    Jaffa Lizards

    By Israel Shamir

    This May was a time of great disillusionment for Russians. Years have
    passed since they parted with Communism, broke up the Soviet Union,
    granted independence to (or gave away to the US) every land they ever
    controlled, allowed Western companies to buy and sell their heirlooms
    and livelihood, closed down their military bases, let their missiles and
    submarines rust in peace, fulfilled every demand and desire of the US.
    Then they prepared a great celebration of V-Day, invited guests, brushed
    up their medals, retold the stories of supreme heroism – and were
    cold-shouldered by the US and UK, their erstwhile allies in the World
    War II. President Bush, tactful as ever, went to Tbilisi and declared
    that there was no big difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

    "O God, why did we fight for them?" thought many Russians. "Why did we
    support the Anglo-American landing in Normandy instead of signing a
    separate peace treaty with practically defeated Germany in the spring of
    1944, when our territory was liberated? Why did so many Russian soldiers
    have to fight and die while liberating Poland or Czechoslovakia or West
    Ukraine? Now we see that the Czechs and the Poles prefer German
    hegemony; they let them in via the EU treaty. The West Ukraine
    celebrates their volunteers in the SS division and pushes for NATO
    membership. We could let them have it their way; stay put behind the old
    borders and let the Wehrmacht deal with Private Ryan."

    If time messaging were possible, have no doubt – that is what would
    happen in 1944; and we would be living today in a different world. In
    that alternative world, the Russians would not have to listen to the
    complaints of an American president about why they were so rough with
    their enemy.

    Such grossly unjust philippics appear in the Western media because the
    Western and the Eastern visions of the War differ greatly. For the
    Russians and their neighbours, the important thing was their great
    victory over the German enemy; but in the West, the Jewish holocaust
    blotted out the victory of Stalingrad and Berlin. The West adopted a
    strange narrative centred on the Jewish fate. According to this
    narrative, the Germans decided to exterminate all Jews, from babies to
    the old men; that is why they fought the war. The world callously
    disregarded the Jewish tragedy, but a miracle occurred: Jews were saved
    and created their state of Israel from the ashes of the Holocaust.

    From the Russian point of view, the USSR did not ‘callously disregard’,
    but shed the blood of its best sons and daughters. The war was not
    fought for Jews or because of Jews; but Russia deserves their eternal
    gratitude anyway for saving them from their peril. Because of this claim
    on Jewish gratitude, the Russians went a long way with the creators of
    the holocaust narrative; but Jewish gratitude was extremely short-lived
    (as it usually is – google up my essay Prince Charming).

    In the present Jewish narrative that became the official version of
    modern history in the West thanks to efforts of Jewish media lords, the
    USSR/Russia is conspicuous by its absence. Even the Americans appear in
    this story as people who failed to bomb Auschwitz and supplied their
    know-how to the Germans. In the endless corridors of the Yad va-Shem
    Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, the Red Army is not even mentioned.
    Millions of perished Russian soldiers find no place in the Zionist
    narrative of the Jewish tragedy, Jewish heroic fight and an indifferent
    gentile world.

    The American and European leaders fully accepted the Jewish narrative,
    not least because it released them from their obligations towards the
    ally that shouldered the immense burden of the war. They watched with
    incomprehension and irritation the V-Day celebrations in Moscow. For
    them, the key event took place a few months earlier in Auschwitz: as
    opposed to Moscow, none failed to appear there and to ask for Jewish
    forgiveness. For them, the Jewish tragedy was the only important event
    of 1945; as for victory – what victory?

    That Victory was stolen. In Israel this May 9 they spoke of the heroism
    of Jewish soldiers and partisans, as if they had won the war
    single-handedly. The Israeli school syllabus does not refer to the War
    except in the context of the holocaust. Israeli well-nurtured ignorance
    is complete:

    A Russian student wrote a thesis on the Battle of Moscow, in the winter
    1941, and mentioned it while meeting with the Israeli students in Tel
    Aviv. "Who actually fought whom at Moscow in 1941?" asked an Israeli
    youth. After a brief silence, an Israeli teacher explained: the Germans
    fought the Japanese!

