Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.

Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB.

We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags.

Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party itself.

In his new, highly praised book "The War of the World, "Historian Niall Ferguson writes that no revolution in the history of mankind devoured its children with the same unrestrained appetite as did the Soviet revolution. In his book on the Stalinist purges, Tel Aviv University's Dr. Igal Halfin writes that Stalinist violence was unique in that it was directed internally.

Lenin, Stalin, and their successors could not have carried out their deeds without wide-scale cooperation of disciplined "terror officials," cruel interrogators, snitches, executioners, guards, judges, perverts, and many bleeding hearts who were members of the progressive Western Left and were deceived by the Soviet regime of horror and even provided it with a kosher certificate.

All these things are well-known to some extent or another, even though the former Soviet Union's archives have not yet been fully opened to the public. But who knows about this? Within Russia itself, very few people have been brought to justice for their crimes in the NKVD's and KGB's service. The Russian public discourse today completely ignores the question of "How could it have happened to us?" As opposed to Eastern European nations, the Russians did not settle the score with their Stalinist past.

And us, the Jews? An Israeli student finishes high school without ever hearing the name "Genrikh Yagoda," the greatest Jewish murderer of the 20th Century, the GPU's deputy commander and the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin's collectivization orders and is responsible for the deaths of at least 10 million people. His Jewish deputies established and managed the Gulag system. After Stalin no longer viewed him favorably, Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, the "bloodthirsty dwarf."

Yezhov was not Jewish but was blessed with an active Jewish wife. In his Book "Stalin: Court of the Red Star", Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore writes that during the darkest period of terror, when the Communist killing machine worked in full force, Stalin was surrounded by beautiful, young Jewish women.

Stalin's close associates and loyalists included member of the Central Committee and Politburo Lazar Kaganovich. Montefiore characterizes him as the "first Stalinist" and adds that those starving to death in Ukraine, an unparalleled tragedy in the history of human kind aside from the Nazi horrors and Mao's terror in China, did not move Kaganovich.

Many Jews sold their soul to the devil of the Communist revolution and have blood on their hands for eternity. We'll mention just one more: Leonid Reichman, head of the NKVD's special department and the organization's chief interrogator, who was a particularly cruel sadist.

In 1934, according to published statistics, 38.5 percent of those holding the most senior posts in the Soviet security apparatuses were of Jewish origin. They too, of course, were gradually eliminated in the next purges. In a fascinating lecture at a Tel Aviv University convention this week, Dr. Halfin described the waves of soviet terror as a "carnival of mass murder," "fantasy of purges", and "essianism of evil." Turns out that Jews too, when they become captivated by messianic ideology, can become great murderers, among the greatest known by modern history.

The Jews active in official communist terror apparatuses (In the Soviet Union and abroad) and who at times led them, did not do this, obviously, as Jews, but rather, as Stalinists, communists, and "Soviet people." Therefore, we find it easy to ignore their origin and "play dumb": What do we have to do with them? But let's not forget them. My own view is different. I find it unacceptable that a person will be considered a member of the Jewish people when he does great things, but not considered part of our people when he does amazingly despicable things.

Even if we deny it, we cannot escape the Jewishness of "our hangmen," who served the Red Terror with loyalty and dedication from its establishment. After all, others will always remind us of their origin.

James Nicola programmed it this year for the New York Theater Workshop, but that production was canceled after resistance from board members and subscribers. Show was eventually produced Off Broadway, where it ran for two months.

"It didn't seem as powerful on the stage as it did on the page," said CanStage creative producer Martin Bragg after seeing the production at Gotham's Minetta Lane Theater.

But in a situation eerily similar to the one that faced Nicola, it appears that Bragg faced pressure from some of his board members not to alienate Toronto's Jewish community.

While admitting he has neither read nor seen the script, CanStage board member Jack Rose said, "My view was it would provoke a negative reaction in the Jewish community."

