The Improvised Navy of the Yugoslav Partisans

 

Tito with sailors from the Partisan Navy
(used with permission)

Freivogel and Rastelli's Adriatic Naval War is a treasury of superb naval images drawn from private collections, alongside the best-informed text I have ever read on the topic. The sheer amount of small but important details suggests to me that much of the book was put together from local knowledge and oral history. The gathering together of this information is a credit to its authors, but it was not the first time I had heard about the improvised navy of those Extemporisers Extraordinaire, the Yugoslav Partisans.

 

That honour goes to Eastern Approaches (2), the travelogue and war diary of the intrepid British adventurer and friend of Josip Broz Tito, Fitzroy Maclean. Yet not even his gripping chronicle records the very beginnings of the maritime struggle against Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for Istria, Dalmatia and its coast of a thousand islands. That story began as the wartime innovation of Croatian sailors.

Partisan ships and seamen were continuously at sea in spite of adverse weather and were taking every risk in the face of the Italian and German revenge. At first they were weakly armed and badly equipped, and their results in sinking and capturing enemy vessels were never as high as the numbers 'bagged' by 'inefficient' Allies. But when the war ended the Partisans remained on the scene as the only victors, getting rid of their enemies, allies and political rivals as well. (1)

The old Yugoslavia was a land of mountains, ideal for the guerrilla warfare at which its people had had centuries of practice. The Adriatic with its twisting coastline, headlands, bays and islands offered the same type of warfare on the sea. Much of the reason for Tito's success as a leader in World War 2 came from his ability to unite these various fighting groups, and there are several images in the Adriatic Naval War of him bestowing a communist blessing on the sailors.

Italy had long coveted the beautiful Croatian coast and, when the Croatian Ustasha dictator Ante Pavelić did as he was told and handed it over to Mussolini in May 1941, local men formed the beginnings of the resistance later that same year.

Small rowing, sailing or motor boats were used to maintain communication lines between various groups in coastal and island camps. Italians were always trying to stop these movements with new orders and regulations, but the boats were often 'stolen' by their owners, being returned to the harbour in the morning after a specific action was performed.(1)

Actual attacks against the Italians began in January 1942 and became such a nuisance that Italian ships had to be armed or escorted and sometimes travelled in convoys for protection.

Italy had naval dockyards around the Adriatic at Monfalcone, Trieste and nearby Taranto, so it might reasonably be asked what type of vessels the Croatians could possibly have used against such technology. Fishing villages run the length of the coast and the first boats used were nothing more than their everyday vessels like those below in the Mandracio of Novigrad, which I visited in 2018.

The Partisan's aim was to capture from the enemy as much as they could: stores, food, arms and the vessels themselves. The Navy was given official recognition in the coastal town of Podgora around September 1942, a year before the Italian collapse. 

  The first flag of the Partisan NOVJ Navy 

 - Narodno Oslobodilačka Vojska Jugoslavija.

   The People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (3). 

From early 1945 this became the Yugoslav Navy. (Not to be confused with the Royal Yugoslav Navy and merchant fleet 1918-1941 or the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, untimely born and ineffective.) Ninety percent of the Navy of the Yugoslav Partisans was Croatian, but members also came from the other areas of Yugoslavia and even Italy and countries in Eastern Europe.

There were two classifications of vessels, PČ and NB, reflecting the Croatian words for boat, čamac (pronounced chamats), and brod, ship. PČ means Patrolni Čamac or patrol boat and NB means Naoružani Brod or ‘armed ship’. The Adriatic Naval War describes them initially as having ‘at least one 40mm gun’ and they may have had in addition ‘older British 40mm Vickers anti-guns with 20mm Breda and Scotti machine guns.’ However, photos from the book show them having many more. The old fishing boats of the pre-war villages were also reinforced with planks and stone filling. They were slow but nevertheless had impressive success rates against the Italians and later the Germans.

The Adriatic Naval War lists 17 armed Partisan ships (four German and several Italian), and 70 patrol boats (four German). 

For two years from the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Partisans received no help from either Russia or Britain and stole arms, ammunition, food, stores and even uniforms from the enemy. They became adept at improvisation. They took the machine guns from crashed aircraft and attached them to the bows of their boats, they stole bombs from under the nose of Italians and dismantled them to reuse the parts. Fitzroy Maclean writes how the Yugoslav Partisans remade railway carriages and engines. (One always feels that they’d have a go at anything.) On Vis they enthusiastically learned how to handle heavy weapons and fly aeroplanes and at the very end of the war, they even stole a miniature submarine from Pula Harbour.

After the Italians abandoned Dalmatia, the Nazis invaded until eventually the only unoccupied island was Vis, the furthest from the coast of Split. It is about an hour and a half by modern fast ferry.

The idea of creating an Allied/Partisan air and naval base on Vis was first floated by Fitzroy Maclean. A small airstrip was constructed where damaged bombers frequently crash-landed from both directions at once. The strip can just be seen at the beginning of this short video. Also visible is Tito’s war cave in which he lived from June to September 1944.

The island of Vis has a noble history dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Officially, it was the only island along the coast that was not invaded by Germany after Italy capitulated to General Eisenhower in September 1943. Practically, however, the Germans had spread themselves too thinly this late in the war, and once Tito declared the fight to retain Vis imperative and the Allies established a base there, many of the islands changed hands frequently.

I  was relieved to discover that the charming port of Komiža where the British and Partisan navies docked during the war is inaccessible to large cruise ships. We caught the ferry from Split to the town of Vis and, once there, hired a car, drove across the island to Komiža, parked outside the town and walked. Alternatively, you can put your own car on the ferry.

An excellent book to read about the Allies and Partisans on Vis is ‘Island of Terrible Friends’ by Bill Strutton. Happily, it was not hard to access and I got my copy on an interlibrary loan.

