What Corruption and Force Have Wrought in Egypt

AP / Ben Curtis

January 30, 2011: By Chris Hedges

What Corruption and Force Have Wrought In Egypt

The uprising in Egypt, although united around the nearly universal desire to rid the country of the military dictator Hosni Mubarak, also presages the inevitable shift within the Arab world away from secular regimes toward an embrace of Islamic rule. Don’t be fooled by the glib sloganeering about democracy or the facile reporting by Western reporters—few of whom speak Arabic or have experience in the region. Egyptians are not Americans. They have their own culture, their own sets of grievances and their own history. And it is not ours. They want, as we do, to have a say in their own governance, but that say will include widespread support—especially among Egypt’s poor, who make up more than half the country and live on about two dollars a day—for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties. Any real opening of the political system in the Arab world’s most populated nation will see an empowering of these Islamic movements. And any attempt to close the system further—say a replacement of Mubarak with another military dictator—will ensure a deeper radicalization in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

The only way opposition to the U.S.-backed regime of Mubarak could be expressed for the past three decades was through Islamic movements, from the Muslim Brotherhood to more radical Islamic groups, some of which embrace violence. And any replacement of Mubarak (which now seems almost certain) while it may initially be dominated by moderate, secular leaders will, once elections are held and popular will is expressed, have an Islamic coloring. A new government, to maintain credibility with the Egyptian population, will have to more actively defy demands from Washington and be more openly antagonistic to Israel. What is happening in Egypt, like what happened in Tunisia, tightens the noose that will—unless Israel and Washington radically change their policies toward the Palestinians and the Muslim world—threaten to strangle the Jewish state as well as dramatically curtail American influence in the Middle East.

The failure of the United States to halt the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel has consequences. The failure to acknowledge the collective humiliation and anger felt by most Arabs because of the presence of U.S. troops on Muslim soil, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in the staging bases set up in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, has consequences. The failure to denounce the repression, including the widespread use of torture, censorship and rigged elections, wielded by our allies against their citizens in the Middle East has consequences. We are soaked with the stench of these regimes. Mubarak, who reportedly is suffering from cancer, is seen as our puppet, a man who betrayed his own people and the Palestinians for money and power.

The Muslim world does not see us as we see ourselves. Muslims are aware, while we are not, that we have murdered tens of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have terrorized families, villages and nations. We enable and defend the Israeli war crimes carried out against Palestinians and the Lebanese—indeed we give the Israelis the weapons and military aid to carry out the slaughter. We dismiss the thousands of dead as “collateral damage.” And when those who are fighting against occupation kill us or Israelis we condemn them, regardless of context, as terrorists. Our hypocrisy is recognized on the Arab street. Most Arabs see bloody and disturbing images every day from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, images that are censored on our television screens. They have grown sick of us. They have grown sick of the Arab regimes that pay lip service to the suffering of Palestinians but do nothing to intervene. They have grown sick of being ruled by tyrants who are funded and supported by Washington. Arabs understand that we, like the Israelis, primarily speak to the Muslim world in the crude language of power and violence. And because of our entrancement with our own power and ability to project force, we are woefully out of touch. Israeli and American intelligence services did not foresee the popular uprising in Tunisia or Egypt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s new intelligence chief, told Knesset members last Tuesday that “there is no concern at the moment about the stability of the Egyptian government.” Tuesday, it turned out, was the day hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets to begin their nationwide protests.

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Defense Against Zionist Aggression

By JB Campbell

Defense Against Zionist Aggression

Note from Author: Submitted for publishing for information purposes only. This is a highly controversial document.

Once we acknowledge the threat that faces us – Zionist Aggression – we are left with the problem of how to remove that threat. Jews are in controlling positions in every segment of our lives, from the financial collapse of Wall Street, to the collapse of our currency by the Federal Reserve Corporation, the collapse of the US military from Jewish wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a de facto Jewish war against Pakistan and a threatened Jewish war against Iran. Trillions of tax dollars have been lost to the pockets of Jewish bankers and speculators.

The news media have always been and continue to be in the hands of Zionists. These lie factories, thanks to the Internet, are in freefall collapse and deservedly so. If the news media had been honest, we would have been informed and warned of the criminal conspiracy so that we could have dealt with it legally. But we were not informed or warned. It was not in the interest of the Zionists to do so, as they explained in their Protocols a hundred years ago. So to save ourselves we must take the law into our own hands, where it belongs anyway. This is where the failure of news has put us.

Zionists are the masters of destruction. They now admit that they possess several hundred nuclear weapons, quite illegally in terms of international agreements, but very logically since it was Zionist mad scientists who designed and developed nuclear weapons and supervised the use of two of them on helpless Japanese civilians. Whether the Zionist nukes actually will work is open to question, since much of what the Israeli military does ends in failure, as we saw with the Lavi jet fighter and Merkava tank and their disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 2006, which ended in a rout. The Israeli attack on the USS Liberty was a catastrophic failure that destroyed an elaborate US/Israeli operation to sink the ship and blame it on the Egyptians, which would have “forced” the US military to join Israel and invade and occupy the Arab countries. It is now generally acknowledged that Israel engineered the shock and awe attacks on 9-11, with the complicity of the US air force and intelligence agencies. This attack was finally successful in putting the US at war with Islam.

Israel’s military strategy is completely dependent on the US military backing it up. The fact that Israel now slyly brags about its illegal nukes and even threatens to burn European cities with them indicates they may not actually function, that they are bluffing. Reports of American missile sites being mysteriously knocked out suggest that much of the world’s nuclear arsenal is kaput. But it has been Jews such as Einstein, Oppenheimer and Teller who have been behind the dropping of nuclear weapons on people in the past and Jews such as Netanyahu and Lieberman who want to drop them on people now.

I am proposing that we neutralize the Zionist threat before they try to use them again.

Zionist aggression is caused by their control of our money system. If this is taken away from them, and only if this is taken away from them, we could regain our national health, and the rest of the world could do so, too. There is a very simple way to do this. It has been done before in this country. The two presidents who did it were shot in the head soon afterward, so there is a risk involved. The Austrian leader of Germany also did this quite successfully until stopped by the combined forces of the Jewish allies (America, England and the Soviet Union) some years later. The Jews were successful in stopping these men mainly because the people didn’t understand the nature of money and debt, which the Jews call “credit.”

Once we understand that Jewish Rule depends on their control of our money system we can figure out how to beat them. Events have shown that there is no political solution, i.e., by elected politicians. The politicians can’t save us even if they wanted to, which they don’t. The police and FBI are controlled by Jewish agencies such as the ADL and SPLC. There is lately talk of a US military coup against the Jews but this is frankly unlikely, since there is no curriculum in the military academies teaching the army, navy and air force about Jewish subversion. The Jews have made sure that the only curriculum is about the Moslem threat and the threat presented by American “patriots.”

The way Jews control our money and our lives should be basically understood. It has been done by Privatization of the only legitimate function of the federal government, the creation of our money. This writer is not an admirer of the US Constitution for reasons explained in other essays, but Article 1, Section 8 does specify that “the Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof.”

Nevertheless, Alexander Hamilton persuaded President Washington and the Congress to allow the private Bank of New York to become the first Bank of the United States in 1791, in a charter lasting twenty years until 1811. On the Caribbean island of Nevus, Hamilton’s birthplace, it is known and openly recorded that Hamilton’s actual father was named “Levy.” Hamilton was a Rothschild agent. The Bank of New York, aka the Bank of the United States, was a private, profit-making company owned mainly (at least 72 %) by the Rothschild-owned central bank in London – the Bank of England. So, from the very beginning of this country, the financial system has been owned and controlled by foreign Jews and their agents here. Despite a bloody war for independence from England, our money and credit was still run by the Bank of England – and is to this day. Dividends to investors have continued virtually uninterrupted for 219 years! The Bank of New York is today known as the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the actual headquarters of the Federal Reserve System.