    Thus the story of the Jewish holocaust obscured the war and the Soviet
    victory. The Western anti-communists wanted to steal the victory; the
    Zionists helped them while minding their own interests. Now they collect
    billions in reparations, while the heroic feat of our fathers is
    forgotten. For me, a dweller of Jaffa, this turn of events recalls the
    myth of Perseus and his victory over the Sea Monster. You probably
    remember how the Sea Monster threatened Jaffa with destruction lest the
    Princess Andromeda were delivered into his paws; how Perseus beheaded
    the Medusa Gorgona, donned the winged sandals of Hermes, flew to Jaffa
    and turned the Sea Monster into stone, thus saving Princess Andromeda.

    Now imagine that a few years after this exploit, a young man named Jason
    decided to check the story and have a peek at the Princess. He gathered
    his friends, young Athenian gentlemen with much spare time on their
    hands, and sailed his black ship east. Winds and currents were
    favourable, and the ship reached Jaffa safely and speedily. If the
    Athenians had any doubts about Perseus’s veracity, these were dispelled
    most convincingly: the vast bulk of the sea monster was beached on the
    rocks a hundred yards from the shore, thus creating a cosy nook of a
    harbour. (It is still here, and is shown to tourists).

    In a café serving local arrack, a fiery, milky drink not dissimilar to
    the Hellene Ouzo, the Athenians enquired about the Sea Monster.

    "Yes, this skeleton is timeless reminder of the great lizard tragedy,"
    said the barman.

    "What lizard tragedy?" asked a sailor.

    "The Monster was devouring the lizards," said the barman. "The lizards,
    these harmless, exquisite and gracious creatures, were his favourite
    food. Every day he would swallow them by thousands. The lizards would be
    eliminated if the Monster were not slain. Until now, we have a Lizard
    tragedy remembrance day, and here is the memorial of the Devoured
    Lizard."

    Indeed, our sailors had not noticed until now a modest sculpture
    embellishing the city square. It depicted a lizard in a tortured pose,
    his tail gone and small paws raised to the blue Jaffa sky.

    "Strange! We have never heard of this lizard angle from Perseus,"
    muttered Jason.

    "Ah, Perseus!" exclaimed the barman. "He never cared for lizards. There
    are dreadful stories that he killed many lizards himself. When he
    carelessly flashed his weapon, the Medusa head, thousands of lizards
    were turned into stone. Some people say that Perseus was not better than
    the dragon."

    The barman’s son intruded into their conversation, "We learned in school
    that this Perseus was very weak on morals, too. He had many sordid
    adventures, took advantage of the old women Graiae, assassinated the
    poor Gorgon in her sleep; and worse -- he murdered his own father!"

    "He was a mass murderer," intervened another Jaffaite, busy with his
    arrack and olives, "he murdered his mother’s suitor Polydectes and many
    others by means of the same Gorgon head. Perseus is not our hero, just
    remember it!"

    "Every time we look at our harbour and see the Monster, we bless the
    Almighty God for saving the lizards," piously intoned a priest.

    "But he vanquished the dragon!" – bellowed Jason.

    "The dragon was defeated by the joint efforts of brave lizards and their
    human friends. Perseus played but a minor role in this drama. Anyone
    could do what he did: he just flashed the Medusa head at the dragon and
    turned it into stone. But before that, our Allied forces carried out a
    dangerous and brutal war; thousands of lizards attacked the monster, and
    we all prayed for the Monster’s end. Don’t you think that our prayers
    should be mentioned first as the greatest reason for victory?"

    "But why are we talking about defeating the dragon?" asked the barman’s
    son. "The dragon was defeated by everybody and anyway, the important
    story is that of the Lizards’s Tragedy. And Perseus is not our hero."

    "Are you Lizards?" asked daring Jason.

    "Oh no, we are humans. But the lizards are the best thing that ever
    happened to us. We always follow their advice."

    "And what happened to Andromeda?" – asked Jason.

    "Nothing special. Her house is out there, on Lizards Street."

    The sailors paid for their drinks and proceeded to the house which the
    barman pointed out. Andromeda the Beautiful was there. She was obviously
    astonished when the sailors brought her the regards of Perseus.

    "It seems the people of Jaffa forgot who saved them from the Dragon. But
    you, Andromeda, surely you remember Perseus who saved you?" asked Jason.