Commando Lieutenant Barton ‘dressed as a peasant and with two Partisans to show him the way, loaded his Sten gun on a mule under a burden of firewood and walked passed a number of German sentries right into the village of Nerežiše on the island of Brać, garrisoned with 200 Germans. One of the Partisans stood guard outside while he knocked on the Commandant’s billet, was admitted, thrust past a screeching woman to a bedroom upstairs, and there, in the faint light of a candle, fired a burst at the German Commandant who, half risen and gaping wordlessly, leaned over and fell. Barton calmly helped himself to the dead commandant’s automatic, his compass, an excellent pair of binoculars and a rifle. [Then] he beat it with his two Jugoslav comrades through a thicket of sentries. (4)

One story I loved occurred when a British doctor expressed his need for an X-ray machine. Upon hearing this, a group of Partisans sailed into Split, held up a local clinic at gun point and demanded the required machine. They then dismantled it and walked out with the pieces under their clothes, got back on board, returned to Vis and reassembled it for the doctor.  

Sources

(1) Freivogel, Z and Rastelli, R Adriatic Naval War 1940-1945 DESPORT INFINITUS 2015

(2) Maclean, Fitzroy Eastern Approaches Jonathon Cape 1949

(3) http://www.ratnakronikasplita.com/kronika/1943-1 

(4) Strutton, Bill Island of Terrible Friends Hodder and Stroughton 1961.

RUPTURED – Jewish women in Australia reflect on life post-October 7th. Book review.

My avoidance of Holocaust images changed after October 7, when I saw photos and videos taken by the murderous terrorists of their pogrom, of the bodies that had been abused and dismembered and set alight, invoking memories of the crematoria of those photographs long ago. The murders, the rapes, the cruelty – how had this somehow happened again? Ramona Koval

All over the world people are in the streets celebrating Hamas for their ‘just resistance’. I don’t understand. Weren’t we the ones attacked and slaughtered? Irena Zilberman

I recently read My Life As A Jew by retired editor of the Age, Michael Gawenda, published just before the Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023. Although I loved the Yiddish culture Gawenda describes and certainly his insights into the antisemitism of the Australian media, I was left feeling that his attitude to Gaza ran along the same lines as his journalistic community – that Israel is the problem. I guess, as well – and because he is a journalist – that he lacked the three things I believe are essential to understanding the conflict in the Middle East, religion, languages and history. ‘I’m no historian,’ he wrote. ‘And I’m too old to learn a new language.’

I thought about this as I read Ruptured. Our media, our government, our tertiary institutions, the Teachers Federation, the arts and the educated elite, feminists, the new-left, not forgetting the nefarious individuals in my electorate who are attempting to wrest office from our Jewish Federal member by blaming Jews for Hamas’s crimes against its own people – a strategy Hamas has successfully used against Israel for twenty years – have never demonstrated my knowledge of the religion, history and languages of the Middle East. Yet the propaganda campaign based on their ignorance is isolating Jewish Australians in their own cities. In Australia, Muslims outnumber Jews by a factor of ten, and the consequence of this is that politicians consider their chances of re-election before making any decisions about Jews or statements about Israel.

What also concerns me is that in my particularly comfortable, educated suburb, I have not heard what I have read in this book – not any of it, as if we have been packed in cotton wool. Christians with whom I worship every Sunday criticise Israel on the basis of biased media reports, only to watch movies and documentaries about the Holocaust, little realizing that they are players in an identical drama. No one I know seems to be aware of the women in Ruptured whose lives are being ruined by racism. Or is antisemitism merely racism? The historian Edward Flannery called it a secular diabolism, Deborah Lipstadt, a prejudice coming from both the right and the left, and Douglas Murray, a shape-shifting virus.

I understood this as I made my way through the book, and it was a rapid read. Antisemitism isn’t logical, it doesn’t make sense. The point made most frequently in Ruptured is that this latest round of antisemitism exploded on October 8, before the bodies of the Hamas victims had been identified and before Israel had fired a shot in its defence. I read about the doxing of Australian Jewish women, the lost friends, the cancelled talks and Writers’ Festival appearances, hate speech online and off, harassment and career destruction, victims turned into villains, the reawakening of intergenerational trauma. ‘The online food world is rife with anti-Zionist slogans and anti-‘Israhell’ propaganda,’ writes Lisa Goldberg. ‘Some days I feel overwhelmed by the hate circulating in my industry. 

Some of the experiences recorded in the book are just horrifying, and over every story hangs the smell of fear which is the reality of living as a Jew in Australia today.

A further point the stories demonstrate is that while the worst perpetrators may be only a vocal minority, the majority remain silent. It has been said that the reason we all know the famous Christians who shielded Jews in World War 2 is that there were so few of them.

‘In the year following October 7, antisemitic activity in Australia increased by 316 percent.’ 

Ruptured records how this has affected the lives of our Jewish women.

I had already avoided the CBD on Sundays, because it had been captured by loud protestors, marching weekly through the streets, some carrying terror group flags, their faces covered with masks and keffiyehs…Why [do] so many leftists now march with Hamas and Hezbollah supporters? Is this a new thing or have they always supported Islamist terrorism? Ramona Koval

Because of your Jewish identity, you don’t belong in the queer community…I was fifteen and rejected by a community that preached acceptance…My favourite artists, from queer musicians to actors, attended pro-Palestinian protests where chants praising Hamas and urging the demise of my people proliferated.  Noa Gomberg

It takes a thick skin to survive as a female in the media, and I experienced all kinds of sexism and misogyny, but I never experienced hatred for being a Jew. After October 7, all that changed…[It] wasn’t empathy for the Palestinians, it was hatred of Jews…No arguments worked, nothing could make the commenters reflect on their own prejudices. Kerri Sackville

It is this point that should wake Australians up. Whether it’s the Rhineland massacres, the Tsarist pogroms, Hitler’s final solution or the Al Jazeera propaganda machine, it all boils down to Jew hatred in the end, as Siana Einfeld’s harrowing depiction of Darebin Council deliberately turning against its tiny Jewish community early in the war illustrates.

