One should not go to Yad Vashem, the stunning Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, without being prepared to be shaken to the core. Bush evidently had that experience yesterday for the second time while touring the site.
I was there last March and can tell you, almost nothing I've seen has ever compared with the emotional impact I experienced there. I started crying the first two minutes I was there and from then on and off until we left about two hours later. I exhausted every Kleenex in every pocket within five minutes.
When one exits, most people are silent, like they're in culture shock. There are no words to capture what one's mind cannot even begin to grasp. Like being in a daze.
Here's a so-so virtual tour of the museum.
One more thing: Everyone should go to this place once. Especially anyone who thinks that appeasement and negotiating with dictators, terrorists and madmen are viable strategies. Bush, no doubt, left Yad Vashem feeling even surer that he did the right thing in Iraq.
I know I did.
4 comments:
Thank you for telling us about this museum. I am glad the President went there. I hope he sticks to his strong stand on behalf of Israel. Some of his comments worry me.
I know the feeling. I've stood before the Nazi ovens at the Dachau Camp Crematorium.
We've also heard the phrase, 'Lest we forget'.
Here are some things we should never forget as well:
According to former US Justice Dept. Nazi War Crimes prosecutor John Loftus -who is today the director of the Florida Holocaust Museum- "The Bush family fortune came from the Third Reich,"
-Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000
Newly revealed files in the National Archive show that Prescott Bush, GW Bush's grandfather, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. Fritz Thyssen, Bush's business partner was directly involved in the steel and coal industry that worked hand in hand with IG Farben to contruct and profit from the Nazi concentration camps. IG Farben also produced the gas used to kill millions - Zyklon B.
Because of this, two Holocaust survivors Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85 sued the Bush family for a total of $40 billion in compensation claiming that the Bush family materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during WWII. The case was thrown out on a technicality.
Just as the Bush family helped the Nazi's rise to power, the US supported Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, the US supported Saddam in the war against Iran, the US spends billions in arming Musharraf - a military dictator with nuclear weapons in Pakistan while bin Laden hides there, and now... just this week, a $20 Billion dollar arms deal has been given to Saudi Arabia - the source of most of the 9/11 hijackers.
The Reagan administration supplied Iraq with 60 Hughes helicopters and the chemicals used in gassing both Iranians and Iraqis. During the Reagan administration, the US supplied Iraq with $1.5 billion worth of biological agents (like anthrax, botulinum), chemicals, and high-tech equipment with military application.
So yea, why negotiate with dictators when we can just arm them?
These aren't conspiracy theories, these are documented facts. Face them.
"Lest we forget!"
...old....stale....un-news.....
Oh, come on. If it was the Clinton family who had dealings with both the German government in the 1940's, and the Saudis since the 1970's (hint, hint...look into who bought out "Arbusto"), you and I both know that the patriots on the right would never stop blathering on about it. Just because it involves the family of the current President does not make it "un-news", whatever that is.
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