk to antagonize Mahmud. There were 86 passengers we had to bring home safely. Our four hijackers defined themselves as freedom fighters, they weren't suicide assassinators like those on September 11. Our hijackers had two goals: The freeing of eleven prisoned terrorists, including those in Stammheim [i.e. the Baader-Meinhof gang members]. And they wanted to survive -- like we did. Based on this common ground we had to cooperate.

And to cope with the fear of the hijackers?

That too. Mahmud's fear played a decisive role at one point. Before we touched down at Aden ... something happened, which explains Mahmuds later atrocious behaviour. He wasn't able to fasten his seatbelt. He sat there like paralyzed because he was obviously scared to death. Therefore Jürgen [Captain Schumann] and I had to fasten his seatbelt. [Vietor explains earlier in the interview that they had to do that because a dead Mahmud bulleting through the cockpit in case of an emergency would have endangered the entire aircraft.] After touchdown, Yemeni military came to the aircraft straight away and talked to Mahmud, who was still upset. Mahmud then told us: "They are adamant to force us to depart. They have issued an ultimatum." Imagine the humiliation for Mahmud: First the thing about the seatbelt and now the rejection by those he had considered his friends. South Yemen was at that time a training center for the PLO. [Notabene that the Baader-Meinhof terrorists received training at PLO camps, thus reviving a long-standing tradition of cooperation between Arabs and Germans.]

Did you consider Mahmud's defeat as dangerous for yourself right from the start?

Mahmud had suffered a loss of face. I understood that he was bound to compensate for it sooner or later...

[...]

At that point you have been for two days in the hands of the hijackers already. Did you have a clear picture of Mahmud and the others?

Something like a profile? No. But that they, too, were highly under stress was obvious from the first moment: all the darting around, the shouting and the gun-waving. The first thing Mahmud did was to sport Jürgen Schumann's captain's cap. That's what he wanted to be, Captain Mahmud. After that, one had to assume that he was a psychopath.

Did you anticipate that Mahmud would kill Schumann?

I had to, because Mahmud had in the meantime informed the passengers as well that he was going to hold a revolution tribunal... In Dubai he had selected passengers for execution. Stupefying. Luckily, he didn't go through with it. But then he became more mistrustful and irritated by the minute because he didn't know what Schumann [who had left the aircraft under the pretense of inspecting the undercarriage which might have suffered through the landing on the sand strip, but, so it became known later, had gone to the airport building to plead for the people in the "Landshut"] was up to. That was an additional loss of authority on top of the other humiliation. I had a very bad feeling, but what could I do?

Does the question haunt you?

It is a non-starter, really. I don't know for sure what Jürgen Schumann would have done in my place, but I think he'd done the same. It was the sensible thing to do.

Feelings of guilt can exist in spite of rational decisions.

His death makes me sad.

The hijackers had thrown his dead body out of the aircraft the next day at Mogadishu.

That wasn't quite so. In fact, they've let him down the rear emergency chute.

Is this difference important for you?

It is a little bit less undignified.

Did you know Schumann well?

He was a young pilot, I was young. [Schumann was 37, Vietor 35.] We had first met before takeoff at Mallorca. And during the hijacking there was no opportunity to talk about private matters.

Do you sometimes think of what Jürgen Schumann might have thought on his way back to the plane?

I thought of it a lot, but without result. Now, after the statement of that General [Sheikh Ahmed Mansur, head of the unit that had surrounded the "Landshut" at Aden airport] I see that he must have known what was waiting for him. And so it happened. Exactly between Economy and First Class before everybody's eyes he had to kneel and Mahmud asked him: "Are you guilty or not guilty?" And Schumann said: "I tried to…" Then Mahmud again: "Are you guilty or not guilty". And again Schumann tried to explain what happened, but Mahmud didn't want to know it at all. He murdered the captain to appear as the resolute leader.

Herr Vietor, is it permissable to think that your chance of survival increased because of Schumann's death because now you'd become indispensable for Mahmud?

One can think that. One can ask as well the basic question why Mahmud murdered the captain and not the first officer.

He almost murdered you as well.

Before Schumann died, I was going to be shot dead twice. First, because I wore a Junghans watch with a "J" on the face and a company logo that looks a bit like the Star of David. Therefore Mahmud thought I was a Jew. The second time, because I was caught calling the Baader-Meinhof group, whom Mahmud intended to free, terrorists instead of freedom fighters. Then there were all the denied clearences to land, the emergency landing in Aden. Five days long it was about nothing but to survive the next hour, not to make any mistake, to keep an eye on the technology... Captain Schumann had just been shot dead when the ancillary unit went out. If one doesn't pinch off the battery pronto, one needs a new one. I didn't want to risk that. Therefore I went to the cockpit as fast as possible and had to step over Schumann's dead body, very carefully, over his legs, his arms, and over his head. Gosh, I couldn't even mourn -- the more as it was me who had to fly the aircraft now. Because I had no idea of the condition of the plane, I had at least to try and to delay the takeoff until daylight to have a better chance for an emergency landing in case of technical problems. I thought feverish how to play for time. First I asked ... for manual refuelling... then for weather charts, which won me ten more minutes. In the end, I had to take off in the middle of the night. Believe me, to fly an aircraft that had just gone through such an emergency landing was risky enough and then Mahmud topped it all by telling me that we were flying to Mogadishu. Mogadishu? I had no idea, where that was, I didn't even know where Somalia was. As a first officer on a 737, the farest I had ever gotten was Cairo. Lucky for us, on our maps, which only showed the 737-routes, the southernmost spot was just Mogadischu, two millimeter away from the bottom margin.

How was Mahmud after his act of violence?

Very focused. I needed a first officer. And finally he was where he wanted to be all the time, in the pilot's seat, with Jürgen Schumann's cap on his head.

How did you react to him?

We all behaved just right without thinking much about a strategy. We were cooperative without sucking up to the hijackers just as every instructional film recommends.

[...]

Did it help that you had to concentrate on the technology?