    "Perseus?" asked the Princess, gazing through the window at the monument
    of the Devoured Lizard. "Perseus? He never cared about the Lizards."

    The Greek team rose and departed back home in visible disgust. Since
    then, mankind has been divided into those who read the story of Perseus
    the Victorious, and those who worship the Devoured Lizard.

    The Old Canard

    Such a paradigm shift occurred in the West. The East celebrates the
    victory over the Dragon, while the West laments the Devoured Lizards.
    Naïve folk think that the Lizard worshippers are moved by compassion and
    try to copycat this narrative with stories of their own suffering: the
    Ukrainians suffered the famine of 1930s, the Africans suffered under
    slavery. Then they are amazed to discover that it does not bring in the
    flood of compensations.

    They forget that every narrative has its moving interest. The Western
    anti-communists and the Zionist Masters of Discourse are not moved by
    compassion; they promote a story of suffering when it is suitable for
    them. They promoted the story of the Ukrainian famine in order to set
    the Ukrainians against the Russians and to break the Soviet Union. They
    promoted the story of the Holocaust in order to obscure our victory.
    They invented the stories of Communist atrocities in order to eradicate
    Communism and privatise public assets from California to Siberia.

    For a while the ‘Red atrocities’ yarn was forgotten, but it came back
    with a vengeance when Russians put the squeeze on the oligarchs and
    slowed down the Western companies’ hostile takeover of the Russian
    economy. The mad exaggerations of Conquest were resurrected, and
    according to them, the Reds killed more people than were ever born in
    Russia.

    If I may use a Jewish cliché much loved by ADL’s Abe Foxman and his kin,
    it’s time to discard the old canard of "Communists killing millions".
    Not only is it used to promote the American way-of-life-and-death, it is
    simply not true. These wild holocaust-copycat stories were debunked not
    only by left-wing Russian historians like Sergey Kara-Murza, but also by
    Russian nationalist historians who can’t be suspected in pro-communist
    sympathies: Vadim Kozhinov and Stanislav Kunyaev.

    Now, our erstwhile friend Patrick Buchanan whom I much admired for his
    stand against the Iraqi war and against Zionism, went back to his Cold
    War follies. He wrote another of his attacks on "Russian Commies":

    "Bush told the awful truth about what really triumphed in World War II
    east of the Elbe. And it was not freedom. It was Stalin, the most odious
    tyrant of the century. Where Hitler killed his millions, Stalin, Mao, Ho
    Chi Minh, Pol Pot, and Castro murdered their tens of millions. Leninism
    was the Black Death of the 20th century."

    Not more, not less – the Black Death! Indeed, Elie Wiesel holocaust
    stories are Sunday Gospel reading in comparison with this raving.
    Communists – Stalin and Mao and Castro – are forever guilty in the eyes
    of Buchanan’s compatriots and fellow Mammon-worshippers; but not for
    their alleged atrocities: their real crime was that they did not allow
    the US to ravage their lands. The ‘Commies’ did not sell the goods, the
    tangible assets, oil, gas, lands to the American Moloch.

    I began to doubt both sanity and sincerity of Buchanan. His sanity,
    because he claims that "Castro murdered tens of millions" on an island
    with total population of nine million. His sincerity, for what are his
    anti-Zionist diatribes are worth if he wants to return Cuba to Meyer
    Lansky and his mafia?

    Buchanan is not alone, oh no. On May 7, 2005, The Economist of London
    condemned "Russian reluctance to acknowledge the Soviet Union's sins
    before, during and after the war, such as the Katyn massacre of Polish
    officers in 1940, the atrocities committed as the Red Army marched on
    Berlin or the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 that carved up Europe."
    Russia was unfavourably compared with "Germany, that has fully admitted
    the sins of its past: next week, for instance, it will open a new
    Holocaust memorial in Berlin".

    Should the Russians repent for the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement between
    the USSR and Germany? Hardly. The only regret is that it did not hold
    for long. Brutal Hitler and cunning Churchill were equally hostile to
    Russia. Churchill’s Fulton speech declaring the Cold War on Soviet
    Russia came before the last Russian casualty of the war was laid to
    rest. And this hostility is still strong: The Tbilisi speech of Bush is
    but an update of Fulton. (I have a personal reason to be an ardent
    supporter of Molotov-Ribbentrop -- this treaty sent the Red Army into
    Galicia and saved my father-to-be from the Einsatzgruppen.)

