It was a MISTAKE. They meant to say "seven freedom fighters."

How many times can I cancel my subscription, anyway?

Second!

Puke

Blatant anti-German bigotry in the midst of pure Palestinian apologism.

I'm just saying that's one way to interpret it too...

Damn Times.

Perception is reality, folks, and the perception here is not how I understand "reporting".

#4 SoCalJustice...that was my first impression too. I'm offended on behalf of all the 'good' Germans.

#4 SCJ

Well, Air France did insist on those humiliating checkpoints in occupied Rhineland. Militantism was clearly the result.

Colt 7:

Vee Vill push zee Alsatians vest untel zey fall into zee Seine!

Zee ground vill shak beelo zair feet!

Israeli woman wounded in West Bank shooting attack

By Haaretz Service

An Israeli woman sustained light-to-moderate wounds
after Palestinians fired at the car she was
travelling in late Sunday night the near the West
Bank settlement of Yitzhar, Israel Radio
reported.

The car kept travelling until it
reached the settlement of
Kedumim, where the woman was
then taken to Meir Hospital in
Kfar Sava.

IDF troops were searching the
area for the shooters, Army
Radio reported

For Li'l Mamzer (#2)

You don't have to cancel your subscription and you don't need an on-line registration. Just go to

[Link: www.asahi.com...]

Click "from NYT" on the left of the page.

Click "Cancel" in the pop-up box for the Japanese language package.

Then just read as much NYuckT as you can tolerate.

Jordyptians can't, by definition, be terrorists, in the eyes of liberals. Even when participating in the exact same terrorist mission along with other terrorists. As calling these five "militants" would be blatant hypocricy, best to use a quieter kind.

The problem goes much further than Howell and Jayson. But we knew that.

So, does Rantisi already work for the NY-Times, utilizing it as a king of undercover paper blog? I's suggest then to stop taking the mick out of readers, and to let the cat out of the bag, e.g. by a openly introducing a daily column "Ranteasy - your daily mindwarp".

Colt, how was your vacation?

Just another day for the New York Times, the official propaganda arm of the Palestinian Authority. And I thought that NPR was the official propaganda arm of the Paleswinians.

Sure, they can tell us that two of the seven terrorists were members of the German Baader-Meinhof gang. But, to the folks in the upper left corner of the universe at Seventh Avenue and W.43rd Street, noting that five of the seven terrorists were Palestinian Arabs and members of the PLFP is simply not the type of news that's fit to print.

Oh dear Hans this presents a dilemma for the LGF'ers,
which do they bash the Germans or the French.

Leesider,

Dilemma? Au contraire! We can bash both of them just fine!

Let's continue bashing the French. You can never go wrong with bashing spineless terrorist appeasers. Peace at any price is fine if you're suicidal.

Leesider, maybe we can bash you too. Where are you from? We can check to see if you're on our list of bashees.

#19

Leesider, maybe we can bash you too. Where are you from? We can check to see if you're on our list of bashees.

You should listen rather than bashing people zuluditzy!

Leesider (#20)

Cute. Get a sense of humour.

@zulubaby

Leesider is a troll.

@Leesider

GAZE

Aah Hans, thank you sweetheart.

Leesider:

Cuteness over. Fuck off. There, I feel better now. (G-d I'm a bitch when I'm hungover.)

#23

Oh wie schade Hans.

You're gonna take your bashing like a man I guess.

Leesider,

Nekama has a memo for you...

Leesider (#24)

hans ze beeman happens to be well-loved and respected on LGF. But nice try.

#25

That was a pretty good answer, thanks.

You should listen rather than bashing people zuluditzy!

Listen to what? Did you say something interesting?

Future stories from the NYT:

Auschwitz liberation anniversary:
"During the Second World War, an alleged six million people; including many Gypsies, homosexuals and communists; were killed in death camps run, in part, by volunteers from Lithuania and Ukraine."
September 11 anniversary:
"Alleged militants, trained by American flight-schools and cleared by US airport security , crashed 2 of the planes into the World Trade Center, killing a number of Canadian visitors and Muslim immigrants. A third aircraft successfully attacked the Pentagon and another crashed in Pennsylvania with no damage or fatalities on the ground."

