Shallowest View of Terror: Globe & Mail

 
Hamas, under the leadership of Khaled Meshaal, dispatched no shortage of suicide bombers, fired thousands of rockets, violently took over the Gaza Strip, stymied Palestinian unity, kidnapped Gilad Shalit, and is in bed with both Iran and Sinai jihadis.

But when it was reported in February that Meshaal considered stepping down as the Hamas politburo chief, the Globe & Mail‘s Patrick Martin painted him as a pragmatic individual whose moderation was needed more than ever.

Martin also depicted lulls in violence to Meshaal’s loftiness, not Israeli security measures. But as Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Shalah conceded in a moment of candor, the lack of terror was due to the lack of Palestinian ability, not desire. He told Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV:

For example, in the West Bank, there is the separation fence which is an obstacle to the resistance. And if it were not there, the situation would be entirely different.

By the end of 2012, Palestinian rocket fire escalated, leading to Operation Pillar of Defense. Meshaal returned to Gaza and gave a fiery speech saying he would never concede anything to Israel, and that “Jihad and the armed resistance is the only true path to liberation.”

If that’s moderation, what would the Globe & Mail consider “radical?” As liberal American columnist Michael Tomasky pointed out after the speech:

But I ask you how any progressive person can fully support a movement like Meshal’s. Granted, the world doesn’t always offer us clean choices. We must prioritize, and the clear priority here is opposing occupation and working to end it.

But secular liberal people must also have the fortitude to demand that leaders of the occupied move away from destructive positions like Meshal’s, which just make for a downward spiral to nowhere.

Rob Ford out as Toronto mayor over conflict of interest case

Natalie Alcoba | Nov 26, 2012 10:42 AM ET | Last Updated: Nov 26, 2012 11:23 AM ET
More from Natalie Alcoba | @NPHallMonitor

Darren Calabrese/National Post Mayor Rob Ford is escorted into court by a court officer during a $6-million defamation case against the mayor in Toronto Friday, November 16, 2012.

 

An Ontario judge has given Toronto Mayor Rob Ford 14 days to vacate his seat.
Mr. Ford contravened the municipal conflict of interest act when he spoke and voted on a matter in which he had pecuniary interest at a city council meeting in February.

“Accordingly, I declare the seat of the respondent Robert Ford on Toronto city council, vacant,” wrote Justice Charles Hackland.

“In view of the significant mitigating circumstances surround the respondent’s actions …. I decline to impose any further disqualification from holding office beyond the current term.”

Given the impact on the City of Toronto, the judge ruled that “the operation of this declaration shall be suspended for a period of 14 days from the release of these reasons.”

Mr. Hackland also said the mayor’s actions were “characterized by ignorance of the law and a lack of diligence in securing professional advice” which he said amounted to “willful blindness” on the part of Mr. Ford. “In view if the respondent’s leadership role in ensuring integrity in municipal government, it is difficult to accept an error in judgment defence based essentially on a stubborn sense of entitlement (concerning his football foundation) and a dismissive and confrontational attitude to the Integrity Commissioner and the Code of Conduct,” the judge wrote in his 24 page judgment.

The ruling throws Toronto’s fractious political landscape into upheaval. The mayor’s lawyer could appeal and request a stay of the order so can remain in office until another court rules. Otherwise, city council would declare the seat vacant and within 60 days decide whether to appoint a new mayor — and the City of Toronto Act states that anyone can apply — or hold a by-election.

The case centred on Mr. Ford’s participation in a debate and a vote regarding his own failure to reimburse $3,150 in donations to his private football foundation. The city’s integrity commissioner ruled that Mr. Ford improperly solicited donations from registered lobbyists and a company that had dealings with the city. Council initially asked him to repay the funds, but he did not, prompting the February vote.

A Toronto resident named Paul Magder brought the lawsuit against the mayor. He was represented by prominent Toronto litigator Clayton Ruby, who argued Mr. Ford clearly violated the act and should not only be ousted, but also banned from running again for seven years. Mr. Ford, meantime, testified he believes a conflict of interest only arises when both the city and himself benefit from a decision — and the city, he told the court, gleaned no such benefit.

Mr. Ruby’s office will hold a press conference at 11:30 a.m. today.

He often breaks the rules and gets away with it. Well this time he didn’t… Sometimes he’s stubborn and pig-headed and this is where he’s landed himself because of it

Mr. Ruby attacked the mayor’s “peculiar” understanding of the law and suggested it is “not believable” coming from someone who has been on council for a dozen years. Alan Lenczner, Mr. Ford’s seasoned litigator, countered that it does not make sense that a councillor would not be able to weigh in on an integrity commissioner report concerning his or her conduct, because that would “muzzle” city councillors. He added that the city did not have the authority to demand repayment in the first place.

Mr. Ford’s brother, councillor Doug Ford, defended the mayor and accused the left of “chasing him down” with a legal fight ahead of the 2014 election.

“It wasn’t about a city contract,” he said in September. “It wasn’t about city money. This is an individual supporting kids. They will twist it any way they can.”

Councillor Josh Matlow called the ruling “shocking” and unprecedented.

“It’s a lesson to every municipal official across Ontario that when you get elected, read the rulebook,” Mr. Matlow said, noting the city needs to get away from the “constant reality show” that has become Mr. Ford’s tenure, and instead focus on priorities such as transit and economic development.

“We can’t have a daily absurdity. We need to focus back on the job at hand,” he said.

If the mayor’s anticipated appeal is unsuccessful, Mr. Matlow said he supports a byelection.
Councillor Janet Davis said council should not “rush into decisions” on how to move forward, but rather start carefully considering options.

“We’ll all be thinking, what is in the best interest of the city? We’ll be listening to our constituents,” she said.

The decision, albeit surprising, cannot stop the business of the city, especially during budget season, Ms. Davis noted.

“The mayor’s not above the law, and the judge said that today,” she said. “He often breaks the rules and gets away with it. Well this time he didn’t… Sometimes he’s stubborn and pig-headed and this is where he’s landed himself because of it.