In dark moments I wonder if Israel’s destruction, dressed up in human rights, is the world’s clandestine fetish…When I am not overwhelmed by fear, I marvel at the hate. Lynette Chazan

As a former prisoner of the Iranian regime…I recognised the vocabulary of these fighters as they raped and tortured and murdered on a visceral, instinctive level…Explained it away, justified it, revelled in it…In the streets of my city were IRCG flags and insignia…A handful of so-called friends called to sound out where I stood on ‘the genocide’. When I refused to throw myself headfirst into the rapidly swelling tide…I was dropped and denounced and smeared. Kylie Moore-Gilbert

And just as my comfy suburb was getting used to this new normal, 2025 drew to a close with the Bondi massacre.

Is Antisemitism the Proof for the Existence of God?

‘The deeply anti-religious kernel of Hitler’s antisemitism is not difficult to discover… Jews represented symbolically the demands of a divinely established moral law, which stood in the way of his racial amoralism and his deification of the German State and Volk. His genocidal decision against the Jewish people represented, again symbolically, the annihilation of his moral (Jewish-Christian) conscience, which stood in the way of his grandiose dream of a Thousand Year Reich founded on an apotheosis of the German Volk and as himself as its Fuehrer and Saviour. This view is supported by his remarks about conscience as a Jewiah intervention and the need to get the “Thou shall” and “Thou shall not” out of Aryan blood. Seen in this light, his antisemitism appears in its ultimate essence as a nomophobia , a revolt against the divinely sanctioned moral law or, religiously speaking, as a revolt against God.’

From The Anguish of the Jews by Edward Flannery, 1965 (1).

Antisemitism has been called the world’s oldest hatred, the perplexing persecution of a single small ethnic group throughout history. Hitler proposed it as the solution to all Germany’s problems. Islamists endlessly plot the destruction of Israel to restore the honour of Islam. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russia used Jews as a universal scapegoat, persecuting and murdering thousands. Saint John Chrysostom vilified the Jews in violent words and Voltaire in erudite language. England expelled its Jewish population in the thirteenth century and in the Nazi era put quotas on the number of Jews allowed to take refuge in the British Mandate of Palestine. Britain abstained from voting for the creation of the State of the Israel in the United Nations in 1947 and in the Jewish war of Independence that followed, they armed the Arabs. Shakespeare gave us Shylock to despise the Jews and Dickens created Fagin. Before departing for Jerusalem, the Crusaders of the Rhineland murdered the Jews who lived there. Once in the Holy Land, they slaughtered many more. France expelled its Jews and Austria expelled them, as did Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland and even parts of Italy despite many Popes being sympathetic towards them. The Inquisition, that ultimate expression of Spanish nationalism, permitted the expulsion of over 200,000 Jews. In Europe Jews were forbidden to own land and to join trade guilds, then criticised for finding employment in the few things allowed to them, money and academia.

The sad list goes on or, as Edward Flannery expresses it, ‘the millennia of horrors’. As Hitler’s star rose in pre-war Germany, even the United States was not immune. ‘A sign [was] posted on a road leading to a mountain resort: “1000 feet – too high for Jews.” Another one read: “Gentiles preferred.”’ (3)

Many theories have been proposed to account for antisemitism, but is it proof for the existence of God? As a Christian, I believe it is.

Jesus said, ‘salvation is through the Jews’ (John 4,22) and ‘[Jerusalem] will not see me again until you say, “blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”’ (Matt 23, 39). The missionary Lydia Prince, who spent a large part of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s in Jerusalem, wrote ‘God’s plan of peace and blessing for all nations can never come to completion until both Israel and Jerusalem are restored…he expects us to be his coworkers in bringing this to pass’ (2).

The world doesn’t see it this way, but the world is anti-God. ‘Those who hate you, O God, your enemies, [say] let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more’ (Psalm 83:1- 4).

There are countless examples of antisemitism in history which demonstrate that, if your aim is to rid yourself of Jews, then it is also to rid yourself of the Jewish God. To the scholars of the European Enlightenment ‘attempting to devise a truly rational understanding of history, politics, and religion—Jewish thought presented a significant challenge’ (4). Indeed, the very reason for antisemitism follows war in heaven, God’s angels versus Satan’s.

Israel gives birth to the Messiah

‘A woman clothed with the sun and on her head a crown of twelve stars brought forth a male child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. The dragon, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, stood before the woman so that he might devour her child, but the child was caught up to God and to his throne.

‘Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down and his angels were thrown down with him. Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great anger, because he knows that his time is short!

Satan pursues Israel

‘When the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child' (Revelation 12).

But ‘a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God is with us.’ (Matt 1, 23). In our pain, in our grief, in the small tortures of daily life Jesus the Jew is there sharing our suffering. Yet Satan would far rather we live our lives in a brand of educated humanism. I have just watched the documentary series Australian Story about an elderly woman who, knowing that she hasn’t much longer to live, wonders who will love the disabled son to whom she has devoted her life.

Outside of Jesus, I don’t have the answer, except to rail against the humanism we live in which encourages the world to live courageously without God, and therefore without the Jews. I’m not very good at theology and psychology and it seems to me an insurmountable difficulty to say that a God who loves you created the Jews that the world hates yet are necessary for its salvation.

What is the point of hating the Jews? Who benefits?

The Jews are God’s people irrespective of their sins, and this says much about the faithfulness of God.

'Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land’ (Ezekial 36, 22-24).

I cannot conclude without considering Arab antisemitism and whether it is appropriate to our argument about the existence of God. Before the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Jews and Christians living in Arab lands were referred to as dhimmi meaning ‘protected’. They were, however, subservient to Muslims and were governed by laws that kept them that way. They paid higher taxes. Regarding the actual murder of Jews, there is the much debated quote from the Hadith, ‘The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees and the stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslim, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’’ and Muhammad’s command to slay those who refused to convert and would not repent.

