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Adolf Hitler and Idi Amin: A Comparative Analysis
“Atrocity propaganda is how we won the war. And we’re only really beginning with it now! We will continue this atrocity propaganda, we will escalate it until nobody will accept even a good word from the Germans, until all the sympathy they may still have abroad will have been destroyed and they themselves will be so confused that they will no longer know what they are doing. Once that has been achieved, once they begin to run down their own country and their own people, not reluctantly but with eagerness to please the victors, only then will our victory be complete. It will never be final. Re-education needs careful tending, like an English lawn. Even one moment of negligence, and the weeds crop up again - those indestructible weeds of historical truth” (Sefton Delmer, 1945).
Introduction: Atrocities Indicate Innocence?
Atrocity propaganda is certainly nothing knew. Paradoxically, I have found that it is generally used to indict the innocent. Atrocity propaganda is similar to the concept of medieval heresy. In fact, when one actually compares and contrasts heresy and atrocity propaganda one comes to find that they are almost indiscernible. Surely evil witches would have sacrificed thousands of innocent European children in satanic rituals just as Hitler would have inevitably ordered his Schutzstaffel to invade and overthrow America, no? We all know that these two possibilities have been exposed as ridiculous, and even somewhat ludicrous, but we continually fail to recognize heresy and atrocity propaganda when it stares us directly in our own faces. We overwhelmingly choose to remain ignorant of the evidence and facts, which future generations will undoubtedly uncover. Instead, we continue to prove ourselves just as foolish, inhuman, and ignorant as the inquisitors of yesterday. We are not the heretics, stormtroopers, or witches; nay, we are the Grand Inquisitor, Nero, the Pope, Lenin, Mao, and Stalin.
We will take a look at the atrocity propaganda wielded at both Hitler and Amin in this brief comparative historical analysis. Hopefully, we will come away from this piece more enlightened and savvy than before, especially when it comes to accusations of guilt, or, more specifically, guilt coupled with atrocities as the measure of that guilt. What we will find is that, in these two men’s cases, their guilt coupled with their mass atrocities is in fact an indication of their innocence. In addition, we will come to see that most atrocity propaganda is so incredibly ludicrous that it has derailed its own credibility. This is especially the case with Hitler and Amin.
Judeocentric Mindset
A close examination of the atrocity propaganda wielded against these two influential men of history must be considered as a product of the Judeocentric context or framework. This particular comparative analysis must be examined within this context because both of these men ultimately suffered for their respective opposition toward Jewry; whether cultural, political, or both. The popular Jewish opposition to “Nazi” Germany and the subsequent boycott against German goods and services, which started in 1933, serves as incredibly incriminating evidence exposing Jewry as inciter and instigator of German retaliation (Clark, 2007; See also Walendy, 1987). This has in fact been the argument of historian Ingrid Weckert as well. Consequently, her examples, in addition to Kalyegira’s, will provide us with our working definition of the term “Judeocentric context.”
Henry Morgenthau, a prominent American Jew, said, in 1933: “Germany must be turned into a wasteland, as happened there during the Thirty Year War” (Walendy, 1987). The Jews in America even solicited Gentile support against the German people.
The Zionist American Jew, Samuel Untermeyer, stated the following during a radio broadcast on WABC, New York, on 6 August 1933:
Each of you, Jew and Gentile alike, who has not already enlisted in this sacred war should do so now and here. It is not sufficient that you should buy no goods made in Germany. You must refuse to deal with any merchant or shopkeeper who sells any German-made goods or who patronizes German ships or shipping.... we will undermine the Hitler regime and bring the German people to their senses by destroying their export trade on which their very existence depends.
According to a July 27, 2003 letter to historian David Irving:
I am writing you from Seattle, Washington, where I am a former military officer, with a part time hobby in history research.
I have studied the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe quite extensively for well over a decade.
I have concluded the popular account is full of contradictions and misinformation, and is still protected by government secrecy classifications. I understand you have published Idi Amin’s records of that incident. Is there any way I might acquire copies of this information and any other relevant documents?
Irving responded by saying,
Yes, I have (stored in Illinois, in safety!) the entire transcript of the Republic of Uganda governmental court of inquiry into the Entebbe Raid. I published extracts in my 1980s newsletter Focal Point. The file was taken off Idi’s desk by a German journalist friend of mine (Gerd Heidemann, no less). It is an often hilarious document, as the army officers are questioned as to how the Israelis managed to land three giant C-130 transport planes on their local airfield, hold them intact there for several hours during the gun battle, and take off with their liberated prisoners.
I offered a copy as a gift to the Israeli Government once (the brother of the unlovely Benjamin Netanyahu was killed in the operation, I recall). But that was many years ago -- I probably would not be so generous now. The blue government file holds about 500 pages of flimsies, transcripts of cross examinations of witnesses, etc. Perhaps I will post it on this website later this year. History has after all moved on from World War II.