“It’s a surprise,” Ms. Davis added. “I sort of thought there would be some kind of a loophole.”

With files from Megan O’Toole

Relationships

Another alpha male whose gonads served to ruin his reputation and career.  This was a man celebrated for his cerebral acuity, his academic mind brought to modernizing warfare by appealing to human values and by strategizing  carefully to accomplish goals that had evaded other military commanders.  Renowned for his acumen and his rectitude, his calm response and reliability during stress situations.

What a paean of praise the man earned for his turn-around of the war in Iraq, and his determination to apply a similar logic to the war in Afghanistan.  His spurt to fame and responsibility went on to elevate him to the powerful head of the CIA.  And talk of the potential of a future candidate for president of the United States.  Famously, a Bush senior headed the CIA before he became president.

This man was leadership quality writ large.  And now he may still be leadership quality in the style of Bill Clinton.  And John F. Kennedy.  Something about those high-powered males, it goes to their head and from there directly to their mid-section, then begins to burrow a little lower until it's game over and they've compromised themselves and their stations in life.

It's only, after all, human nature.  People do such things.  And such things are not extraordinarily out of whack with societal norms.  We like to pretend that we are all faithful to those to whom we pledge ourselves in perpetuity, and while some honour that convention, a greater balance do not because they can not; the appeal to stray when the opportunities are vibrant cannot be avoided.

The ego demands it, the id desires it, and endorphins aid the process.  The psyche insists on satisfaction in an exciting new enterprise.

It is beyond unfortunate that honour is also involved here, but human nature and human proclivities never bear simple fruit.  Moral ambiguity will bury the stoutest soul.  When he was still a general he insisted on the strict code that those serving in the military be above suspicion in their relations with the opposite sex.

This brilliant tactician and strategist allowed himself to falter from the straight-as-an-arrow path he had set for himself.  There was a positive side to all of this; he enjoyed himself, in a thrilling, forbidden enterprise.  And the negative, like a humped, ill-tempered crow black as Hades, now sits on his shoulders, career shattered, his wife equally so.

This personable man of huge talent and likeability, transgressed, moving from mentor to a professional protege with an agenda of her own, to willing partner in betrayal of his own core values.  In so doing, placing three marriages in peril.  And the children of those marriages may one day look back at the history they were part of; now insignificant.

For the time being, the public has much to talk about.  And Washington feels rather vexed about it all.
And General David Petraeus demonstrated surprisingly poor judgement.  This in and of itself is the critical issue in someone whose ability to make instant decisions of great value to his country was his vaunted entry to history.

Institutionalized Mass Murder

The United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission charged with investigating former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in 2005, took its second mandate-round seriously under the second of its appointed heads, Canadian Daniel Bellemare.

Mr. Bellemare, throughout the period he acted as head of the investigation, became a target for assassination himself. "The reason that I chose to go there is because I believed in what was being done. Once you meet the Lebanese people, you fall in love with them. They deserve an end to impunity. So I thought I could bring a little bit of Canadian justice to the process."

Lebanon, in its 'cedar revolution', in the wake of the Hariri assassination, protested vigorously against Syria which had occupied it for years, absorbing the country's wealth to itself, and governing by proxy. Syria responded, as a result of strenuous Lebanese opposition to their continued occupation of the country, and international condemnation after the Hariri assassination, by departing.

In effect, it hardly mattered. Hezbollah, Syria's creature-militia simply took over where Syria left off. With the support of a large refugee contingent of Palestinians, Hezbollah was effective in political manoeuvring that had some of its 'political wing' members elected to the Lebanese parliament. And although Lebanon formally required Hezbollah to surrender their arms and integrate their militias with the regular Lebanese army, they refused.

Hezbollah, in fact, has a more powerful, better armed military than Lebanon itself has. This is a country that is effectively governed by two separate interests, and which hosts, reluctantly, two separate armies, one of which could easily destroy the other; a country held captive by a militant Islamist entity that the EU, U.S., Canada, and much of the world holds to be a terrorist group.

So when, in the course of their investigations the UNIIIC under Bellemare began to make inroads in discovering who was behind the tremendous concussive explosion that killed Mr. Hariri along with 21 other Lebanese, and wounding 231 additional people, Hezbollah became increasingly restive. Its chief, Nasrallah, accused Bellemare of being a puppet of Israel.

While Mr. Bellemare lived and worked out of Lebanon, the Lebanese military gave him around-the-clock protection. At least 85 people had to be mobilized to secure a route and travel in a convoy of a dozen SUVs through traffic, when he had to leave the hotel he was sequestered in. Guards wearing helmets, bulletproof vests, armed with machine guns, sat on either side of him in the vehicle conveying him.

A Lebanese police investigator proved to be the indispensable link to discovering who was behind the Hariri assassination. Wissam Eid had obtained cellphone call records that represented the evidence required to delve deeper into the plot through an interconnected cellphone network that identified Hezbollah involvement. For his troubles, Mr.Eid was murdered in a bomb blast.

Finally, Mr. Bellemare felt satisfied that his investigators had acquired enough circumstantial evidence to feel confident they could lay charges. An indictment for review by the tribunal's pre-trial judge came through in January, 2011. Just a short week after the Lebanese government headed by Saad Hariri had fallen because a furious Hezbollah had withdrawn its support, when Saad Hariri had refused to renounce the tribunal's results.

Arrest warrants were issued for four Hezbollah members in the summer. They were charged with intentional homicide, terrorism and conspiracy. Since then, a fifth Hezbollah member has additionally been charged. Discovering their whereabouts to take them into custody, however, is another matter entirely. Hezbollah has sworn that none of its men will be arrested.

It has been decided that the only recourse to justice now lies in trying them in absentia. Something the Lebanon tribunal is uniquely empowered to do. "Now, what people want is to send a clear message: nobody's above the law. If you commit a crime, you will pay. This, to me, is a huge, huge step forward", said Mr. Bellemare.

But the Hezbollah members who have been found guilty of the assassination remain at large. The findings of guilt appear somewhat like a hollow victory, a bit of a let-down. On the other hand, Hezbollah has been revealed for what it most certainly is; a threat to the stability of Lebanon and of the Middle East in their standoff with peace and justice.