Very. Being ruthlessly exposed to those people was the most difficult thing I had to suffer because I like to be in control. But at least I had something to do whereas the passengers were confined to their seats, belts fastened, without information. They weren't even allowed to speak. And because the sunshades had to be down all the time they didn't even know where we were. Sometimes they were allowed to use the lavatory, that was all. That was much worse than what I experienced -- I believe.

[...]

What do you think [of the fact that the 20th- and 25th anniversaries of the "Landshut" hijacking went almost unnoticed, different from the 30th]?

Maybe the media are so eager because most of the witnesses will be dead in a couple of years. To think of how old the then chancellor [Helmut Schmidt] is now. Not to forget the discussion about the petitions for clemency of Mohnhaupt und Klar [Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar were among the masterminds of the "second generation" of the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and the crimes commited during the "German Autumn". They were detained, trialled and sentenced in the Eighties, Mohnhaupt to five terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. After the minimum term of 24 years, she was set free in March 2007 on parole. Klar was sentenced to six terms of life in prison and additional 15 years. 1992 he got an additional life sentence in a different trial.] ... This discussion irritated me very much.

Why?

... When the consequences of terrorism are discussed, it's mostly about the consequences for the state. And now the state is supposed to show mercy because state and society are past terrorism. That may be, but are the bereaved past it? If somebody is able to show mercy it's them. I think that Klar and Mohnhaupt deserve more than just those 26 years. They ought to leave prison only in a coffin.

The discussion about pardon [for the Baader-Meinhof terrorists] has offended you.

Very much so. In spite of the fact that my suffering was limited. But I don't even want to begin to imagine how Jürgen Schumann's widow feels, or the widows of Schleyer und Buback [Siegfried Buback, German chief federal prosecutor from 1974-1977, his driver and a security officer, can be considered the first victims of the "German Autumn". They were murdered in a drive-by shooting on April 7, 1977.], or the children of the security officers. I don't intend to mention all the names here, there are so many who were murdered in cold blood. Okay, there may be good reasons to ask for mercy, but then the perpetrator ought to be deserving of it. Does Mohnhaupt? I don't know. But Klar, who is still adamant that the fight insn't over yet? How can he ask a state he is fighting for mercy? That is cowardice. Alright, the president has denied Klar that [in 2007, Christian Klar's mercy petition was rejected], but I fear that Klar will be released sooner or later.

What does a life sentence for Klar mean to you?

Satisfaction? It would go together with my sence of justice. That in any case. I will tell you something: Three of our four hijackers were killed by the GSG 9, and the only survivor, Andrawes, is suffering for life. I am glad for that.

She was shot during the raid and can't walk properly anymore…

… and is in pain. Yes.

Do you wish she were suffering from a bad conscience as well?

How can one determine anything like that? It's not measurable anyway.

[Notabene that Jürgen Vietor's witness account at Souhaila Andrawe's court trial exonerated her in many details because he chose to tell the facts instead of taking revenge.]

[...]

Did you ever have nightmares?

No.

[...]

Never been scared again?

Never.

Did you assess passengers henceforth? Who looks suspicious? Who is acting oddly?

No.

But you surely forewent the "Landshut", didn't you?

I'll tell you something now that is hardly believable. When a colleague asked me years later whether I've ever flown the "Landshut" again, I said that I didn't know.

What? Tourists have nicked pukebags from the "Landshut" and you didn't care whether you had to enter that plane or not?

Wait, it gets even more remarkable: I looked up my old flight schedules. My first scheduled flight after the hijacking was with the "Landshut". Of 80 possible 737-jets the "Landshut". I have proof of that.

[...]

The last hours on October 17 and 18.

Yes, things were coming to a head now. Day five, Mahmud was at the end of his tether. He submitted his last ultimatum. At 15:00 at the latest, the Baader-Meinhof group and the other terrorists were to arrive at Mogadishu or he'd blow us all up. Our last information was that the federal government wasn't going to give in. So they tied our hands behind our backs with the women's nylons, shoved us into seats and fastened the seatbelts. Even the children's seatbelts were fastened. Then they uncorked the duty-free spirit... and emptied the bottles on top of us. "So that you will burn better." Ah well... In the end, they applied plastic explosives everywhere. I had been in the military and saw at once that it looked like the real thing. And the detonators were definitely genuine: brass sheathing. When I looked at the clock it was ten to three.

May I ask a fallacious question?

Whether we didn't fight even then, right?

Is that the question you are asking yourself?

It has been asked before many times. I have always admitted that we let ourselves drive like lambs to the slaughter. But who has never felt a gun at his neck ought to judge very carefully.

What I really wanted to ask is whether it is true that in the face of death one seas a fast-motion playback of one's life.

That is a myth. I saw nothing at all anymore, only the hands of the clock. Now you have ten minutes more to live, now nine, when suddenly, five minutes before time, excited radio voices could be heard from the cockpit. Mahmud came running and asked me how long it would take a Boeing 707 from Frankfurt to Mogadishu. I started to do the numbers. Adrenaline works miracles. Imagine, I hadn't slept even a minute for several days. So I figured out: we are close to the equator, Frankfurt lies 50 degrees north of us, roughly 3000 miles, a bit of slope distance as well: roughly seven or eight hours. That was good because it was exactly the time they had told Mahmud via the radio. Then he cried joyfully: "They'll exchange! They'll exchange!" What a relief.

[...]

Then, when it was dark, the plane was raided. Your second birth.

One can put it like that.

The mission of the antiterror unit GSG 9 was triumphal.

Yes, brilliant.

Was it worth the risk? Just to not having to release eleven imprisoned terrorists?

I never gave it a thought.

You never gave it a thought? The state could have given in and set you free without such a risk.

That is a touchy point. Let me put it like that: Should somebody ask me whether I thought while we were in that situation that the state ought not to budge and I'd reply with yes, I'd lie. We have beseeched the chancellor to exchange, we begged over the radio. Life is important. Who wants to victimize himself. But had I been in front of a TV set I, too, would have said that the state must not budge.

[...]

So you understand [Chancellor Helmut Schmidt]?

His moral dilemma, yes. Guilt and liability are hard to escape. At that time I have simply begged for my life, as Mr. Schleyer did.