Thufir: Exactly.

Blatant anti-German bigotry in the midst of pure Palestinian apologism.
I'm just saying that's one way to interpret it too...

Coincidence that the LATimes and others are currently in a bash-Arnold-the-son-of-a-German-Nazi-stormtrooper? Grey Davis and Bustamante sure could use the help right about now.

Coincidence that the LATimes and others are currently in a bash-Arnold-the-son-of-a-German-Nazi-stormtrooper? Grey Davis and Bustamante sure could use the help right about now.

Interesting also, that no one, particularly on Television, has re-run the video tape of Bustamante "accidentally" making a freudian slip and using the N-word in front of an african american group.

They continue the scandal of NYTimes-gate: the covering up of inconvenient facts.

The Paleostinian terrorists are simply "militants" to the hardcore lefties at the NYT. The only thing the NYT is good for is to cover the table where I clean my guns.

And of course the PFLP had a training camp in Iraq.

One of their guys was killed in the first raid on Iraq, thr bombing where we thought we killed Hussein the first time.

Now why was a PFLP member at that meeting?

I'm no defenfder of the NYT, but I think that the underlying message of the description is that the others are ASSUMED to be Palestinian. What they want to say is gee, two Germans were involved which is actually an unusual collaboration with "you already know who else".

#31 paul #32 piglet: Interesting too that whenever the Quimbys run for office, we aren't treated to rehashes about Joe Kennedy's disgraceful past. But then Teddy has a (D) after his name, so it's ok.

#36, that is an awfully big assumption to make -- especially as I initially decided to comment in order to thank LGF for pointing out this interesting bit of history.

I'm well-read and intelligent, although certainly not as well-versed in Palestinian terrorism as LGF. But I daresay I'm better educated, history wise, than most NYT readers. To say that they assumed a general knowledge by most of their readers that the other terrorist were Palestinians, is, I think, stretching things a bit. In fact, I can't think of one reason why they would do so -- especially if they were a journalistic enterprise concerned with ethics and elucidation, which they obviously are not.

I'm no defenfder of the NYT, but I think that the underlying message of the description is that the others are ASSUMED to be Palestinian.

Interesting.  Following through on this line of thinking, NY Times readers should always assume and speculate what are the basic facts in NY Times articles, because the basic facts will be omitted from NY Times articles?

I don't know what that's called, but definitely not journalism, and definitely not a "newspaper of record"...

Even the Associated Press provided a more honest (though watered down) recount of the 1976 PFLP hijacking:

Associated Press
August 16, 2003

Ex - Uganda Dictator Idi Amin Dies

In 1976 a Palestinian group hijacked an Air France airliner to Entebbe Airport in Uganda and kept its Israeli passengers as hostages. Israeli commandos flew to Entebbe under cover of darkness and rescued the captives. Amin claimed he had been trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution, but there was plenty of evidence that he was in league with the hijackers.

[Link: story.news.yahoo.com...]

The AP didn't even mention the German accomplices...
 

muslim=vermin=NYT

Yeah, and the NYT is charging 5.00 for the sunday edn, here in so Cal. It must not be selling very fast as the store is handing out a spec coupon for $2.25 off the 5.00 price. Lousy paper with trumped-up cause-du-jour reporting.

I'm an ardent supporter of Israel and no fan of the New York Times. Just thought I should get that straight before I say this: what the heck is the big fuss? So the NYT forgot to mention that five of the terrorists were Arab. So what? Isn't it more likely that this was a simple case of editorial slip-up, than it was a deliberate exercise in Palestinian apologism?

Isn't it more likely that this was a simple case of editorial slip-up, than it was a deliberate exercise in Palestinian apologism?

No. The New York Times is the big leagues.

Why mention the fact that two of the terrorists where members of a communist group that no longer exists, rather than the fact that most of the terrorists where members of a group connected to the current (actual) leader of the Palestinians.

Big L (#31)

Last week they were giving away free copies of the LA Times all week long. I refused it -- every day. Heh. Small pleasures and all that.

Pseudonym (#42),

So what? Isn't it more likely that this was a simple case of editorial slip-up, than it was a deliberate exercise in Palestinian apologism?