    Should the Russians repent for Katyn? The Katyn story is promoted to set
    the Poles against Russians and to restore le cordon sanitaire around
    Russia. Our enemies do not care a fig for the slain Poles. Otherwise,
    they would speak about tens of thousands of Poles slaughtered by Bandera
    gangs, the ultra-Nationalist West Ukrainians. But they keep mum, for the
    Bandera followers are their allies in the fight against Russians.
    Indeed, after 1945 these allies of Hitler were supported, armed and
    trained by the CIA, and survived up to our days when they were the
    leading force of the Orange Putsch in December 2004. (The city of Lvov
    named the main street after this mass murderer of Poles, Russians and
    Jews.)

    Should the Russians repent for "the atrocities committed as the Red Army
    marched on Berlin"? The fate of German civilians does not concern the
    British hypocrites. London cherishes the memory of Air Marshal "Bomber"
    Harris, and even raised a bronze statue to honour his memory ten years
    ago, although this war criminal killed more people than Genghis Khan. In
    the 1920s, Harris bombed and strafed Iraqis, and later planned and
    executed the allied bombings of German cities, including the fiery
    hecatomb of Dresden, turning a hundred thousand German refugees to
    ashes. While this mass murderer is honoured in England, the Russians
    have no reason to skip a heartbeat over their uphill struggle on the way
    to Berlin. They are not guilty of Dresden, Hiroshima and Auschwitz, nor
    did they pour Agent Orange on innocent civilians.

    Skip Apologies

    What the Russians do not need is your apologies. I tell you, curators of
    holocaust museums and editors of the Economist, Mr Conquest and Mr
    Buchanan, shove your catalogues of suffering and calls for pity and
    repentance you-know-where. It befits beggars to brag about sores and
    show off their deformities, not warriors and philosophers. Enough of
    this flirting with death and suffering. Let the dead bury their own. The
    worst legacy of Jews in this Jewish century is their obsession with
    death, grief, mourning, and suffering: their two most holy sites in
    Israel are the Wailing Wall and the Holocaust Museum, the most important
    day of a year is the fast of repentance; it is backed up by the fallen
    soldiers’ remembrance day, the holocaust day, the temple destruction
    remembrance day and more. The favourite Jewish genre is kina,
    lamentation. This disease of the mind spreads around the world in a
    paroxysm of self-pity, guilt and angst.

    If you intend to follow the Jewish discourse of grief, follow it
    consistently. Jews are not so silly as to recognise their guilt and
    apologise. Nobody yet has got an apology from a Jew. A Jew would reply
    with: "Did ALL Jews do it?". This marvellous reply can be equally well
    used by all of us, by Russians regarding Katyn, by Germans regarding
    Auschwitz, by English regarding Dresden, by the Yanks regarding Mai Lai
    and Abu Ghraib.

    And do not go around demanding apologies or begging forgiveness. This is
    sick. The late Pope opened the gates of Hell when he travelled around
    the world and asked forgiveness for deeds he did not do, from the sack
    of Constantinople to starvation in Dachau. Now we are asked daily to
    apologise for something we did not do. We should leave it for the Sunday
    of the Great Lent, like good Christians.

    Our Polish philosopher-friend Marek G. was right: "If one wants to have
    a healthy society, he has to extinguish, not inflame, ancient ethnic and
    other sores within it. In order to keep the people of Athens united, the
    democratic government of this polis, after a bloody civil war, declared
    "amnesia": it was forbidden, under the penalty of death, to recall
    publicly who had killed whom in the preceding decades. Today’s
    Judeo-American paradigm has decided otherwise: all wounds have to be
    constantly kept bleeding".

    Enough whining! I can hardly read anymore the reports from Palestine
    written by a good man (and a good reporter) Gideon Levy, for his story
    is just a story of suffering. Yes, there is suffering, but there is also
    courage, bravery, heroic mighty deeds and victory at the end, as I tried
    to describe in the story of Farris Ode (google it!). Old Russian
    chronicles tell us that the Mongol conquerors loved to listen to the sad
    songs of the vanquished. Let us sing the songs our conquerors will hate.