Philanthropist Bluma Appel, after whom CanStage's flagship theater is named, concurred. "I told them I would react very badly to a play that was offensive to Jews," she said.

Bragg denied he was lobbied by the board in any way and insisted, "I pick the plays. No one on our board has ever told me what we can and can't do."

CanStage posted a $700,000 loss in its most recent season and is facing a struggle as this year it produced 10 plays, none of which met with critical or audience approval.

NEW YORK, Dec. 26 - It was the spring of 1987 and the Office of Special Investigations, the Justice Department's Nazi prosecution unit, which I headed at the time, was in the midst of one of our most productive and historic periods.

On April 27, as a result of an in-depth OSI investigation and despite resistance at the State Department, Austrian President and former U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who had served as an officer in the Nazi army, was barred from setting foot ever again on U.S. soil.

One week earlier, after eight years of bruising litigation, we deported to the Soviet Union one Karl Linnas, who had been chief of a Nazi concentration camp in Estonia. To do so, we had to outmaneuver concerted attempts to block the deportation by Patrick Buchanan, the Reagan White House's communications director, and my boss, U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese.

A month later, OSI announced the loss of citizenship and removal from the United States of a former Chicago resident. Martin Bartesch admitted to our office and the court that he had voluntarily joined the Waffen SS and had served in the notorious SS Death's Head Division at the Mauthausen concentration camp where, at the hands of Bartesch and his cohorts, many thousands of prisoners were gassed, shot, starved and worked to death. He also confessed to having concealed his service at the infamous camp from U.S. immigration officials.

In Bartesch's case, OSI researchers uncovered iron-clad documentary evidence of his direct, hands-on role in the Nazi genocide. Among the SS documents captured by American forces when they liberated Mauthausen was what we described as the Unnatural Death Book, a register of prisoners killed, along with the identity of the SS guard responsible for the murder.

So powerful was this evidence that, in postwar trials conducted by the U.S. military, the book served as the basis for execution or long prison sentences for many identified SS guards.

An entry on Oct. 20, 1943, registers the shooting death of Max Oschorn, a French Jewish prisoner. His murderer was also recorded: SS man Martin Bartesch. It was a most chilling document.

Bartesch's family and "supporters," seeking special relief, launched a campaign to discredit OSI while trying to garner political support. Indeed, OSI received numerous inquiries from members of Congress who had been approached.

After we explained the facts of the case, however, the matter inevitably was dropped; no one urged that Bartesch or his family be accorded any special treatment.
Well, there was one exception - Jimmy Carter.

In September 1987, after all of the gruesome details of the case had been made public and widely reported in the media, I received a letter sent by Bartesch's daughter to the former president. Citing groups that had been exposed for their anti-Semitism, it was an all-out assault against OSI as unfair, "un-American" and interested only in "vengeance" against innocent family members.

It's axiomatic that the families of every person prosecuted under the criminal or immigration laws are affected and subjected to hardship. It was obvious, I thought to myself, that no reasonable person could genuinely believe that the Bartesch case was worthy of special dispensation.

On the contrary, it would be a perversion of justice to accede to the family's demands and grant Bartesch relief to which no one else would be entitled. Not even the staunchest and most sincere devotee to humanitarian causes could legitimately claim that an SS murderer who deceived authorities to obtain a visa and citizenship was somehow deserving of exceptional treatment.

That's why I was so taken aback by the personal, handwritten note Jimmy Carter sent to me seeking "special consideration" for this Nazi SS murderer. There on the upper-right corner of Bartesch's daughter's letter was a note to me in the former president's handwriting, and with his signature, urging that "in cases such as this, special consideration can be given to the families for humanitarian reasons."

Unlike members of Congress who inquired about the facts, Carter blindly accepted at face value the daughter's self-serving (and disingenuous) assertions.