Well The NYTimes is supposed to be a first class news paper, so when they "forget" to mention something that is such a blatantly and obvious omission we suspect it might be something more than "Aw Shucks we're just kinda dumb, oops" as an acceptable excuse.

Of course they couldn't catch Jayson Blair lying and plagiarizing his way through 60+ stories for a year, so I guess they could be that stupid.

I wonder if they know that their German Foriegn Minister bum pal, Joschka Fisher, was a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang and was involved in the attack on OPEC's Vienna Headquarters.

#13 zulubaby

Still a coupla days left to go.

Socialism has gone absolutely crazy in the Netherlands. I heard of an old disabled man who, as part of his benefits, recieves an allowance to go see hookers.

!!!

#46 AndyM

I wonder if they know that their German Foriegn Minister bum pal, Joschka Fisher, was a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang and was involved in the attack on OPEC's Vienna Headquarters.

You do realise not one word of that is true?

Fisher knew one of the OPEC attackers, and was personally involved in a street battle with german police two years earlier in a demonstration. He didn't have any connection with Baader-Meinhof.

Don't let any of that stand in the way of some juicy libel though.

#48

Carlos testified that the weapons used for the OPEC operation had been kept in the apartment where Klein was then living with two other "red revolutionaries" of those days, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Joschka Fischer.

After Carlos was arrested by the DST, German journalist Bettina Roehl (daughter of the late Ulrike Meinhof, co-leader of the terrorist Baader-Meinhof organization) revealed that Fischer did indeed belong to a Frankfurt/Main terrorist group during the 1970s.

#49 Mr Pol

Klein isn't Fischer, and therefore can't be held accountable for what he (Klein) did, or didn't do. There's no evidence that Fischer had anything to do with the OPEC attack.

Bettina Röhl never accused Fischer of being a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang. She accused him of involvement in violent demonstrations (which he doesn't deny), and of being 'apolitical, and fond of violence'. It's well known that Fischer knew many people involved in far left activism, and some of them were indeed participating in volent and armed actions. All that's been proven about Fischer is that he threw some stones at demonstrations in '73, and that Klein kept guns in his apartment which he shared with Fischer.

#50

See here.

I'm getting fed up with Egyptian rivers.

#51 Mr Pol

Just like I said. He lived in an apartment with Klein, and hasn't been accused of/ or implicated in being a member of Baader-Meinhof.

Even if you were to believe eveything Bettina Röhl had to say about Fischer (which is a stretch, since she obviously has an axe to grind), there's no suggestion he was involved in the OPEC attack, or Baader-Meinhof.

Margrit Schiller had breakfast in Fischer's apartment and went on a pub crawl with him? This is evidence of what exactly?

#52

You are attempting to distort the article I linked to.

1/ When weapons are stored in Fischer's apartment before the OPEC attack, there definitely is a relation between Fischer and the OPEC attack. Claiming there is no relation is a lie.

2/ Margrit Schiller confirmed that Fischer was linked to the RAF, which was a Frankfurt/Main-based terrorist organization. Concentrating as you do on the pub crawl anecdote is a sorry attempt at misrepresenting Margrit Schiller's account.

3/ Dismissing Bettina Roehl's account on the grounds that she "obviously" has "an axe to grind" is ridiculous when there is a separate, independent confirmation by Margrit Schiller. Without the separate, independent confirmation, you'd still have to prove Bettina Roehl is biased.

4/ Gaddafi letter, in view of the three previous points, and of Fischer denial of the storage of the weapons, confirms that both Fischer and Cohn-Bendit were members or helpers of a terrorist organization based in Frankfurt/Main.

5/ I grant you that Fischer was apparently not a member of the Baader-Meinhof group: he was a member of the RAF.

And here's a quiote from Monday's Times:

The exchange of policing responsibility for Qalqilya and Jericho was likely to be less significant in terms of redeploying forces than in demonstrating renewed commitment by the adversaries to the road map, the peace plan supported by the Bush administration. The plan calls for swift, reciprocal concessions by both sides to yield a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace and a Palestinian state in three years, but progress has been mincing.