Anyone still dumb enough to pay Jewish income taxes should examine the back of his canceled check to the IRS. It will say, “Pay to the order of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.” Why do you suppose it doesn’t designate the IRS or Treasury Department? Why does your tax money go to a private, profit-making English corporation owned by Jews?

The (first) Bank of the United States lost its charter in 1811. Due to our second war with England in thirty-six years, the War of 1812, it was not possible to charter a second Bank of the United States – owned by the Bank of England! – until 1819, when another twenty-year charter was granted. In 1833, President Jackson cut off its funds and this private British-Jewish company calling itself the Bank of the United States died six years before its charter would have expired.

People were a lot smarter or more educated in the 19th Century and they would not allow the Congress to create another private, foreign-owned central bank that would profit by lending us our own currency at interest. By 1913, however, the persistence of the Jews finally paid off when Paul Warburg of Germany bribed and manipulated American politicians to pass the Federal Reserve Act, which gave us our third and current private central bank.

Paul Warburg’s brother, Max, was Germany’s chief financial advisor to the Kaiser as well as the head of the German espionage service during World War I, while Paul was on the board of the Federal Reserve – while Germany and America were at war! Only Jews can get away with such wild criminality.

Our corrupt government pretends to sell treasury bonds on Wall Street which are converted by the Federal Reserve into Federal Reserve Notes for which we pay the Fed to use our own currency! In other words, our government can print and sell bonds but cannot print and distribute currency. The currency must be supplied to us from a private, British/Jewish company (printed at the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving!) at great profit to itself. The US government is now trillions of dollars in debt to this artificial company calling itself by the grandiose name of the Federal Reserve System.

This scam must have irritated John F. Kennedy because he attempted to put an end to it, sort of in the manner of Andrew Jackson, by ordering the issuance of Series 1963 United States Notes – about $4.3 billion worth. That was just the beginning of his move to destroy the Fed. He tied the US Note to silver and this would have meant the end of the Federal Reserve Note, for who would have wanted something backed only by smoke and mirrors? But, five months later, JFK was dead and the US Notes were withdrawn from circulation. I still have one.

But, what Jack Kennedy did can be done again and must be done again. The Federal Reserve Note must be replaced by the United States Note and be issued by the Congress interest-free. This is exactly how the economic miracle of Germany was produced starting in 1933, when Germans were still starving due to our rapacious and sadistic program of “reparations payments to the victors” of World War I. Hitler and Schacht issued interest-free currency tied only to the productivity of the German worker, since we had stolen all of Germany’s gold ten years earlier. By 1935, while American farmers were starving to death and trekking to California to pick other people’s prunes or working themselves to death building dams, six million formerly unemployed German workers were taking paid vacations on cruise ships and buying their first cars. Germany was manufacturing again and exporting goods while the rest of the world was mired in the Great Depression, engineered by the Jewish-owned central banks – the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. To the Jewish banker, German success was an outrage that had to be controlled or destroyed, and so we became the military partners of the Soviet Union for three and a half years, something America can never live down. Together, we, the Jewish allies, destroyed Germany and millions of Germans for the crime of being successful. To be successful, though, requires the removal of Jews from power. That’s what Germany did, or attempted to do. For that they had to die. For that we were ordered to kill them, which we did by the millions.

Today we face the modern version of the Great Depression. Actual unemployment in 1933 was 25%. Today it is 22% and climbing. This writer was “laid off” a very good job and subsequently homeless for 21 months and was lucky to get his old job back – but for how long? Those 21 months were the most terrible, degrading and frightening of his life during which he and his wife lost their home and vehicles and horses and virtually all of their belongings. Millions of Americans are experiencing this terror right now, with 43 million of us on food stamps! All of this misery has been caused by Jewish bankers and Jewish speculators on Wall Street.

George W. Bush lied us into two evil wars of aggression for the benefit of Israel and the Jewish war profiteers on Wall Street and the banks.

We are the victims of Jewish aggression. I have spent much space on our money system, since it is the heart of our lives. No money – no lives. We must remove the Jews from our money or we will die, and soon. Now, of course, the Jews cannot let go of our veins, arteries and bank accounts. It would be against their religion, the control of all money. We must pry them loose.

There is no legal way to do this, because Jews are the law. The Jews are God and they are the law. So, to bring them under control we must ignore Jewish law and make our own law. What law is that? It is the law of survival.

The Jewish Problem is much more terrible than we even know. Jewish subversion has saturated our lives with death and filth and our minds with confusion and an inability to defend ourselves. If you wonder how this was done, read a few of the twenty-four Jewish Protocols. You’ll get the picture very quickly. Few can read all twenty-four of them – they are too revolting.

Defense Against Jewish Aggression requires that Jews be disfranchised from all positions of power and influence in the important aspects of our lives. Starting with government, of course. Medicine, law, banking, finance, news, publishing, entertainment – all must be free of Jews and Jewish influence. Our actions should start against the powerful Jewish organizations of subversion, such as the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, the Jews-only Masonic lodge they call B’nai B’rith and the Council on Foreign Relations, which is roughly 70% Jewish. There are hundreds and hundreds of Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization. Quite simply, these subversive organizations must be destroyed. Jews must be put on notice that their dreamy days of power are ending. All things must end and Jewish power is one of them.

Naturally, the Jews will fight hard to prevent losing their unearned power over us. That is, they will hire as many of us as they can to fight us. Jews can’t fight. They can kill, assassinate, murder and just about anything by stealth, but they can’t fight. When the Jew is confronted with his Jewishness, he splits.

The filmmaker John Carpenter made a great training film for us in this coming struggle. THEY LIVE. Malevolent aliens live among us. But most of us can’t tell who’s who, or realize how they control our lives. A small group of resistance fighters have special glasses that reveal the hideous faces of the aliens, who have taken over the organs of power. The aliens are so evil that no mercy can be shown them. If you see the scary face, start shooting, because they mean to enslave all of us and kill some of us. The only way to save ourselves is to kill them and keep killing them until the source of their power can be turned off – forever.

Carpenter’s aliens are the Jews. Most of them actually look like us. Carpenter’s special glasses represent the Jewish Protocols. Once you read a few of them, you see immediately what we’re up against. That’s why the Jews always freak out whenever the Protocols are mentioned. They are probably the most important writings you will ever read, even if you can only manage a few of them. Victor Marsden of the London Morning Post translated them in a special room in the British Museum but could only manage a page or so per day, so malevolent and disturbing were they. He died shortly after finishing his work.

Just look at Palestine! Do you want to live the way those people live, showing your papers to some creepy armed Jew at a checkpoint twice a day, fearful that he may refuse to let you pass today? This is how life is under Jewish Rule. But forget Palestine – now we’re getting a well-deserved dose of Jewish Rule at our airports. In case you hadn’t considered it, the only reason for “airport security” is the fake fear that enraged, crazy Moslems are trying to get on board with bombs and guns, which the TSA can’t seem to find at the best of times. And why are these Moslems supposedly enraged and crazy? Because of Israel, right? Isn’t airport security all about Moslems being angry about Israel? Now there may have been a couple of fake Moslems with phony explosives in their pants or shoes, but real Palestinians? Name one. Not to mention that most airport security is run by Israeli companies.

TSA now stands for The Sex Aggressors. These morons are now authorized to squeeze your private parts for Glocks and grenades. Little kids, too! A friend of mine’s wife was strip-searched in June after she’d passed successfully through the metal detector because the moron thought she “didn’t look right.” “Airport security” is the result of what Israel does to Arabs. When you get your crotch squeezed, if you haven’t got the brains to stop flying, think about Defense Against Jewish Aggression.