The chancellor considered himself to be in a sort of war against terrorism and put himself, together with his crisis squad, almost all of them former Wehrmacht members, in a sort of combat situation.

But it was a war the terrorists waged against the state. That a politician taps into his experience as a soldier I can, as a soldier, understand.

What do you think if hostages are taken in Iraq or Afghanistan. To pay or not to pay?

What is the state supposed to do? To budge? How big is the danger to produce copycat crimes and thus even more victims in the long run? Exactly that is the question to which nobody has an answer. I am not presumptious enough to consider my opinion important just because of my experience as a victim.

[...]

I could have died through a [GSG 9] officer's bullet. Did this thought occur to you?

The government had even taken into account that some of us hostages would die ... It is bordering on a miracle that no hostage and no GSG 9-officer died.

It must have been an incredible ruckus.

The banging away seemed endless and if the GSG 9-boys hadn't hollered all the time we hadn't even known that there were Germans attacking. "Where are you pigs?" "Here, you pigs!"

They hollered that?

Believe it or not. And it felt good to hear it.

[...]

Did you ever talk about that to the GSG-9-commander, Ulrich Wegener, the hero of Mogadishu?

I met him recently for the first time since 30 years. It was very helpful because he was able to explain some details previously unknown to me. For example that at the ladders they got at Mogadishu rungs were missing.

Not a personal word?

Only technical stuff. Nothing deep.

What do you consider deep?

Something like questions of innocence and guilt, like those we just discussed. That is deep. In the sense of profound.

You close yourself off, in a psychological sense?

I don't have any secrets.

[...]

And still, many think you are a hero.

I don't. Heroes look out for danger. I was exposed to it. And even that by mere chance. On October 13, the day we took off from Mallorca, I was on standby when the first officer fell sick and I stood in for him.

Good God, how does one ever say "thank you" for anything like that?

He never said "thank you". I am still waiting for my bottle of bubbly. But seriously, I don't even know the colleague's name. I have never tried to find it out.

Are you sometimes amazed at yourself?

A little bit. And at this point I remember a peculiar thing. When I was with Mahmud in the cockpit, I heard scratching noises and suddenly turned around and saw an empty seat in front of the emergency exit. I thought I go and sit down there. Later I learned that the GSG 9 was watching us with night sights and hoped that I would move away from Mahmud. I don't believe in telepathy but that is truly amazing, isn't it?

Do you believe in luck? In fate? Or is everything mere chance.

We were damned lucky.

There had been children on board.

Yes, it could all have been much more sad than it was anyway.

Have you ever met Jürgen Schumann's widow?

No, never. There isn't anything about her in the media. She must be very bitter.

Mr. Vietor, you are retired. What are you doing now?

My partner and I do a lot of travelling with the camper.

You are divorced?

Yes, and believe me, that really hurt me. I was vitually depressive. It had nothing to do with the hijacking.

Sure.

Sure. I am fine now. I just regret that I can not live in Canada.

Nice and far away.

In Vancouver, wonderful city. But the Canadians don't want an old age pensioner.

So far Jürgen Vietor's account. What happened to the other participants in the drama?

Jürgen Vietor and flight attendant Gabriele Dillmann 1977

Jürgen Vietor and Gabriele von Lutzau 2007

The "Landshut" served the Deutsche Lufthansa until 1985 and then went on an odyssey serving many owners around the globe. Until January 2008 she flew for TAF Linhas Aereas under the registration number PT-MTB in Brasil. Since January 2008, after 38 years and about 30.000 trips, she is now placed as a memorial to itself in a remote spot of Fortaleza airport. The name "Landshut" is still in use by the Lufthansa. Currently, an Airbus A330 is thus named.

The Bavarian town of Landshut named a street after Jürgen Schumann and the Lufthansa the building of their flight training school in Bremen. Different from his colleague Vietor, Schumann can not hand back the Bundesverdienstkreuz that had been awarded to him posthumously.

Monika Schumann is still, so it can be safely assumed, serving her life sentence. Waltrude Schleyer's ended when she died on March 21, 2008 at the age of 92, 31 years after the RAF had murdered her husband.

From October 1964 until June 1965, Leutnant Jürgen Schumann received training at Luke AFB under Colonel James Jabarra. Memorial page here (in German).

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, the man whose strength, authority and brains saw Germany safely through the most difficult time since WWII, was, two years ago, at the age of 89, publicly reproved because his smoking habit was setting a bad example for society. This, to show that we have got our priorities right.

Chancellor Helmut Schmidt offers his condolences to Waltrude Schleyer.

The Federal Republic of Germany, who was adamant in 1977 never to talk to terrorists again, pledged at a donor conference on December 19, 2007 twenty million Euro for the Palestinians.

The Rotting Fish That Is Sweden

In the past several years Sweden has welcomed thousands of new citizens from Arab lands who have repaid their hosts by making their quarters "no go areas" for Swedish police, recreating their culture of hatred and violence at the expense of their hosts. The city of Malmö is specifically plagued. About 7 percent of Malmö's 285,000 inhabitants are of "Middle Eastern origin" (a Western society can bear as much as a 3 percent Muslim population without suffering damage) and, according to the Malmö police, of 115 hate crimes reported in 2009, 52 were antisemitic. And that in spite of the fact that the number of Jews in Malmö is about 700 and shrinking.

Different from Denmark, where police, state and authorities take the issue of Muslim violence seriously, Jews get little support from their Swedish counterparts. Malmö's left-wing Mayor Ilmar Reepalu, for one, thinks that antisemitism comes from the extreme right. He also thinks, that the Jews have brought it unto themselves because they didn't distance themselves from the Israeli campaign in Gaza.

So what else is new.

Now yesterday's bomb blasts that shattered the Swedish capital have triggered really strong and principled responses from Sweden's top politicians, after they had assessed that there was really terrorist intent behind it and not just a wardrobe malfunction of a guy who wears bombs strapped to his body and a Palestinian headrag just for fun. PM Fredrik Reinfeldt called them 'unacceptable' and foreign minister Carl Bildt said in a Twitter message (no less) that it was the "most worrying attempt at terrorist attack in crowded part of central Stockholm". That'll teach them!