Idi Amin allegedly kept the severed heads of his opponents in his fridge. Right next to a handily placed package of frozen peas (handy, as it identifies it as a domestic fridge) [emphasis added].
As in the case with Adolf Hitler, as soon as Jewry sensed an imminent problem, or a potential problem—perhaps Amin would have exposed this Jewish hoax?—it wielded its usual accusations of unconfirmed mass murders and mass atrocities. Jewry wielded the now nearly-copyrighted accusations of schizophrenia, madness, delusion, and downright insanity. Both men became instant perverts with odd and sadistic fetishes. Both men suddenly derived pleasure from torture. Both men tortured and murdered their female partners for no apparent reason other than madness. Both men were cruel. Both men inexplicably hated their people and subsequently mass murdered them. Both men were suddenly reviled by the masses that had once embraced them as saviors. Are we getting a sense of what is meant by “Judeocentric context”?
Undoing the Mother of Atrocity Propaganda: Accounting for the Elusive “6 Million”
According to retired Mechanical Engineer and historian Friedrich Berg,
When I was young and naive in the sixties, if someone had told me that there were more than a million Jewish holocaust survivors alive in the world--I would have seriously doubted that person's sanity. Everyone knew that Hitler and the Nazis had murdered practically every Jew in Europe and that only a small handful; perhaps a few dozen or so, could have possibly “survived.” Each known “survivor” was some kind of living miracle and this led to...adulation for the likes of Elie Wiesel. But now, thanks to Sergio DellaPergola, we know that even many years later, in 2003, 1,092,000 Jewish holocaust survivors were still alive. Those “survivors” would have also been alive at the end of the war.
In other words, the number “1,092,000” is the declining number for a much larger population that must have existed just after the end of the war. The important question is just how much larger was that same category of people at war’s end? Germar Rudolf studied the actuarial tables and concluded that for the period from 1995 to 1945 there would have been a normal population (no births added) decline by a factor of about 4.2. My own estimate is that for an even longer period of time, from 2003 to 1945, that comparable factor would have been at least 4.7—which [indicates] a “survivor” population of about 5 million Jews at the end of the war.
If the postwar population rate of decline had been greater than normal (from all [of] that suffering, etc.), the factor would have been more than 4.7. That would, in turn, mean that the Jewish “survivor” population at the end of the war would have been greater than 5 million--perhaps even as high as 6 million. So, how bad could the holocaust have been...? How many Jews could have possibly died or been killed? The answer depends on how many Jews had been under German occupation--and that question depends, in turn, on how one defines a Jew. Lots of questions--but clearly the huge number of survivors alive in 2003 undermines the hoax generally. The Jews under Nazi rule did not “disappear” at all. The vast majority were still there but in diverse locations at war’s end (F. Berg, e-mail communication, June 22, 2007) [emphasis added].
Evidence of Mass Atrocities
Numerous accounts of German “brutality” against German enemies, and even Jewry, were oftentimes fraudulent or exaggerated. Aside from the Weckert account, which will be discussed in this section, the following is just one example among many.
Historian John Toland (1992) has described in detail Hitler’s unprecedented offer to withdraw all of his troops from Poland during the first few days of the invasion; he had even offered to pay reparations to the Polish authorities in order to compensate them for the damages wrought by the German Navy and Wehrmacht. As noted by Toland (1992), “[Ribbentrop stated over the telephone] the Fuehrer is prepared to move out of Poland and to offer reparation damages provided that we receive Danzig and a road through the Corridor, if England will act as mediator in the German-Polish conflict. You [Hesse] are empowered by the Fuehrer to submit this proposal to the British cabinet and initiate negotiations immediately” (p. 573). This came after Hitler’s exceedingly generous peace offer prior to the actual invasion which the Poles had foolishly refused. This proposal included a resolution to the problem of the Corridor via plebiscite, which was completely democratic (Toland, p. 562). Need I mention that Hitler forbade attacks upon women and children during the Blitzkrieg campaign (Ibid., p. 570)?
Many people are unaware that Winston Churchill ordered an unwarranted retaliatory air attack over Berlin simply because one German pilot accidentally overshot his military target landing his payload within London’s “eastern city limits.” The Germans immediately reported this accident, which resulted in no injuries and very light damage to infrastructure, to the International Red Cross and the British authorities in hopes of an understanding that this was a mistake. Churchill withheld this information from not only his Parliament and Cabinet, but also his Bomber Command, and used this incident as his pretext for the unwarranted air raid against German civilians in Berlin. He betrayed his own country in so doing, but Hitler ordered no retaliatory attacks (Schaerffenberg, p. 73).
