Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: don't tell me Brits were benign

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/opinions/1997/07/10/1997-07-10_don_t_tell_me_brits_were_ben.html
 "The British love freedom almost as much as they love depriving
people of it," wrote Ben Hecht. I know of no better history of the
British Empire, whose sun just fell into the China Sea and barely
flickers over Northern Ireland.
Misery followed the Union Jack across the seas and across the
centuries. The world was its outhouse, however civilized it appeared
at home. Check India, Palestine, Egypt, Hong Kong, Ireland check
America on the Fourth of July.
So imagine my surprise and maybe yours when I read on this very page
the other day the headline over a column by Charles Krauthammer: "Sun
sets on Brit empire, but not on its fine legacy."
Krauthammer sees the handover of Hong Kong as a "melancholy" end to
British colonial rule over the Pacific, and he waxes nostalgic over
the "benevolent" empire, under which he was raised as a child in
Montreal.
Montreal was maybe the exception that proved the rule, but oh,
Charlie, don't sing "Melancholy Baby" to us about the Brits. Not a
good Jew like you, who backs Israel to the hilt, and ought to know
what the English did to your people.
Fifty years ago, the Hebrew Revolution was in full swing against the
British occupation of Palestine. The Brits, who had closed off Jewish
immigration to Palestine in 1939, on the eve of World War II, thus
locking the Jews of Europe into Hitler's death camps, now had 100,000
troops in the Holy Land with the sole purpose of killing off a Jewish
State. Against this, the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, and the tiny
but lethal Stern group, fought a street revolution unparalleled in
history. Never more than 5,000 strong, they blew up British
installations, copped British arms and flogged and hanged in
retaliation British soldiers.
Condemned in the world press as "terrorists," informed against,
kidnaped, tortured by the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion and
Golda Meir, they somehow managed to drive the British out of the Holy
Land.
The Brits were brutal; as always the broken neck was their answer. In
the spring and summer of 1947, they hanged Jewish patriots in Acre
prison as a matter of course.
Dov Gruner, an Irgun soldier captured by the British, became the
symbol of the Jewish revolt. His poignant letters from prison caught a
little of the world's sympathy. The Brits hanged him anyway, and in
secret, even as they invited his sister to visit him.
Few remember Dov Gruner in Israel, and far fewer remember him in
America. Who, after all, knows that there was a Hebrew Revolution? Say
the word and people shake their heads like a batter fighting off a
fastball from Randy Johnson.
The reason is that Israel has denied its revolution, because the
"wrong people" fought it. The official Jewish Army, the Haganah, laid
down its arms in the midst of the fray. In the summer of 1946, the
British arrested the leaders of the Jewish Agency, and that was that
for their fight against the British.
"The Hebrews learn it backward, which is absolutely frightening," said
Henry Higgins. In that vein, Israel had as its first leaders Ben-
Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and Golda Meir those who collaborated with the
English by opposing those who fought them, the Irgun and the Stern
group.
When Menachem Begin finally took over in 1977, he was no longer a
revolutionary. And so the history of the Hebrew Revolution has been
buried like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Next year the Israelis celebrate the 50th year of the War of
Independence, which they say began after the British left the country,
when the Arab world attacked the new Jewish State.
It's as if our War of Independence was the War of 1812. Israel's real
War of Independence was against the British Empire. A guy as wise as
Charles Krauthammer would know this, if history hadn't been blotted
out like a foggy day over London town.

 Independence
un po' datato quest'articolo, ma l'odio verso la perfida Albione è
come quei vini che non invecchiano mai...

  "The British love freedom almost as much as they love depriving
Però non hanno mai avuto ghetti, eh...

 Però non hanno mai avuto ghetti, eh...
gia'.
In Italia, invece, come siete messi quanto a IVG?

 In Italia, invece, come siete messi quanto a IVG?
non è obbligatoria come per i falascià in Israele, alle cui donne
viene somministato in massa il depo-provera senza spiegare a cosa
serve...