Thursday, May 28, 2009

Adbusters' Spurious Gaza/Warsaw Ghetto Comparison

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 Adbusters' Spurious Gaza/Warsaw Ghetto Comparison May 28, 2009
 
  Click Here to View this Article Online and Discuss on Headlines and Deadlines
 
Dear HonestReporting Canada Subscriber,

Following the recent 22-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, anti-Israel proponents – in politics, the UN, Hamas, trade unions, academia, and in the media – have drawn spurious comparisons of the situation of Palestinians in Gaza to that of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II.

The reason the Warsaw Ghetto analogy is used is to trump up libelous claims that Jews who were once the victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust are now the victimizers carrying out the genocide of Palestinians. It should be noted that comparisons of Israeli policy and actions to the Nazis fit the European Union's and U.S. State Department's working definition of anti-Semitism.

Vancouver-based "alternative" magazine Adbusters, which bills itself as an "anti-consumerist" publication, recently made this comparison in its May/June edition. A prominent 6-page report (click here to view it in PDF format) by Saeed David Mohammed mockingly titled "Never Again," featured nine large photographs juxtaposing gruesome images of the Warsaw Ghetto with images of Gaza in a feeble attempt to demonstrate similarities.

The grotesque and misleading photo montage, along with the article, lacked the necessary context required. For example, one photograph contrasted dead members of the Jewish resistance executed by the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto with unknown Palestinian prisoners wounded after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in late December. Other photos showed dead bodies outside of a Hamas "police headquarters" compared to bodies of Jewish policemen executed in the Ghetto uprising.

  

According to writer Mohammed: "Comparing any event with the actions of Nazi Germany during World War II should never be done lightly. When events lend themselves to such comparisons, however, it can almost certainly be said that something is very wrong. Though the stated goal of Israel has never been the complete destruction of the Palestinian people, the tactics and policies supported by the state of Israel paint an extremely grim picture."

Contrary to Mohammed's pernicious thesis, 1943 Warsaw is nothing like 2009 Gaza for the following reasons:
 
1) Haaretz's Bradley Burston notes that this comparison:
  • "… denies and diminishes and exploits the Holocaust, does disrespect to Holocaust victims and survivors alike, alleviates European guilt over complicity with the Nazis, alleviates American guilt over inaction in the face of the annihilation machine, misrepresents both the cruel reality of the Gaza Strip and the cruel reality of the ghetto, dismisses the humanity and the vulnerability of the million Israeli Jews and Arabs within rocket range, and ignores completely the role of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, in having sent thousands and thousands and thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel."
2) As Eamonn McDonagh expounds on the American Jewish Committee's online journal:
  • "The Jews in the Ghetto didn't have their very own international aid organization to provide for their basic needs and there was no Jewish political entity down the road which enjoyed a limited measure of peace and prosperity despite being occupied by Germany. No Jewish organization had ever sworn to destroy Germany and turn it into a Jewish state. No Jewish organization had ever fired thousands of rockets at Germany towns and cities. No Jewish organization had sent suicide bombers into Germany and slaughtered hundreds of Germans while they went about their lawful business."
3) According to Middle East historian Mark LeVine on the Al Jazeera website:
  • "Gaza is not the Warsaw Ghetto. Even after the latest war, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank remain rooted to the soil, not buried beneath it."
  • "The Warsaw Ghetto was used by the Nazis to confine Jews into the smallest possible space, eventually in preparation for their ultimate extermination - which became official Nazi policy within a year of the ghetto's creation. Out of an initial population of over 400,000 Jews, 100,000 had died of disease and starvation by the time the uprising began in 1943. To be comparable, by 2007 over 300,000 Gazans would have to have died from similar causes."
     
This isn't the first time Adbusters has been in hot water. To recall, in 2004 Adbusters was accused of anti-Semitism for featuring an article entitled "Why won't anyone say they are Jewish?" that identified supporters of the Bush Administration and the Iraq war as Jewish. A list of fifty prominent "neo-conservatives" was presented, half of which featured dots next to names of those who are Jewish.

Adbusters' and Mohammed's highly charged Gaza/Warsaw Ghetto comparisons are odious and do not hold up to scrutiny. As Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University notes, comparing "Jews to Nazis is not only ill-informed, it demonstrates a certain prejudice — anti-Semitism — which will never help resolve the situation. Whatever one thinks of Israeli policy, to describe it as akin to the Nazi policy of murdering all of European Jewry is to engage in anti-Semitism and a form of Holocaust denial."

How You Can Make A Difference:

Please write to
Adbusters to criticize their spurious attempt to liken the Warsaw Ghetto to Gaza. Please send your comments to Adbusters Editor-in-Chief, Kalle Lasn at: editor@adbusters.org or call (604) 736-9401 and refer to Saeed David Mohammed's reportt entitled "Never Again" in the May/June edition of the magazine.                                        
 
 
 
   
 
 
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VIDEO:Canada Human Rights

VIDEO of CTV PowerPlay Canada Human? Rights Commission?