Historian A.V. Schaerffenberg (2003) has also affirmed that
On April 27, 1937, newspapers around the world were filled with outrage over an air raid on the undefended Basque city of Guernica. Gruesome photographs of 6,000 dead women and children appeared accompanied by headlines accusing the ‘Nazi murderers’ of causing this terrible tragedy. While every effort was being made by journalists in France, England, Russia, and America to inflame public opinion against the Germans, Condor Legion pilots were puzzled, because they never bombed Guernica. Their targets had been confined to Republican strongholds around the nearby city of Bilbao. Although Guernica’s civilian dead were real enough, they had in fact been butchered by Communist hit squads, who transformed their own atrocities into anti-Fascist propaganda. They were aided and abetted, of course, by the largely sympathetic world press, whose readers were [not] allowed an opportunity to learn about contrary evidence from [either] the Germans [or] the International Red Cross (p. 33-34).
Oranienburg inmate Kurt Ludecke (1937) stated,
... After the usual routine, plus a primitive but welcome shower-bath, I was locked up alone in a cell somewhat larger than the Alex cell. Altogether my new home was friendlier. The window, though barred, was wider; there was a real little table and a cupboard, a wash-basin and a shoebrush, and a bunk which folded against the wall. There was a single mattress—luxury! The walls mercifully were white with only a lower dado of grey.
For a few hours I was almost happy. And there hung the prison rules of the old regime, still in force. Yes, here was Prussian order: bed-clothing changed twice a month, a fresh towel every week, and rules for everything—church services, prison library, writing, visitors, cell-cleaning, and so forth. Here the prisoner had a few privileges, however modest. ... [W]e were not required to work and had the privilege of buying tobacco, food, and little extras through the commissary. I read as many newspapers as I wanted. The food was meager and simple, but eatable, and I sustained myself pretty well with the extras I bought. ... Except for the Freigang—half an hour in the morning and afternoon in the recreation yard, a large compound with some elms and apple trees—we were left completely to ourselves (p. 687-688).
According to American Doug Brinkley (2001):
... I have visited the concentration camps in Germany. In the camp at Oranienburg, about twenty English miles out of Berlin, I found 187 prisoners—not 1500 as Lord Marley claims. Two guards with rifles stood in front of the gate, but there were no machine-guns. I found totally modern, sanitary facilities and not, as has been claimed, ‘just a single water pump in the courtyard with old pails for the use of individual prisoners.’ The sleeping rooms were not ‘ruins made with some dirty straw covering concrete floors,’ rather they were just as good and clean as the sleeping rooms of many army barracks I have seen in America.
I could see that many false claims had been made. For example, the prisoners receive the same food as the commandant of the camp and the National Socialist guards—three plentiful means each day, naturally without luxury. They have two free hours for relaxation and exercises. If they behave well, they may have two visits each month from relatives or friends. One will be amazed—as I was indeed myself surprised—that I did not find a single Jew in this concentration camp; the prisoners were mostly communists. I had been invited to join a group of journalists and other official visitors who were to visit the Oranienburg concentration camp. But I declined, because there were rumors that the conditions in the camp had been altered for such visits. ... I therefore got special permission from the police and picked another day at random to go to Oranienburg unannounced. I drove the twenty miles in a common taxi. There were no other visitors there that day. ...
... I talked with many prisoners. Their answers were essentially the same. The first prisoner I spoke to was a communist. He spoke English and read foreign papers. He said: ‘My whole life I always had too little time—now I have too much.’ Another said: ‘Aside from the loss of my freedom, I have nothing to complain about.’ A group of prisoners further commented, ‘We are well treated, as prisoners can just expect to be.’ They told me they were never hit, that no mistreatment occurred and that order and discipline prevailed in the camp (p. 20-21).
Historian Ingrid Weckert (1991) has stated,
According to a November 9, 1988, New York Times editorial, for example, one thousand Jews died during the [Kristallnacht]. In fact, fewer than a hundred lost their lives. (Security Chief Heydrich privately reported to Goering that 36 Jews had been killed. According to another official report, 91 died.)
It is clear...that some National Socialist Party leaders and ‘Brown Shirt’ stormstroopers [sic] took part in the mob action. It is likewise a fact that when Hitler heard about the outbreak of violence, he immediately ordered an end to the lawlessness. ...
Goebbels could not have instigated the Crystal Night tumult. For one thing he lacked the authority to secretly order a pogrom. And when he learned the next morning about he [sic] extent of the lawlessness, he was outraged and promptly issued a strongly worded official statement calling on the population to refrain from further actions or demonstrations of any kind against the Jews. ...