Their role as a client of Iran and Syria, at their orders prepared to embark on other missions to destroy security and to destabilize the geography with an eye to spreading their brand of vicious, violent Islamism is undeniable and despicable. It is inevitable that a clash will occur between the forces they represent and that portion of the Muslim Middle East that wishes to achieve normalcy.

It may be closer to becoming reality than most would like to contemplate, given the situation now in Syria, the presence there of Hezbollah and Iranian military advisers, and the anxiety of the Arab League, Turkey, the UN, EU and US to find a solution to the unbearable spectre of insufferable institutionalized mass murder.

When Victims Become The Prosecuted

Ian Thomson's isolated farmhouse located at Port Colborne, appears not to be considered his castle, by Crown prosecutors. We certainly do give lip service to the accepted need and the right under the law for people to defend themselves and their homes and those whom they are responsible for, from intruders to the home whose intention is to do harm. But when it comes to actually having the law and the justice system recognize that need and that right, we've been treated to another reality altogether.

Ian Thomson knows how to safely and responsibly use firearms. He is, after all, a former firearms instructor, expert at what he knows well. And it's also obvious that he's no shrinking violet. His response was immediate and to the point when he awoke one wee-hours-of-the-morning day to the realization that his property was hosting unwanted intruders who did, in fact, mean to do him and his harm.

Masked, and none too stealthy, three men were approaching his house and hurling fire bombs. It was, in fact, the sound of explosions that had awakened him from a sound sleep at 6:37 a.m., on August 22, 2010. He heard one of his unwanted guests greet him warmly with the question: "Are you ready to die?", and he responded in the negative, swiftly gathering a firearm out of its locked cabinet, and loading it.

Adrian Humphreys/National Post Ian Thomson leaves the Welland, Ont., courthouse Monday, Jan. 30, 2012, after testifying in his own defence as he fights criminal charges for shooting at masked men who were firebombing his rural home.

Then he returned the compliment, shouting a warning, as, in his underwear, he presented himself outside his home to fire one shot into the ground and two in the direction of the trees where he knew the men who had invited him to die had decided to do what cowards do best; emulate rats by scurrying away into the underbrush. In the meanwhile, his porch was on fire, as well as his companion dogs' house.

He dialled 911, and while awaiting the eventual arrival of police made use of his garden hose to put out the flames left in the wake of the Molotov cocktail attack. When police did arrive, some ten minutes later (which must have seemed like an eternity), they busied themselves surveying the scene, and decided that Mr. Thomson was deserving of arrest, and laid charges of four gun offenses.

The episode that he had dutifully recounted to them, believing that he was a victim, seemed to matter little; that he was merely defending himself and his property from a violent assault mounted by unknown intruders with murder and mayhem on their minds. As it happened, the charges of dangerous use of a firearm and pointing a firearm were dropped by prosecutors who realized the absurdity of their case.

But they forged on nonetheless with the lesser two charges, determined to apply the letter of the law, to prove that he had not properly stored his firearms under lock and key, with the ammunition stored separately, and secured. A closed circuit video had validated his claims of violent intruders, and another video, presented at court in Welland, Ontario, demonstrated Mr. Thomson's facility with firearms loading, pretty well destroying the prosecutors' theory.

But the trial has been adjourned as Justice Tory Colvin has instructed that a search of case law be embarked upon to assist in the precise and appropriate and relevant understanding of of the gun law in question. It seems that Mr. Thomson is far better served by his lawyer, Ed Burlew, one of Ontario's principal gun-law lawyers, than is the Crown with their stumbling attorneys who have little idea of the fine details of the case they're prosecuting.

In the end, it can only be hoped that reason and rationality will prevail, and the judge, finding for the accused, will suggest to the Crown that an apology is in order directed toward Mr. Thomson, and that the proper authorities (the federal government) begin to take steps to amend a law whose purpose and true legitimacy leaves much to be desired.

Righteous Gentiles

It was not the entire world that turned away, unwilling to rouse themselves to aid people at a time of great tribulation, agony and massive collective murder. There were individuals who witnessed the horrors, and did what they could to alleviate the atrocity for as many as they could manage.

Their efforts were anything but modest. From the farm families of limited means who took in a few Jewish children and did their utmost to conceal their identities and feed them when food was scarce for their own families, to the official diplomats of foreign countries who issued life-saving visas.

Those dedicated humanists, people who understood their obligations to others at a time of inconceivably monstrous inhumanity, outdid themselves in their efforts to disprove that no one cared. For they did. And they dedicated themselves passionately without thinking too deeply of the fact that their mission to save a few, or a hundred, or a thousand Jewish lives, contravened the direct edicts of their countries which maintained a strict stance of non-involvement.

From the Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, who, defying his diplomatic orders, issued 3,400 transit visas and saved 6,000 Jewish lives, to the most famous diplomat of all, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish envoy to Hungary who after saving thousands of Jews by issuing passports to them, disappeared into a Russian prison never to be seen again.

And the German industrialist whose story was made famous through a book and a film, Oskar Schindler, credited with saving over a thousand Jews by employing them in his factories.

The story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat who was stationed in France during the Second World War, yet another "unsung hero", who helped countless Jews escape the Nazi death camps. It is estimated ten thousand Jewish and other refugees were assisted by Mr. de Sousa Mendes to flee 1940 France for safety.

Among them, Peter C. Newman, Salvador Dali and authors Hans and Margret Rey, of the children's series, Curious George.

What so many of these courageous humanitarians who acted when no one else would, seemed to have in common, aside from their belief in their need to save as many human lives as possible, was their actively pursuing this mission in the face of denials and counter orders from their superiors.

Their manifest destiny in pursuing a heroic mission of salvation for those whom the world had abandoned to the mass slaughter designed for their deliberate obliteration, also assigned to them, post-war, a life of official disgrace, poverty, and early death.