Iranian S-Elections?

Evolution / Intelligent Design

Legitimate Questions Should Be Discussed

I am reminded of how established "science" has been wrong many times before such as in the case of Piltdown man. So could it be wrong now? Or has it been perfected? Should not reasonable arguments be considered?

We have become a nation of beggars

Terence Corcoran reports in the National Post on Friday, January 16, 2009 that the STIMULUS everyone is yelling for may only work over a short period and may actually MAKE THE ECONOMY WORSE over longer periods.

[Read the article below for the researchers who studied this phenomenon.]

POINTS

- "What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?"

- Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

-One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

-A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

-Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

- What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

The whole article by Terrance Corcoran follows:

Are you "shovel-ready," poised to hit the ground running, or merely desperate for cheap cash to get through the recession? If so, here's your last chance to apply to Ottawa for a piece of the massive government spending-bailout-infrastructure-stimulus operation now being prepared for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's Jan. 27 budget extravaganza.

To get you going, the National Post has created an all-purpose Stimulus Canada application document. Simply make sure your company/institution fills out the form here to get in on the action.

We're just kidding, of course, or at least we were until our satirical Stimulus Canada General Application Form was mugged by reality, which is rapidly turning out to be funnier than the fanciful idea of a government department called Stimulus Canada. To all intents and purposes, Stimulus Canada already exists.

Government money to flow, the taps are opening, deficits are no problem. The spending, as Stephen Harper said after a meeting with the premiers on Friday, will be "very significant" and there will be "very significant deficits." That could mean new spending of $20-billion and deficits of $40-billion.

Industry groups, corporate opportunists, charities, municipal politicians, arts groups, provincial premiers, tech firms, mining companies, forestry operators, banks, money lenders -- in fact, just about everybody has come forward to get in on Canada's portion of what is turning out to be a mad global government stimulus pandemic.

Each claims to have a plan or an idea that they say would produce jobs, spending, investment and activity that would get Canada through the recession and stimulate the economy.

At some point, though, the clamour of claims and calls becomes absurd, and that point looks to have been crossed the other day in the United States when porn merchant Larry Flint said the U.S. sex industry was falling on hard times, business was down 25%, and it needed a $5-billion slice of the $1.2-billion U.S. stimulus program.

And why not?

Mr. Flint has a point. It is not totally illogical for anyone to think that way. If you spend a dollar somewhere -- whether building a bridge or operating a forest company or buying a car -- it generates activity. And, after all, it's a grand old economic theory, created by John Maynard Keynes, that spending, especially government spending, rolls through the economy on a giant multiplier, piling jobs on jobs, growth on growth.

Except for one problem: What if it's not true? What if, as a wide and growing school of economists now suspect, the government spending and stimulus theory is a crock that is shovel-ready to be heaved out into the barnyard of economic waste?

The Prime Minister, in his comments on Friday, seemed to be riding right into the barnyard. He said the government would be simply "borrowing money that is not being used" and "that business is afraid to invest." By borrowing that money, and turning it over to all the groups and interests looking for part of the stimulus spending, he would be jump-starting activity while the private sector got its legs back.

Even disciples of Keynes, such as Harvard's Greg Mankiw, recently highlighted economic studies that show government spending binges -- shocks, they are sometimes called -- don't seem to help the economy grow. They might even make it worse.

One of the studies cited by Mr. Mankiw was by two European economists (Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig), titled "What are the Effects of Fiscal Shocks?" It looked at big deficit-financed spending increases and found that they stimulate the economy for the first year, but "only weakly" compared with a deficit financed tax cut. The overriding problem is that the deficits crowd out private investment and, over the long run, may make the economy worse. "The resulting higher debt burdens may have long-term consequences which are far worse than the short-term increase in GDP."

Two other studies point in the same direction. A paper by two economists, including the current chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, Olivier Blanchard, concluded that increased taxes and "increases in government spending have a strong negative effect on private investment spending."

Roberto Perotti, an Italian economist with links to Columbia University, in "Estimating the Effects of Fiscal Policy in OECD Countries," found nothing but bad news for Keynesians. Economic growth is little changed after big increases in government spending, but there are signs of weakening private investment.

What we all might logically intuit to be true -- spend government money, especially borrowed money, and you stimulate growth -- has long been thought to be a fallacy by some economists. That thought is now spreading. British economist William Buiter said the massive Obama fiscal stimulus proposals "are afflicted by the Keynesian fallacy on steroids."

Over at Stimulus Canada, Mr. Harper's plan looks somewhat more modest and Canada is not in the same fiscal fix as the United States. But Ottawa and the provinces are clearly ready to borrow big wads of money from the future to stimulate the economy today. It's money that is supposedly sitting out there in the timid hands of investors who will be repaid with tax dollars later.

But if that stimulus spending does not generate much fresh economic growth, and the borrowing chews up money that private investors could invest in the future, the shovel-ready brigades who get the cash today will produce only short term gains at the expense of the long term health of the economy.

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