    This differing view of victory is not a lapse into some pagan belief, as
    Nietzsche thought. It is a precious gift of the Eastern Orthodox
    Christianity whose main image is one of Christ Triumphant. You won’t
    find a suffering Christ on an Eastern icon. We remember His suffering on
    Good Friday, but otherwise we live under the shining sun of His
    Resurrection. Only after its fateful schism from the East, with Prima
    Lumi, did Western art begin to present Christ tormented. Even our True
    images differ: the

    Western True Image (of Veronica) shows Christ in a crown of thorns
    on the Via Dolorosa, the Eastern True Image (of Edessa King Abgar)
    shows Him as the Ruler of the World. This masculine victorious
    Christianity of the East found expression in the Eastern vision of the
    great victory.

    These two paradigms – of the victorious Perseus and of the Devoured
    Lizard - meet in Berlin represented by two monuments. One is the Soviet
    Russian statue in Treptov Park, that of a powerful, somewhat Nordic
    soldier; his proud shoulders proclaim his victory, his formidable foot
    tramples the broken swastika, a mighty sword in one hand is lowered, a
    little German girl sits on his other arm clinging to his neck. They
    could be taken for a father and his daughter, an inverted Madonna with
    Child. This is an Orthodox Christian symbol made familiar by the icon of
    Christ holding his small Mother. The soldier apparently saved the little
    girl in battle – like Christ saves His Mother and like Perseus saved
    Andromeda.

    Soviet Russians indeed felt they had saved Germany and Europe from an
    evil spirit, and never induced guilt feelings in the East Germans. That
    is why East Germans are more masculine and less broken than their West
    German brethren.

    The statue was cast by Eugene Vutechich, a great Soviet Russian
    counterpart of the best contemporary German sculptor, Arno Breker. In
    German eyes, this soldier does not look ethnically or aesthetically
    foreign. It could have been made by Breker who created many fine and
    noble warriors, though with a touch of Hellenic homoeroticism. Vuchetich
    and Breker incarnated the aesthetic and moral ideals, even the spirit of
    the Soviet and the National-Socialist societies. Despite so many
    differences they were united in their Nordic and Hellenic masculinity,
    the forcefulness of the Iliad heroes so admired by Simone Weil.

    A Russian art historian noted that the "brutal and heroic energy of
    Vuchetich’s statues is near in spirit to the German plastics of the
    Third Reich". Such a statue does not offend Germans – it is not a shame
    to be defeated by a better warrior. The Russians and the Germans
    courageously fought a hard war that cost millions of civilians and
    soldiers’ their lives. Their efforts and their losses dwarfed those of
    other participants of the European war. Their battle was a battle of
    Titans, of Nordic Asar, of two strong heroes, and the best won, all
    praise to the hero. (I despise those who describe their common
    masculinity as ‘totalitarianism’.)

    But the best doesn't win in the long run, said Ecclesiastes. The
    masculine heroic ideologies faded away, while we are living today under
    an ideology that found its aesthetic and moral expression in another
    piece of memorial art in Berlin, creating a cemetery-like sprawling
    field of stone slabs near the Brandenburg Gate, namely, the Holocaust
    Memorial. This aesthetically ugly, conceptually diminishing, intrusive
    and insulting installation was made by their new occupying power.

    Our adversaries claim that the holocaust is a question of fact; and some
    Revisionists argue the facts: whether gas chambers existed or not. But
    for the Left, this is not a question of fact but of dominant narrative.
    Even if all the facts they claim were true, we should refuse the
    narrative and deny its importance. An important Dutch far left thinker,
    Paul Treanor, wrote in an essay called Why Forget the holocaust:

    "The Holocaust was the primary historical reference used to justify
    military intervention, by the US and its allies. Indirectly, it is also
    used to legitimise social injustice in liberal-democratic nations, and
    to imply a liberal-democratic entitlement to a monopoly of power. It is
    used to legitimise global inequality, as if it entitled opponents of the
    Holocaust to prosperity, while others starve. Remembering the Holocaust
    is not a moral imperative: the memory serves no good purpose, only evil
    purposes. The memory of the Holocaust has become an instrument of the
    right. The Holocaust should be publicly forgotten, in the same sense as
    it is now publicly remembered."

