Putin admits Russia's anti-Semitism

Sapa-AFP, Daily Dispatch, SA ^ | 30JAN05 | Sapa-AFP

[familyop]

MOSCOW - A visit to Auschwitz has prompted President Vladimir Putin to do something he had never done over five years in power, admit that anti-Semitism rages on in Russia and must be stamped out, amid a rare public debate on the once taboo subject.

Jews were mistreated throughout much of the Soviet era, with dissidents sent by Stalin to gulags and Jewish students barred from entry to the more prestigious universities.

Nationalist rhetoric largely graduated from that era to post-Soviet Russia amid concern and blame- seeking over the demise of its superpower status.

A poll this week by the Levada Foundation found that 59 percent agreed with the sentiment "Russia for Russians".

A March 2004 study by the Expertiza foundation found 45 percent thought Russia was anti-Semitic while 42 percent said Jews ought to be barred from power.

But Putin, who rose to the presidency on a strongly nationalist ticket, and his entourage avoided the subject even as Washington expressed growing alarm over a recent rise of hate crimes against Jews.

Two events appeared to change that this month: The first was a letter signed by 20 parliamentarians demanding that Jewish groups be banned across Russia for their "radical" views. The second was Putin's trip to the Auschwitz memorial on Thursday.

"Just a short time ago, the German chancellor said he was embarrassed for the past. But this is the past," Putin said at the poignant 60th anniversary ceremony marking the notorious Nazi concentration camp's liberation by Soviet troops.

"But we have to be embarrassed of today, because even in Russia, which has done the most to defeat fascism, to liberate Jews, we see frequent signs of this disease," he said in the first direct reference to anti- Semitism from the Kremlin this decade.

"We must proclaim in one voice: no one has a right to be indifferent to anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racial intolerance."

Moscow newspapers, some of them state-run, fawned over what they saw as a courageous and even historic pronouncement.

"Putin is embarrassed by anti- Semitism," the Izvestia daily wrote.

"The concentration camp no longer exists but Nazism lives on" in Russia, the government's Rossiyskaya Gazeta wrote in giving a synopsis of Putin's speech. - Sapa-AFP

[jb6]

By the 10th centuary, the Khazars were a spent and defeated force, having been mostly absorbed by the Orthodox Kieven Russ.

[wardaddy]

I did not mean they were the Northern Kingdom (or lost tribe) ...just talking about their conversion to Judaism and the degree to which is speculated.

Koestler called them the 13th tribe

regards

I think the northern kingdom dispersed...and God knows where literally I suppose. Nearly everyone speculating now has a dog in the hunt ...as usual...lol...don't we all?

[Just mythoughts]

"Actually, from what I've read, the Pushtins of Afghanistan/Pakistan fit closest to the lost tribes. They do so both in naming conventions, in culture (except that they are islamics now) and in folklore. They say they were placed there by the Assyrians as a punishment. Also, there is a jewish black tribe (proven genetically by the priest gene) stretching from eastern S.Africa through Mozambique."

You really need to broaden your reading material, because you have one huge problem with "Afghanistan/Pakistan" being the lost tribes. Now I will give you a hint Christ told his disciples to go to the "lost tribes" (so Christ knew who they were), and where exactly did those disciples go and where did the WORD end up being sent forth?

Try reading exactly what was promised to Abraham the whole HISTORY, not the allegory as some like to shelve it.

[gogogodzilla]

I wonder... If Dean becomes the Democratic party chairman, will THAT finally push Jewish Democrats into voting for something other than a Democrat?

[BringBackMyHUAC]

BTW jb6, Stalin supported the creation of Israel to push the British out and then he expected it to become Communist. The British were in fact pushed out, but M. Begin's Irgun completely frustrated his plan to make Israel a Soviet puppet.

I can't resist...Look how tenderly jb6 speaks when he is fawning all over Stalin! He sure treats Stalin a whole lot better than he treats me (Thanks Tailgunner Joe...you've definately lived up to your screen name by drudging these priceless gems up!!!)

"Stalin later supported Israel and was the first to recognize it. It was established as a socialist state that opposed the British and the French, and thus was a natural ally to Stalin. When the rich Jews in the US influenced the US government to swing Israel's support towards America and away from Stalin, Stalin created a "jewish" homeland in south central Siberia, on the Chinese border. This was not mass murder or exile, many Jews who were Communists went there willingly and others were persuaded, both negatively and positively."