It is often forgotten that Jewish Zionists and German National Socialists shared similar views about the Jewish question, and accordingly worked together between 1933 and 1939 to encourage German Jews to emigrate to Palestine. ...Zionists and National Socialists agreed that Jews belonged in Palestine, not Germany.
This was known as the informal Ha’avara or “Transfer” agreement (Walendy, 1987). I might like to add that these Zionist Jews cooperated with the German regime, on an intimate basis nonetheless, but none of these “Nazi collaborators” were brought to trial for war crimes during Nuremberg. All non-Jewish “Nazi collaborators” were tried, and subsequently hanged or imprisoned. One must admit that special people do indeed receive special treatment.
Weckert goes on to say,
Hitler complained bitterly in private: ‘It is terrible. They have destroyed everything for me like elephants in a china shop—and much worse. I had the great hope that I was about to come to an understanding with France. And now this!’ ...
Weckert provides circumstantial...evidence that points the finger of blame at those who benefited most from this aberrant lawlessness, and who were most eager to discredit Germany and its leadership.
Above all, Weckert suggests, this meant the powerful Jewish organizations headquartered in New York, Paris, and London that had ‘declared war’ against Hitler shortly after he came to power in 1933. ...For most certainly it was neither Germany nor Hitler’s National Socialist regime that benefited from Crystal Night. At one stroke, German prestige was dealt a crippling blow.
[Even Goebbels had lamented] ‘The whole business is outrageous...That is not the way to solve the Jewish problem, not by any means. Not that way. That only makes martyrs out of them—and then? We have disgraced ourselves before the whole world Helldorf...and I? I am expected to bail us out of this idiocy, to iron everything out again with propaganda. An impossibility. We become unbelievable when we do things like that, do you understand me?... They have cut the ground from under me. They have made me a laughing stock. ... We could not possibly have done the opposing propaganda a greater service. Our people have killed a dozen Jews, but for this dozen we may have to pay someday with a million German soldiers’ (p. 1, 4, 7).
Do the aforementioned private statements made by Hitler and Goebbels indicate that either was honestly part of this pogrom? No historian or thinking person can possibly implicate either of these men upon reading their statements and studying the actual factual evidence surrounding this event. Neither man can be physically or even politically tied to the crime. Furthermore, does any of the quoted evidence, whether factual or circumstantial, point to top level “Nazi” involvement? As Weckert has noted, the events of Crystal Night did more damage to Germany’s international standing and relations than any single event before or after. According to an undergraduate lecture delivered by Dr. Kent Bolton, Professor of Political Science at California State University San Marcos, “Every nation-state acts in its own self-interest” (K. Bolton, personal communication, September 2003). If this is indeed an accurate portrayal of national psychology, then the German instigation of the Crystal Night pogrom makes absolutely no sense at all. When one takes into account the inane stories told by the alleged victims, one is inevitably compelled to call into question all similar stories of atrocities.
According to alleged victim Zindel Gryszspan,
The SS-men drove us on with whips; they whipped those who couldn’t keep up, and blood flowed in the street. They tore our suitcases out of our hands, they treated us in the most brutal fashion. At that time I saw the savage brutality of the Germans for the first time... I also was beaten, and fell into a ditch (Weckert, p. 12).
As postulated by Weckert (1991), how could this story have been true when the alleged victims of SS brutality were heavily bundled in their October winter clothing which would have absorbed the blood? These atrocities were supposed to have occurred on the German-Polish border. Neither the German police nor SS men carried whips, only pistols. In conclusion, “Dr. Friedrich Grimm, an internationally known legal expert who examined intensively the events of that period, affirms explicitly, ‘The expulsion, as bitter as it was for those affected, was done humanely’” (Ibid., p. 12-13). One should be familiar with the irrefutable fact that Poland treated its Jews far worse than Germans ever had. In fact, the Poles refused to accept their own displaced Jewish population which was the circumstance surrounding this German-led repatriation of Polish Jews (Ibid., p. 13).
Remarkably, journalist Timothy Kalyegira has come to similar conclusions regarding the accuracy of Amin’s atrocities against the Ugandan populace. The following assessment raises numerous questions comparable to the questions raised by Weckert with regards to “Nazi” atrocities during Crystal Night.
According to Kalyegira (2005, February),
I have never seen any single article, watched TV or heard a single radio programme anywhere question the accuracy of this claim of 300,000 people killed. ...
I grew up in Entebbe town during the 1970s. I would like to mention something that never ceases to surprise me; the general figure given of the number of people killed by the Amin regime. The estimate of 300,000 to 500,000 strikes me these days as inaccurate. The Amin security services did not go on the sorts of rampages that many assume. They chose their targets and even where they had their excesses, I know for a fact that it would not have risen to 300,000 people.
