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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: seventh_son who wrote (9737)7/20/2006 11:52:15 AM
From: Emile Vidrine  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 37549
 
Zionists Celebrate 1946 Terror Attack on Britain

British anger at terror celebration
By Ned Parker and Stephen Farrell
The commemoration of Israeli bombings that killing 92 people has caused offence

AS ISRAEL wages war against Hezbollah “terrorists” in Lebanon, Britain has protested about the celebration by right-wing Israelis of a Jewish “act of terrorism” against British rule 60 years ago this week.
The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine.

They have erected a plaque outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.

Simon McDonald, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and John Jenkins, the Consul-General in Jerusalem, have written to the municipality, stating: “We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.”

In particular they demanded the removal of the plaque that pays tribute to the Irgun, the Jewish resistance branch headed by Menachem Begin, the future Prime Minister, which carried out the attack on July 22, 1946.

The plaque presents as fact the Irgun’s claim that people died because the British ignored warning calls. “For reasons known only to the British, the hotel was not evacuated,” it states.

Mr McDonald and Dr Jenkins denied that the British had been warned, adding that even if they had “this does not absolve those who planted the bomb from responsibility for the deaths”. On Monday city officials agreed to remove the language deemed offensive from the blue sign hanging on the hotel’s gates, though that had not been done shortly before it was unveiled last night.

The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the right-wing Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas.

“It’s very important to make the distinction between terror groups and freedom fighters, and between terror action and legitimate military action,” he said. “Imagine that Hamas or Hezbollah would call the military headquarters in Tel Aviv and say, ‘We have placed a bomb and we are asking you to evacuate the area’.”

But the view of the attack was very different in 1946 when The Times branded the Irgun “terrorists in disguise”. Decades later, Irgun veterans are unrepentant. Sarah Agassi, 80, remembers spying in the King David Hotel.

She and a fellow agent posed as a couple. They danced tangos and waltzes, sipped whisky and wine while they cased out the hotel.

On the day her brother and his fellow fighters posed as Arabs delivering milk and brought seven milk churns, each containing 50kg of explosives, into the building. Ms Agassi waited across the street until her brother rushed out. She said that she then made the warning call to the British command in the hotel.

Sitting in the luxurious hotel lobby, she expressed no regret. “We fought for our independence. We thought it was the right way . . . If I had to fight for Israel, I swear even now I would do anything.”



To: seventh_son who wrote (9737)7/20/2006 12:00:05 PM
From: Ichy Smith  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 37549
 

I would rather Harper says Canada opposes violence and aggression against innocent civilians in any form, in any manner, at any time, against any people. No double standards.

I don't think that the UN is taking Israel's side. They are calling for all sides in the conflict to stop and patch things up. Of course they are being ignored on both sides, although one side is a government and the other is a smaller, much more loosely defined and uncontrollable group.


Then you repudiate the actions of the Canadian War machine in the First and Second World Wars when Canadian planes dropped bombs in huge quantities in the hopes that it would end the wars. Canadians killed hundreds of thousands of poor German Civilians, whose only crime was to be born German. Will you start by apologising to the German people for the Slaughter this country imposed on the poor Germans because their country was led by a madman?