In the face of the degradation of the universal human spirit that chose to look away from the desperate need of people targeted for political-ideological annihilation, these were the outstanding heroes - ordinary people with extraordinary convictions of the equality of humankind, who treasured human life, and in so doing restored dignity and honour to the human race - to them we are indebted beyond repayment.

And, to the credit of the world at large, despite the uncountable numbers that did nothing to distinguish themselves as decent human beings, there were many who did, as can be attested by the listing below:

Leaders and diplomats

• Per Anger - Swedish diplomat in Budapest who originated the idea of issuing provisional passports to Hungarian Jews to protect them from arrest and deportation to camps. Anger collaborated with Raoul Wallenberg to save the lives of thousands of Jews.
• Władysław Bartoszewski - Polish Żegota activist.
• Ilustrissimo Dom Roberto de Castro Brandão - Brazilian diplomat and nobleman (Marquis?), who issued diplomatic visas and passports to Jews in Marseilles, France. He was later deported, along with his daughter Maria-Theresa Marchioness Siciliano di Rende and later Lady Pretyman, née de Castro Brandão, and his son, current Brazilian Ambassador, D. Guy Marie de Castro Brandão, as a diplomatic prisoner in the Rheinhotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg where Hitler used to go regularly. He stayed there until the end of the war and was exchanged with German soldiers imprisoned by the Allies.
• Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg - Swedish diplomat, who negotiated the release of 27,000 people (a significant number of which were Jews) to hospitals in Sweden.
• Jacob (Jack) Benardout - British diplomat to Dominican Republic before and during World War II. Issued numerous Dominican Republic visas to Jews in Germany. Only 16 Jewish families arrived in the Dominican Republic (the other Jews dispersed to countries along the way, e.g. Britain, America) and so created the Jewish community of the Dominican Republic. [this citation is unsupported by evidence from any other source and should be treated as dubious until further evidence is provided]
• Hiram Bingham IV - American Vice Consul in Marseilles, France 1940–1941.
• José Castellanos Contreras - a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador's Consul General for Geneva from 1942–45, and in conjunction with George Mantello, helped save at least 13,000 Central European Jews from Nazi persecution by providing them with false papers of Salvadoran nationality.
• Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz - German diplomatic attaché in Denmark. Alerted Danish politician Hans Hedtoft about the imminent German plans deport to Denmark's Jewish community, thus enabling the following rescue of the Danish Jews.
• Frank Foley - British MI6 agent undercover as a passport officer in Berlin, saved around 10,000 people by issuing forged passports to Britain and the British Mandate of Palestine.
• Rafael Leónidas Trujillo - Dominican dictator Promised to receive 100,000 Jewish refugees into the Dominican Republic in 1938 when Franklin D. Roosevelt organised an international conference in Evian to discuss the persecution of the Jews. Dominican Republic was the only nation accepting Jews immigrants after the conference.^[28] The DORSA (Dominican Republic Settlement Association) was formed to settle Jews on the northern coast. 5,000 visas were issued but only 645 European Jews reached the settlement. The refugees were assigned land and cattle and the town of Sosúa was founded.^[28] 5000 dollars in gold from Jewish International in New York were paid for each person taken by the Trujillo.^[28] Other refugees settled in the capital Santo Domingo.^[29]
• Albert Göring - German businessman (and younger brother of leading Nazi Hermann Göring) who helped Jews and dissidents survive in Germany
• Paul Grüninger - Swiss commander of police who provided falsely dated papers to over 3,000 refugees so they could escape Austria following the Anschluss.
• Kiichiro Higuchi - Japanese lieutenant general who saved 20,000 Jewish refugees.^[30]
• Wilm Hosenfeld - German officer who helped pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, among many others.
• Prince Constantin Karadja - Romanian diplomat, who saved over 51,000 Jews from deportation and extermination, as credited by Yad Vashem in 2005.^[31]
• Jan Karski - Polish emissary of Armia Krajowa to Western Allies and eye-witness of the Holocaust.
• Necdet Kent - Turkish Consul General at Marseille, who granted Turkish citizenship to hundreds of Jews. At one point, he entered an Auschwitz-bound train at enormous personal risk to save 70 Jews, to whom he had granted Turkish citizenship, from deportation.
• Zofia Kossak-Szczucka - Polish founder of Zegota.
• Carl Lutz - Swiss consul in Budapest, managed to provide safe-conducts for emigration to Palestine to many thousands of Hungarian Jews.
• Luis Martins de Souza Dantas - Brazilian in charge of the Brazilian diplomatic mission in France. He granted Brazilian visas to several Jews and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis. He was proclaimed as Righteous among the Nations in 2003.^[32]
• George Mantello (b. George Mandl) - El Salvador's honorary consul for Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia - provided fictive Salvadoran citizenship papers for thousands of Jews and spearheaded a publicity campaign that eventually ended the deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.^[33][34]
• Paul V. McNutt - United States High Commissioner of the Philippines, 1937–1939, who facilitated the entry of Jewish refugees into the Philippines.^[35]
• Helmuth James Graf von Moltke - adviser to the Third Reich on international law; active in Kreisau Circle resistance group, sent Jews to safe haven countries.
• Delia Murphy - wife of Dr. Thomas J. Kiernan, Irish minister in Rome 1941–1946, who worked with Hugh O'Flaherty and was part of the network that saved the lives of POWs and Jews in the hands of the Gestapo.^[36]
• Giovanni Palatucci - Italian police official who saved several thousand.
• Giorgio Perlasca - Italian. When Ángel Sanz Briz was ordered to leave Hungary, he falsely claimed to be his substitute and saved some thousands more Jews.
• Dimitar Peshev - Deputy Speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament.
• Frits Philips - Dutch industrialist who saved 382 Jews by insisting to the Nazis that they were indispensable employees of Philips.
• Witold Pilecki - the only person who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, organised a resistance inside the camp and as a member of Armia Krajowa sent the first reports on the camp atrocities to the Polish Government in Exile, from where they were passed to the rest of the Western Allies.
• Karl Plagge - a major in the Wehrmacht who issued work permits in order to save almost 1,000 Jews (see The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews, by Michael Good)
• Eduardo Propper de Callejón - First Secretary in the Spanish embassy in Paris who stamped and signed passports almost non-stop for four days in 1940 to let Jewish refugees escape to Spain and Portugal.
• Traian Popovici - Romanian mayor of Cernăuţi (Chernivtsi) who saved 20,000 Jews of Bukovina.
• Manuel L. Quezon - President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, 1935–1941, assisted in resettling Jewish refugees on the island of Mindanao.^[35]
• Florencio Rivas - Consul General of Uruguay in Germany, who allegedly hid one hundred and fifty Jews during Kristallnacht and later provided them with passports.^[37]
• Gilberto Bosques Saldívar - General Consul of Mexico in Marseilles, France. For two years, he issued Mexican visas to around 40,000 Jews and political refugees, allowing them to escape to Mexico and other countries. He was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1943 and released to Mexico in 1944.^[38]
• Ángel Sanz Briz - Spanish consul in Hungary. Together with Giorgio Perlasca, he saved more than 5,000 Jews in Budapest by issuing Spanish passports to them.
• Abdol-Hossein Sardari - Head of Consular affairs at the Iranian Embassy in Paris. He saved many Iranian Jews and gave 500 blank Iranian passports to an acquaintance of his to be used by non-Iranian Jews in France.
• Oskar Schindler - German businessman whose efforts to save his 1,200 Jewish workers were recounted in the book Schindler's Ark and the film Schindler's List.
• Eduard Schulte - German industrialist, the first to inform the Allies about the mass extermination of Jews.
• Irena Sendler - Polish head of Zegota children's department who saved 2,500 Jewish children.
• Ho Feng Shan - Chinese Consul in Vienna who freely issued visas to Jews.
• Henryk Slawik - Polish diplomat who saved 5,000-10,000 people in Budapest, Hungary.
• Aristides de Sousa Mendes - Portuguese diplomat in Bordeaux, who signed about 30,000 visas to help Jews and persecuted minorities to escape the Nazis and The Holocaust.
• Chiune Sugihara - Japanese consul to Lithuania, 2,140 (mostly Polish) Jews and an unknown number of additional family members were saved by passports, many unauthorized, provided by him in 1940.
• Selâhattin Ülkümen - Turkish diplomat who saved the lives of some 42 Jewish Turkish families, more than 200 persons, among a Jewish community of some 2000 after the Germans occupied the island of Rhodes in 1944.
• Raoul Wallenberg - Swedish diplomat. Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews condemned to certain death by the Nazis during World War II. He disappeared in January 1945 after being imprisoned by the Soviet troops who took control of Budapest.
• Sir Nicholas Winton - British stockbroker who organized the Czech Kindertransport which sent 669 children (most of them Jewish) to foster parents ln England and Sweden from Czechoslovakia and Austria after Kristallnacht. Sir Nicholas has been nominated for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.^[39][40]
• Namik Kemal Yolga -A Vice-Consul at the Turkish Embassy in Paris who saved numerous Turkish Jews from deportation.
• Guelfo Zamboni - Consul General at Thessaloniki who gave false papers to save the lives of over 300 Jews residing there.
• Fumimaro Konoe - Japanese Prime Minister who adopted a Japanese national policy to receive Jew refugees.^[41]
• Seishirō Itagaki - Japanese Army Minister who proposed and adopted a Japanese national policy to receive Jew refugees.^[41]
• Hideki Tōjō - General and Prime Minister of Japan who received Jewish refugees in Manchuria and rejected German protest.^[27]