The whole article can be found .here. The thrust of the article is that both sides are equally uncommitted. More of the same whitewash

#53 Mr Pol

1/ Again, you are talking about someone else living in that apartment. Not Fischer.

2/ No she didn't. She said he was in contact with some RAF members. That's a different thing entirely. Given that she was a RAF member and breakfasted with him (but obviously didn't discuss RAF activities with him) we already know that he was in contact with RAF members.

3/ there isn't any confirmation from Schiller.

4/ No. If you want to let 1 & 1=3, and indulge in a bit of guilt by association then feel free. But there is no evidence for linking Fischer with terrorism. I've met a number of people, and in one case been a friend of someone who was a member of the IRA. Does that mean I'm connected with the IRA?

#55

1/ Again, Fischer was living in that apartment. There is only one apartment. Fischer, Klein and Cohn-Bendit shared the same apartment. That apartment was used to store the weapons. There is no way weapons were stored in that apartment without Fischer and Cohn-Bendit knowing about it. That is why Fischer vehemently denied weapons were ever stored in the apartment, instead of just saying he wasn't aware of it.

2/ Distorting again. She said that Fischer was in contact with illegal RAF members. When you live underground you don't have casual acquantancies. At that time, Margrit Schiller had not gone underground yet, or she wouldn't have gone on a pub crawl. The block denial by Fischer of Margrit Schiller's report, which is partly confirmed by Sibylle Krause-Burger in her unofficial biography, speaks volumes. In addition, nowhere does the article I linked say that Schiller and Fischer didn't talk about RAF activities. It actually implies the exact opposite by specifying illegal RAF members.

3/ Wrong. Again. Fischer was in contact with illegal members of the RAF, a Frankfurt/Main-based terrorist group. His apartment was used as a safe house by illegal RAF members. Ergo, Fischer was a member or a helper of the RAF. That was probably the case for Cohn-Bendit, too, by the way. Margrit Schiller confirmed Bettina Roehl declarations.

4/ If you were in contact with illegal IRA members, and they used your apartment as a safe house and to store weapons, then you were an IRA member. At the very least you were actively helping the IRA.

#56 Mr Pol

1/ It's supposition on your part that Fischer had to know about the weapons. The fact is that he has never been charged with any crime related to the OPEC attack, and the guns were not his, but someone elses.

2/ You accuse ME of distortion? ALL RAF members were 'illegal'. Margrit Schiller had been on the run by the way since 1971, two years before she was in Fischer's apartment. She obviously didn't discuss RAF activities with him, or she would have mentioned this juicy fact. Whether on the run, or unknown to police, all RAF members were 'illegal'.

3/ Schiller didn't accuse Fischer of membership, and didn't claim he played any role in supporting the RAF. She stayed with Daniel Cohn Bendit on his invitation, and Fischer was also a tenant in the apartment.
Again, you indulge in guilt by association.

#57

Forget it. You're obviously too dumb to make the difference between a member of an illegal organization, and an illegal member living underground.

#58 Mr Pol

No, I think that you're reading your own scenario into the word 'illegal'. And I note that you don't acknowledge that Schiller WAS on the run when she had her 'casual acquaintance' with Fischer.

Face facts. There isn't any evidence that Fischer had anything to do with OPEC, Baader-Meinhof, or (beyond sharing an apartment with those who did) the RAF.

Schiller says she had breakfast with him and went to the pub, and Röhl says he was apolitical, was involved in street violence, but makes no claim that he was a member of any terrorist group.

I'd just leave it go. You don't have anything to support your theories.

#53 Mr Pol

5/ I grant you that Fischer was apparently not a member of the Baader-Meinhof group: he was a member of the RAF.

I assume you are aware that there's no real difference in the two, bar the reference to the personalities?

Answering a point raised earlier: I very much doubt this could have been an innocent editorial mistake by the NYT. The reference to two of the terrorists being German/Baader-Meinhoff is just too much of an odd man out. The article is about Idi Amin. There is no other reference in the piece to any connections to German communist groups. On the other hand, there is reference to Idi's rather convenient conversion to Islam, and his living the high life as an exile in Saudi Arabia. So, given the latter two points, which is more relevant? The fact that two of the Entebbe terrorists were German communists, or that the rest were Palestinian killers? Hmm, Saudis... Palestinians... radical Islam... perhaps there's a connection here worth mentioning. Nah, I'll go with the German angle.

