If we can learn from the past at all, let us focus on care for refugees. While of course each conflict engenders its own forms of terror, all refugees have certain basic and immediate needs. When Mr. Goldberg and several hundred thousand other Polish Jews fled east in 1939, they struggled to find both food and shelter. Local Jewish communal help was hindered by the new Soviet authorities, yet these officials also had no plan of their own for the refugees and refused to allow in aid from international Jewish institutions.
A PLEA TO ISRAELIS BY AN ADMIRER FROM THE FAR EAST
Hezbollah was founded in secret in 1982 with the assistance of Iran and Syria. A thousand-man strong unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard force deployed in 1982 into eastern Lebanon and began training and equipping Shiite insurgents. The Hezbollah cadre carried out their first major attack on the American Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, where 63 people were killed including 17 Americans. The CIA chief in Lebanon and the chief on Middle East analysis in the CIA were among the dead from the suicide bomber attack. In October 1983, Hezbollah suicide attacks killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers in Beirut. A month later, another suicide bomber destroyed the headquarters of the IDF in Tyre, killing 75 Israelis and dozens of Lebanese.51
In most of the nations polled, there continues to be extensive opposition to the American drone campaign against extremist leaders and organizations. In 31 nations, at least half disapprove of the U.S. conducting drone missile strikes targeting extremists in places such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. At least three-in-four hold this view in 15 countries from all corners of the world, including nations from the Middle East, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
was certainly legitimate when it was addressed as an appeal to the British mandatory authorities ... It had no legitimacy whatsoever when addressed to Nazi authorities who had cooperated with the Zionists to send tens of thousands of German Jews to Palestine and then set out to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The Mufti was well aware that the European Jews were being wiped out; he never claimed the contrary. Nor, unlike some of his present-day admirers, did he play the ignoble, perverse, and stupid game of Holocaust denial ... His armour-propre would not allow him to justify himself to the Jews ... gloating that the Jews had paid a much higher price than the Germans ... he cites : "Their losses in the Second World War represent more than thirty percent of the total number of their people ... Statements like this, from a man who was well placed to know what the Nazis had done ... constitute a powerful argument against Holocaust deniers. Husseini reports that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ... told him in summer 1943 that the Germans had 'already exterminated more than three million' Jews: "I was astonished by this figure, as I had known nothing about the matter until then." ... Thus. in 1943, Husseini knew about the genocide ... Himmler ... again in the summer of 1941 ... let him in on a secret that ... Germany would have an atomic bomb in three years' time ...[53]
I have an especially warm recollection of my meeting with Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi. We both expressed the wish for a new era of religious and cultural dialogue between Islam and Christianity. It is in this context, Mr. Ambassador, that I am particularly pleased that you have spoken of Egypt as a land where unity and harmony are greatly valued and where differences of religion are seen not as barriers but as a means of mutual enrichment in rendering service to the nation. I trust most sincerely that this will always be the case, and that the difficulties that have arisen from time to time will be overcome, especially in view of the widespread willingness and positive conditions for interreligious dialogue and cooperation which can be found in Egypt.
There was gold in Asia, it was thought, and certainly silks and spices, for Marco Polo and othershad brought back marvelous things from their overland expeditions centuries before. Now that theTurks had conquered Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled the land routesto Asia, a sea route was needed. Portuguese sailors were working their way around the southern tipof Africa. Spain decided to gamble on a long sail across an unknown ocean.
The Aztec civilization of Mexico came out of the heritage of Mayan, Zapotec, and Toltec cultures.It built enormous constructions from stone tools and human labor, developed a writing system anda priesthood. It also engaged in (let us not overlook this) the ritual killing of thousands of people assacrifices to the gods. The cruelty of the Aztecs, however, did not erase a certain innocence, andwhen a Spanish armada appeared at Vera Cruz, and a bearded white man came ashore, with strangebeasts (horses), clad in iron, it was thought that he was the legendary Aztec man-god who had died three hundred years before, with the promise to return-the mysterious Quetzalcoatl. And so theywelcomed him, with munificent hospitality.
And yet, there is some reason to call them Indians, because they did come, perhaps 25,000 yearsago, from Asia, across the land bridge of the Bering Straits (later to disappear under water) toAlaska. Then they moved southward, seeking warmth and land, in a trek lasting thousands of yearsthat took them into North America, then Central and South America. In Nicaragua, Brazil, andEcuador their petrified footprints can still be seen, along with the print of bison, who disappearedabout five thousand years ago, so they must have reached South America at least that far back 2ff7e9595c
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