The myths
First, let us dispense with the myths. The story that Amin killed his wife Kay Adroa and had her limbs sewn upside down was plainly false. So were many more stories, most of the grimmest ones created by Ugandan exiles to blemish the undoubtedly sordid regime further.
Another example is that of Archbishop Janan Luwum who was killed in February 1977. It has been the assumption worldwide that this was one of Amin’s most heinous crimes; the murder of an “innocent” religious cleric. However, we were stunned in 1979 after the Tanzanian-led war that deposed Amin when several former Ugandan exiles told their friends, including my parents, that the allegation by Amin that Luwum had been used by these exiles to smuggle arms into Uganda were actually correct.
West deceived
In June 1977 the International Court of Jurists supplied information from Western intelligence organisations and “estimates” by Ugandan exile groups. It became the first body to put a figure to the number of people killed by Amin: 300,000.
How those estimates were arrived at was never questioned. And anyway, the Ugandan dictator had so infuriated the west and the numbers of the dead were irrelevant; he was a killer, full stop. We must ask: did the Ugandan exile community manipulate the West in 1977 in order to stiffen the West’s resolve to oppose Amin and maybe hasten his downfall?
Where have we in recent years heard of a dictator who was painted much darker than he was by an exile group in whose interest it was to set off a western-led coup or invasion? Iraq, of course. It might be instructive that a prominent Iraqi exile leader, Mr. Ahmad Chalabi, working discreetly for the CIA, provided the US government with information on President Saddam Hussein’s acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and that influenced the March 2003 war. [It is quite well known that Chalabi is a liar and con man who works solely for Jewish interests (Islamic Voice, 2003)].
Obviously, Chalabi exaggerated his information in order to mar the already tarnished reputation of Saddam. That’s the way the West is – its intelligence agencies are sophisticated; the governments and news media usually thorough; the embassies that cable back information on their host country efficient.
But, as many of us have discovered, the west is also quite impressionable and easily deceived. It is not too hard to deceive a Western embassy, as thousands of us do everyday, in order to get visas into their countries.
It does not take much to deceive, mislead, or manipulate the West because officials there do not know much about us and usually settle for sketchy information.
Back to Amin
... Then as far as the figure of the dead goes, just think about this: for the 1994 Rwandan genocide that was wholly mass and at random, with practically every man’s hand against his neighbour, the total deaths are estimated at 800,000.
How could the victims of Amin’s regime, which mainly targeted its political opponents or people from the Acholi and Langi tribes, total 500,000 or even 300,000? I was in Uganda all those years and I would have felt something about that overwhelming number.
It has been estimated that the number of Ugandans who have died of HIV/Aids since it was first clearly identified in 1984 is one million. I don’t have to be persuaded about that figure. It is something you feel everywhere – in the obituaries in newspapers, death announcements on radio stations, and feel at a personal level with relatives, friends, office colleagues, and classmates dying.
If something as devastating as Aids can kill one million Ugandans over a 20-year period with hardly a Ugandan family that cannot claim to have lost a relative, how much more would we have felt the great bereavement of people killed by Amin’s regime (when you bear in mind that Uganda’s population in the mid 1970s was only 9 million?)
Aids has killed an average of five people per family, immediate or extended, in Uganda. The Amin regime tended to liquidate the man, the head of the family, who was suspected of subverting the regime or working with the armed exile groups.
The alleged 300,000 - 500,000 deaths would have been so much more noticeable, with whole families losing children and cousins to the State Research Bureau counterintelligence agency. Why were many more people not bitter with Amin in death? Has anyone stopped to ask why so many Ugandans, writing in our newspapers and speaking on radio just after the death of Amin in August 2003, were somewhat lenient to the dead former president - and the majority saying that his wish to be buried in Uganda should be granted.
Is it that Ugandans forget so fast, or that they do not, and that the number of 300,000 or 500,000 people killed was a gross exaggeration? Would the bitterness over Amin not have been so evident in Uganda, even among children who were too young to have known his rule but who heard stories told to them by their relatives?
According to the “west,” Hussein had also been accused of committing mass atrocities against his people. There is contradictory evidence beginning to surface with regards to the mass murder of the Iranian Kurds as well as the true instigators of the Iraq Oil Embargo.
I had written in an earlier assessment,
Saddam Hussein had clearly recognized the importance of his nation’s oil sales to America. In fact, America was the nation that had boycotted Iraqi oil with the imposition of the Iraq Oil Embargo; thus, Iraq was forced to turn to new markets, which in turn inflamed America to the point of secretly condoning Hussein’s economic survival tactics (Clark, 2007).
According to Stephen C. Pelletiere, author of Iraq and the International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Persian Gulf, Hussein cannot be implicated for the gassing of the Iranian Kurds.
He said,
But the truth is [that] all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.