Yes, he really said "attempt"! And here am I, thinking that a terrorist attack was something that terrorizes people. But who knows, maybe all Swedes are as sanguine about the Evil of Islam as the mayor of Malmö and it takes much more than a piddling bomb blast with a dead terrorist -- alright, make that "bomb carrier" -- and two injured to terrorize them.

A fish rots from the head down.

Hyperventilating Ego-Extravaganza

The old bag is at it again:

There is no peace and consequently, I (I, I, I !) have no peace. Every morning, I (I, I, I !) wake up to news about Muslims blowing each other up ... Yesterday, a friend ... told me (ME, ME, ME !) that Arab Muslims are taking over more and more Jewish Israeli land ... They are not allowing me (ME, ME, ME !) to have peaceful thoughts. Every week, sometimes every few days, I (I, I, I !) am informed that yet another Iranian woman has been ... Daily, the news from Afghanistan chills my (MY, MY, MY !) blood ... Thus, Muslims, among whom I (I, I, I !) once lived and whom I (I, I, I !) once loved, are giving me (ME, ME, ME !) no peace in my (MY, MY, MY !) older years. (The ones I (I, I, I !) knew and loved are either dead or living in exile in the West.) ... please explain to me (ME, ME, ME !) why Gretta Duisenberg ... is now suing my (MY, MY, MY !) friend and colleague the eminent Iranian-Dutch professor of philosophy and jurisprudence, Afshin Ellian, for calling her an “anti-Semite,” when she proudly calls herself an “anti-Semite.”

You get the point? The worst about the threat Islam poses to the West is that it causes Professor Chesler to suffer sleepless nights and doesn't allow her to have peaceful thoughts anymore. And now, finally, at last (we are relieved) to the purpose (apart from letting us know that the worst about the threat Islam poses to the West is that it causes Professor Chesler to suffer sleepless nights and doesn't allow her to have peaceful thoughts anymore) of this hyperventilating ego-extravaganza:

Leon de Winter and Abigail Esman are both asking us all to write on their blogs, in our articles, on our Facebook pages that we, too, believe that Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-Semite. In Dutch, de Winter says:

I invite all readers to support journalistic freedom and freedom of expression by writing ‘I, too, think Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-Semite.’

How many people can Duisenberg sue? Can she sue only one person if thousands, perhaps millions, are saying the same thing?

For Heaven's Sake! Almost exactly seven years ago, I (I, I, I !) and the Jerusalem Post called Gretta Duisenberg (and others) antisemites. Countless people must have done so as well before and since then. And now she (SHE, SHE, SHE !) needs to recruit "thousands, perhaps millions" to save her (HER, HER, HER !) "friend and colleague" from a fate worse than death? Give me a break!

In fact, a Google search for "gretta duisenberg antisemite" renders 398,000 results right now and a picture search shows countless pictures poking fun at the evil old Duisen-hag, even including the antisemitism-topic.

For Phyllis Chesler, the world revolves around one thing, Phyllis Chesler's arse. The fact that people take seriously what this lump of hormones blathers, is proof for the fact that feminism has won long ago.

Who ON EARTH would have thought so?

Oh WOW!

The Potential of Attention Whoredom

Have you ever seen something quite as grossly nauseating as that?

However, it's the circumstances that are really remarkable. Here we have somebody who converted to Islam, half-sister to somebody for whom the description "has been" would be quite apropos, and all the world is as ecstatic as if the Pope had. And now we have to suffer the ubiquitous pictures of another sickeningly simpering blonde clad in a headrag. The phenomenon that lets women put on a self-congratulatory, smug smirk as soon as they are wearing such a piece of cloth, is something else!

I educated myself about her because I had never heard of her before. At home, she enjoys (You BET!) a modest notability as a TV personality, just exactly the vulgar, obnoxious lower class broad with a horrible accent one would expect, who makes the max out of her faint connection with the pre-previous PM.

There is only one possible explanation. The corrupted media, hell-bent on the Islamisation of the West, are hoping for copycat conversions because they know quite well that women will fall for any (but ANY) little bit of potential attention whoredom, however cheap, however dangerous, however evil.

And this one wants to be taken seriously!

On Thursday, June 3, two days after the Swedish writer Henning Mankell, who is not JUST hugely popular for his antisemitic anti-Zionist commitment in Germany, was released from his ordeal to which the Israelis had submitted him, SPIEGEL ONLINE International performed an interview with him that was full of as-hard-as-nails-investigative questions and gems of replies from the interviewee, such as whether he had ever been to Gaza ("no"), whether he knows the IHH and the Free Gaza movement ("not well enough to be able to form an opinion"), whether Hamas was a source of hope for him ("I don’t know enough about the issue"), or why he ignored repeated Israeli warnings that they would not allow the convoy to reach Gaza ("At least they should have let us continue for another two hours, until we were just off the coast") and nobody laughed and the world listened in awe.

I quite liked that one as well:

You know, I was born in 1948, the same year as the establishment of the State of Israel, so this conflict has accompanied me my entire life. For me, the thought that this conflict will still exist when I die is unbearable.

Whether the fact of having been born in the same year as the old fart who has hair growing out of his nose and ears makes the Middle East conflict so precious, the as-tough-as-nails-investigative journalists from SPON forgot to ask -- or why he doesn't give an aviating fornication for all the many other still unresolved ethnic or political conflicts worldwide, for that.

But this is priceless:

By the way, I have many Jewish friends, my books are published in Hebrew [which he considers to revoke] ... and a branch of my family is Jewish.

Just like the Führer!
............

Harmonicas for Hamas

From the JPost:

Edith Lutz, a member of a fringe group of anti-Israeli German Jews, announced on Thursday in German radio (Deutschlandradio) that members plan to deliver musical instruments and other goods aboard a vessel destined for Hamas in Gaza.

According to Lutz, the German chapter of the group European Jews for a Just Peace (EJJP) stated “there must be talks with Hamas, the elected government.” Members of the anti-Zionist group (EJJP) have frequently compared Israel with Nazi Germany and the former Apartheid government in South Africa.