Religious figures

• Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Zakynthos,^[42] who, when ordered by the Axis occupying forces to submit a list of all Jews on the island, submitted a document bearing just two names: his own and the Mayor's. Consequently all 275 Zante Jews were saved.
• Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to issue fake Christian baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis. Thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens were thus able to claim that they were Christian and were thus saved.
• Archbishop Johannes de Jong, later Cardinal, of Utrecht, Netherlands, who drew up together with Titus Brandsma O.Carm. († Dachau, 1942) a letter in which he called for all Catholics to assist persecuted Jews, and in which he openly condemned the Nazi German "deportation of our Jewish fellow citizens" (From: Herderlijk Schrijven, read from all pulpits on Sunday 26 January 1942).
• Alfred Delp S.J., a Jesuit priest who helped Jews escape to Switzerland while rector of St. Georg Church in suburban Munich; also involved with the Kreisau Circle. Executed February 2, 1945 in Berlin.
• Rufino Niccacci, a Franciscan friar and priest who sheltered Jewish refugees in Assisi, Italy, from September 1943 through June 1944.
• Maximilian Kolbe - Polish Conventual Franciscan friar. During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to people from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews. He was also active as a radio amateur, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
• Bernhard Lichtenberg - German Catholic priest at Berlin's Cathedral. Sent to Dachau because he prayed for Jews at Evening Prayer.
• Hugh O'Flaherty - an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews; known as the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican". Retold in the film The Scarlet and the Black.
• Sára Salkaházi - a Hungarian Roman Catholic nun who sheltered approximately 100 Jews in Budapest.
• Andrey Sheptytsky - Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", to protest Nazi atrocities.
• The Sisters of Social Service, nuns who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews; included Sister Sara Salkahazi, recognized by Yad Vashem as well as beatified.
• Archbishop Stefan of Sofia - Bishop of Sofia and Exarch of Bulgaria.
• André and Magda Trocmé - A French pastor and his wife who led the Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.
• Omelyan Kovch - Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who was deported to Treblinka camp for helping thousands of Jews. He was canonized by pope John Paul II^[43]