As disturbing as I found Carter's plea, and although his attempted intervention has always gnawed at me, I chalked it up at the time to a certain naivete on the part of the former president. But now, in light of Carter's most recent writings and comments, I am left to wonder whether it was I who was naive simply to dismiss his knee-jerk appeal as the instinctive reaction of a well-meaning but misguided humanitarian.

His latest book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," and his subsequent defense of it, leaves no doubt that Carter has a problem with Israel and its American Jewish supporters. His blame-Israel approach through the distortion of easily verifiable facts; his whining about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby; and even the whiff of plagiarism have been exposed and are now spread upon the public record for all to see.

Kenneth Stein, who resigned his 23-year association with the Carter Center at Emory University, described it this way: Carter's book "is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments."

Some believe that there's a venal element at work. To be sure, Carter and his publisher and editor knew that, if nothing else, the intentionally provocative, misleading and insulting title would be good for sales.

Moreover, Carter and his center appear to care little about how they fill their coffers. After all, among the most generous contributors to the Carter Center - at least a million dollars each, according to the center's published accountings - are Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz, best known for having offered $10 million to New York City after the Sept. 11 attacks, an offer that was rejected by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the prince implied that the attacks may have been justified because of U.S. support for Israel; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; the Saudi Fund for Development; and, most interestingly, the Bin Laden Group.

Make no mistake, these are not simply benevolent donors looking for a good cause; they expect something in return. And Carter gave them exactly what they paid for: an unequivocal stamp of approval from a former, if failed, U.S. president for their decades of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic ramblings. It's a diplomatic and public-relations dividend that likely will far exceed their investment.

The exposure of Carter's views on Israel and the Jewish lobby has shed a clearer light on his attempt to influence me in the Bartesch case. We know from his own confession that he has had lust in his heart. Unfortunately, he has given us ample reason to wonder what else is lurking there.

Neal Sher, a New York attorney (see picture), previously served as Director of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations and is a former Executive Director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Just as gripping to me was the discussion that took place after the event between Rachel Glaser, the campus coordinator of the rightwing Zionist Organization of America, and the students who had organized the event.

"What did this accomplish? What did it accomplish?" Glaser barked at the organizers.

"It achieved something important," one of the Jewish students said. "People perceive pro-Israel groups as monolithic. They think that we are not able to take responsibility for the bad things that happen."

Fine, Glaser said, but the students should have organized "a panel," in which Shaul was just one voice. "Have someone else," she said. (Just as the New York Theatre Workshop wanted to "contextualize" the Rachel Corrie play with pro-Israel voices.)

It was one thing to have Yehuda Shaul give a talk inside Israel, Glaser said. "Outside of Israel, you're playing with fire."

This chilling statement was a candid expression of the goals of the Israel lobby. A member of a Jewish organization was saying that it's OK to have a wide-open discussion of these issues in Israel, but it's dangerous to have such a discussion here. Why? Because America is the mainstay of support allowing Israel to continue its policies in the Occupied Territories. The Israel lobby fears that Americans, if left to their own devices, will abandon Israel, out of indifference, or antisemitism. So Americans must be influenced-in this case by having the information they get about Israel/Palestine vetted, and by pressuring Jews on campus to toe the party line.

I bring this up because Glaser's group, the Zionist Organization of America, is now trying to have the Jewish group that sponsored Shaul's tour, the Union of Progressive Zionists, kicked out of a consortium of campus groups that promote Israel's image on campuses. Why? Because (per the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) "Jewish money should not be spent on programming that provides fodder for Israel's most virulent critics."

This is shameful news. Jews are better than this, America is better than this...

I met Yehuda Shaul last summer in Hebron. Raised Orthodox in Jerusalem, Shaul was a sergeant in the IDF serving in the Occupied Territories when he woke up one morning a couple of years ago and realized he did not recognize the person in the mirror. Everything he had been told was right and wrong as a boy had gotten blended into nothing. He had done hideous things that would make his parents and friends vomit if they knew about them, and he had curtained off these actions and been numbed to it all. He began talking to other soldiers and formed an organization, Breaking the Silence, to describe what Israeli society was forcing its youth to do for the occupation. He read history and came to the awareness that all military occupations become corrupt in exactly the ways that Israel's is: humiliating the occupied, depriving them of human rights, let alone civil and democratic freedoms.