Critics in Germany note that the EJJP are obsessed with Israel and show no interest for the genocide in Dafur or the Iranian government's brutal crackdown of its civilian population.

According to media observers, the EJJP attracts vast media attention in Germany because of widespread anti-Israeli sentiments among the population.

Yes Edith, and it won't even buy you the window seat on the next train to Auschwitz you are so longing for.

Garbage for Gaza

From the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated June 7th:

The Logistics Section of SIBAT (Foreign Defense Assistance and Defense Export Department of the Israel Ministry of Defense), together with COGAT (Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories), are responsible for transferring humanitarian aid to Gaza. They handled the transfer of the equipment that arrived on the flotilla ships from Ashdod Port to the Defense Ministry's humanitarian aid base in Zrifin, which now await Hamas permission for transfer into the Gaza Strip.

[...]

The equipment includes:

1. 300 wheelchairs
2. 300 new mobility scooters
3. 100 special mobility scooters for the disabled
4. Hundreds of crutches
5. 250 hospital beds
6. 50 sofas
7. Four tons of medicine
8. 20 tons of clothing, carpets, school bags, cloth and shoes
9. Various hospital equipment - closets and cabinets, operating theater equipment, etc.
10. Playground equipment
11. Mattresses

The equipment remaining at Ashdod Port on the three ships which have not been offloaded include some 2000 tons of construction equipment - building materials and tools, and construction waste (rubble, toilets, sinks and cement) for re-use.

During the week of 30 May - 5 June 2010, 484 truckloads (12,413 tons) of aid were transferred from Israel to the Gaza Strip via the land crossings.

It should be noted that:

1. The equipment does not constitute humanitarian aid in the accepted sense (basic foodstuffs, new and functional equipment, fresh medicines).

2. The equipment awaiting entry into the Gaza Strip, both at the Kerem Shalom crossing and the Defense Ministry base, has been approved by COGAT.

3. The humanitarian aid on all the ships was scattered in the ships' holds and thrown onto piles and not packed properly for transport. The equipment was not packaged and not properly placed on wooden bases.

4. Because of the improper packing, some of the equipment was crushed by the weight in transit.

5. The medicines and sensitive equipment (operating theater equipment, new clothing, etc.) are being kept in cool storage at the Defense Ministry base. Some of the medicines have already expired, and some will expire soon. The operating theater equipment, which should be kept sterile, was carelessly wrapped.

6. A large part of the equipment, particularly shoes and clothing, was used and worn.

7. The construction material must be approved by COGAT and the political echelons before it can be transferred to the Gaza Strip.

It's the A-Word, Stupid!

Below the header Actually, Israel wasn’t tough enough Peter Hitchens writes in his Mail on Sunday blog:

I view Israel’s assault on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara as a textbook example of incompetence. These people are not as brilliant as they like to claim.

The ship, despite its supercargo of PC, anti-Israel, Left-wing suckers, dupes and sandal-wearers, was also seething with militant and far-from-pacifist full-time Israel-haters.

If the Mossad secret service types had lived up to their legend, they would have known this.

So why lower troops, one by one, into the midst of a mob of foes? Why equip them with feeble paintball guns, shroud their hands in gloves so they can’t reach their sidearms, and order them not to open fire until things get out of hand?

They did this because the Israeli military let their civilised, law-governed instincts get the better of sensible cynicism.

The gullibility of the reporting on this issue defies belief. This wasn’t a humanitarian convoy. The Israelis were quite willing to send on the supplies, after searching them for contraband.

It's not as if I wouldn't have any issues with the rest of the entry as well, but the quoted bit is so awash with expressions of a commom misconception, that I'll concentrate on that. Hitchens says that, had "...the Mossad secret service types had lived up to their legend, they would have known this." I am not implying antisemitism on Hitchen's side, but oughtn't he to know that this legend is largely an antisemic wet dream? A up-to-date-version of the old omniscient, ubiquitous and omnipotent Jew?

He then raises an extremely interesting point, getting close to the core of antisemitism, apparently without noticing it, when he says that they were so ill-prepared for the terrorist attack "...because the Israeli military let their civilised, law-governed instincts get the better of sensible cynicism." Quite right, Mr. Hitchens. And that is because the Jews think they can win hearts by "good" behaviour when the opposite is the case. Jews (as a group) are not hated because of the evil they do, but because of the good they do. This is called -- dare I say it? -- antisemitism.

Lastly, he states that "(t)he gullibility of the reporting on this issue defies belief." Wrong, Mr. Hitchens. That is not gullibility. Far from it. And it does not a bit defy belief. For somebody who is at home in and part of the media this is a pretty obtuse statement. Anybody who WANTS to know the truth, specifically in the time of the Internet, can learn the truth -- if the truth were what he's after. But only very few are. And we're back to square one and the a-word again.

A Hoax from the Start

This is Gaza harbour. BEFORE it was demolished during Operation Cast Lead, mind you. (Click on the picture for a better view.) And now tell me that this fishing dump would have been able to harbour the "aid" flotilla including a vessel like the Mavi Marmara.

The "peace activists" knew that full well. The entire thing was a hoax intended to run rings around Israel from the very start.

---

Hat tip: Gudrun Eussner!

Muslim Pride

The Israeli German-language blog ARO1, maintained by the German convert to Judaism Ulrich J. Becker, shows parts of a slide show from the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet about the three Israeli commando soldiers, who had been captured and detained during the raid on the Mavi Marmara. They were taken below, stripped of their uniforms and equipment and humiliated. Ulrich thinks that the szenario was supposed to remind the Israelis of the Ramallah lynching.

The camera points incessantly at the 'humiliated Jews'! – In terrorcamps in Gaza, Afghanistan or in Lebanon that would be fodder for thigh-slapping, bawling mirth. To present this to a worldwide public is a non-plus-ultra proof for the total absence of any morality and the general sadistic mental disorder of those 'peace activists'...