Prominent individuals

• Khaled Abdul-Wahab administrator of Mahdia, Tunisia, under German occupation; first Arab nominated for "Righteous Among the Nations" ^[44]
• Maria Leenderts and Petrus Johannes Jacobus Kleiss, Dutch merchants in her "Selecta Schoenenwinkel" (located at 248 Dierenselaan in Den Haag) with the cooperation of personnel of the "Quick Steps" soccer club (located on the corner of the Hardewijkstraat and the Nijkerklaan in Den Haag) and the pastor of the "Sint Thersia Van Het Kind Jesus Kerk" (located across the street from the Selecta shoe store and on the corner of the Apeldoornselaan and the Dierenselaan) accommodated many Jewish families throughout the war.
• Gustav Schröder - German Captain of the Ocean liner SS St. Louis who, in 1939 attempted to find asylum for over 900 Jewish passengers rather than return them to Germany.
• Albert Battel - a German Wehrmacht officer.
• Albert Bedane - of Jersey, provided shelter to a Jewish woman, as well as others sought by the German occupiers of the Channel Islands.
• Victor Bodson helped Jews escape from Germany through an underground escape route in Luxembourg.
• Corrie ten Boom, rescued many Jews in the Netherlands by sheltering them at her home. - was sent to Ravensbrück
• Stefania Podgorska Burzminski and Helena Podgorska at age 16 and 7 (Helena was her sister), they smuggled out of the ghettos and saved thirteen Jews from the liquidation of the ghettos.
• Sgt.-Major Charles Coward was an English POW who smuggled over 400 Jews out of Monowitz labour camp.
• Miep Gies, Jan Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Victor Kugler, and Johannes Kleiman hid Anne Frank and seven others in Amsterdam, Netherlands for two years.
• Alexandre Glasberg, Ukrainian-French priest who helped hundreds of French Jews escape deportation.
• Friedrich Kellner, justice inspector, who helped Julius and Lucie Abt, and their infant son, John Peter, escape from Laubach.
• Stanislaw Kielar – two girls from Reisenbach family
• Janis Lipke from Latvia, protected and hid around 40 Jews from the Nazis in Riga.
• Heralda Luxin, young woman who sheltered Jewish children in her cellar.
• Józef and Stefania Macugowscy, hid six members of the Radza family, and several others, in Nowy Korczyn, Poland.
• Shyqyri Myrto, Albanian rescuer of Jozef Jakoel and his sister Keti.
• Dorothea Neff, Austrian stage actress, who hid her Jewish friend Lilli Schiff.
• Algoth Niska Finnish gentleman rogue and alcohol smuggler; smuggled Jews via the Baltic.
• Irene Gut Opdyke, Polish hid twelve Jews in a German Major's basement.
• Jaap Penraat - Dutch architect who forged identity cards for Jews and helped many escape to Spain.
• Nicolaus Rossini, helped many Jewish orphans - was executed in Kraków-Płaszów.
• Irena Sendler, Polish social worker who saved about 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto.
• Suzanne Spaak, wealthy socialite who saved Jewish children in France.
• Marie Taquet-Martens and Major Emile Taquet hid some seventy-five Jewish children in a home for disabled children they were running in Jamoigne-sur-Semois, Belgium.
• Ilse (Davidsohn Intrator) Stanley, herself a German Jew living in Germany until 1939, made many trips to German concentration camps and secured the release of 412 people. After Kristallnacht when she could no longer make those trips, she continued helping German Jews leave the country legally, until her own departure in 1939.
• Hetty Voute, part of the Utrechtse Kindercomite in the Netherlands that rescued hundreds of Jews. Her oral history is found in the book The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage by Mark Klempner
• Gabrielle Weidner and Johan Hendrik Weidner, escape network rescued 800 Jews.
• Bertha Marx and Eugen Marx assisted in saving Jews through the Resistance forces.
• JUDr Rudolf Štursa, a lawyer, and Jan Martin Vochoč, an Old Catholic priest, in Prague baptized Jews on demand and issued over 1,500 baptism certificates.^[45]

Villages helping Jews

• Yaruga, Ukraine^[46]
• Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the Haute-Loire département in France, which saved up to 5,000 Jews.
• Markowa, Poland, where 17 Jews survived the war. Many families hid their Jewish neighbours there and some paid the ultimate price.
  • Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, their 6 children and unborn baby were shot dead by the Germans for hiding the Szall and Goldman families.
  • Dorota and Antoni Szylar - hid seven members of Weltz family.
  • Julia and Józef Bar - hid five members of Reisenbach family.
  • Michal Bar - hid Jakub Lorbenfeld.
  • Jan and Weronika Przybylak - hid Jakub Einhorn.

For more details on Polish villages helping Jews, see Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust.

• Tršice, Czech Republic, many people from this village helped hide a Jewish family, six of them were given the honorific of Righteous among the Nations.
• Nieuwlande, The Netherlands - during the war this small village contained 117 inhabitants. They unanimously decided in 1942 and 1943 that every household would give shelter to one Jewish household or individual during the war, thus making it impossible that anyone in the small village would betray their neighbours. Dozens of Jews were thus saved. All inhabitants have been honored by Yad Vashem.
• Moissac, France There was a Jewish boarding home and orphanage in this town. When the mayor was told that the Nazis were coming the older students would go camping for several days, the younger students were boarded with families in the area and told to treat as members of their immediate family and the oldest students hid in the house. When it became too dangerous for the students to stay there any longer they made sure that every student had a safe place to go to. If the students again had to move the counsellors from the boarding house arranged for a new place and even escorted them to the new housing.
  

Their acts of selfless bravery and heroic devotion to life and humankind, reminders of what it is to be human.

Heroes And A Villain

Getty Images Christopher Hitchens at his home in Washington, D.C., on May 17, 2010.

The past week, just before Christmas, has seen three deaths notable on the world scene. The first was that of cancer-stricken Christopher Hitchens, the British-American writer, polemicist, agitator, wit and formidable debater. His point of view on a wide range of subjects brought him fame as well as a circle of like-minded friends and admirers.

Enough reminiscences and memorials have been written about this extraordinary man with his uncompromising moral values to make most readers familiar with both private and public details of Christopher Hitchens's life. He was very human, made errors in judgement like everyone else at times, but more than compensated for his 'averageness' in that way, by his precision-clockwork-mind addressing issues of profound social, political and religious imperatives.

Pointing other peoples' minds toward balancing their own points of view with another opinion which was capable of providing insights not available to most introspective minds seeking to sway public opinion and instill a deeper understanding of events and human-contrived ideologies associated with those events. His penetrating analysis knew few equals and his mode of expression caused both wry assent and amusement.