DAJA. First step: Recognize the Jewish Problem. Where does the Problem originate? Well, probably in the synagogues, in Hebrew school, in all the brainwash programs the Jews have for their kids. These kids are born and bred to hate us, to feel nothing when they cheat us, steal from us and kill us. It’s all laid out in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and of course in the Talmud. The problem is with the rabbis. I’ve written it before but Defense Against Jewish Aggression means the entire rabbinical class has to be wiped out. That means all the rabbis who preach Jewish hate and all the Jews who accept it. The rabbis are the political commissars who keep the party members in line, just like the Jewish commissars under Stalin who shot Russian soldiers from behind to terrorize the rest into attacking the Germans. I’d bet that a lot of Jews who’d like to assimilate with us would even help wipe out some of the hate-mongering rabbis.

Theodor Herzl comes to mind. Herzl, the supposed designer of Zionism, actually hated the Jewish ruling class and all typically Jewish ways. What he wanted was to blend with the Gentiles, whom he greatly admired. He was rejected because in those days, it was hard to trust a Jew, no matter how much he wanted to be a Gentile, or a Christian. Sad story. So Plan B was to get the Jews out of Europe, out of polite society, and into a land for Jews only. Herzl knew that most Jews just couldn’t behave properly, so the humane thing was to put them somewhere they couldn’t do any harm. What he didn’t count on was the rise of the Russian Jews, the real Zionists, whom he’d never heard of before his 1897 Zionist Congress in Basel. These uncouth roughnecks from the Pale showed up, demanding to go to Palestine. Not Uganda, not Madagascar, not America, not South America – Palestine. These were the phony Jews, the poseurs, the Khazar converts to Judaism but converts who possessed the deadliest zeal in the history of the world. They wanted to kill all the Palestinians and take over “the holy land.” Well?

My late friend, Heinz Weichardt, was another. His mother was Jewish, a famous opera singer in Berlin, his father a well-known journalist with the big German papers. Heinz was a life-long supporter of Hitler and of National Socialism. I recommend his memoir, “Under Two Flags,” on the Gnostic Liberation Front website. Jews such as Aaron Russo and David Cole have done more to hurt the Jewish racket than anyone on our side. So we mustn’t be indiscriminant in our Defense Against Jewish Aggression.

Anti-Jewish operations must be designed carefully. The big organizations must be taken out first.

The US military has never exactly covered itself in glory. Actually, it has been a total disgrace to America. The military has done the Jews’ dirty work, and I do mean dirty, ever since the Civil War and the Indian Wars. World Wars I & II? Imagine, Americans going to fight Germans in Europe! Most Americans in those days were of German descent. Korea, Vietnam… Total disgraces. Desert Storm? Burying alive thousands of Iraqis with their hands up. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman, Fallujah, Predator drones – Jesus, what a shower of shit the US military has always been, including the glory days against the fascists. (Read Other Losses, Crimes & Mercies, Operation Keelhaul if you’re craving US military glory.)

And, soldier boys, I have news for you. The Jews consider YOU to be the fascists. That’s what the military is for, to absorb the “fascistic element” of society (masculine men) into a controllable organization, because you scare the hell out of the Jews. They dread the day that you will turn on them, stop killing their enemies like the fools you are, and aim your guns at them. Watch THEY LIVE. How do you think the guards at Abu Ghraib could become so sadistic so early in our invasion and occupation of Iraq? They were conditioned by Jews with Jewish hate before they ever got out of the US.

I do have one good story to tell about the marines. A buddy of mine, Mike Hanson, was at the airport in West Beirut in ’83, near where Arafat and his men were holed up. A half-dozen Israeli tanks came rolling up to wipe them out. The marines just looked at them but the captain in charge of the airport detail climbed up on the lead tank and held the muzzle of his .45 against the Jew commander’s head. “If this tank moves another foot, your brains are gonna be all over this tank.” Jew commander ordered everyone to leave. This is the only language Jews understand. The upshot was, a truck bomb soon killed over 240 marines nearby. Victor Ostravsky, a Mossad officer, revealed that the Mossad knew about the plot but deliberately withheld the information. Translation: the bombing of the marine barracks was a Mossad operation, probably in retaliation for the marine captain’s heroism. Mike bunked in the open and escaped the blast at the barracks. He carried out a lot of bodies.

But that captain was the exception that proves the rule: the US military man is always obeying Jewish orders. So, the only way for a US military man to gain his honor is to join with this DAJA program – Defense Against Jewish Aggression. It’s the only way to gain honor. You can’t regain something you never had. You joined up to fight, didn’t you? Against all enemies, foreign and domestic? The only foreign enemies we have are in Israel. You don’t need to mess with them. The real enemy is domestic, the Jew who sends you to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran to kill people who never threatened us but who are hated by Jews. We have to clean up this country by wiping out the Jewish organization. Once the organization is wiped out, the Federal Reserve and its stinking Note can be wiped out and replaced by the debt-free US Note.

And that’s how we’re going to clean up this Jewish mess.

The Collapse of Western Morality

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Collapse of Western Morality

Yes, I know, as many readers will be quick to inform me, the West never had any morality. Nevertheless things have gotten worse.

In hopes that I will be permitted to make a point, permit me to acknowledge that the US dropped nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities, fire-bombed Tokyo, that Great Britain and the US fire-bombed Dresden and a number of other German cities, expending more destructive force, according to some historians, against the civilian German population than against the German armies, that President Grant and his Civil War war criminals, Generals Sherman and Sheridan, committed genocide against the Plains Indians, that the US today enables Israel’s genocidal policies against the Palestinians, policies that one Israeli official has compared to 19th century US genocidal policies against the American Indians, that the US in the new 21st century invaded Iraq and Afghanistan on contrived pretenses, murdering countless numbers of civilians, and that British prime minister Tony Blair lent the British army to his American masters, as did other NATO countries, all of whom find themselves committing war crimes under the Nuremberg standard in lands in which they have no national interests, but for which they receive an American pay check.

I don’t mean these few examples to be exhaustive. I know the list goes on and on. Still, despite the long list of horrors, moral degradation is reaching new lows. The US now routinely tortures prisoners, despite its strict illegality under US and international law, and a recent poll shows that the percentage of Americans who approve of torture is rising. Indeed, it is quite high, though still just below a majority.

And we have what appears to be a new thrill: American soldiers using the cover of war to murder civilians. Recently American troops were arrested for murdering Afghan civilians for fun and collecting trophies such as fingers and skulls.

This revelation came on the heels of Pfc. Bradley Manning’s alleged leak of a US Army video of US soldiers in helicopters and their controllers thousands of miles away having fun with joy sticks murdering members of the press and Afghan civilians. Manning is cursed with a moral conscience that has been discarded by his government and his military, and Manning has been arrested for obeying the law and reporting a war crime to the American people.

US Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, of course, from Michigan, who is on the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, has called for Manning’s execution. According to US Rep. Rogers it is an act of treason to report an American war crime.

In other words, to obey the law constitutes “treason to America.”

US Rep. Rogers said that America’s wars are being undermined by “a culture of disclosure” and that this “serious and growing problem” could only be stopped by the execution of Manning.

If Rep. Rogers is representative of Michigan, then Michigan is a state that we don’t need.

The US government, a font of imperial hubris, does not believe that any act it commits, no matter how vile, can possibly be a war crime. One million dead Iraqis, a ruined country, and four million displaced Iraqis are all justified, because the “threatened” US Superpower had to protect itself from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that the US government knew for a fact were not in Iraq and could not have been a threat to the US if they were in Iraq.

When other countries attempt to enforce the international laws that the Americans established in order to execute Germans defeated in World War II, the US government goes to work and blocks the attempt. A year ago on October 8, the Spanish Senate, obeying its American master, limited Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction in order to sink a legitimate war crimes case brought against George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, Tony Blair,and Gordon Brown.

The West includes Israel, and there the horror stories are 60 years long. Moreover, if you mention any of them you are declared to be an anti-semite. I only mention them in order to prove that I am not anti-American, anti-British, and anti-NATO, but am simply against war crimes. It was the distinguished Zionist Jewish Judge, Goldstone, who produced the UN report indicating that Israel committed war crimes when it attacked the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of Gaza. For his efforts, Israel declared the Zionist Goldstone to be “a self-hating Jew,” and the US Congress, on instruction from the Israel Lobby, voted to disregard the Goldstone Report to the UN.