Well, Islamists think differently. What evokes compassion for the brutally molested in the West, is in Islam symbol and proof of their strength, because degradation, humiliation etc. are the pride of the Islamic fighter, which means they don't even twig that they are damaging their entire PR for Europe all by themselves.

And while I think Ulrich is on to something here, I wouldn't count all THAT much on Western compassion when it's about Jews.

I have refrained from posting the pictures here for obvious reasons.

"Go back to Auschwitz"

From today's entry in the IDF Spokesperson blog:

In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they are approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara respond, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11".

Germans Love Jews ...

... dead, that is!

Almost seven years ago, a so far unremarkable Bundestag backbencher of the Christian Democratic Union named Martin Hohmann caused a tsunami of angry, dismayed, shocked and generally hypocritical protests because he had, sort of, relativised the Holocaust. His babblings about the Jewish perpetrators of Stalinism who had been no real Jews because they didn't believe in God, and the Nazis who didn't believe in God, so the Germans were no "people of perpetrators" either, revealed more about the state of the nation than about him or the Holocaust. Nobody laughed, instead, he was expelled from his parlamentiary group and later stripped of his party membership as well. All of Germany was split in two factions. One thought that he was quite right and that the Jews get away with everything, the rest felt noble.

Things were a bit different, when Annette Groth and Inge Höger, two German Bundestag backbenchers from the post-Stalinist Left party joined the recent terrorist-aid convoi to Gaza. It was, after all, about Jews who are still alive.

Being safely home and dutifully fussed over, they were eager to convey their message. "We have a moral and Christian commitment to speak out aloud against any sort of human rights violations," said Groth, who used to work for ecumenical institutions and an organisation linked to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), Germany's main Protestant umbrella, before becoming a member of the Bundestag.

Groth said she had been on the women's deck (sic!) of the Mavi Marmara, having joined the Muslim women for their morning prayers (sic!) as every good Protestant Christian ought to, when Israeli special forces attacked. "There were soldiers everywhere, heavily armed and pointing their guns at us," she said. "There was an attitude of terror and humiliation. They did not allow old men to go to the toilet ... It was mere terror, creating a situation full of anxiety."

Her colleague Höger said the women on the ship were quickly (sic!) shut in at a lower level of the ship, the so-called "women's deck" (sic!) during the night and that they "... couldn't get out, we didn't know what was going on above because we were locked in," she said. "We put on our life vests and eventually we figured out that the ship was occupied, that the Israelis had taken it over", which doesn't quite go together with Groth's vivid description of heavily armed soldiers everywhere who pointed their guns at them and didn't allow old men to go to the toilet, but whatever.

Different from Hohmann, who had been torn to shreds seven years ago, there was a fussing and clucking and general "there there I can relate yo you" over the two "visibly shaken" victims of Israeli savagery all through the media, because -- did I say this already? -- this was about Jews who are not yet dead.

There is a petition online to have the Stalin-sisters expelled from the Bundestag with, while I am writing this, 1820 signatures. Will it bring about anything? No, but I signed nevertheless because I thought everybody who got his knickers in a knot over Martin Hohmann seven years ago is somewhat morally obliged to do so.

In the meantime, the German mainstream is eagerly awaiting that the poor, beleaguered Pals and their assorted cronies in the Middle East will finish what had to be cut short 65 years ago in Europe, so that they can go on standing in firm solidarity side by side, upright, solemn and serious, with dead Jews again.

Who needs Nazis for antisemitism?

Predictably, the callous treatment of the humanitarian relief flotilla to Gaza by the Jews Israelis evoked the reaction of eternal antisemites critics of the Zionist entity in the Middle East. As reported by a German blog, entirely peaceful, non-threatening ralliers organised by the Left Party (Die Linke), unidentified "anti-war activists" and the Palestinian community of Bonn, all of them honestly concerned about the fate of the poor people in Gaza, aggresively molested the guests of a Starbucks café in Bonn (the former West German capital) because they had "an announcement to make". When one of the guests at Starbucks, recognisable by his American accented English as an American, asked them to leave the people in the café alone, he was attacked and beaten unconscious. The personnel refused to intervene, to help the man, to restrain the attacker (because it was partially the victim's "own fault") or to call the police. The victim was taken to a hospital where the doctor on call thought that he had been "very lucky". Interviewed later by the blog who had reported all this, the victim commented that "No American or Israeli should feel safe at any Starbucks."

While I am writing this, the MSM are totally ignoring the incident at Starbucks, and largely the rally, but I found a report in English (without the Starbucks incident) at the Demotix "citizen journalism" website. It pays, too, to go to the report from the "sister" rally at Cologne and have a close look at the photos -- and the Hamas flags.

Have a look, too, at the mixture of headscarf-clad women, men with, as it is called euphemistically here in police reports, "Mediterranean" features and ethnically German faces and be reminded of the excellent historical German and Palestinian Arab cooperation. We reported here and here and here, although not JUST there, about it.

Notice, too, that there are no "Nazis" anywhere. This blog has tirelessly droned on for years now about the hypocrisy of German "Never Again" rhetoric, about the hypocritical smokescreen of "right wing extremism" when left wing antisemitism has filtered down to the mainstream long ago.

Will somebody finally read it?

Where Other Commandos Fear to Tread

IF the MSM make an effort at honest reporting about the "humanitarian" Gaza relief flotilla, the outcome is both, thrilling and telling.

The UK's Channel 4 News asked Peter Cook, a retired Royal Marine [one of those as-tough-as-shit commandos, like, say, the Navy SEALS] Officer, naval analyst and counter-terror expert, to analyse IDF footage. Peter Cook had indentified the weapons used by the IDF as paint guns when he was asked:

Question: "... as a Royal Marine, is this the sort of equipment you'd go onto a ship like this with?"

His answer: (With a wry "yes but..." smile) "I wouldn't want to."

So what else is new?

Currently, the worldwide mainstream media are working their collective Attends in a knot because Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top terrorist senior Hamas official, who wanted to buy arms from Iran nothing but to live in peace like all Palestinians if the Israelis would only let them, was killed in a luxury hotel in Dubai.