    Europe still can choose between the two narratives of the WWII, one of
    masculine salvation expressed by the Russian soldier with the saved
    German girl, and the other of emasculation, piling slabs of guilt on
    your soul. After all, this is the choice of Andromeda, whether to
    remember her saviour Perseus or to bewail the Lizards.

    Epilogue

    But the Lizard story did not end here. In his report from future, called
    So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s
    Guide to the Galaxy) tells what happened later.

    A spacecraft, a flying saucer landed on earth, and out of it marched
    down a silver robot, a hundred feet tall, and said "I come in peace",
    adding after a long moment of grinding, "take me to your Lizards".

    An experienced extra-terrestrial, Ford, explained this strange request:
    "The robot comes from a very ancient democracy, you see".

    "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

    "No," said Ford, "Nothing so simple. On its world, the people are
    people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the
    lizards rule the people."

    "I thought you said it was a democracy."

    "I did, "said Ford. "It is."

    "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

    "Oh yes, "said Ford, "Of course!"

    "Why?"

    "Because if they did not vote for a lizard," - said Ford, "the wrong
    lizard might get in. Some people say that the lizards are the best thing
    that ever happened to them. They're completely wrong of course, but
    someone's got to say it."

    Apparently, the Lizards of Jaffa have moved elsewhere and found
    themselves a fresh supply of gullible humans.

    ------------------------------------------------------
    Dear Israel,

    You write:

    "Should the Russians repent for the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement between the
    USSR and Germany? Hardly. The only regret is that it did not hold for long.
    Brutal Hitler and cunning Churchill were equally hostile to Russia.
    Churchill's Fulton speech declaring the Cold War on Soviet Russia came before
    the last Russian casualty of the war was laid to rest. And this hostility is
    still strong: The Tbilisi speech of Bush is but an update of Fulton. (I have a
    personal reason to be an ardent supporter of Molotov-Ribbentrop -- this treaty
    sent the Red Army into Galicia and saved my father-to-be from the
    Einsatzgruppen.)"

    I answer:

    "not before the British and French repent for their multiple treaties with the
    Nazis and Italian fascists:

    "The New Liberals are fondest of citing the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of
    August 23, 1939 as authority for the doctrine formerly subscribed to only by
    Mr. William Randolph Hearst and his peers. But search through their holy
    writings as you may, you will find no mention of the French-Italian agreement
    of January 7, 1935; the Anglo-Nazi Naval treaty of June 18, 1935; the British
    Italian accord of April 16, 1938; the Munich Pact of September 29, 1938; the
    Anglo-Nazi non-aggression pact of September 30, 1938; nor the French-Nazi
    non-aggression pact of December 6, 1938 - all of which preceded and
    considerably affected the one pact they cherish and recall."

    Dalton Trumbo, THE TIME OF THE TOAD, A Study of Inquisition in America, The
    Journeyman Press, London & West Nyack, (pp 37-38)

    More later.

    Best
    George
    ------------------------------------------------------

    From Mihaly Dohan, Hungary

    Dear Israel

    By chance I was away from my computer for some days, so I read your
    Perseus story and the replies only today (20/06). I think this topic is
    terribly hard to speak of and one has to pick his words very cautiously.
    That’s why I like your Perseus parable, as a parable always simplifies
    the reality and focuses only to some fundamental aspects stressed by the
    author for a certain purpose. Eg. in the parable of Jesus on the
    “merciful Samaritan” it does not matter whether the victim was
    completely innocent, or he provoked the “robbers” by some sort of insult
    previously. The lesson is clear without knowing that. Tha can be an
    answer to many right objections of Mihkel Tammepuu.