I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair (Pelletiere, 2003).
American regimes consistently lie. Not only did American authorities lie about Hitler and Amin, but they had also lied about Hussein as indicated in Pelletiere’s statement. It is now common knowledge that the American government lied throughout the entire Vietnam War as well. If the American authorities are guilty of distorting the truth as regards Hussein and Amin, then why do researchers and historians so unwittingly accept the American version of “Nazi” Germany? If America cannot be trusted now, what makes us believe that they could be trusted then?
Raid on Entebbe: Another Covert Jewish Crime like Kristallnacht?
According to a Times Online article dated June 1, 2007,
British diplomats considered the possibility that the aircraft hijacking that led to the fatal Israeli raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda may have been the work of Israeli secret agents.
The suggestion was made by D. H. Colvin, first secretary at the British Embassy in Paris, after the hijacking of an Air France aircraft by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on June 27, 1976.
Idi Amin co-operated with the hijackers and allowed the aircraft to land at Entebbe, where Israeli and Jewish passengers were kept hostage and others were freed. A week later, Israeli special forces stormed the airport and freed the passengers, in an assault that claimed the lives of three hostages, one Israeli soldier, forty-five Ugandan soldiers and six hijackers.
Four days previously, Mr. Colvin had written a confidential report, made public for the first time at the National Archives today, in which he outlined theories on the identity and motives of the hijackers. “A contact Euro-Arab Parliamentary association rang me on June 29 to say that . . . the hijack was the work of the PFLP, with help from the Israeli secret service, the Shin Bet.
“The operation was designed to torpedo the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s standing in France,” he wrote, referring to the organisation then headed by Yassir Arafat, “and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans . . . hence the unholy alliance of the hijacking”.
There is no indication that the theory was taken further, but the suggestion of inter-Palestinian rivalries resurfaced days later, when a Foreign and Commonwealth Office official reported his discussions with the journalist Leo Murray. Murray said sources had said “the Entebbe hijacking had been planned by Wadia Hassad’s splinter group from the PFLP . . . to prevent the development of contacts between Arafat of the PLO and the West . . . The group were thinking of hijacking next an aircraft, perhaps on an internal European route.”
These warnings were made as Britain came under diplomatic pressure to congratulate Israel on its raid, and struggled to determine the fate of Doris Bloch, a British-Israeli grandmother who was left behind by the mission and later went missing from [the] hospital. Confidential telegrams report that staff had seen her being dragged away, screaming. Within a week she was presumed dead, and by the end of the month Britain had severed diplomatic ties with Amin’s regime.
Unsubstantiated Biographies: Keeping the Uneducated Indoctrinated
According to a highly biased and unsubstantiated biography of Idi Amin, by writer Marjorie Dorfman1, Amin was “Uganda’s Hitler”.
According to Dorfman (2006),
Idi Amin Dada Oumee, aka the "Butcher of Africa," was born to a humble family between 1923 and 1925 in the northwest corner of Uganda. His parents separated soon after his birth and he was raised by his mother who had eight children, he being the third born. As a child, Idi Amin converted to Islam, the faith of his father, receiving only a rudimentary education.
In 1946, Idi Amin joined the King’s African Rifles of the British colonial army. He was considered a skilled soldier but he had a reputation for cruelty. Idi Amin was promoted several times and in 1959 became effendi (warrant officer), the highest rank possible for a Black African in the colonial British army. In 1961 Idi Amin earned the rank of lieutenant in the Ugandan army and was a champion swimmer and boxer.
In 1964, Uganda's First Prime Minister, Milton Obote, promoted him to deputy commander of the army. Under his command, the Turkana Massacre occurred, in which the many victims were tortured, beaten to death and in some cases, buried alive. Under Idi Amin's command, more than 300,000 innocent people (some estimates say 500,000) lost their lives. Among those killed were ordinary citizens, Cabinet ministers, Supreme Court judges, diplomats, educators, prominent Roman Catholic and Anglican clergy, bankers, tribal leaders, journalists and foreigners. In some cases, entire villages were wiped out.
In 1971 Idi Amin seized power, declaring himself the new president of Uganda. Obote later referred to Idi Amin as " the greatest brute an African mother ever brought to life." During his first year in power, mass executions of officers and troops he believed loyal to Obote took place, and as many as 9,000 soldiers were executed during his first year in power.
In 1979 the Tanzanian army forced Idi Amin into exile as a new government took over Uganda. He sought exile in Saudi Arabia where he died on August 16, 2003, at the age of 79. Shortly before his death, Idi Amin's wife begged Uganda's president to permit his return so that he could die in his native land, but the request was denied.
Idi Amin was a murderous monster whose unabashed cruelty resembled that of a man he very much admired, namely, Adolph [sic] Hitler. Their souls, in all probability, lie very close together in a place where it is always rather warm.