Another individual of some importance on the world stage was the playwright-dissident turned reluctant politician, Vaclav Havel, who responded to his country's need as a passionate patriot. He was instrumental in helping to bring down the iron-fisted rule of the Soviet Union over its satellites, and he helped guide his country Czechoslovakia toward a civil separation resulting in the emergence of two countries; the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

His inspired Velvet Revolution stood as a hopeful beacon to other countries whose unity was called into question as varying ethnicities, religions, traditions and cultures sought to become independent of one another's hegemony. He was another defender of human dignity and the absolute necessity of calling autocratic regimes to account for their trampling on human rights for their populations.

These were two stalwarts of human consciousness at the highest level; neither was fearful of placing themselves in inconvenient places, each was uncompromising in their denunciation of moral fraud and state-sponsored fear and oppression. Others will come along and in their own way attempt to fill the vacuum left by Hitchens and Havel. They may partially succeed, without the distinct flavour each of these men gave to the battle for civility, human rights, and accountability.

Last, and most certainly least of the trio, is the death of North Korea's Kim Jong-il. As the other two represented an undeniable force for good in the world, Kim Jong-il, like his father before him, and possibly inclusive of his son-and-heir, Kim Jong-un, the new reclusive tyrant of a poverty-stricken country, investing its scant treasury in militancy rather than ensuring food on the table for its residents.

Dreaded and despised by its neighbours, North Korea under Kim Jong-il became a byword for treachery and danger in Asia. It has militarily threatened South Korea and Japan. Despite that its 24-million+ people live subsistence lives and hunger stalks the land, funding has gone toward establishing a nuclear program and to arming its military, the fifth-largest standing army in the world.

It has that distinction in common with Pakistan, incapable of providing for its indigent population, but invested in nuclear technology; as an un-neighbourly belligerent; both with their own arsenals of nuclear bombs and ballistics delivery systems. Pakistan was the fount of information on nuclear technology that led to North Korea's success in achieving nuclear proficiency.

And in a truly nasty interpretation of 'paying it forward', North Korea helped arm Syria, Libya and Egypt with missile technology, as well as being closely involved with Iran's nuclear development. When Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, built with North Korea's scientific expertise, ten north Korean nuclear scientists were killed.

It is, of course, wishful thinking to hope that North Korea will somehow become a civil, decent society dedicated to the well-being of its people, and extending friendship to South Korea, apologizing in the process for its most recent deadly attacks on its neighbour, setting aside, by some miracle, its belligerence once and for all. China doubtless prefers the kind of stability it knows best on its border.

On the other hand, even China would gain substantially, should Kim Jong-un somehow be inspired to become a confidently humane leader to his people, who are prepared to worship him whether or not that occurs, but who, if famine continues to decimate the population as it did under his father, will attempt to find refuge in China, a country which would prefer they not.

Yue Yue

The moral crisis that has been brought home to China is not particularly distinct to China. It can happen anywhere. But it was in China that Yue Yue, a two-year-old toddler, had run out into the street, was hit by a man in a van who stopped momentarily, considered, then continued and ran over her for the second time, with its back wheels. Another van later ran over her bleeding, contorted body again. Eighteen passersby were all too busy, disengaged and disinterested to stop.

A grandmotherly street cleaner stopped and lifted the bleeding child from the street, running off to find her mother. The China Daily has reported that shattered and shamed local officials in Foshan gave Chen Xianmei, the street cleaner, a 10,000 yuan reward, while a local company was said to have offered Yue Yue's family and her rescuer 50,000 yuan.

October 17, 2011 5:34 PM

Yue Yue and her mother

According to the China Daily, "Both drivers said they didn't see the child before the accident happened, according to the police. the first driver who knocked down Yue Yue expressed regret, deep sadness and apologies to the child's family." Actually, not quite; the first driver was on his cellphone and expressed no contrition whatever.

"You saw that girl on the CCTV footage, she didn't see where she was going, you know. I was on the phone when it happened, I didn't mean it. When I realized I had knocked her down, I thought I'd go down to see how she was. Then when I saw that she was already bleeding, I decided to just step on the gas pedal and escape, seeing that nobody was around me."

China Daily reported that several passersby said they hadn't seen the girl. " I couldn't see clearly because it was dark then", said one driving an electric tricycle. The woman who had passed by the bleeding child, holding her own child by the hand said, "The girl was bleeding in mouth and ear and crying a little. I was so scared and my girl cried because of fear, therefore, we left."

The Chinese Ministry of Health, at one point had issued guidelines to the public. "Don't rush to lend a hand to the elderly after seeing them fall over. It should be handled by different measures in different situations." Such as? Is that a maddeningly ambiguous, useless statement, or is it not? Does that official statement encourage people to care for one another?

"The people who rescued others, at the risk of their own lives, haven't been treated fairly", explained a professor with the South China Normal University in Guangzhou. He has set up a foundation to help Good Samaritans who get in trouble helping the elderly.

Thank heavens that among the masses of uncaring, disingenuous, unhelpful and inhumane there are understanding and compassionate people who do what they can to undo the harm done by others.

Courage Under Fire

Attackers Carve Jewish Star Into Back of Iraqi Poet in S. Louis
by Chana Ya'ar

An Iraqi poet who converted from Islam to Christianity, and who expressed pain over the loss of six million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, has paid the price for his beliefs.

Over a month has passed since Alaa Alsaegh was attacked over his Arabic-language poem, “Tears at the Heart of the Holocaust,”

featured on the “Arabs For Israel” blog.

The site is run by Arabs and Muslims who believe they can “support Israel and still support the Palestinian people.... support the State of Israel and the Jewish religion and still treasure our Arab and Islamic culture.”

But the poem apparently inspired attackers in St. Louis, Missouri to mark the Iraqi immigrant as a target for hate.

On August 14, Alsaegh was trapped by two cars as he was driving in St. Louis, Missouri. One sideswiped and struck his car, forcing him to stop, while the other stopped behind, cutting off contact with anyone else.