But the theological question of Arab antisemitism for God doesn’t make an appearance until the Islamic terrorism of our own day. It is important to understand that this is a modern phenomenon.

‘Palestinian Authority elites have built a three-stage case against Jewish existence…As their expert witness, they bring Allah himself who is said to have sent a message through the Prophet Muhammad that killing Jews is a necessary step to bring Resurrection. Stage 1 is characterized by a collective labelling of Jews as the enemies of Allah…Stage 2 teaches that because of their immutable traits, Jews represent an existential danger to all humanity. Stage 3 presents the necessary solution…the annihilation of Jews as legitimate self-defence and a service to God and man’ (5).

If God didn’t exist, would killing a Jew have been a necessary step to welcome the Resurrection? Would such slaughter have been a service to God?

I leave you with these thoughts so that the next time free-to-air television vilifies Israel you will consider their reasons for doing so.

(1) The Anguish of the Jews by Edward Flannery, Macmillan, New York, 1965.

(2) Appointment in Jerusalem, Lydia and Derek Prince, F.H. Revell Co. 1975.

(3) Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, Thomas Nelson, 2010.s

(4) https://thelemur.org/2026/01/05/voltaires-antisemitism-an-adapted-final-paper/

(5) https://www.jstor.org/stable/25834644

Margaret Walker mwalkeristra.com

 

 

 

Salvation is From the Jews. A review of 'On Democracies and Death Cults' by Douglas Murray.

The problem with the Western church is that it's too rational. It doesn't realize when it's being demonised.

Australian Christians, this post is for you. 

What has upset me most about this whole, horrible war between Israel and Hamas has been your response. You do not recognise spiritual warfare. You claim to be Bible-believing, except when it comes to what the Bible says about Israel. You claim to be godly, but on the topic of Israel you are worldly. Since the invasion of Israel by Hamas on October 7th 2023, a beautiful old friend of mine has assured me that she trusts the ABC to report the conflict, and I fancy that my many Christian friends who lay the blame for Palestinian suffering at Israel's door, do too. 

But the ABC and SBS have proved themselves as effective propaganda machines as the media of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Their narrative from the beginning has been that Israel is always the aggressor and the Palestinians are always the victims and they will neither publish nor give air time to alternate points of view. I've read dozens of war books that tell the same story of carnage as On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray and he contradicts our Australian media as effectively as light dispels the darkness. It seems to me that he gives a straightforward account of the conflict based on his observations and witness statements. 

I admire his composure. Perhaps it's my Yugoslav genes, no doubt it is the stirring of the Holy Spirit as well, but I cannot remain calm while reading about the violence of Hamas towards their own people. These are people for whom Christ died.

So, Australian Christians, you can discuss who's to blame for the casualties in Gaza or who owns the land until the cows come home but, if you claim to believe the Bible, then you must first address the following points.

Israel is part of God's plan for the salvation of the world. Jesus himself said that salvation is through the Jews (John 4: 22) and their involvement is ongoing. Jesus was born 'to be a light for revelation to the gentiles and glory to [his] people Israel. [He was] destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel ( Luke 2:32 and 34)'. He remains the Lion of Judah (Rev 5:5) and cannot be separated from his Jewish roots. Romans 11, furthermore, reminds Christians that Israel is the root onto which they are grafted and not merely one of the world's three monotheistic religions, as we so often hear. God promised to restore Israel to His land not once (Ezekiel 36) but twice (Isaiah 11:11) and to watch over her like a shepherd (Jeremiah 31:10).

This is why every foreign army that has tried to conquer Israel in modern times has failed, despite overwhelming superiority in numbers and arms. In 1948 'the leaders of the Arab nations publicly declared their intention to annihilate the newborn Jewish state and to sweep the Jews into the sea' (1). The defeat that followed, of 50 million Arabs by just 650,000 Jews, should stand as a warning to Christians to choose carefully which side they are on today, the Australian media's side or God's, the ones that curse Israel or those who bless it (Genesis 12:3).

Despite the clarity of the 1948 Arab warning and despite what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has so succinctly expressed - that, if you believe Mohammed and the Koran, the State of Israel cannot be allowed to exist - Douglas Murray relates how the Western world has come to support a new version of antisemitism churned out by the propaganda moguls of Qatar, Al Jazeera and their fellow jihadists, and the settler colonial theory created by Beirut intellectuals in the 1920's. The Palestine Liberation Organization even became fashionable amongst 'Western celebrities and intellectuals.'

'In 1977 the British-born, Oscar winning actress Vanessa Redgrave even made sure to have herself filmed dancing around a campfire with the PLO, waving a Kalashnikov rifle' (p145).

Thus, the West, purporting to be rational, looks askance at the very mention of Israel and supports instead a fictional Palestine that has never existed. The word Palestine was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus. Its meaning in Greek, 'composed of wrestlers', bears a striking resemblance to the Hebrew meaning of Israel, 'wrestles with God'. Being the bridge between Africa, Europe and Asia, Israel has been invaded countless times, and before the twentieth century was in a very degraded state with a small population of various ethnicities. It would take another article to discuss where much of the present Arab population has come from.

On Democracies and Death Cults has been a best seller. In the six months since it was published there have been 3936 ratings and 466 reviews on Goodreads alone, yet no major newspaper has reviewed it, and we have already established why. Murray's observation about Hamas and not Israel being the tormentor of the Palestinians doesn't fit their narrative.

What does Murray tell Christians about how Hamas, who were elected into government in 2006, cares for its citizens?  