It was no accident.

what the heck is the big fuss? So the NYT forgot to mention that five of the terrorists were Arab. So what? Isn't it more likely that this was a simple case of editorial slip-up, than it was a deliberate exercise in Palestinian apologism?

Problem is, all these NY Times "editorial slip-ups" always support the same left wing political agenda...

These "slip-ups" are standard operating procedure for the New York Times.

And regarding this specific example, do you think the New York Times -- located in New York City -- would have a faulty memory regarding terrorist hijackings?  Perhaps from their perch on West 43rd Street, they cannot see the giant hole where the World Trade Center used to reside?  (You know, the buildings in New york City that housed 50,000 civilians and were destroyed by terrorist hijackers.)
 

VFI,

So Gemany's Foreign Minister isn't a card carrying member of the Baader-Meinhof Brigades or RAF, he's only a vicious leftist thug and terrorist sympathizer. By your own admission, Fischer was "personally involved in a street battle with German police" and has strong ties to individuals in the RAF organization involved in international terrorism (which apparently includes sharing an apartment where weapons used to commit acts of terrorism were likely stashed).

#63 Dirk Diggler

If street demonstrations are vicious, then I guess he was vicious. The leftist movement in Germany over those years did help usher in positive political change, just as similar protests did in the US. I'm no proponent of marxist revolution, but sometimes political has to take to the streets to be heard. No doubt there were vicious aspects to the street protests against Milocsovic too, but we are happy enough to endorse those protests.

Fischer knew and was friends with some people involved in terrorist acts. The world and the dog know this. That doesn't make him a terrorist. It's telling that there isn't anyone from that movement who claims that he was involved in terrorism, despite his subsequent move into compromised mainstream politics, where he has endorsed policies that must dismay his old political buddies.

Fischer says he knows nothing of guns in the apartment he lived in, and no-one claims any proof that he did know about them. I'm pretty sure that even the most intimate housemates manage to keep secrets from each other.

um,

sometimes 'politics' has to take to the streets

The world and 'its' dog

preview

Mr. Fischer, Who Are You? by the late Michael Kelly

VFI (64)

If street demonstrations are vicious, then I guess he was vicious.

You guessed right on that. From Kelly's article:

In 2001, Stern magazine published five photographs of you in action that day. What these pictures depicted was described by Berman, in a deeply informed 25,000-word article, ``The Passion of Joschka Fischer'' (The New Republic, Sept. 3, 2001). The photos showed you, Mr. Fischer, inflicting a ``gruesome beating'' on a young policeman named Rainer Marx: ``Fischer and other people on the attack, the white-helmeted cop going into a crouch; Fischer's black-gloved fist raised as if to punch the crouching cop on the back; Fischer's comrades crowding around; the cop huddled on the ground, Fischer and his comrades appearing to kick him ...''

As for the photographed scuffle, Fischer admitted that he was a militant who squatted in houses that were cleared by the police. "We defended ourselves," he said. "We threw stones. We were beaten up, but we also took a good swipe. I have never concealed anything in this regard." Still, he tried to put the episode behind him, chatting on the phone with Rainer Marx, the policeman whom he attacked. The 48-year-old Marx, who retired last year for health reasons, said he had already forgiven Fischer because of all he achieved as a politician.

Time magazine

VFI,

Re: Fischer's story that he was only defending himself: that's not how Kelly described it. Who do you think is more reliable? Fischer, the admitted stone-thrower, or Kelly the professional journalist?

Re: the policeman forgiving Fischer -- IIRC, the trucker who was dragged out of his car and beaten almost to death, in the Rodney King riots, "forgave" his attackers too. That doesn't mean the attack wasn't vicious - in both cases.