Link:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1334883/posts?page=33#33

[BringBackMyHUAC]

Re jb6, please see the following link:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1431149/posts?page=61#61

[Tailgunner Joe]

Right, Stalin loved jews, just like jb6 does.

[rmlew]

. Only Mark Rudd (whom I recall well from the Columbia takeover)and Todd Gitlin were actually remorseful...the rest were still defiant and cheeky about it....especially that shrew from Hell....Bernadine Dorhn. They were all except Flanagan working in academia...tenured.
Did you attend the Students' Democratic Repuplic of Morningside Hieghts?

[DaveTesla]

If you trust Putin you'll get Dead.

"Kremlin Terrorists"
by J. R. Nyquist


It comes again. Another Russia-U.S. summit, another swindle by way of Kremlin “democracy”; led by KGB-democrat Vladimir Putin; financed by a capitalism based on KGB ownership of the means of production; celebrating freedom after the last independent television station has been shut down; demilitarized with its armored hordes momentarily parked behind the Urals, with hundreds of strategic missiles held past the agreed timetable of decommission; and there is more.

Russia will be keeping us warm this winter, selling us the natural gas we need to keep our furnaces, water heaters and stoves lit. It seems the Russians have been taking lessons from the lords of global interdependence, the Saudis. The West and Japan depend on Saudi oil and the Saudis depend on Western military technology (which they purchase with petrodollars). As the world’s biggest oil producing country Russia wants in on the action. The Kremlin hopes to make the Saudi-U.S. energy relationship into an energy triangle. Russian Fuel and Energy Minister Igor Yusufov recently announced a new agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia to “coordinate oil exports.” The Kremlin also hopes to use its new relationship with the Saudis for joint ventures in the production of weapons and aircraft.

But how could Russia make nice with Saudi Arabia? After all, Russia’s civil war in Chechnya was supposedly fueled by Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi fundamentalism. At least that’s the official story out of Moscow. Islamic fanatics are said to be responsible for terrorist acts going back to the 1990s. Last July a suicide bomber killed 15 people at a Moscow rock concert. In August a suicide truck bomb killed 50 people at a military hospital in North Ossetia. These acts have been blamed on Islamic extremists. But now a new twist has appeared in the story, casting doubt on our easy assumptions. An out-of-step investigator with the Russian security services has acknowledged that the chief suspects behind the suicide bombings in Moscow and North Ossetia are Interior Ministry policemen. Of course, the acknowledgement is sure to be retracted or buried by Kremlin fixers. The indiscreet investigators and security officials who exposed the provocation will be called on the carpet. The controlled press in Moscow, with its pet liberals and democrats, will offer a few cynical asides. No major shift in world consciousness will occur.

What should be remembered, what we always seem to forget, is that Russia was the leading sponsor of international terrorism during the Cold War. Russia trained some of the world’s most notorious terrorists -- from Carlos “the Jackal” to Yasser Arafat. This week we owe a debt of gratitude to former Romanian intelligence chief Ion Mihai Pacepa for his Monday column in The Wall Street Journal Online which clarifies Arafat’s Russian connections. As Romania’s former spy chief, Pacepa has read Arafat’s KGB file. He says that Arafat was a KGB agent. According to Pacepa, Arafat “is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.”

In his Wall Street Journal column, Pacepa describes Moscow’s plan to make Arafat the national leader of the Palestinians. And this is what Arafat has become, even as he directs the greatest terror offensive of them all -- against Israel. Pacepa describes Arafat as “an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence.” Arafat was trained at the Balashikha special-ops school in Russia. Pacepa also relates how “the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat’s birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.”

But surely, that is old news. The Soviet Union is gone and Arafat is a free man. Right?

In November 2000, when the Israelis were about to retaliate against Palestinian forces, Arafat flew to Moscow for a huddle with President Putin: the KGB officer and the KGB agent, now and forever. This indicates the relationship between the Kremlin and Arafat did not change with the fall of the Soviet Union. The relationship continues, and so does the overall plan.

Pacepa reminds us who has fed the hatred against Israel and U.S. imperialism decade after decade in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is Russia and its secret agents, like Arafat, that have told the big lie, spreading hate and misery on all sides. President Vladimir Putin is no friend of President Bush. He is no ally in the war against terror. He is our most dangerous enemy.