'In the 140 square miles of Gaza, Hamas spent its years in power constructing over 350 miles of tunnels, with around 6000 different tunnel entrances. Many of these were hidden in civilians houses, mosques, hospitals and other non-military buildings...By two months into the war, [the] estimate was that somewhere between every two or three civilian homes in Gaza had military weapons including AK-47's, grenades, and rocket launchers, or tunnel entrances in them.' (pp172/3)

'Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk was asked whether ordinary Gazan civilians would be able to shelter in the tunnels. "These tunnels", he explained, "are meant to protect us from the aeroplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels. " Besides, he went on, the lives of the people of Gaza were the responsibility of the UN, not Hamas.'  (p229)  

'A month after [the October 7th massacre], in the second week of the Israeli ground operation,' Murray visited Gaza. 'At this point in the conflict, the Israelis had set up a border between the north and south of the Gaza Strip. They had messaged the civilian population of the north...telling them to make their way south... Just a day earlier, video had emerged from up the highway where the road was strewn with the bodies of Gazan civilians shot by Hamas for trying to make their way south.' (p109/10)

'By the start of the 2023 war the international community had made every Hamas leader into a billionaire. By then Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashal were estimated to have a combined worth of some $11 billion. While claiming that their people were living in a poverty-stricken concentration camp, these leaders lived in luxury hotels and penthouses in Qatar.'  (p169) 

But that's not what upsets me the most, because it is the usual sad circus of power, corruption and war. The most dismay I feel at Hamas is for teaching pre-schoolers to hate and taking children on summer camps to learn how to kill Jews.

'As the historian of antisemitism looks back over the millennia of horrors he has recorded,' writes Edward Flannery in The Anguish of the Jews (2), 'an inescapable conclusion emerges: antisemitism is the longest and deepest hatred of human history.' Yet 'God's plan of peace and blessing for all nations can never come to completion until both Israel and Jerusalem are restored (3).' Therefore, can we ask as Christians, what does the Bible say? The standard answer, with which I agree, is that Satan doesn't want the world to be saved so he persecutes the Jews because they are part of God's plan for salvation. The 12th and 13th chapters of Revelation, where this is found, are either enlightening or horrific, depending on how you look at them. Basically they say that Satan was angry with Israel for birthing the Messiah and that's why he persecutes her. After all, Jesus Christ came to 'destroy the works of the devil' (1 John 3: 8). But Satan has deceived the whole world (12:9), and even conquered Christians (13:7). Douglas Murray writes about the author Gitta Sereny, 'who spent her life studying evil...I remembered something Sereny had said towards the end of her life: she had come to the conclusion that evil is a force that sometimes seems to just descend on the world.' (p 218)

Now you may scoff all you like, but what sense does it make for Christians to ignore the Bible and believe instead a media who have declared from the start that they will only publish a false narrative?

Oh, and Mr Murray, concerning Death Cults, here's a Bible verse for your book, Isaiah 28:17-18, 'I will sweep away the refuge of lies...your covenant with death will be annulled and your agreement with the place of the dead will not stand.'

References

1. Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting,  Derek Prince 1973 Whitaker House.

2. The Anguish of the Jews, Edward Flannery 1965 Paulist Press.

3. Appointment in Jerusalem, Derek Prince for Lydia Prince. 1975 Whitaker House.

What did Palestine and Yugoslavia have in common?

Answer: Amin al-Husseini.

Related on the female side to Yasser Arafat, former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, revered by radical Islamists, President Tito of Yugoslavia charged him with war crimes.

Before we discover why, it is important to know what Israel was like before Jews fleeing persecution in Europe made its deserts bloom. Indeed, over half of this tiny country was desert and much of the remainder, malarial swamps. In 1857 the British consul wrote, 'the country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants.' Other visitors described it as 'desolate and unpeopled', in 'wretched desolation and neglect' (2). According to Mark Twain, who visited Jerusalem in 1867, the city was so small that one could walk around it in an hour, and hosted a mixed population of Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Copts and other Christians, Latins, Syrians and Abyssinians, speaking a variety of languages. Outside the walls, Bedouins rode wildly across the landscape. 'It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem,' Twain wrote. 'Mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here' (3).

Thirty years later, Amin al-Husseini was born into this unprepossessing community. In a quick overview of his life, one thing is apparent: he always seemed to be fleeing from something. In 1920, he fled from Jerusalem to Syria to escape imprisonment by the British for inflammatory speech during the Jerusalem riots. He was a pivotal figure in the Hebron Massacre of 1929. In July 1937 he fled the British again, disguised as a woman, for his part in the Arab revolts against them and the Jews. Later that year, he fled to Lebanon, this time disguised as a Bedouin. As his relationship with the French and the Syrians deteriorated, he fled from there to Iraq in 1939. 'In October 1941 General Wavell, commander of the British Middle Eastern forces, offered a $100,000 (25,000 pounds) reward for [his] capture...dead or alive...being under a still valid warrant of arrest of the Palestine government for the assassination of Jews, Arabs, and British, including Galilee Commissioner Andrews.' (8). From Iraq, al-Husseini fled 'to Iran and hid himself in the Japanese Embassy'. From Tehran he [fled] to Italy' (8). From November1941, we find him in Germany supported by Hitler. In May 1945 following the dictator's suicide, he fled first from Austria to Switzerland and then to Germany where he was arrested by the French (4). It was while he was in France under house arrest that the request for his indictment arrived from Yugoslavia and so, in 1946, he fled yet again to Egypt where King Farouk of Egypt granted him asylum (5, 7).

As someone who has visited the former Yugoslavia once and since its breakup, Bosnia twice, and Serbia and Croatia many times, I have observed that Bosnia, although rich in natural resources, is the worst off. It is very poor. Unemployment is high. I saw whole villages lying deserted because the inhabitants had left for a better life. Over the centuries Bosnia has been exploited by the Ottomans, the Austrians, the Nazis, and most recently by political Islam. A young sales assistant we spoke to, a university graduate, told us in perfect English that it was generally felt that a war was again approaching.