The two attackers then quickly hopped out of the cars, jerked open Alsaegh's door and pointed a gun at the poet, reported FrontPage Magazine.

“They pushed his upper body down against the steering wheel, stabbed him and pulled off his shirt to expose his back. Then, with a knife, they carved the Star of David on his back while laughing as they recited his pro-Jewish poem,” the magazine reported.

After the attackers fled Alsaegh was surrounded by witnesses and taken to the local hospital, where his wounds were photographed by a friend, to be given to police and to the media.

Alsaegh told local KMOV TV News 4 last week that he recently posted a poem online expressing support for Jewish people in Israel. He also said that his attackers, who he said may have been Somali Muslims, told him not to publish any more poems.

The FBI has allegedly opened an investigation into the incident, although a spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment. The crime has not been labeled a “hate crime,” though no explanation has been offered. No arrests have been made in the case.

As published online at ArutzSheva, 4 October 2011

Our Common Humanity

"We toasted to the honour and the courage of the rescue team, realizing that the other climbers had put their humanity aside and their egos forward." German climber Gerfried Goschi

People determined and intent beyond all other concerns, to mount an energetic and dedicated effort to push themselves beyond endurance to ascend a mountain peak for the thrill of achievement and the acclaim and celebrity-status that accompanies such a feat, sometimes leave their humanity behind. The struggle to achieve that goal and the toll it takes on the human psyche may override all other concerns.

Including the understanding that no man is an island.

Just recently, there was a dreadful capsizing of an old passenger vessel on the Volga River in Russia, resulting in the deaths of over a hundred people. Children had been securely locked into a play room. People discovered as the ship listed in its final agonies that they could not escape, as doors were locked.

Some saved themselves, exiting portholes and managing to stay afloat for hours. And they noted that two passenger ships passed them with no effort made to rescue anyone in the water. And that passengers on the passing ships took photographs of the disaster on their cellphones, presumably as mementos of the occasion.

There have been occasions, when mountaineers have climbed Mount Everest, that some, so focused on their quest for final ascent, have passed unheedingly by another person who had fallen ill. Passed by without acknowledging their personal responsibility to aid and assist, for it would deflect them from their purpose, when time and the vagaries of weather speak the essence for success.

And it happened again. A Japanese climbing group with a porter who had become ill decided to leave the man to fend for himself. They were climbing the K5 peak in Pakistan's Karakoram Himalayas, when a Pakistani porter had fallen ill to altitude sickness which can become rapidly fatal if the ill person is not cared for, and brought down to a lower level on the mountain and given medical care.

Just as well for the abandoned porter that people with conscience intact were nearby, people who were similarly aspiring to ascend to the peak of K5. Louis Rousseau and his team responded to an urgent call for help. Mr. Rousseau, an experienced Quebec-based mountaineer sought assistance from other climbers and between them they managed to rescue the abandoned porter.

They used a rescue sled and emergency oxygen tanks and managed to stabilize the man with first aid, and began lowering him down to base camp, knowing that medical help would meet them there. It is no mean feat to ascend a mountain which is the eleventh highest in the world. It takes great skill, immense strength and endurance and determination.

To perform the task in reverse hampered with a man suffering from pulmonary edema, carefully lowering him in a life-saving descent, is all the more difficult. There are some who ascribe the lack of care and concern for others to the transitory nature of current expeditions who helicopter in, rather than as was done in the past, establish a close relationship over time between climbers and porters achieving the various camp levels.

We live in a hurried world where people expect instant results and immediate rewards, with no time wasted on niceties let alone consideration for the welfare of others. It's a world of 'you're on your own, and tough it out'. And while most climbers would shudder at the very prospect of turning away from someone in need; for they themselves could be that person in need; there are those who utterly lack concern for others' welfare.

It is, as the editorial director of Gripped, Canada's climber magazine said: "When there's somebody who's ill or needs help, you offer it. It's basic human decency."

True To Bestial Form

His country traded him in for political stability, international recognition and material advantage in the world community. He was himself a willing participant in the trade. An end-of-life decision that he must feel has a certain nobility to it, ensuring that his family is well taken care of, while he lends himself to what he is convinced is a charade of justice.

For as he knows and as everyone else should know, he was doing no more than his duty as a devotedly loyal and courageous Serbian commander. The Butcher of Srebrenica has nothing, nothing whatever to apologize for, to ask mercy for, to beg forgiveness for.

Not from the grieving mothers who lost their sons and their civilian husbands and their brothers, nor from NATO allies who fought against his troops, nor the UN peacekeepers whom he morally compromised to become a witness to the slaughters he expressly ordered. And besides, in the best tradition of the world's butchers whom fate allowed to live long and natural lives, he is now a frail, elderly, ill man.

Have they no respect? This is not the strutting general who commanded his troops' undying respect for his commands to enact atrocities on unarmed populations, to separate men and boys from the women to dispatch them in a mass ethnic cleansing. "I am General Mladic and the whole world knows who I am", he proudly addressed the International Tribunal in the Hague.

He had done nothing less - and much more to be proud of - than to "defend my people and my country. Now I am defending myself. I want to live to see that I am a free man." And he had no intention, none whatever, of sitting by placidly while the court read out "obnoxious and monstrous" charges of criminality and crimes against humanity brought against him.

In one sitting, this man who took so much pleasure in the suffering of others, and who feels that his suffering as "a gravely ill man", should be looked on with compassion, veered from contempt for the proceedings and insisting on special accommodation in respect of his condition, to a smirking monster, proud of his accomplishments which were read out as charges after the clerk of the court called "All rise".

His pride in his accomplishments evident enough as a smile overtook his face, causing the grieving mothers sitting in the court to wail in their pain. He was placed behind a glass barrier for a good reason. But he was visible enough to all those gathered there, waving to the public gallery. Led away, back to his prison cell he turned to the families of his victims, smiled and flipped two military salutes.

"My heart breaks when I see him so old and obviously in ailing health. We should not have let this happen." Jovana Ciric, waitress in Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb capital.