Chess champion Garry Kasparov is a Russian personality whose outspoken political writings deserve attention in this context. On Sept. 18 he wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal Europe with the title, “KGB State.” Kasparov tells us, flatly, that Putin is no ally in the war against terror. Taking the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council to task for sins of omission, Kasparov damns the policy of the Bush White House formulated by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This policy is based on Rice’s formula that America should “punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia” for obstructing our war against Saddam. Kasparov calls this “one of the worst blunders of U.S. foreign policy in recent years.”

According to Kasparov, White House support for Putin “is preventing any serious opposition” to Putin’s KGB-regime. The old Soviet structures that remain beneath the surface in Russia since 1991, controlling things from the shadows, now lead the way in seizing businesses and terminating free market reforms. Kasparov tells us that democracy has collapsed in Russia. “With the de facto liquidation of the institution of a free press … and increasing power of the former KGB … Russia is increasingly overloaded with anti-U.S. hysteria.

It is time for realism to take hold in Washington. It is time for President Bush to look past Putin’s friendly demeanor. The Russian dictator intends to supply Iran with nuclear technology. He continues to support China’s military buildup. He tells his controlled media to bombard the Russian people with anti-American lies.

President Bush should have a few choice words for Vladimir Putin, who is not America’s friend. Russia is bolstering every rogue regime on the planet. It is trying to divide Europe from America. It is stirring the bubbling cauldron of Asia while breaking its disarmament treaties with the U.S. The Kremlin terror machine remains in place, and we should not be fooled.

[DaveTesla]

Ping to above post.

[BringBackMyHUAC]

Thanks for the post...can you believe these characters?!?!?

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[jb6]

Look how tenderly jb6 speaks when he is fawning all over Stalin!

This is speaking about Stalin tenderly? Oh please, you are as bad as Tailgunner. Why don't you look up some of my other posts where I state plainly that he was a mass murdering bastard and because of him, the Russians were almost enslaved by the Nazis. Keep trying, I'll shoot your islam excusing arse down just like I do Tailgunner.

Want to tell us again how the Jihadies are not really Muslims and Islam is the religion of peace?

[jb6]

And yet a half jew sits as Prime Minister, and not only that but is the second such Prime Minister. Have there been a single VP here who was even half Jewish? How about a none protestant president? Oh, yes, one catholic, and yet Catholics are 20% of the population. Hmmm, lots of room to talk.

[jb6]

However, as long as they are able to find "friends" in China, Europe and ME countries, they'll assume their hatred for Jews is justified.

Do we have a hatred of Jews? After all we are friends with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, most of Europe (on and off) and China is our most favored trading nation.

[Sabramerican]

Jews were mistreated throughout much of the Soviet era, with dissidents sent by Stalin to gulags and Jewish students barred from entry to the more prestigious universities. Coincidentally, where is the Soviet Union today?

[wardaddy]

LOL...nah.....I was just an idealistic kid watching all these idiots on the news.

Some had a Pied Piper quality I followed before I knew better....Abbie Hoffman for example.

weren't many radicals where I came from.

I was young and stupid......and frequently stoned......it all went together like a mass neurosis.

It still exists just not for me.

[dervish]

Are you seriously comparing the US to Russia on anti-Semitism?

A reasonable comparison would be Europe particularly Eastern Europe. But the US is not even close. There have never been anti-Semitic laws here, nor the history Europe had and has.

Considering that many of the Russia supporters here (I consider Russia an ally, by the way) consider Russian Jews - Jews first, and Russians by default - I would have to say that the nationalistic tendencies described in this article do come equipped with a dolop of anti-Semitism.

As long as the tendency to racially profile compatriots exists, anti-Semitism will continue in Russia and Eastern Europe. By the same token it is low in the US because of the diversity of our citizens and our willingness to call an American an American.

The tribalism of some is a primitive and destructive force, antithetical to positive nationalism.

[jb6]

Are you seriously comparing the US to Russia on anti-Semitism?

No, I'm making the comparison of stating that if a nation is allied or in relations with other nations of a region, etc then they are antisemitic. Which is ridiculous.

[Tailgunner Joe]

More evidence of jb6's anti-semitism: Here's one of his very first posts from the anti-semitic tinfoiler site of DAVID ICKE! Plans for the Fourth Reich (EU Reich Rising)

jb6 likes to call others "birchers" but he is a bigger kook than any bircher if he's reading DAVID ICKE!

His "fourth reich" stuff is a vehilcle for his rabid anti-German and anti-Polish racism. He started the theme as his old alter ego RussianConservative, banned for claiming the Bolsheviks were all jews. EU challenges Putin (Fourth Reich on move alert!) - Posted by RussianConservative