Those of you who have read the Nobel Prize winning novel by Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina, will recall Turks in Bosnia with surnames like Sokolović and Branković. Though referred to as 'Turks', they were actually Bosniaks, Slavs who had converted to Islam in the centuries of the Ottoman occupation. During Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, Germany did not have enough soldiers to control Yugoslavia and, in 1942, Himmler decided to form two SS Waffen Divisions (a third was later added) from these Bosnian Muslims, ethnic Yugoslav Germans and a small percentage of Catholic Croats. (Waffen is German for 'armed' in the same way as Panzer is German for a 'tank'.) The divisions were led by German officers and became operational early in 1943. They were called the Handschar Divisions, handžar being a Serbo Croatian word for a scimitar, the curved sword of the Ottomans. They were Mountain Divisions because Bosnia is very mountainous until you descend to the plain of the Neretva River and commence the drive towards the coast.

Meanwhile in Berlin, Al-Husseini had been comfortably provided for by Hitler since 1941. He was assisting him with the Holocaust. In the spring of 1943, the Nazis flew him to Yugoslavia to help with the organizing and recruiting of Bosnian Muslims into Himmler's SS Divisions (10). Many photographs exist of al-Husseini at this time. After initial training in France, the units were sent to Germany, where al-Husseini met them again, inspected them and blessed them. Swelled by German soldiers, their numbers approached 22,000. In December 1943, the Germans returned the divisions to Yugoslavia for active service in Bosnia, and in October 1944 they were disbanded.

You don't need to have observed the recent anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre to know that there is bad blood between Bosnian Muslims and Serbs. The Handschar SS Divisions did more than just fight the Yugoslav Partisans. They developed a reputation for savagery and atrocities against the civilian Bosnian population of Serbs and Jews. In addition, 'Al-Husseini ... had always preached that murdering Jews pleases Allah and is essential to salvation' (5). 

In July 1945, at the request of the Minister of the Interior and Information in the Yugoslav Government, the United Nations placed al-Husseini on their war criminals list (9). He was charged with organizing the SS divisions in Bosnia and being responsible for the massacre of Bosnian Muslims who refused to collaborate with the Germans.

He was never brought to justice. Like his father before him, Al-Husseini was a dedicated antisemite, notable for using inflammatory language and inciting riots against the Jews and the British, and for the murder of his rivals. His family had arrived in Palestine the same century as mine had arrived in Australia and, as 'Palestinian' was not used as a political term until well into my lifetime, he didn't advocate for its statehood. Given that the Koran says the Jews will return to the Promised Land (6) - Surah Al-Ma’idah (5:21) and Surah Al-Isra (17:104) - we may wonder at the extent to which the radical Islamists who admired him have created an unnecessary problem for the modern world. 

1. Taxation in the Ottoman Empire - Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core

2. The Population of Palestine, circa 1875 on JSTOR

3. The Innocents Abroad, Complete | Project Gutenberg    Chapter LIII

4. Unmasking Hajj Amin al-Husseini through his wartime letters and diaries

5. From Hitler to Hamas: A Genealogy of Evil » ISGAP

6. EDITORIAL: The Koran itself says Jews will return to their land

7. The Long Shadow Over Palestine: The Terrorist Legacy of Haj Amin al-Husseini | by Jeff Cunningham | Medium

8, U.S. Dept. of State Withheld Evidence From Nazi Files, Shielded Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from Prosecution for War Crimes in 1948 | Adara Press

9. Ex-mufti of Jerusalem Placed on War Criminals List; Indicted by Yugoslav Government - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

10. 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) 

Israel, Palestine and the Australian media. Review of 'My Life as a Jew' by Michael Gawenda.

 

Has anyone read Why the Germans, Why the Jews? by Götz Ali? If you haven’t read it, you need to before reading My Life as a Jew. 

Why the Germans, Why the Jews? charts the normalization of intellectual antisemitism in Germany in the decades before World War 2 which facilitated the Holocaust. A similar normalization has been happening in literary, journalistic, educational and artistic circles across Australia, not forgetting the Labor left and the Greens. It is the hatred of an ethnic minority, a secularized diabolism (1), and one that I feel is gradually building up. 

My Life as a Jew is a fine book, personal and in places deeply harrowing. It is easy to read and I found the Yiddish culture fascinating. I devoured the whole lot in about eight hours from one afternoon to the next morning. 

In the days of my innocence, I used to wonder how the Australian media could justify publishing press releases from the Gaza Ministry of Health, because isn't that rather like reporting on the Battle of Britain by sourcing your information from Nazi Germany? Well, after Chapter One, I don't wonder anymore.

The chapter describes the presuppositions regarding Israel and Palestine that members of the Australian media are expected to hold and how these had been reinforced just in time for the October 7th 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists. Two years earlier, a booklet was commissioned for Monash University Publishing. Written by John Lyons, at the time the ABC senior news executive, it was a rant against the Israel lobby in Australia. Before the booklet was commissioned, 400 Australian media personnel signed a letter relating to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Gawenda continues: 

What this letter calls for, what it urges editors and executive producers to do, is refuse space and a voice to journalists and others who do not accept the black-and-white position of the signatories to this letter - that Israel is the villain that launches savage and unprovoked attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza, on the powerless and the helpless victims of Israeli villainy.

What does it mean that journalists and media workers who work for the ABC and SBS signed the letter?

In the more political chapters of the book (and I say this to distinguish them from the personal ones in which a bias is less evident), Michael Gawenda too writes about the Israel and Palestine conflict from a similar starting point to these journalists - that Israel is the tyrant. Yet, there is so much more to be understood if you are a nobody like me and can write whatever you like without having to fend off attacks by an irate literary community. 

As a Christian, I say that antisemitism exists because, in the words of Jesus: ‘Salvation is from the Jews’. This is the reason, no doubt, that the Koran and the Hadith dismantle anything about Judaism and Christianity that relate to God’s plan for the salvation of a troubled world, even to threatening hell fire for a Muslim who believes that the Messiah is the son of Mary. (The many kind and motherly Muslim women I have met are unaware of this, I’m sure.) Edward Flannery (1) insists that the conflict cannot be understood without a knowledge of the Koran and this belief is echoed in the works of Richard Landes, Ayann Hirsi Ali, Narbeel Qureshi and Derek Prince among many others. I have read the relevant verses in the Koran and they are not encouraging. If imams continue to preach what it says about Jews and Muslims, then there will never be peace in the Middle East. 