Actually Kelly is just quoting Paul Berman who has this to say on Kelly's synopsis:

Kelly is right about these facts. I know that he is right because he draws his information from a long article of mine that ran in the Sept. 3, 2001, New Republic. Kelly concludes that Fischer used to be a creep, a knave, a thug, and generally a bad guy. And Fischer's knavishness of the past explains his resistance to American policies of the present, to wit, his riposte to Donald Rumsfeld last week—"Excuse me, I'm not convinced"—on the topic of war with Iraq. Kelly cites my article a number of times in arriving at these conclusions, which I suppose was generous of him. Yet I worry that Kelly's citations may have led his readers to suppose that I share his estimation of Fischer's knavish character. I do not.
Fischer and a good many Europeans of his generation became militants of the New Left in the late 1960s and '70s because, among other motives, they considered themselves to be fighting a war against the lingering Nazism of German life and of Western civilization as a whole. This anti-Nazism of theirs turned out to be foolish in many ways—sometimes criminal, sometimes even Nazi-like at its most grotesque moments, which is why the New Left finally disintegrated. But the anti-Nazi motives were sincere, for all that. The impulse to go fight against totalitarian legacies had a large and (on balance) mostly positive effect on German and European society—or, at least, a great many Germans and Europeans believe that to be the case today. Fischer is by far the most popular politician in Germany right now, and that is partly because many people do credit him with having had moral and admirable motives in the past, even if they (and he) acknowledge that, in his youth, he went off the deep end from time to time.

Berman on Kelly's article

VFI,

Actually, Kelly was not just quoting Berman.

Kelly was taking factual information from Berman -- all properly credited to the source -- and adding his own analysis, that is, his own interpretation of those facts.

Kelly's article made that quite clear.

All I'd like to say concerning Fischer is:

"If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain."

He was quite a vicious thug, and was way off the mark ( he participated in a PLO conference once, but was obviously only a bystander).
BUT he has developed, and matured, though his past is flawed. Don't take me as the great Joschka Fischer fan. But apart from recent verbal lapses (Israel feels "isolated"), he has earned a doctor honoris causa from the University of Haifa, honouring his fight against anti-Semitism, and he was awarded the Buber Rosenzweig recently. These prices are usually not given to anti-Semites or stone-throwers.
I myself have never been a stone-thrower or terrorist, but was against the war in Iraq in the beginning, my attitude changed through reflection and information. Am I judged by what I was or what I am? Again - I do not try to evade, and I disgust Fischer's past; but he has faced it. People change, and it is good if they change from bad to the better. Unfortunately, there are changes from good to bad too.

As to the quote at the top of the post - Fischer, in his mind, IS a structural conservative in the sense that he has become extremely moderate, compared to his party. In fact, it was he who urged Schröder not to mouth off by stating "Germany will not participate under ANY circumstances". Kinda inverse Powell...

#26: zulubaby

Thank you!
I'll go and check now whether Leechsider has faced Nekama's Troll Hammer... :)

Remember one mans terrorist is another man's freddom fighter. /sarcasm.

The New York Nazi Times is so bad that nothing but a total purge can possible change it.

Coincidence that the LATimes and others are currently in a bash-Arnold-the-son-of-a-German-Nazi-stormtrooper? Grey Davis and Bustamante sure could use the help right about now.

People in the media don't like to pont out that Maria Shriver's grandfather, the unlamented Joe Kennedy Sr. who was Ambassador to the UK was the biggest Nazi sympathizer around.

Way OT - View from Ireland

On Saturday night I saw the film "The Magdalene Sisters" - what's the story with the convent laundries? I hate to say this because I sincerely do not want to be an Ireland basher - but Ireland until recently had to be one of the most reactionary countires in the Western world if even half of it was true.

#75   Joel

Yes, one of the worst chapters in our history. There was a widespread but hidden culture of throwing 'problematic' children and women inside institutions when they became embarrassing or awkward to the norms of society. This continued through to the 70's, and has only really been confronted in the last decade.

VFI thanks for responding. The sadism that was depicted in the film was truly frightening. It seemed as if the powers that be in Irish society were fascinated and repelled at the same time by any hint of sexuality. There was one horrific scene in the film where the laundress girls are lined up totally naked in front of two nuns who proceed to make fun of their bodies. According to the film, even girls who were raped were considered to be impure and thrown into the Church's version of the Gulag.

#77   Joel

It wasn't a universal consequence of pregnancy. If you had money you might go to another town while the pregnancy showed, and give the child up for adoption, or go to England for an illegal abortion (pre-'67). As ever, it was the poor that bore the brunt of social abberation.