    Nobody can deny the heroism of the soviet soldiers. But the same time
    they made a terrible horde, fanaticized by authors, like Ilia Ehrenburg
    and probably many others. Believe me: as a small child I was on the
    other side. And my family was in a very exceptional position as my
    parents were born on that part of Hungary which became attached to the
    Soviet Union. That area had a mixed population, so they spoke more
    Slavonic languages (Ruthenian, Slovak, Check). This fact meant some
    protection. (Moreover my father, as a notary, spoke Jiddish, too, as
    many Jews were living there, who had come there from Galicia.) The basic
    requirement of a balanced approach is to put aside all the feelings and
    studying the facts and sources without any emotion. It is not a small
    task and perhaps the next generation is the first, who may be able to
    start the work, if the hurts are not maintained for generations, and
    mysticized and magnified by – for example - Holocaust remembrance days,
    or arrangements of similar purpose.

    Years ago a dozen of Soviet engineers came to my company for two weeks
    training. As there was a weekend during the course I took them for an
    excursion. It was early summer, wonderful weather, so I arranged them a
    tour around Lake Balaton. That area has many tourist targets, one of
    which is the famous wine. The head of the delegation had been in Hungary
    earlier and asked me to find a private cellar, because his Nordic
    companions had never seen a vineyard and vine cellar. I turned away from
    the main road on a dirt one and found a small, round, dished valley,
    surrounded by small hills with wood on the very top and vineyards on the
    hillsides and on the bottom of the valley spotted with small, white
    press-houses. It was wonderful and utmost idyllic. In one of the
    press-houses I found the proprietor, a white haired old farmer, who had
    quite good vine, so the mission was successfully completed. When the
    time of leaving arrived I wanted to pay, but he refused to accept any
    money. When I asked him about the reason, he answered: “Look, I was a
    soldier in WW2. I was fighting and shooting them many times. I am
    pleased that I could give them some vine at last.” – He did not tell
    that he himself was being shot, so the case was quitted. No! He want
    them enjoy his wine free. This guy was not a highly educated man. In his
    days the obligatory schooling was only five years. They finished
    learning at ten and started to work hard on the fields. All the same
    this men was wiser, then the majority of the world leaders. He did not
    demonize the “enemy”. He did not follow Eli Wiesel’s inhuman advice to
    preserve a corner in the soul for an everlasting “strong and healthy”
    hatred, who - by this claim - presented his moral level as like that of
    a human protozoa. He esteemed the “enemy”, he was sorry he had to fight
    agqinst them and wanted to show an act of private reconciliation that
    way, although a lot of his comrades were killed by the Soviet weapons.

    Concerning Katyn: When the Germans discovered the mass graves, they
    assembled an international expert committee to examine the case. A
    professor of the Medical University of Budapest participated in the job.
    The results of the examination were published, so the judges of the
    Nuremberg trial new exactly, what happened there. But they were not
    interested in the truth. They had to preserve the appearance, which was
    told at first by Wilson at the end of WWI: “We won over the Evil.” So
    their aim was not to find the truth, but demonize Germany and the German
    people and save their own hypocrisy from any damage. For this purpose
    they had to polish their ally, too. And they did it against all evidnece
    available. At the end of the war the professor had to escape, as he he
    was accused by the defamation of the great Soviet nation. He was
    fortunate that he was not deported back, like the Soviet
    “collaborators”, captured by the Allied, as he could not have escaped
    the execution in Hungary.

    A last remark about the statue problem: Mihkel Tammepuu wrote: “There's
    some point in your argument, but please go and ask Germans how they like
    the monument in Treptow park, do not guess. Yep, pretty sure the H
    memorial is more aesthetically foreign than the Soviet soldier, but
    could you imagine a monument of German soldier in Stalingrad (after all
    Germans fought in Stalingrad at least as heroically as Russians in
    Berlin)?” - And he is completely right. (By the way, his story about the
    statue of the Esthonian soldiers is shocking. That fantastic and
    sophisticated sensitivity of theirs! That is why I greatly appreciate
    the job of the researchers nicknamed “holocaust denials”. The “gassing”
    story is the reference point of this “sensitivity”. If there was no
    gassing, they shall be what they really were together with many others:
    people on forced labour under harsh war circumstances.)