If you’re an atheist, as I’m told journalists are, then what do you do with the salvation question? How do you explain the infiltration of the Jewish problem into all levels of our society? 

Meanwhile, the catastrophic effects of British colonialism in the Middle East are forgotten or ignored. Churchill splitting Kurdistan between three countries, making the Kurds an ethnic minority in their own land and opening the path to their persecution. British oil exploration and exploitation in the Middle East between 1908 and WW2. The British Mandate of Palestine. The British Mandate of Mesopotamia. Britain creating Iraq. Churchill giving 75% of its Palestine Mandate to create Transjordan to please the Arabs and protect British oil supplies. The UN creating Israel out of the dregs of what remained amidst threats of Arab oil embargoes. Britain abstaining from the vote to partition Palestine in 1947. Britain arming the Arabs in the Jewish war of Independence.

Why obsess over Israel? 

Because religion is at the heart of the matter and this is a stumbling block for atheists who lump all religions into the one basket, toss it in the trash and look for a logical, Western solution to the problem. Not finding any, they blame Israel, and I doubt whether this attitude is actually helping the people of Gaza. To quote Hamza Howidy whose article is listed below, 'If their heart bleeds for Gaza, why are they not outraged at all of the violence that Gazans face—including the violence of Hamas? The sad truth is, when Israelis aren't involved, no one is interested in advocating for the Palestinian rights they claim to care about so deeply.'

Some knowledge of the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Palestine might help Australian journalists. They could discover what Palestine was once like by reading about the famous visit of Mark Twain in 1867 The Innocents Abroad, or research the origin of the term Al Nakba (the catastrophe) in Daniel Szeftel’s A History of the ‘Settler Colonialism’ charge. They could pinpoint who has actually lived in Palestine during the last century, by reading The Smoking Gun: Arab immigration into Palestine, 1922 to 1931 by Fred M. Gottheil. Richard Landes might explain to them how eliminating Israel will restore the honour of Islam that its foundation has shamed in Why the Arab World is lost in an emotional nakba. And how we keep it there. Or they could be really radical and discover how the Palestinians feel themselves in Why Does the Media Ignore Hamas' Crimes Against Palestinians? by Hamza Howidy. 

But back to the book.

The definitions of an anti-Zionist, and even of a Jew, that consumed Gawenda did not consume me, but I was quite rivetted by his observations of what is antisemitism and what it isn't according to the judgements of contemporary society. Fueled by the media, we are directed to the conclusion 'that it is not antisemitic to compare Israelis to Nazis', page 103. 

Those of us who are old enough to remember Yasser Arafat might find page 201 as strange as I did. I thought Gawenda was harsh to blame Israel for 'some of' the suffering of the Palestinians without mention of either Arafat or Hamas. In 2004 as Arafat lay dying, Ed O'Loughlin of the Sydney Morning Herald wrote about 'the corrupt and self-serving political elite which has prospered from the donor-funded Palestinian Authority while the common people suffer economic and political strangulation under occupation.' (I have the clipping.) It should be remembered that Gaza and the West Bank are not modern welfare states, and that the governments who profess to lead them can best be compared to the House of Lords at the time of the First Fleet. 

I was moved by the unfortunate employee of the Anne Frank Museum who was asked to replace his kippeh with a baseball cap. Gawenda pours vitriol on those who would de-Jewify the Holocaust, as this example illustrates, transforming 'it into a universal metaphor for the capacity of human beings to do terrible things to other human beings', page 94. He criticizes Hollywood and popular Auschwitz literature, rightly so as the child of Holocaust survivors, born in a Displaced Persons camp in Austria. (I must add, Mr Gawenda, that I have read Exodus by Leon Uris twice, but I have never seen the movie.) 

As I left the supermarket yesterday morning with a loaded bag and my library copy of My Life as a Jew sitting under the bananas, a woman handed me a pro-Palestinian flyer. ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I pray for Israel, and also for the people of Gaza and an end to the hostilities.’ She just stared at me as if she couldn’t understand my attitude.

1 The Anguish of the Jews, Flannery E.   Cambridge University Press 1985.

Margaret Walker - War in the Balkans: The Anguish of the Jews -- book review and reflections

 

POWERFULLY PROTECTED - the Ustasha in Australia

I was a political child. In 1972 during the campaign that toppled twenty-three years of Australian Liberal governments, I wore my It's Time badge faithfully to Sunday School every week - It's Time For A Change. I rejoiced when in December Gough Whitlam and the Labor Party roared into office and, even today, I can still sing the song that encapsulated that exciting time in Australian politics. 'The Adventures of Edward Gough Whitlam. Dinki Di tales of an Aussie Boy.'  

From 1952 to 1978 Whitlam held the safe Labor seat of Werriwa in southwest Sydney which contained a substantial migrant community from the former Yugoslavia. 

Unlike their Liberal predecessors, the new Labor Government was not frightened of the Yugoslav communist government or communism in general. They did not permit the freedom of terrorist groups in Australia merely because they weren't communist and therefore not considered a threat. One such group that they banned were the Croatian terrorists, the Ustasha. 

Who were the Ustasha?

They were fascists, which means right wing ultra-nationalists, the opposites and opponents of communism. Fascism flourished in Europe in the interwar years under Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, the Ustasha in Croatia and many others. 

In my 1915 atlas (right) there is no Croatia. It forms part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Various factors, including the fear of land claims from Italy, resulted in Croatia being incorporated into Yugoslavia in 1918 under a Serbian monarchy. The Ustasha were founded in 1929 with the aim of achieving Croatian independence. 

Following the German invasion of Yugoslavia 6th April 1941, Hitler put the Ustasha in charge of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) which included Bosnia and 1.8 million ethnic Serbs (5). The Croatian historian, Slavko Goldstein (2) acknowledges that, although the Serbian monarchy had been guilty of the suppression of Croatia, the punishment the Ustasha meted out to the Serbs was out of all proportion to the crimes.