As the Israeli official said, we are only doing to the Palestinians what the Americans did to the American Indians.

The Israeli army uses female soldiers to sit before video screens and to fire by remote control machine guns from towers to murder Palestinians who come to tend their fields within 1500 meters of the inclosed perimeter of Ghetto Gaza. There is no indication that these Israeli women are bothered by gunning down young children and old people who come to tend to their fields.

If the crimes were limited to war and the theft of lands, perhaps we could say it is a case of jingoism sidetracking traditional morality, otherwise still in effect.

Alas, the collapse of morality is too widespread. Some sports teams now have a win-at-all-cost attitude that involves plans to injure the star players of the opposing teams. To avoid all these controversies, let’s go to Formula One racing where 200 mph speeds are routine.

Prior to 1988, 22 years ago, track deaths were due to driver error, car failure, and poorly designed tracks compromised with safety hazards. World Champion Jackie Stewart did much to improve the safety of tracks, both for drivers and spectators. But in 1988 everything changed. Top driver Ayrton Senna nudged another top driver Alain Prost toward a pit wall at 190 mph. According to AutoWeek (August 30, 2010), nothing like this had been seen before. “Officials did not punish Senna’s move that day in Portugal, and so a significant shift in racing began.” What the great racing driver Stirling Moss called “dirty driving” became the norm.

Nigel Roebuck in AutoWeek reports that in 1996 World Champion Damon Hill said that Senna’s win-at-all-cost tactic “was responsible for fundamental change in the ethics of the sport.” Drivers began using “terrorist tactics on the track.” Damon Hill said that “the views that I’d gleaned from being around my dad [twice world champion Graham Hill] and people like him, I soon had to abandon,” because you realized that no penalty was forthcoming against the guy who tried to kill you in order that he could win.

When asked about the ethics of modern Formula One racing, American World Champion Phil Hill said: “Doing that sort of stuff in my day was just unthinkable. For one thing, we believed certain tactics were unacceptable.”

In today’s Western moral climate, driving another talented driver into the wall at 200 mph is just part of winning. Michael Schumacher, born in January 1969, is a seven times World Champion, an unequaled record. On August 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, AutoWeek Reports that Schumacher tried to drive his former Ferrari teammate, Rubens Barrichello, into the wall at 200 mph speeds.

Confronted with his attempted act of murder, Schumacher said: “This is Formula One. Everyone knows I don’t give presents.”

Neither does the US government, nor state and local governments, nor the UK government, nor the EU.

The deformation of the police, which many Americans, in their untutored existence as naive believers in “law and order,” still think are “on their side,” has taken on new dimensions with the police militarized to fight “terrorists” and “domestic extremists.”

The police have been off the leash since the civilian police boards were nixed by the conservatives. Kids as young as 6 years old have been handcuffed and carted off to jail for school infractions that may or may not have occurred. So have moms with a car full of children (see, for example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AaSLERx0VM ).

Anyone who googles videos of US police gratuitous brutality will call up tens of thousands of examples, and this is after laws that make filming police brutality a felony. A year or two ago such a search would call up hundreds of thousands of videos.

In one of the most recent of the numerous daily acts of gratuitous police abuse of citizens, an 84-year-old man had his neck broken because he objected to a night time towing of his car. The goon cop body-slammed the 84-year old and broke his neck. The Orlando, Florida, police department says that the old man was a “threat” to the well-armed much younger police goon, because the old man clenched his fist.

Americans will be the first people sent straight to Hell while thinking that they are the salt of the earth. The Americans have even devised a title for themselves to rival that of the Israelis’ self-designation as “God’s Chosen People.” The Americans call themselves “the indispensable people.”

© Copyright Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research, 2010

America’s War on Islam

By Steve Lendman

America’s War on Islam

America prides itself on religious freedom, the Constitution’s First Amendment stating:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

In fact, those rights are selectively enforced, and consistently denied at the whim of administrations, Congress and courts, including equal respect for all religions – more than ever post-9/11 under Bush and Obama, agents of privilege, not Constitutionally protected freedoms. A sad testimony to a rhetorical, not real democracy, Muslim Americans especially victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and charity – innocent men and women bogusly called terrorists, used for political advantage.

More than any other ethnic/religious group, Western discourse especially wrongs and unfairly portrays Muslim/Arabs stereotypically as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent.

In his book, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” Jack Shaheen explained how they’ve been defamed and used as fair game throughout decades of cinematic history (from silent films to recent ones) to foster prejudicial attitudes, and reinforce notions of Western values, high-mindedness, and moral superiority.

Worse still are slanderous media commentaries about dangerous gun-toting terrorists, vital for authorities to arrest and imprison, never mind the rule of law, right or wrong, or whether those accused are guilty or innocent. It’s no surprise when new suspects are named, media reports automatically convicting them in the court of public opinion, poisoning it by stereotypical characterizations and baseless charges, invariably against Muslims, and by implication their faith.

No wonder politicians and extremist Christian fundamentalist ministers rage over Muslim “terrorists” and a proposed New York Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, threatening a public 9/11 Koran burning in protest – cancelled, then suspended, now re-cancelled, so stay tuned, the outrageous media frenzy may encourage it ahead, as well as attacks around the country against mosques, perhaps with Muslims inside praying, authorities turning a blind eye about people they despise, pretending, like Obama, they care.

On 9/11/2010, he disingenuously said America’s not “at war with Islam,” while he wages it against at least six Muslim countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia Yemen, and Palestine by supplying Israel with annual billions in aid and the latest weapons and technology. He also threatens or intimidates other countries, including Iran, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, even though none of them pose a regional or global threat.

In addition, Special Forces death squads (like Task Force 373), extrajudicially murder or capture suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda figures, many hundreds or perhaps thousands on a so-called Jpel (joint prioritized effects) list.

Further, drones and ground forces kill civilian men, women and children daily, falsely called “terrorists” or “insurgents,” and Special Forces and CIA operatives operate lawlessly in 75 or more countries, warring covertly against anyone opposing US interests.

It’s America’s secret war, mostly against Muslims, including US citizens abroad, denied due process or judicial fairness. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat, Obama’s summary judgment, defiling the rule of law – counter-insurgency madness to cow people into submission, advancing permanent war and endless violence, breeding resentment and hatred throughout the Muslim world.

On 9/11, AP said, for the second straight day, thousands of Afghans in Kabul responded to anti-Muslim hatred, specifically the announced Koran burning. Despite cancelling it, the damage was done, crowds burning tires and shouting “Long live Islam, death to America.” Earlier in the week, they heard fiery speeches from parliament members, provincial council deputies, and Islamic clerics, criticizing Washington and demanding foreign troops withdraw. Some also threw rocks at a passing US military convoy.

Protesters in front of western Kabul’s Milad ul-Nabi mosque raised and flags with slogans calling for Obama’s death, also a cardboard effigy of Dove World Outreach Center’s pastor Terry Jones. All religious holy books are sacred, demanding the respect they deserve. Burning or desecrating them is morally wrong and profoundly offensive.

In 2005, Afghan riots killed 15 and injured dozens following stories about Guantanamo interrogators placing Korans in washrooms and flushing one down a toilet. Imagine the outrage in America if Muslims did it to Bibles or other Judeo-Christian scripture.

Against that backdrop, Obama’s 9/11 address at the Pentagon (symbolic of America’s war agenda) was an exercise in demagoguery and lies saying:

“We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust….The highest honor we can pay those we lost, indeed our greatest weapon in this ongoing war, is to do what our adversaries fear the most. To stay true to who we are, as Americans; to renew our sense of common purpose; to say that we define the character of our country, and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are.”