Another unsubstantiated account of Idi Amin claims the following as historically accurate. It might be pertinent to note that there is no observance of objectivity or source citation included in the following biography, aside from Astles himself. This August 19, 2003 article was published online by the Daily News. Please take note of the many impossibilities and contradictions in this report when compared to others in this essay. They are astounding on more than one occasion.
Uganda’s white Rat—Major Bob Astles is unrepentant, writes Jane Kelly.
This is a gentle if eccentric scene. Two dingy rooms occupied by a white-haired pensioner are given over entirely to his pets. Ginger, a former stray cat, sprawls on a sofa, while Scruffy, a tame magpie, hops about the furniture, stealing car keys and hiding his meat inside Wimbledon Borough Library books.
At first sight, 'Major' Bob Astles, 79, in turn-ups, stiff collar and drooping moustache, looks like the sort of old buffer who stayed on too long in the colonies after the British had left. In fact, after the British left Uganda in 1962 Astles's life took on a grandeur and style it had never had before.
For eight murderous years he was closer to African potentate Idi Amin Dada than the dictator's own bullet-proof vest. Amin, the self-styled 'Conqueror of the British Empire' and the 'Last King of Scotland', finally died on Saturday after a stroke in exile in Saudi Arabia.
It was he who gave Astles the title of major. Astles, in turn, called Amin H.E. or His Excellence. As Amin's aide, Astles, known in Uganda as 'the White Rat', became the second most hated man in Uganda.
Amin, who once proposed marriage to Princess Anne, admired Hitler, kept human heads in his fridge, decapitated his own wife Kaye and murdered 7,000 Africans.
In 1975 Astles arranged an extraordinary stunt in which Amin’s 130kg bulk was held aloft by four uneasy-looking white businessmen. It was a picture that shocked the world, with its suggestion of black domination over white and a potent reminder of post-colonial mayhem and disintegration.
One year later, Amin was making headlines again when Palestinian terrorists, who hijacked an El Al plane, were allowed to land at Entebbe airport near the Ugandan capital, Kampala. One of the hostages, British-Israeli Dora Bloch, 75, was hospitalised, but then seized from her bed, beaten and burned to death.
Throughout it all Astles remained unperturbed, safe at the heart of Amin's odious regime. He was his 'odd job man', happy to obey orders and, claim many, to facilitate Amin's bloodlust.
Officially, Astles was head of Amin's so called anti-corruption squad and advised the president on British affairs. Many lived in fear of him because of the power and influence he wielded.
He is unrepentant today about what he did and his friendship with one of the most evil men who ever lived. "I loved it," he says of that period of his life when he was at Amin's beck and call. "When my minister (Amin) asked me to do something, I'd do it. And I'd do it all again, definitely."
After the fall of Amin in April 1979, Astles spent more than six years in prison in Kampala before returning, penniless, to Britain. Since then, he has lived quietly and in straitened circumstances. Astles was born into a working-class Kent family in 1924. His father was a soldier and most of his childhood was spent in barracks.
As a teenager, he joined the Indian army and then the Royal Engineers, reaching the rank of sergeant.
He was 21 when he left Britain for Africa seeking a Boys' Own adventure. He had charisma, energy and great affinity with the Ugandan people. His first job was as a building foreman; then with £100 he set up Uganda Aviation Services Ltd, the first airline in Uganda to employ Africans.
Astles also ran a TV station, owned a 50-acre pineapple farm and set up some boys' clubs. He also founded an animal sanctuary on an island in Lake Victoria.
In 1958, aged 34, he married Monica, who had come with him from Kent. She divorced him a year later after running off with a boat builder. A year later he married an aristocratic member of the Bugandan tribe, Mary Ssen-Katukka, and they had two children.
It was in 1962 that he had his first momentous meeting with Amin. Astles had been struggling in the waters of Lake Victoria for 20 minutes, pulled down by his yachting boots, when Amin, then a captain in the 4th King's African Rifles, dived in and saved him.
They met again in 1964 during trouble in the neighbouring Congo when Astles became Amin's regular pilot, prepared to fly the ambitious African on dangerous missions. They were brought together by their love of animals.
Astles supported Milton Obote, Uganda's first president, but on January 25, 1971, Obote was overthrown by Amin in a military coup. Astles quickly switched allegiance.
Things went well as he flew members of the new government about in his plane.
"I kept my eyes shut and said nothing about what I saw," he says, "which they liked."
But more sinister forces were gaining ground in Uganda.
The secret police were establishing torture centres, and in December 1971 suspicion fell on Astles because of his support for Obote.
Amin sent him to Makindye prison on a spurious charge. He was there for 17 weeks, often shackled and brutally interrogated. "It was tough," he says.