Estimates of the genocide of Serbs by the Ustasha during World War 2 vary. Hubert Butler (3), the Irish essayist who lived in Croatia before and after the war quotes half a million, while other sources suggest even more. Marcus Tanner (4) writes 'the figure of 600,000 Serb deaths in the NDH is probably much too high as it does not tally with the ethnic composition of Croatia and Bosnia after the war...[but] there is no doubt that the NDH intended to exterminate the Serb population and failed only because it lacked the means.' The Ustasha also killed 75% of the Jews, all the Gypsies, any antifascist who crossed their line of vision, and a cousin of my mother's.

In an attempt to explain the fanatical hatred with which the Ustasha slaughtered Serbs, that even shocked the Nazis, Goldstein quotes the commander of Jasenovac death camp, Ljubo Miloš, 'I know I will burn in hell for what I have done, but I will burn for Croatia.' (2)

The Ustasha find protection in Australia.  

'Like many refugees from countries in Eastern Europe who had collaborated with Hitler and Mussolini,' writes Gough Whitlam, 'and who therefore could not return to their countries of birth, the Ustasha formed close ties with the Liberal Party.' 

'In 1954, I had brought to the notice of the Minister for Immigration [Holt] the distress which had been caused to many migrants in my electorate by a program on a Sydney commercial radio station on the Sunday nearest to 10th April to celebrate "the Croatian National Day" This was the anniversary of the establishment of the Ustasha puppet regime under Ante Pavelić in 1941.' (1)  

In September 1963, the following article appeared in the Tribune (6), the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia.

The Wodonga incident had been staged by the Ustasha, filmed then splashed across the world to demonstrate the 'help' they were receiving from Australian authorities. An embarrassed Minister for the Army 'pleaded that the officer commanding was not aware of the composition of the [Ustasha] 'picnic group' and had merely regarded them as potential recruits'. (1)  

Some selected Ustasha bombings                 Quotes are from (1) unless otherwise stated.

1964 May, Sydney - a supporter is seriously injured by his own bomb. 

1965 February, Geelong - Yugoslav dance.

1967 April, Melbourne - two separate residences.

1967 January, Sydney - Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1967 November, Richmond VIC - Yugoslav function.

1968 November, Melbourne - bombs thrown into a residence.

1968 November, Sydney -    Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1969 April, Sydney - residence. 

1969 June - Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1969, October, Canberra - USSR Embassy.                                         

1969, November, Canberra - Yugoslav Embassy.

1970, October, Melbourne - Yugoslav Consulate-General.

1971, January - USSR consulate.

1971, February, Sydney airport - bomb threat against Yugoslav musicians.

1971, November, Sydney - Yugoslav agency.

1971, December, Suburban Sydney - Yugoslav film show. 
1972, February, Canberra - Serbian orthodox church. 

1972, April, Melbourne and Canberra - residence and an exhibition.

1972, September, Sydney -- Yugoslav premises. 

The Tribune was not impressed. 

October 28th 1970 - 'There appear to be several flocks of guardian angels watching over the Ustashi. Firstly, there are the Liberal and Democratic Labor Parties. Top Liberals, including Gorton, McMahon and Snedden, have either praised them or defended them. Liberal politicians such as Federal Minister Mr W C Wentworth and NSW Parliamentarian have appeared and spoken at their rallies.  Apparently, the fanatical anti-communist and anti-labor attitudes of the Ustashi make them a valued ally.' (7)

Gough Whitlam agreed. 'The Ustasha had enjoyed immunity under [successive Liberal prime ministers] Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon...If communist rather than anti-communist organizations had been thought responsible for [the terrorist incidents in Australia] all the Liberal Attorneys-General would have been active in pursuing and prosecuting the perpetrators.' (1)

But was it only to do with the fear of Communism? 

While I might rant and rage at the injustice of allowing a persecuted ethnic group to enter Australia only to permit the persecution to continue here, it is true that post war Australia was essentially British and not concerned about migrants it didn't understand and whose language it couldn't speak. 'By focusing their attacks on the Yugoslav community, the Ustaša avoided provoking general outrage and public censure,' writes Kristy Campion (8). 'The violence was considered a Yugoslav migrant problem. It was not until the tourism centre bombings injured sixteen random civilians that decisive political action was taken.'  She notes that contributing factors were the fear the victims had of retribution and the fear of deportation back to the communist Yugoslavia they had left.  

It is fortunate that Gough Whitlam held an electorate with a Yugoslav community. With the Labor party at last in office, the long run of government permissiveness to the Ustasha came to an end and the community had a few short years of peace until the breakup of Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990's. Writing many years after he was an eyewitness to the Ustasha crimes, Slavko Goldstein concluded that Ustasha intellectuals believed that 'if you loved Croatia very much, you must be forgiven completely even if in its name... you persecuted people, drove them into prisons and camps, killed them, or had them killed on a massive scale. If you have expressed remorse with a few general phrases, you have been “purified" and you will receive the honour that you deserve.' (2)

Sources

(1) Whitlam, Gough     The Whitlam Government 1972-1975   Penguin Books 1985

(2) Goldstein, Slavko    1941: The Year Tthat Keeps Returning  NY Review of Books 2007

(3) Butler, Hubert   The Balkan Essays.  Irish Page Press 2016.

(4) Tanner, Marcus     Croatia   Yale UP 1997.

(5) Nationalities and Minorities in the Independent State of Croatia | Nationalities Papers | Cambridge Core

(6) 18 Sep 1963 - "Poem" for terrorism - Trove

(7) 28 Oct 1970 - Powerful protectors of the Ustashi bomb terrorists - Trove

(8) The Ustaša in Australia: A Review of Right-Wing Ustaša Terrorism from 1963-1973, and Factors that Enabled their Endurance Kristy Campion.

researchoutput.csu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/29095069/28757579_Published_article.pdf/