    You know perhaps that the southern and central part of Hungary was under
    Turkish rule for 150 years. The Habsburgs were successful in getting the
    western and northern part of the country, and only the eastern part (now
    Rumania) remained independent. Even our capital, Budapest was ruled by
    Turks for that long. In Istanbul you spoke with reverence of the peace
    the Turkish Empire provided for in the Middle East. We did not
    experience something similar, as there was a long, permanent frontline
    across our country. When the castle of Buda was liberated, the last
    pasha of Buda, a certain Abdul Rahman, a 70 year old Albanian man,
    personally fought with his sword against the assaulting Hungarian
    soldiers and died in action. If you ever come to Budapest you can find
    an obelisk where Abdul Rahman died, with an epigraph in Turkish and
    Hungarian telling the event with the final remark: “He was a brave
    enemy”. So, our values are different to the American ones, as also in
    the case of the old farmer I mentioned.

    You referred to Suleiman, the Magnificent in a speech in Istanbul. I do
    not believe that you know that he died in Hungary while attacking the
    castle of Szigetvár, which was defended by a small group of Croatian and
    Hungarian solders headed by Miklós Zrinyi, who himself came from a mixed
    Croatian-Hungarian family. Not a single person of the defenders did
    survive the siege. The Turkish wars were the greatest tragedy of our
    history. All the same Suleiman has a statue erected by Turkey near the
    place of his death. The Hungarian government did not refuse the request
    of Turkey to erect the monument, as all hostilities, no matter how
    painful or tragic they were, have to be ended at a time. The only sad
    thing is in the story that mankind even now regard the conquerors as
    great. We ought to find better criterions for greatness. (That is why I
    was happy when the French historian, Francois Furet called Napoleon “the
    fraud of liberty”.)

    In this respect I can tell you another educative story told me by a
    Polish friend. Also the Poles fought against the Turks, although their
    circumstances were more fortunate than ours. (Their frontline was in
    Ukraine.) All the same, it was not a game. I was told that the Turkish
    sultans had a big reception room in their Istanbul palace for the
    foreign ambassadors, where each country had its assigned place. When
    Poland was cut into three parts by its three neighbours and politically
    ceased to exist, the Turks preserved the place for the Polish
    ambassador. The old enemy was the only country of the world, which did
    not stop regarding Poland as an existing country. They did not care
    about the sensitivity of the Russians, the Prussians and the Habsburgs.
    May be they were secretly laughing at the inconvenience of the
    ambassadors concerned. Nice, wasn’t it?

    Excuse: just another “last remark”. I completely understand the
    objections of Mihkel Tammepuu and his speaking of your “blind spot”. I
    myself hated the political system I had to live in. But I understand
    that the “lizard demagogism” always needs some “evil”. While they speak
    of the “crimes of the (actual) evil” they can do much more evil under
    the pretence of “fighting against evil”. They speak enough of the wrong
    deeds of the Nazis and Commies, so it can be a good policy for us to
    speak of their merits (without whitewashing their sins) and contrast
    them to the sins of the self-qualified “Good Side”, ie. the “chosen
    people” and the “chosen nation”. In this respect I should like to draw
    your attention to the words of Saral Sarkar, the German Green of Indian
    origin, who deeply investigated the possibilities of an
    enwironment-friendly eco-society: “The (present) situation … has given
    rise to a great confusion and lack of perspective. Socialism (as it
    existed) has failed, radical environmentalism has failed to achieve
    anything worth mentioning; but capitalism has also failed and is failing
    increasingly to solve any of the problems of the world. One need think
    only of the vehemence with which the ruling elites of even the richest
    capitalist countries are today trying to dismantle the welfare state.
    They are not even justifying this with the argument that it has to be
    done in order to protect the environment.” … “I reject eco-capitalism,
    not only because it cannot function, but also and mainly because of the
    values the capitalism represents: exploitation, brutal competition,
    worship of mammon, profit and greed as motive. And I am mainly for
    socialism because of the values it represents: equality, co-operation,
    solidarity. Freedom and democracy are compatible with these values,
    although they did not exist in the socialist regimes we have experienced
    up to now, but they are not compatible with the values of capitalism,
    especially not with inequality in wealth and power.” (Saral Sarkar:
    Eco-socialism or Eco-capitalism, Zed Books, London and New York, 1999)
    And that is the essence. Is it possible that the class war, the
    dictatorship of proletariat and militant atheism were the Judaist
    elements of the Marxist theory?

    Best regards

    Mihály from Hungary

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