Fact check:

— in 20 months as president, Obama continued what Bush began, stripping civil liberties, defiling human rights, waging imperial wars, increasing homeland repression, and targeting dissent and democratic freedoms;

— at home and abroad, he’s fostered hate, loathing, and mistrust throughout the entire Muslim world;

— “those (9/11 victims) we lost” were by our hands, not “crazed Arabs” from an Afghanistan cave directing their American operatives;

— “true to who we are? our sense of common purpose? the character of our country?” In fact, a cavernous divide separates most Americans from our criminal ruling cabal. Obama is its titular head allied with corporate predators, exploiting human resources and strip mining the world for profits, allied with out-of-control militarists, destroying it for power and privilege;

— “some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent?” America’s marauding armies wage ruthless wars on planet earth, slaughtering millions on every continent;

— “distort who we are?” The above account explains it, unmasking Obama’s demagoguery.

Saying “We champion the rights of every American (to) worship as one chooses,” Obama omitted the New York cultural center or announced Koran burning, now cancelled, showing his contempt for Islam, his words notwithstanding, disingenuous rhetoric like everything he says, what everyone needs to know, what too few understand, still thinking he’s different. He’s not, and in many respects he’s worse than his predecessor.

Justifying America’s imperial wars and homeland repression requires enemies, Muslims the target of choice, vilified for their faith, “terrorists” or “Islamofascists” because we say so. It’s reminiscent of the false late 1990s accusations against Nation of Islam National Representative Louis Farrakhan, saying he called the Pope “the anti-Christ” and Judaism a “gutter religion.”

He strongly rebutted the assertions, what Washington can’t do about Islam, calling it a “religion of war,” when, in fact, it promotes love, not hate; peace, not violence; good over evil; charity, not exploitation; and a just and fair society for people of all faiths.

America’s Judeo-Christian “war on terror” disdains these beliefs, vilifying people for their faith, slaughtering and torturing them abroad, conducting a modern day Inquisition at home, a lawless holy crusade, based on lies, deceit, and managed news. Regular state propaganda over the airwaves preaches hate for global conquest, masquerading as democracy, the kind Washington won’t tolerate anywhere, including at home.

A Final Comment

Washington’s one-sided Israeli support underscores its disdain for Islam. Obama accentuated it by telling Netanyahu that “The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable,” assuring him of America’s “deep, abiding interest in Israel’s security,” a message Palestinians and world Muslims know means no interest in theirs.

Worse still, he endorsed Cast Lead and Gaza’s siege, mercilessly and illegally suffocating 1.5 million people posing no threat whatever. Hamas is targeted for its independence, not militancy, what he and Western media won’t explain.

The latest round of peace talks continue, as bogus as others, on and off for the past 35 years, resolving nothing but empowering Israel at the expense of Occupied Palestinians. The only possible outcome this time is like before – total failure or unconditional capitulation, nothing in between, because Washington and Israel won’t tolerate a just, equitable agreement.

Obama also rejects Hamas as Palestine’s legitimate government as well its right to self-defense. Under occupation, it’s essential against a nuclear-armed marauder, a rogue state, a military powerhouse aggressor believing violence is the only language Arabs understand. No wonder growing millions globally see Israel for what it is – a regional and world menace complicit with its Washington paymaster/partner.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Global BDS Against Israel Is Working

By Steve Lendman

Blobal BDS Against Israel is Working

In July 2005, a coalition of 171 Palestinian Civil Society organizations created the Global BDS movement for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights” for Occupied Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian diaspora refugees.

The Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute (RI) provides “real-time strategic decision-making” support in areas of national security and socioeconomic policy. Its new report titled “The Gaza Flotilla: The Collapse of Israel’s Political Firewall” suggests it’s working. It followed an earlier one on “creating a political firewall” against Israel’s “delegitimization challenge,” recommending sabotage and subterfuge against growing global forces it fears, not an equitable solution it rejects.

Focusing now on the Gaza Flotilla, it called it “the tip of the iceberg” attempt along with the BDS movement and Durban conference against racism to cause “tangible and significant damage to Israel.” Unmentioned was how expert Israel is in self-inflicting it by decades of occupation and crimes of war and against humanity.

Clearly they’re having an effect, RI saying opposition “momentum is gaining,” its aim “to delegitimize Israel in order to precipitate its implosion, inspired by the collapses of” apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union. Calling the challenge global, systemic and political, RI blames two cooperating forces:

— the Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah “Resistance Network;” and

— the “Delegimization Network” based in cities like London, Brussels and San Francisco.

Their “constantly adapting” strategy requires Israel to adopt “a comprehensive systemic treatment” of the challenge it faces.

RI gave its version of the Gaza Flotilla interdiction, specifically against the Mavi Marmara mother ship, a “grave incident devlop(ing) during the takeover (when) Members of the Turkish IHH organization attacked Israeli forces with knives and metal bars, and in some cases with live fire. In the ensuing confrontation, nine Israeli soldiers were injured and nine Turkish activists killed.”

An earlier article discussed the truth, not RI’s revisionism, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/05/brave-israeli-commandos-slaughter-aid.html

Israeli commandos (trained killers), planned and executed a premeditated attack in international waters against nonviolent, unarmed humanitarian activists, trying to deliver essential to life aid to besieged Gazans – to break Israel’s attempt to suffocate and starve them.

RI ignored the crime, focusing instead on world outrage, including anti-Israeli demonstrations in dozens of major cities, increased BDS efforts, international investigations, and the “stronger perception of cooperation between Israel’s Arab citizens and the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks.” Turkey also “exploited” the incident, “deepen(ing) the crisis with Israel.”

Israel followed with two inquiry commissions, an IDF one under reserve Major General Giora Eiland and another under retired Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel, both mandated to whitewash the crime, what RI won’t admit, instead saying:

“The mandates of both commissions reflect the mindset that mistakes surrounding the Gaza Flotilla were technical-operational or tactical-political in nature. The commissions are thus focused on the reasonableness of the actions taken by decision-makers on existing laws, regulations, and accepted practices.”

In addition, RI is conducting its own inquiry, “based on a methodology of systemic policy analysis and on its conceptual framework for confronting the delegitimization challenge….to contribute to understanding the strategic significance of the event and to suggest principles for preventing similar occurrences in the future.”

RI, of course, means preventing world outrage from boiling over, followed by actions harming Israeli interests, not its repeated crimes of war, against humanity, and high seas outrages. It worries instead about a new challenge because of two developments:

— Hamas’ “increased sophistication and efficiency and the Resistance Network’s ‘Logic of Implosion.’ ” It aims to precipitate Israel’s collapse from overstretch, benefitting from the unpopular occupation, promoting its delegitimization, and engaging in asymmetric tactics against Israeli civilians; and

— the Delegitimization Network’s evolution, aiming to portray Israeli as a pariah state, gaining support from “the Western liberal progressive elite (through) a variety of means aimed at blurring its true intentions.”

In recent years, the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks have created connections able to accelerate the following dynamics:

— “Promoting the one-state paradigm;” and

— Foiling Israel’s ability to contain or deny legitimacy to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Both lead “a systemic and systematic attack against Israel’s political and economic model, which has already had strategic consequences and may become existential if ignored or inadequately addressed.” In addition, Israel hasn’t developed an effective response to this challenge.

Hamas gained “agility” from 2006 electoral victory. Israeli “rigidity” followed – policies unable to change Hamas’ positions or precipitate its demise. “On the contrary, Hamas went from strength to strength” despite Israel’s imposed siege and Cast Lead. It continually adapts to new circumstances, “demonstrating a relatively clear strategic logic….while strengthening its domestic and international status” and ability to promote Israeli delegitimization.

The Gaza Flotilla and others planned are “the latest manifestation of a systemic and systematic attack” to undermine Israel’s legitimacy with considerable support from the BDS campaign, the “lawfare” war against senior Israeli officials, and effect of the Goldstone Commission.

The Flotilla was “a first-of-its-kind collaboration” between Hamas and the Resistance and Delegitimization Networks. Turkey’s involvement was the “difference that made the difference.” In addition, its organizers’ ability to gain Western progressive elite support turned Israel’s interdiction into a “global and politically explosive event.” RI called it a “clash of brands,” Israel tarnished and defeated in the eyes of world public opinion.