Shaul is this week wrapping up a five-week tour of the U.S. notable for the unbelievable photos he shows, taken by IDF soldiers, that document abuses. For instance, pictures taken by Israeli soldiers of other soldiers treating handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees as mannequins to do monkeyshines with.

The amazing development is that some of Shaul's college events have been sponsored by Hillel chapters, the on-campus Jewish organization. (This according to Tammy Shapiro, who heads the Union of Progressive Zionists, which also sponsored portions of Shaul's tour.) At some universities, the Hillel chapter declined to sponsor Shaul; and he was sponsored there by Palestinian groups. But (Shapiro notes,) at the U. of Wisconsin, the Hillel staff and leaders had a special meeting with Shaul, to hear what he had to say. At Columbia, a largely-Jewish group called Pro-Israel Progressives, which is related to the College Democrats, sponsored Shaul.

I find this amazing because it shows the discourse really is changing. And who is changing it? Youth. Shaul hasn't met with any congressmen; Lantos and Pelosi already know what to think of the occupation-no problem-so they won't meet with him. But these American campus organizations are tired of their role as cheerleaders for Israel. They understand that there is truth in the progressive understanding that occupation is crushing Israel's soul. Can American Jewish youth break the logjam on the Israel lobby? Well they can help.

Israeli progressives will lead us, as they feel greater freedom to discuss these matters. Here I would point to the comments of two other members of Breaking the Silence who visited the U.S. a year ago. "My commanding officer told me that public opinion in the U.S. is the most powerful weapon that Israel has," said Noam Chayut. "Public opinion here enables us to do many things that in my opinion are bringing us to our social destruction." To which his friend Avichai Sharon chimed in: "It's about time you know what you are enabling."

Their insight recalls a statement by the black South African poet Dennis Brutus. When he was in prison under apartheid, a jailer said to him, "The African National Congress will never win, you know why-because the U.S. is on our side." (Thanks to James North, author of Freedom Rising, for that.) The Israelis have placed a similar wager on our endless support for their injustices. They have been enabled so far by a stiffnecked, fearful and obedient Jewish leadership here. What a beautiful thing if it is idealistic Jewish youth that at last brings down this moral house of cards.

Britain agreed the loan with the United States in 1945 in the form of a direct line of credit worth $3.75 billion and a lend-lease facility worth $585 million. It was intended as a final settlement for the financial claims of each country against the other for costs arising out of the Second World War, and provided the essential capital to fund Britain's postwar construction. Canada followed suit with a direct line of credit of $1.25 billion agreed in 1946.

Ed Balls, the City minister, told The Times last night that it was a historic moment. "This week we finally honour in full our commitments to the US and Canada for the support they gave us 60 years ago. It was vital support which helped Britain defeat Nazi Germany and secure peace and prosperity in the postwar period. We honour our commitments to them now as they honoured their commitments to us all those years ago."

Under the arrangement, the US handed a financial lifeline to Britain, allowing it to secure oil, food, arms and other military equipment on credit to help the war effort. Though other countries also benefited under the programme - a $48 billion project - Britain received the largest chunk of aid.

When the war finished, the economist Maynard Keynes - by then the government adviser Lord Keynes - led a delegation to the U.S to agree repayment for those materials for which it had been charged and to secure a loan of $4 billion. He warned that Britain had been left facing a "financial Dunkirk".

In 1950, Britain's national debt stood at about 200 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. Today the comparable figure is 36.8 per cent.

The loans have been repaid on the same principle as a home mortgage. Repayments cover both the capital sum borrowed and the interest due on the loan. In the 1950s and 1960s, payments were geared mainly to paying off the interest, while in latter years, the repayment of capital has increased.