While I was asking myself how a Hamas official could afford a luxury hotel in Dubai while the Palestinian children are starving (I haven't found an answer yet), I had a closer look at the case. So there was a team of eleven to perform an assasination for which two would have been sufficient? And they all look as if they'd jumped off the stage of a cheap amateur movie production? Smiling at the security cameras? Using mainly passports of Britons living in Israel? The MOSSAD, of all organisations, overlooked the fact that in security-obsessed Dubai nothing will escape the omnipresent cameras? Precision? Finesse? Not even the Hamas believes that the Mossad is behind the killing and suspects "an Arab government". And don't we all know how the Palestinian groups love and cherish each other?

To me (I may be wrong) this looks like an effort at getting rid of al-Mabhouh while playing off the Brits and Israel against each other in the process, and, thanks to the anti-Israel media bias, so far successfully. There is only one thing of which we can be sure at this point: The story will vanish into thin air more quickly, MUCH more quickly, than you can say "antisemitism" should it transpire that Israel is NOT behind the assassination.

Just as a reminder three random examples of antisemitic anti-Zionist media spin: this and this and this. There are countless more examples, just let me mention as well the probably most damaging ones, the Mohammed al Doura hoax and the Jenin "massacre" lie.

May the blood of the 23 killed Israeli soldiers come over those who ordered them to street fight to save Arab lifes instead of bombing the place.

To the world it is still a "massacre".

Jew Hatred from the Cradle

One of the major topics of this blog is the deep in the German culture ingrained hatred of Jews. Read At Full Gallop through German History with links to further information here or elsewhere. Part of it is the long-standing bleeding-heart empathy for the Palestinian Arabs.

Lately, the picture of a toddler wearing a kefija-styled baby bib attracted some attention here. I did a Google search for "Palituch and children" (="kefija and children") and -- lo and behold! -- there is an entire market for it.

4,160 hits for "Palituch" (kefija) and "Kinder" (children). To be fair, quite a few of them are critical of the kefija and contain some information for youngsters why they ought not to wear it. As I haven't browsed through all the 4,000 plus hits, from a cursory overview I'd say that this applies to a quarter of them, which is, I guess, better than nothing.

Some details from the majority:

"This shawl has a long historiy and is right now totally hip again. The shawl is doubly woven and from 100% cotton..."

This is pretty self-explaining. Halstuch/Tuch = shawl, and they are "lovingly made". You bet!

"Finally mother and baby can wear the super-hip partner look. Stylish [notice the appalling Anglicism!] kefija for babies, the mini-variant, so to say, for mommy's large shawl..."

Granted, many of those sellers may not know what they are doing and are, dumb, deaf and daft, waxing lyrically about super-hip kefijas for babies, made with love, as they would swoon over anything they intend to sell. However, something like "This shawl has a long history and is right now totally hip again" leaves not just some doubt about the sellers intentions (but then, maybe there ARE people who are drivelling about "history" and don't know what this specific history is about, namely the hatred and genocide of Jews) but is frightening in its, maybe inadvertent, accuracy as well. Jew hatred IS "totally hip again" in Germany.

While many sellers and buyers of the kefija may not consciously intend to express hatred of Jews, but rather a vague feeling of being "anti-imperialist" of "leftist" (if that), it is certainly a fact that in Germany, and in Germany only, an environment exists, where a symbol of hatred for Jews and genocidal intent could become a "hip" part of children's wardrobe. How do I know that? I tried an English language search for "kefija/kefijah/kefije/kefijeh and children" and didn't get a single hit and even the French, although their passion for the Arafat mop is considerable, they don't offer any pour des bébés ("Pastinien and foulard and enfants"). Do you want me to try Spanish, the Slav languages and some Bantoo dialects as well?

There is a large intersection, mind you, between the buyers and sellers of that sort of stuff and those who throw everything, from hissy fit to court trial, at the first sight of any swastika. Yes, we have learned a lot from our past.

Hat tip: Gudrun Eusser!

Peace Is Kow-Towing to Islam

So the handsome bag of hot air in the White House got the Nobel Peace Price "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".

My first reaction was to think it's a political jest, a sort of brainteaser. But having finally gotten a grip, it doesn't seem all that surreal anymore, rather only too real. What did Obama actually do within the short time he is in office? Domestically, a lot of things to keep grievances and polarisation between the races alive and thriving, while peddling his (and his wife's) mawkish self-promotion, but that doesn't count all that much for the awarders. Externally, and that DOES count, a summary is equally easy. His first official interview was with a Muslim radio network, his entire demeanour towards the Muslim world is humble and conciliatory, stressing his own Muslim ties and hopes for a Palestinian state, an attitude he even maintains when asked if America could “live with” Iranian nuclear weapons. (A recipe for peace if I have ever seen one.) His term in office took off with a Mideast peace push that included an unequivocal demand for Israel to halt settlement activity in the West Bank, and we all know how well that "land for peace"-thingy has worked so far for Israel, don't we. But to be fair, he isn't all THAT much more hostile towards Israel or the Jews in the Middle East than American officials have been, historically, anyway.

His job, he said, is "to communicate [to the Muslim world] that the Americans are not your enemy”, which is not easily to bring in line with another "job", namely the protection of his country from further Muslim aggression, and yes, when we equate "peace" with that of the graveyard, the awarders of the Nobel Peace Price are not all THAT far off the mark.

But let's stop the cynicisms. Dear Americans, didn't he swear to protect you and your country? And does anybody remember the botched oath? Does anybody see a connection here? Does anybody remember, too, that he grew up as a Muslim and that this "religion" punishes apostasy by death, yet that he is, of all notable apostates, the only one still alive and not under massive death threats? Does anybody remember his butt high in the air, bowing to the Saudi king like a waiter, this leader of the free world? Does anybody ever seriously ask him why? Or where the money for his campaign came from? Too many questions only too many people never ask.

WHY don't you ever seriously ask all that, Americans? Now you will go on bellyaching that a leftist liberal pinko commie, a charismatic seducing his followers in either Stalinist or Nazi spirit (depending on the bogeyman pf choice) and anti-white racist is now at the receiving end of the Nobel Peace Price while the Muslim world will do ... WHAT?


