Barry Farber
Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2003

The next day the Hitler government ordered the Jews to PAY for the cleanup and forced elderly Jews to go into the streets with brooms and shovels to do the cleaning physically, on grounds that "It's about time Jews learned to do some real work!"

That was the time to quit talking about Hitler building highways and restoring German pride. That was the time to give up on Nazi Germany.

Less than two weeks after Castro took power in Cuba the first "trial" of Batista henchmen opened in Havana. The trial was staged where a circus had quickly vacated when the shooting started. They couldn't have picked a more appropriate venue.

The first defendant was a Batista police chief named Jesus de Sosa Blanco. A witness to his alleged cruelty was asked to identify the man who had committed the grotesqueries she alleged.

Believe it or not, she couldn't even find him in the courtroom! Even though he was sitting in the defendant's chair in the center of the arena alone, the sole focus of everybody's attention with his hands handcuffed behind his back, she couldn't locate him.

Her eyes swept the scene from left to right. The crowd cheered every time her gaze approached Sosa Blanco. The cheers waned each time she failed to spot him and her gaze continued aimlessly around the tent. The ritual repeated every time she moved her head back the other way. It was like that childhood game of "Now You're Getting Hot – Now You're Getting Cold."

The crowd cried out for the firing squad. To heck with identifying the defendant. They got their wish only hours later.

That was the time to stop rhapsodizing about Castro, the young bearded "freedom fighter" who promised to become the new Simon Bolivar, liberating all the Latin Americas. That – and not one, five, 10, 20, 30, 40 years later – was the time to give up on Castro Cuba.

I'm not saying it's time now to give up on America; but let me illustrate how late it is.

There were anti-war rallies in several American cities on Saturday, Jan. 18, the largest in Washington, D.C. All the birds and the beasts were there: Rev. Al Sharpton; once-upon-a-time Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who spares Janet Reno the distinction of being the most dismal law enforcement officer in American history; and the usual crowd of Hate-America-and-Blame-America-Firsters. (David Horowitz bluntly traces the organizers to the Communist Workers Party and outright terrorist groups.)

There were also surely a sprinkling of good Americans who thought war with Iraq inadvisable at this time. One wonders if those latter folk enjoyed the journey or realized they were being hijacked.

Ramsey Clark, before President Bush had time to bomb a single Baghdad maternity ward, actually called for his impeachment. Once upon a time, in an argumentative forum in New York in which I participated, I clearly heard Ramsey Clark say, "The punishment IS the crime!"

One video sequence from that Washington rally got to me and THROUGH me all the way to the red zone. One of those speakers who thinks it's dazzlingly effective to have the crowd echo verbatim what he's just told them was railing forth.

"Long live the peace-loving Iraqis!" and the screen showed a particularly innocent-looking teenage girl repeating, "Long live the peace-loving Iraqis!" And then, "Long live the peace-loving Palestinians!" and the young girl's face reverently repeated that mantra and all that followed.

All the speakers were rhetorical echoes of each other excoriating racism, fascism, militarism, colonialism – and Zionism.

And that sweet little face came across on cue with all the words and melody, like a well-trained little parakeet. Her denunciations of Zionism were equal in passion to her denunciations of racism, fascism, colonialism and militarism.

I could take mean-pills and intravenous gallons of essence-of-sadism and still not have the verve to ask that squashed-out little honeydew melon of an American girl if she even knew what Zionism was. That would be intellectual bullying.

Zionism is nothing more than the notion that the Jews should have a homeland. Just one, mind you; one SMALL Jewish homeland.

How many Christian homelands are there? I quit counting after 59. How many Moslem homelands are there? Twenty-two Moslem ARAB homelands plus many more non-Arab Moslem homelands like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh and – the largest and most populous of all – Indonesia.

In 1948, when the United Nations voted a Palestinian AND a Jewish state in the territory of Palestine, the Jews were not just willing but elated. The Arabs were enraged and welcomed five Arab armies to come in and destroy the infant Israel. They were unsuccessful. So, now it's 2003 and in the middle of the capital of the Free World they're hailing the peace-loving Palestinians and pressure-pumping sulfuric acid between the eyeballs of "Zionism"!

I felt I was watching nothing less than the capital punishment of history itself.

Football may stop cold out-of-bounds, but populations don't. Turks live in Bulgaria. Bulgarians live in Romania. Romanians live in Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs live in Austria. Austrians live in Italy AND SO ON AND ON AND ON CLEAR ACROSS THE ENTIRE WORLD.

And guess what? That simple fact of life does NOT cause suicide bombings.

In one remarkable example, more than 97 percent of a population lives under a flag other than their own. Look at a map of northern Europe. Find the Aaland Islands between Sweden and Finland. They belong to Finland, but the population's almost all Swedish and there's no record of even a barroom brawl as a result.

But wait! There happens to be one and only one corner of the earth where that kind of easy living doesn't go. And that's the sacred soil of the Middle East where it's somehow written that Jewish shoes shall not desecrate Moslem sand.

Do you buy that doctrine? That doctrine is mediocre even for medieval.

But the leaders of that rally buy it – inhale it, swallow it, marinate in it and spew it out at the speed of hate.

And that sweet little American girl buys it without even looking at the label. Watch her earnest little lips as they squirt equal venom upon "Zionism" as upon racism, fascism, colonialism and militarism. When did Palestinians begin?

Great question. They began only after the start of the Six-Day War in June 1967. Before that, the Arabs who lived on the "West Bank" were Jordanians and those who lived in Gaza were simply Egyptians.

The notion of "Palestinians" was invented to offer Jew haters an artificial, laboratory-cultured tortured class of Arabs who were being "persecuted" by virtue of Israel's attempt to defend itself.

That in no way deflected or diminished the gusto of that young woman's anguish as she gave her lung-emptying all in that sub-freezing weather for the "peace-loving Palestinians."

This brings us to the untold story of Camp David.

In the late 1970s President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to shuck their multiple layers of security guards and take a walk together through the lush woodlands around Camp David.

As the three were walking together through the forest they heard the Voice of the Lord Himself booming down upon them.

They fell instantly to their knees.

The Heavenly Voice from above said, "Arise, my sons. You need not be on your knees. You are doing my work. You are making peace.

"In reward for your efforts, you may have the answer to any one question that may reside in your hearts."

President Jimmy Carter went first.

"Dear God," he asked, "when will we have a nuclear-free world?"

"In the year 2048," God replied.

And President Carter began to cry.

"Why do you cry?" asked God.

"Not in my administration," sobbed President Carter.

Then it was Sadat's turn.

"Dear God," asked the Egyptian president, "when will my Arab brothers finally be united?"

"In the year 4004," God replied.

And then Sadat began to cry.

"Why do you cry?" asked God.

"Not in my administration," wailed Sadat.

Then it was Prime Minister Menachem Begin's turn.

"Dear God," he asked. "When will Israel finally begin to get fair treatment in the world media?"

And then God began to cry.

"Dear God, why do You cry?" asked all three of them.

And in one heartful cry the Lord replied, "NOT IN MY ADMINISTRATION!"

Barry Farber's daily radio program can be heard on Talk America Radio Networks, www.talkamerica.com.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Castro/Cuba
Israel
Middle East

Editor's note:
You can fight terrorism: David Horowitz's Defense of Israel Campaign