Under the terms of the agreement, this country was allowed to defer up to six annual instalments and did so in 1956, 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968 and 1976, on the grounds that international exchange rate conditions and the UK's foreign currency reserves made payments in those years impractical.

The loans were taken out under two facilities - a line of credit of $3.8 billion and a lend-lease loan facility of $586 million (about £145 million at 1945 exchange rates) which represented the settlement with the US for lend-lease. With interest added Britain's total bill was $7 billion.

The conditions of the loan included that the pound should be convertible into the dollar within 12 months.

The payments will be made by a simple electronic transfer of funds, and are timed for December 29 simply because it is the last working day of the year. the British Government has never in the duration of the loans lobbied to have them reduced or cancelled, and has always insisted it is right to meet the commitments it made in return for the financial support given by the United States and Canada both before and after the war.

While Friday's payments will close the book on the UK's Second World War debts, Britain still owes and is owed billions of pounds in relation to loans made and costs incurred during the First World War. However, since a moratorium on all war debts agreed at the height of the Great Depression, no debt repayments have been made to or received from other nations since 1934.

On demand

#Under the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, the US provided Britain, the Soviet Union, China, France and other allies with war supplies

#$50.1bn of supplies were shipped out during the Second World War, $31.4bn of it to Britain

#Washington terminated lend-lease on September 2, 1945, suddenly with goods still in transit

# These were sold to Britain for 10 cents on the dollar with payment stretched out for 50 years at 2 per cent interest

#The $4.34bn was to be paid back over 50 years, beginning in 1950

# Britain deferred payments for six years because of economic pressures

# The last payment is £43m

Abbas, locked in a power struggle with anti-Israel Hamas militants, has long sought to strengthen the arsenal available to security services under his control.

Israel initially balked at letting additional weapons through, for fear they would be used against Israelis.

But a recent warming of contacts between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Israel's desire to see Abbas prevail against anti-Israel Hamas militants, who control the Palestinian parliament and Cabinet, apparently have overridden those concerns.

The Israeli Haaretz daily said Olmert and Abbas settled the details of the shipment at their first summit, held in Jerusalem on Saturday.

Saeb Erekat, a spokesman for Abbas, declined comment, as did Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin and the Israeli Defense Ministry. Egyptian officials were not immediately available for comment.

But Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer appeared to confirm the deal, telling Army Radio the weapons transfer was designed to give Abbas "the capability to hold his own against those organizations that are trying to spoil everything.''

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Abbas, issued a statement denying any arms deal. However, at midday Thursday, witnesses saw a truck belonging to the pro-Fatah National Security force carrying what appeared to be sealed boxes of weapons.

When the truck attempted to make a quick detour, one box fell onto the ground, scattering a pile of automatic guns on the road, the witnesses said. Security men in the truck quickly got out and collected the weapons.

Hamas and Fatah have been tussling for power since the Islamic militant group defeated Fatah in legislative elections last January. Recurrent clashes between the two groups turned exceptionally violent earlier this month after Abbas abandoned efforts to form a coalition with Hamas and announced plans to call early elections.

Seventeen people have died in this month's fighting, which included an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

On Thursday, Haniyeh left Gaza to resume a trip to Gulf states that had been cut short by the violence, which has since subsided. He was headed first to Saudi Arabia, then to Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan, where he and Abbas have been invited for talks by King Abdullah II.

Some 5,000 Hamas militiamen, some on foot, others in jeeps, lined the roads as Haniyeh traveled from his base in Gaza City to the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Haniyeh's convoy came under fire at Rafah on Dec. 14 when he came back from his suspended trip, and the heavy security showed concerns about his safety remained high.

Haniyeh and Abbas have both agreed to meet with Abdullah, but nothing concrete has been scheduled. Asked before he set off for Saudi Arabia whether the meeting would take place on the last leg of his trip, Haniyeh told reporters that preparations were "still under way,'' but gave no additional details.