Indeed so but not enough. Still RI concludes that Israel’s firewall is eroding because it’s increasingly viewed as not “genuinely striving for peace, consistently and honestly committed to ending control over the Palestinians, or concerned with alleviating the humanitarian situation in Gaza.”

Israel doesn’t understand the gravity of the delegitimization threat, and hasn’t addressed it effectively. The campaign promoting it will continue, perhaps in new forms. RI urges confronting it strategically by “systematically collect(ing) intelligence (and) identif(ing) key (delegitimization) catalysts,” as well as adopting a:

“consistent and honest….commitment to end….control over the Palestinians, advance human rights (at least rhetorically), and promote greater integration and equality for its Arab citizens….”

“It takes a network to fight” one, says RI. Disrupting it is job one by training Israeli diplomats to work in delegitimization hubs, developing its own network, re-branding itself to promote a new image, and engaging “liberal progressive elite(s).” The objective – delegitimize, isolate and marginalize the delegitimizers and BDS movement.

Its earlier “delegitimize challenge” report recommended sabotage and subterfuge against growing forces it fears. Perhaps now it’s softening but not enough. It omitted the right of return, East Jerusalem as Palestine’s capital, the logic of a one-state solution, the renunciation of conflict, an admission of Israeli crimes of war and against humanity, accountability for those responsible, demilitarization as a show of good faith, legislation granting all Israeli citizens equal rights, an occupation end date, a full commitment to the rule of law, and restitution to compensate victims for decades of crimes and destructive harm for starters.

Short of fundamental change, Israeli delegitimization will prevail over half-hearted measures, more rhetorical than substantive the way they’ve always been for decades.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

The Tears of Gaza Must Be Our Tears

© giwersworld.org

By Chris Hedges

The Tears of Gaza Must Be Our Tears

Chris Hedges made these remarks Thursday night in New York City at a fundraiser for sponsoring a U.S. boat to break the blockade of Gaza. More information can be found at www.ustogaza.org.

When I lived in Jerusalem I had a friend who confided in me that as a college student in the United States she attended events like these, wrote up reports and submitted them to the Israel consulate for money. It would be naive to assume this Israeli practice has ended. So, I want first tonight to address that person, or those persons, who may have come to this event for the purpose of reporting on it to the Israeli government.

I would like to remind them that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.

You may have the bulldozers, planes and helicopters that smash houses to rubble, the commandos who descend from ropes on ships and kill unarmed civilians on the high seas as well as in Gaza, the vast power of the state behind you. We have only our hands and our hearts and our voices. But note this. Note this well. It is you who are afraid of us. We are not afraid of you. We will keep working and praying, keep protesting and denouncing, keep pushing up against your navy and army, with nothing but our bodies, until we prove that the force of morality and justice is greater than hate and violence. And then, when there is freedom in Gaza, we will forgive … you. We will ask you to break bread with us. We will bless your children even if you did not find it in your heart to bless the children of those you occupied. And maybe it is this forgiveness, maybe it is the final, insurmountable power of love, which unsettles you the most.

And so tonight, a night when some seek to name names and others seek to hide names, let me do some naming. Let me call things by their proper names. Let me cut through the jargon, the euphemisms we use to mask human suffering and war crimes. “Closures” mean heavily armed soldiers who ring Palestinian ghettos, deny those trapped inside food or basic amenities—including toys, razors, chocolate, fishing rods and musical instruments—and carry out a brutal policy of collective punishment, which is a crime under international law. “Disputed land” means land stolen from the Palestinians. “Clashes” mean, almost always, the killing or wounding of unarmed Palestinians, including children. “Jewish neighborhoods in the West Bank” mean fortress-like compounds that serve as military outposts in the campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. “Targeted assassinations” mean extrajudicial murder. “Air strikes on militant bomb-making posts” mean the dropping of huge iron fragmentation bombs from fighter jets on densely crowded neighborhoods that always leaves scores of dead and wounded, whose only contact with a bomb was the one manufactured in the United States and given to the Israeli Air Force as part of our complicity in the occupation. “The peace process” means the cynical, one-way route to the crushing of the Palestinians as a people.

These are some names. There are others. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish in the late afternoon of Jan. 16, 2009, had a pair of Israeli tank shells rip through a bedroom in his Gaza apartment, killing three of his daughters—Bessan, Mayar and Aya—along with a niece, Noor.

“I have the right to feel angry,” says Abuelaish. “But I ask, ‘Is this the right way?’ So many people were expecting me to hate. My answer to them is I shall not hate.”

“Whom to hate?” asks the 55-year-old gynecologist, who was born a Palestinian refugee and raised in poverty. “My Israeli friends? My Israeli colleagues? The Israeli babies I have delivered?”

The Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali wrote this in his poem “Revenge”:

At times … I wish

I could meet in a duel

the man who killed my father

and razed our home,

expelling me

into

a narrow country.

And if he killed me,

I’d rest at last,

and if I were ready—

I would take my revenge!

*

But if it came to light,

when my rival appeared,

that he had a mother

waiting for him,

or a father who’d put

his right hand over

the heart’s place in his chest

whenever his son was late

even by just a quarter-hour

for a meeting they’d set—

then I would not kill him,

even if I could.

*

Likewise … I

would not murder him

if it were soon made clear

that he had a brother or sisters

who loved him and constantly longed to see him.

Or if he had a wife to greet him

and children who

couldn’t bear his absence

and whom his gifts would thrill.

Or if he had

friends or companions,

neighbors he knew

or allies from prison

or a hospital room,

or classmates from his school …

asking about him

and sending him regards.

*

But if he turned

out to be on his own—

cut off like a branch from a tree—

without a mother or father,

with neither a brother nor sister,

wifeless, without a child,

and without kin or neighbors or friends,

colleagues or companions,

then I’d add not a thing to his pain

within that aloneness—

not the torment of death,

and not the sorrow of passing away.

Instead I’d be content

to ignore him when I passed him by

on the street—as I

convinced myself

that paying him no attention

in itself was a kind of revenge.

And if these words are what it means to be a Muslim, and I believe it does, name me too a Muslim, a follower of the prophet, peace be upon him.

The boat to Gaza will be named “The Audacity of Hope.” But these are not Barack Obama’s words. These are the words of my friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. They are borrowed words. And Jerry Wright is not afraid to speak the truth, not afraid to tell us to stop confusing God with America. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands [killed] in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Or the words of Edward Said:

Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.

For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.

And some of the last words of Rachel Corrie to her parents:

I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside. When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.

And if this is what it means to be a Christian, and I believe it does, to speak in the voice of Jeremiah Wright, Edward Said or Rachel Corrie, to remember and take upon us the pain and injustice of others, then name me a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ.

And what of the long line of Jewish prophets that run from Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos to Hannah Arendt, who reminded the world when the state of Israel was founded that the injustice meted out to the Jews could not be rectified by an injustice meted out to the Palestinians, what of our own prophets, Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein, outcasts like all prophets, what of Uri Avnery or the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, who writes in his poem “Rypin,” the Polish town his father escaped from during the Holocaust, these words:

These creatures in helmets and khakis,

I say to myself, aren’t Jews,

In the truest sense of the word. A Jew

Doesn’t dress himself up with weapons like jewelry,

Doesn’t believe in the barrel of a gun aimed at a target,

But in the thumb of the child who was shot at—

In the house through which he comes and goes,

Not in the charge that blows it apart.

The coarse soul and iron first

He scorns by nature.

He lifts his eyes not to the officer, or the soldier

With his finger on the trigger—but to justice,

And he cries out for compassion.

Therefore, he won’t steal land from its people

And will not starve them in camps.

The voice calling for expulsion

Is heard from the hoarse throat of the oppressor—

A sure sign that the Jew has entered a foreign country

And, like Umberto Saba, gone into hiding within his own city.