Religious orders are currently involved in paying compensation to those abused by the institutional process that existed up until recently. In the case of children, the state will have to pay the bulk of costs, since the religious orders undertook the 'care' of children on behalf of the state.

VFI

The last laundry closed in 1996. They were called Magdalene laundries after Mary Magdalene and the girls would wash clothes by hand using scalding water as "penance' just like their namesake Saint who was an alleged prostitute. I still think it was a disgraceful episode of Irish history. I remember that the American TV show "60 Minutes" did a piece on the convent laundry girls back in 1999. I am not sure if abortion is legal in Ireland, I know that divorce was recently legalized. In the past I was told that you could not even purchase birth control devices in Eire.

hans,

you should know that Fischer received his Israeli awards at a time when GWB came to Berlin and spoke about Germany as a "partner in leadership" and Möllemann ran for FM. Never forget that the Israelis have so few allies in the world that they are forced to apply moral bribing to nominal friends. Joschka Fischer received his Haifa doctoral cap for his power, not for reasons of sincerity.

Before the liberation of Iraq Fischer said that Germany had "a special responsibility" to intervene in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and afterwards he said he didn't know about the Israelis "feeling of isolation".

He didn't even acknowledge the fact but just that they had a feeling! This man is a blatant liar, and that's what he brought from the street into the government, not the lefts anti-Nazism to which he always had a cynical relation. Though our parliament believed one of his spokesmen that he was "bored" by the 1969 Algier conference, he hailed Arafat from the very beginning and will stand and (hopefully) fall with him.

He and his advisors (e.g. Joscha Schmierer) stood in the epicentre of German antiimperialism in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day war, and have internalized the Middle-Eastern wisdom "kiss the hand of your enemy until you can cut it off" to the marrow, as their 30 year track record of intrigues among the Left (e.g. documented in the Christian Schmidt biography) proves.

As far as I know, there is nothing which provides a direct link from Fischer to the Entebbe hijacking, where the Palestinian terrorists worked with the Berlin-based "2. Juni" group while Fischer and other terrorist groups worked in Frankfurt/Main.

However, the two German terrorists were those who did the selektion of the Jewish passengers on that flight when the other hostages were released. It was known in time, but there had been no discussion let off criticism in Germany, neither on the Right nor the Left. Guess who then was a key activist on the Left who could haved voiced it if he had wanted to.

#80: leo

Never forget that the Israelis have so few allies in the world that they are forced to apply moral bribing to nominal friends. Joschka Fischer received his Haifa doctoral cap for his power, not for reasons of sincerity.

With all due respect, the University of Haifa gives a doctor honoris causa to those whom they deem worthy. Your idea is not based on facts. Fischer has been been vice president of the German-Israel society for some years, and Paul Spiegel, at the Buber-Rosenzweig award ceremony, recently said:

“Joschka Fischer is a German who has convincingly succeeded in drawing lessons from the terrible past of this country,” said Spiegel. “His support for the security of Israel, for the right of the Jewish state to exist, is not just lip service, but an active deed.” In acting to further the peaceful coexistence of religions, Fischer serves as a role model “for he sets standards for relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, between Germans and Israelis,” Spiegel said.

Do you think this medal is also given as "bribery" too? Tsk.

leo, don't take me wrong, Fischer has - as I said - a dark past. Still, he has developed. I dislike the Greens and their policy a lot, as I do dislike anti-Semitism. But Fischer would not have been awarded for his efforts to fight anti-Semitism, neither by Haifa nor by Spiegel, if he were still what he was.

Why do you believe the Buber-Rosenzweig award was "recently"? It had been when Saddam was in power (March 09, 2003) and this is one of the reasons why Fischer was awarded.

And didn't you realize the irony that Paul Spiegel in his speech called Joschka Fischer "a honest broker ("ehrlicher Makler") for the Palestinians", quoting a term which in German politics last had been employed by Otto von Bismarck in a campaign that prepared the cultivation of the Ottoman Empire for WWI? You can bet that Mr. Spiegel, who likes to play with sophisticated historical allusions, knew whom he was quoting, and so did Mr. Fischer.