The good side? Easy! There have been worse choices:

On the record now: Israel-hatred official German policy

Or: Another Step on the long way to the decontamination of the German history, performed at Israel's expense with the help of a "good" Jewess. (Henryk M. Broder)

On July 16, 2009, Horst Köhler, president of the Federal Republic of Germany, issued the Bundesverdienstkreuz Erster Klasse (Federal Cross of Merit, first class, no less) the highest civilian order of merit, to the Israeli lawyer Felicia Langer for her lifetime achievement. She lives in the old university town of Tübingen.

Felicia Langer was born in Poland of Jewish parents. Her family fled to Russia in 1939, where her father died in one of Stalins prisons. In 1950 she went to Israel where, in 1965, she obtained a law degree from Hebrew University. After the Six-Day-War in 1967, she set up a private practice in Jerusalem defending Palestinians. In 1990, Langer ended her law practice and left Israel to live in Germany, accepting a teaching position at Tübingen university. In an interview with The Washington Post, Langer said "I decided that I could not be a fig leaf for this system anymore. I want my quitting to be a sort of demonstration and expression of my despair and disgust with the system... because for the Palestinians unfortunately we cannot obtain justice." To live in the country of the people who tried to murder her and her people was obviously the better, and in a way a logical, option.

Langer's main public identity stems from her vocal criticism of Israel, whom she compares with apartheid-South Africa, she is known for having praised the antisemitic speech of Iranian President Ahmadinejad in Geneva at the Durban II UN conference on racism and could, with some justification, tell the Jerusalem Post that the Bundesverdienstkreuz is a "recognition of my work".

Because indeed it is.

Asked by the JP about her interview with the German antisemitic (what is called "anti-Zionist" for some time now) website Muslim Markt, in which she argued that leading Israeli politicians and generals should be charged and convicted with war crimes at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Langer replied that she considers Israeli representatives "war criminals" and that the "official translation" of Ahmadinejad's threat to "wipe Israel off the map" did not mean that Israel ought to be obliterated. President Köhler, when asked why he had awarded Langer with Germany’s highest civil award, remained silent and his press spokesman deferred the matter to the State Ministry in Baden-Württemberg, the federal state in which Tübingen is located. Uwe Köhn, a spokesman for the state of Baden-Württemberg, wrote in a mail to the JP that "the honor bestowed on Felicia Langer recognizes her humanitarian service, independent of political, ideological or religious motivation. Most important is her dedication to people in need, regardless of nationality or religion, given her own background as massively affected by the Holocaust. The decision to present the Order of Merit was made on the recommendation of the Lord Mayor of Tübingen, where Ms. Langer lives, with confirmation from all the usual departments involved in bestowing such honors, including the Foreign Ministry."

If it's through official channels it's alright. And to be honest, worse things than bestowing an award to somebody unworthy have been done this way in Germany.

According to Langer, the governor of Baden-Württemberg, Günther Oettinger, a Christian Democrat, praised her work in a letter and congratulated her on receiving the award, which is both, funny haha and funny peculiar (but then, maybe not), because Oettinger is the man who tried to turn his odious predecessor Filbinger from an old Nazi into a resistance fighter. We reported in 2007.

Even Dieter Graumann, Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, an organisation whose method of representing Jews in Germany can be aptly described as bidding for tickets on the next train to Auschwitz, had enough and stated that "Ms. Langer just a few months ago called the German Chancellor’s positive attitude toward Israel 'scandalous'. Now Langer is suddenly getting a Federal Cross of Merit- that’s a fatal signal, recognizing and legitimizing her fully one-sided agitation against Israel” and "Is this the introduction of a new fashion? Whoever criticizes Israel the loudest - especially if they are Jewish - is first in line for the Federal Cross of Merit?" Which may be a rhetorical, but nevertheless legitimate, question and can be safely answered with a resounding: "Very probably".

The lifetime achivement of Felicia Langer is remarkable indeed, from the winning of the "Right Livelihood Award" (shadows of Nazi-money looming) via the Human Rights Award of the "Gesellschaft zum Schutz von Bürgerrecht und Menschenwürde" (a collecting tank -- or rather cesspool -- for former StaSi-staff and other Stalinist cadre) to the preface she wrote for the book of Germano-Syrian (or is it Syrio-German?) antisemite Jamal Karsli, somebody we introduced in 2007 already as well.

However, nothing unmasks the German obsession with Jews coupled with a stubborn determination to remain staunchly at their side as long as they are safely dead or suicidal, better than Boris Palmer, the Green Party mayor in Tübingen, who had, like so many German Gutmenschen, previously played down Iran’s genocidal threats toward Israel. In a public email-exchange with Henryk. M. Broder, where he stated that Langer was criticising Israel "among other things", he had the nerve to thematize his own Jewish ancestry, to which Broder replied:

Frau Langer doesn't criticize Israel "among other things" but Israel ONLY. Has Frau Langer ever had anything to say about the treatment of women in Saudi-Arabia? Of homosexuals in Iran? Is there a statement from her regarding Chechnya or Georgia? Sri Lanka or Darfur? Has she ever risked to say a word about the persecution of the Baha'i? Expressed solidarity with the Tibetans or Uighurs? For all that she gives, upright and honest as she is, a rat's ass.

The only object of her obsession is Israel. Because only this obsession is so highly marketable in Germany.

You, Herr Palmer, are a bandwagon-jumper of this boom when you are writing: "I say that as the grandson of a Jew...".

So you are a quarter- or one-eighth Jew -- according to what, the Nuremberg Laws or the halacha? And what does that imply? Does a quarter- or one-eighth Jew have a different world view? What do you think, as a quarter Jew, of the commuter tax relief? What is your stance, as a one-eighth Jew, regarding the bottle deposit?

Amen, Henryk!

When I did the modest research for this entry, I didn't know that I'd meet quite a few old acquaintances in the process. However, really amazing it isn't. A cesspool is a cesspool is a cesspool, even if it tries to pass itself off as a perfume factory.