Because of voices like these, father

At age sixteen, with your family, you fled Rypin;

Now here Rypin is your son.

And if to be Jew means this, and I believe it does, name me a Jew. Name us all Muslims and Christians and Jews. Name us as human beings who believe that when one of us suffers all of us suffer, that we never have to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for us all, that the tears of the mother in Gaza are our tears, that the wails of the bloodied children in Al Shifa Hospital are the wails of our own children.

Let me close tonight with one last name. Let me name those who send these tanks and fighter jets to bomb the concrete hovels in Gaza with families crouching, helpless, inside, let me name those who deny children the right to a childhood and the sick a right to care, those who torture, those who carry out assassinations in hotel rooms in Dubai and on the streets of Gaza City, those who deny the hungry food, the oppressed justice and foul the truth with official propaganda and state lies. Let me call them, not by their honorific titles and positions of power, but by the name they have earned for themselves by draining the blood of the innocent into the sands of Gaza. Let me name them for who they are: terrorists.

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.

View additional photos of Gaza Massacres: http://giwersworld.org/antisem/GAZA-pics/index.html

The Iranian Threat?

June 29, 2010: By Noam Chomsky

The Iranian Threat?

The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. Congress has just strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle East and Central Asia. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 “bunker busters” used for blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these “massive ordnance penetrators,” the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran.

“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. “US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he said. “The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003,” accelerating under Obama.

The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel) passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task is “to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran.” British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia). On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the US will stay the course after the replacement of General McChrystal by his superior, General Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior Israeli military staff along with intelligence and planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S. in Tel Aviv. The meeting focused “on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran,” according to Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that “I always try to see challenges from Israeli perspective.” Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure line.

The increasing threats of military action against Iran are of course in violation of the UN Charter, and in specific violation of Security Council resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.

Some respected analysts describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms. Amitai Etzioni warns that “The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East,” no less. If Iran’s nuclear program proceeds, he asserts, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will “move toward” the new Iranian “superpower”; in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance might take shape independent of the US. In the US army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges a US attack that targets not only Iran’s nuclear facilities but also its non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure – meaning, the civilian society. “This kind of military action is akin to sanctions – causing ‘pain’ in order to change behaviour, albeit by much more powerful means.”

Such harrowing pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided in the April 2010 study of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2010. The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it does not rank particularly high in that respect in comparison to US allies in the region. But that is not what concerns the Institute. Rather, it is concerned with the threat Iran poses to the region and the world.

The study makes it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran’s military spending is “relatively low compared to the rest of the region,” and less than 2% that of the US. Iranian military doctrine is strictly “defensive,… designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” Iran has only “a limited capability to project force beyond its borders.” With regard to the nuclear option, “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

Though the Iranian threat is not military, that does not mean that it might be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with US global designs. Specifically, it threatens US control of Middle East energy resources, a high priority of planners since World War II, which yields “substantial control of the world,” one influential figure advised (A. A. Berle).

But Iran’s threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence. As the Institute study formulates the threat, Iran is “destabilizing” the region. US invasion and military occupation of Iran’s neighbors is “stabilization.” Iran’s efforts to extend its influence in neighboring countries is “destabilization,” hence plainly illegitimate. It should be noted that such revealing usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, was properly using the term “stability” in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve “stability” in Chile it was necessary to “destabilize” the country (by overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).

Beyond these crimes, Iran is also supporting terrorism, the study continues: by backing Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in Lebanon and in Palestine – if elections matter. The Hezbollah-based coalition handily won the popular vote in Lebanon’s latest (2009) election. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the US and Israel to institute the harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants for voting the wrong way in a free election. These have been the only relatively free elections in the Arab world. It is normal for elite opinion to fear the threat of democracy and to act to deter it, but this is a rather striking case, particularly alongside of strong US support for the regional dictatorships, particularly striking with Obama’s strong praise for the brutal Egyptian dictator Mubarak on the way to his famous address to the Muslim world in Cairo.

The terrorist acts attributed to Hamas and Hezbollah pale in comparison to US-Israeli terrorism in the same region, but they are worth a look nevertheless.

On May 25 Lebanon celebrated its national holiday, Liberation Day, commemorating Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years, as a result of Hezbollah resistance – described by Israeli authorities as “Iranian aggression” against Israel in Israeli-occupied Lebanon (Ephraim Sneh). That too is normal imperial usage. Thus President John F. Kennedy condemned the “the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the North.” The assault by the South Vietnamese resistance against Kennedy’s bombers, chemical warfare, driving peasants to virtual concentration camps, and other such benign measures was denounced as “internal aggression” by Kennedy’s UN Ambassador, liberal hero Adlai Stevenson. North Vietnamese support for their countrymen in the US-occupied South is aggression, intolerable interference with Washington’s righteous mission. Kennedy advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, considered doves, also praised Washington’s intervention to reverse “aggression” in South Vietnam – by the indigenous resistance, as they knew, at least if they read US intelligence reports. In 1955 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff defined several types of “aggression,” including “Aggression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion.” For example, an internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way. The usage is also common in scholarship and political commentary, and makes sense on the prevailing assumption that We Own the World.

Hamas resists Israel’s military occupation and its illegal and violent actions in the occupied territories. It is accused of refusing to recognize Israel (political parties do not recognize states). In contrast, the US and Israel not only do not recognize Palestine, but have been acting for decades to ensure that it can never come into existence in any meaningful form; the governing party in Israel, in its 1999 campaign platform, bars the existence of any Palestinian state.

Hamas is charged with rocketing Israeli settlements on the border, criminal acts no doubt, though a fraction of Israel’s violence in Gaza, let alone elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind, in this connection, that the US and Israel know exactly how to terminate the terror that they deplore with such passion. Israel officially concedes that there were no Hamas rockets as long as Israel partially observed a truce with Hamas in 2008. Israel rejected Hamas’s offer to renew the truce, preferring to launch the murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008, with full US backing, an exploit of murderous aggression without the slightest credible pretext on either legal or moral grounds.

The model for democracy in the Muslim world, despite serious flaws, is Turkey, which has relatively free elections, and has also been subject to harsh criticism in the US. The most extreme case was when the government followed the position of 95% of the population and refused to join in the invasion of Iraq, eliciting harsh condemnation from Washington for its failure to comprehend how a democratic government should behave: under our concept of democracy, the voice of the Master determines policy, not the near-unanimous voice of the population.

The Obama administration was once again incensed when Turkey joined with Brazil in arranging a deal with Iran to restrict its enrichment of uranium. Obama had praised the initiative in a letter to Brazil’s president Lula da Silva, apparently on the assumption that it would fail and provide a propaganda weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the US was furious, and quickly undermined it by ramming through a Security Council resolution with new sanctions against Iran that were so meaningless that China cheerfully joined at once – recognizing that at most the sanctions would impede Western interests in competing with China for Iran’s resources. Once again, Washington acted forthrightly to ensure that others would not interfere with US control of the region.

Not surprisingly, Turkey (along with Brazil) voted against the US sanctions motion in the Security Council. The other regional member, Lebanon, abstained. These actions aroused further consternation in Washington. Philip Gordon, the Obama administration’s top diplomat on European affairs, warned Turkey that its actions are not understood in the US and that it must “demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West,” AP reported, “a rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally.”

The political class understands as well. Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, observed that the critical question now is “How do we keep the Turks in their lane?” – following orders like good democrats. A New York Times headline captured the general mood: “Iran Deal Seen as Spot on Brazilian Leader’s Legacy.” In brief, do what we say, or else.

There is no indication that other countries in the region favor US sanctions any more than Turkey does. On Iran’s opposite border, for example, Pakistan and Iran, meeting in Turkey, recently signed an agreement for a new pipeline. Even more worrisome for the US is that the pipeline might extend to India. The 2008 US treaty with India supporting its nuclear programs – and indirectly its nuclear weapons programs — was intended to stop India from joining the pipeline, according to Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia adviser to the United States Institute of Peace, expressing a common interpretation. India and Pakistan are two of the three nuclear powers that have refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the third being Israel. All have developed nuclear weapons with US support, and still do.