"I saw about 50 army officers from the Acholi and Langi tribes marched in. They were all taken to cell C2, where they were bludgeoned to death. I saw people kicked to death in my cell. I was beyond fear.
"Amin called me a 'rotten apple' on the radio, and nationalised my airline. It was ordinary Africans who helped me to survive. One guard was kicked to death for helping me."
In the end Astles made over his whole government pension in cash to get out of prison, but amazingly he did not leave the country.
Amin forced him to take Ugandan citizenship.
In 1975, Idi Amin, perhaps realising the public relations value of a white henchman, decided to smile again on Astles. Within a year Astles was referring to his leader as "a misunderstood man" and "a very kind man".
Today, Astles says it was his sense of duty and a childhood that frowned upon emotion, that made him so loyal to Amin. Perhaps it was his form of revenge on the middle-class whites who despised him?
Ultimately, his misguided loyalty to Amin led to disaster. After invasion by neighbouring Tanzania in 1979 toppled the despised dictator, Amin escaped to Saudi Arabia. Astles fled to Kenya, but was brought back to face "trial" in Uganda.
Aged 60, he was imprisoned in Kampala's Luzira prison and placed on Death Row. After six years, he was released.
On returning to England, a close friend, Betty Julius, an historian, whom he'd met in 1941, offered him rooms in her house in Wimbledon, where he still lives.
He spends hours every night on the internet, in touch, he says, with "African leaders", such as Yoweri Museveni, the current leader of Uganda.
Until Amin fell into a coma, he and Amin spoke by phone once a year. "He would ring up to find out if I had been spying on him," says Astles.
His abiding love of the darkest, most untamed continent and the dangerous men who run it is undiminished, and as he sits there with his animals, his memories are of what he perceives to be his glory days as Amin's loyal and trusted servant.
Interestingly enough, all of the biographies of Idi Amin ignore the latest evidence which exonerates him. For instance, biographers cleverly avoid discussing Jewish treachery and the role the Jews of Israel played in the hijacking of the flight as well as the massacre at Entebbe. The following June 10, 2007 account of journalist Timothy Kalyegira should suffice as the final word on the undeniable Jewish role in demonizing Amin in order to clear itself of an historical war crime.
Did Israel stage-manage the 1976 plane hijack and Entebbe Raid? asks Timothy Kalyegira.
On May 31, 2007, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, as it customarily does, released documents that have sent ripples all over the world. The documents bearing the reference number FCO 93/913 offer startling new insights and previously top-secret details on the hijack of an Air France passenger jetliner in June 1976. A week later, the raid ended in a dramatic rescue attack on Entebbe Airport, an attack that went on to become one of the most celebrated commando operations in history.
The BBC reported on May 31, 2007: "But newly released documents contain a claim that the 1976 rescue of hostages, kidnapped on an Air France flight and held in Entebbe in Uganda, was not all it seemed. A UK government file on the crisis, released from the National Archives, contains a claim that Israel itself was behind the hijacking."
According to the document, a British diplomat and First Secretary at the British embassy in Paris, David H. Colvin, wrote a memo on June 30, 1976 to the Foreign Office in London that he had got information that the hijack "was the work of the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], with help from the Israeli secret service, the Shin Bet."
"The operation was designed to torpedo the PLO's [Palestine Liberation Organisation] standing in France and to prevent what they see as a growing rapprochement between the PLO and the Americans," Colvin's memo said.
Israel worries
There had been worry in Israel that after the November 1976 presidential elections, the United States would move to impose peace in the Middle East that would probably involve Israel returning land seized from the Arabs during the 1967 Six-Day war.
This new state of affairs in the Middle East, Israel feared, would give the PLO an upper hand and diplomatic respect.
Quoting a source in his memo, Colvin noted: "My contact said the PFLP had attracted all sorts of wild elements, some of whom had been planted by the Israelis." After Colvin's report arrived via secure cable to the Foreign Office in London, a reporter for the Liverpool Post newspaper, Leo Murray, told the Foreign Office that he had information that a breakaway faction of the PFLP was planning a series of actions to sabotage the warming relations between Washington and the PLO.
The just released document has touched off a wave of conspiracy theories across the Arab and Islamic world, reinforcing the view that most of what is ordinarily seen as news is nothing close to reality.
The Jordan Times, in an opinion piece on June 3, 2007 commented: "The exposure of the Israeli role in the 1976 hijack should serve as a reminder to all those who harbour hopes of a just and fair peace between the Arab world and Jewish state of how tough and deceitful [Israel] could get when it is pressed to accept the minimum conditions for peace; there would be dramatic and stunning incidents designed to divert world attention and to strengthen Israeli negotiating positions." |