No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a NFWZ in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel’s nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” Obama’s technique of evasion is to adopt Israel’s position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the US can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with rare and temporary exceptions.

At the same time, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked foreign ministers of its 151 member states to share views on how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel “accede to” the NPT and throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.

It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special responsibility to work to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In attempting to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of the Iraq in 2003, they appealed to Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which called on Iraq to terminate its development of weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done so. We need not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers to move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.

Parenthetically, we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear facilities in Diego Garcia undermines the nuclear-free weapons zone (NFWZ) established by the African Union, just as Washington continues to block a Pacific NFWZ by excluding its Pacific dependencies.

Obama’s rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much praise, even a Nobel peace prize. One practical step in this direction is establishment of NFWZs. Another is withdrawing support for the nuclear programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and actions are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case, facts that pass with little attention.

Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the US must take major steps towards reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not succeed. That is understandable and even reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine.

US Fear Factory Kills Free Speech

By Yvonne Ridley

US Fear Factory Kills Free Speech

AMERICA is still embarrassed by the infamous McCarthy Hearings which ruined the lives of thousands of innocents during the Fifties.

Anyone then, suspected of being linked to communism was arrested, interrogated and either imprisoned or forced to give names of others suspected of communist tendencies. And so the fear and intimidation spread like a great plague across the USA.

Names were blacklisted, careers and lives ruined as the authorities ruthlessly traded on peoples’ fears, paranoia and weaknesses.

With little or no evidence people were found guilty and anyone daring to question any of the actions and the wild accusations also had suspicion cast upon them. But hey folks, that was back in the Fifties and various administrations resolved the same insane hysteria, hatred and fears would never again cast a dark shadow across the Land of the Free.

Sadly, the Salem-style witch hunts have returned, but the new villains are no longer communists. The Red Scare has been replaced by those who shout Viva Palestina!

From the very highest law-makers right down to ordinary John Doe there is an irrational fear so great that it holds many of them hostage in their homes, workplaces and schools.

Their vision has become so skewed they are unable to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

And so when they’re told that heavily armed Israeli soldiers shoot peace activists at near point blank range because they are defending themselves, few dare to question.

When they see babies dying on the Gaza Strip because of lack of medical equipment because of the Israeli-enforced blockade, they remain silent.

And even fewer dare to criticize Israel.

Millions upon millions of Americans wake up frightened, go to sleep frightened while others feed on the hatred and bile spewed out by politicians, preachers, academics and the media who tell them Israel is good and Palestine is bad.

There are some politicians who want to see the heroic Americans who took part in the Viva Palestina convoys and the recent Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla prosecuted as terrorists.

Today I trolled through some of the pages in the American media and there, among the column inches, are stories that perfectly illustrate the Zionist Fear Factory in operation.

The Los Angeles Times reveals that UC Irvine has told its university students that the Muslim Student Union will be suspended for one year because it dared to criticize Israel and protested during a speech given by the Israeli Ambassador. So there you have it – freedom of speech is now banned.

The unprecedented action also sends out a chilling message to students across the USA who might consider demonstrating, rallying or protesting against the Zionist state and its supporters. Free speech, it seems, is a thing of the past in Barack Obama’s America.

And should you be in any doubt, read a story about the latest decision to emerge from the US Supreme Court.

In a majority 6-3 ruling it becomes virtually impossible for anyone to put food into the mouths of malnourished babies in Gaza or to give money to a charity to do the humanitarian act for you.

Insane as it sounds, it is now a crime in America to work for peace and human rights in Gaza because the day-to-day running of The Strip is carried out by the democratically-elected Hamas government. Therefore it would be virtually impossibly to bypass Hamas to operate in Gaza.

In an astonishing McCarthy-like ruling any American who even offers advice to banned organizations like Hamas, including legal assistance and information on conflict resolution, will be prosecuted as terrorists. Be afraid, be very afraid … this is happening in the USA, here and now.

Barack Obama’s barmy administration reckons that even giving advice intended for peaceful purposes will amount to “material support” for terrorism. “The supreme court has ruled that human rights advocates, providing training and assistance in the nonviolent resolution of disputes, can be prosecuted as terrorists,” said David Cole, a Georgetown university law professor who argued the case before the court. In the name of fighting terrorism, the court has said that the first amendment [on free speech] permits congress to make it a crime to work for peace and human rights. That is wrong.”

The ruling is designed to intimidate Palestinian supporters and their fundraising activity. Some have already been prosecuted and jailed for raising cash for social groups dealing with issues such as housing and welfare in Gaza.

The government’s case was enthusiastically argued in February by Elena Kagan, who is now the Obama administration’s nominee to the supreme court. She said: “Hizb’Allah builds bombs. Hizb’Allah also builds homes. What Congress decided was when you help Hizb’Allah build homes, you are also helping Hizb’Allah build bombs. That’s the entire theory behind the statute.”

Well if that’s the case an interesting legal situation looms on the horizon – unless all of this legislation is purely designed for Palestinian supporters.

A Congressional subcommittee, led by Representative John F. Tierney, Democrat of Massachusetts, has uncovered evidence showing US tax dollars are funding the Taliban.

The source is a Pentagon-issued $2.1 billion dollar contract called Host Nation Trucking, which pays for the movement of food and supplies to some 200 American bases. It appears Afghan security firms have been extorting as much as $4 million a week and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban in return for a safe passage. In short, the US is financing the enemy and undermining international efforts to stabilize the country.

Hmm, isn’t this material support for terrorism? I think we need to have the Commander in Chief charged with immediate affect.

Yvonne Ridley is one of the founders of Viva Palestina and European President of the international Muslim Women’s Union

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Blog Editor Note: See how the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews collects money for their terrorists. The following video details how the scam is run on innocent Americans and others.

Part one: Israeli Money Scam
Part two: Israeli Money Scam

Looking Back at the Lexicon of Resistance

March 30, 2009: By Gilad Atzmon

Lexicon of Resistance

The following is an attempt to present my own personal dictionary of what seems to be the most charged terminology and concepts attached to the Palestinian solidarity and anti-war discourse.

Palestine– a piece of land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. For many years Palestine was the home of the Palestinian people: Muslims, Christians and Jews who lived in peace and harmony for hundred of years. In the late 19th century, in the light of emerging European nationalism, a few Jews had decided that Jews should not be left out. They then invented the notions of: “Jewish people”, “Jewish history” and “Jewish nationalism”.  They decided to settle the majority of world Jewry in Palestine. Throughout the years the Jewish national project, i.e., Zionism, had become more and more sinister and ruthless. In 1949 70% of the indigenous Palestinian population had already been ethnically cleansed. Nowadays the majority of Palestinians are living behind barbed wire in a state of terror guarded by Israeli soldiers.

Jews– the people who happen to identify themselves as Jews. Jews are not a race, they do not follow a single belief system either. I made myself a rule. I categorically refrain from dealing with “the Jews” as a collective or an ethnic group. Instead I restrict myself to criticism of Jewish politics, Jewish ideology and Jewish identity.

Judaism– one of the many religions practiced by the Jewish people (Jews for Jesus, Jews For Buddha, Jews For Allah and so on). Though Judaism contains some non-ethical aspects and teachings, the one and only peace-seeking collective amongst the Jewish people is actually a religious orthodox sect, namely Torah Jews. This fact is enough to make me very careful when criticising Judaism as a religion. When dealing with Judaism, I would restrict myself to criticism of interpretations of Talmudic racism and the biblically orientated Zionist genocidal plunder of Palestine.

Jewishness– Jewish ideology, the interpretations of the meaning of being a Jew by those who regard themselves as Jews. Jewishness is the core of Jewish identity, it is a dynamic notion. It is hard to pin down.  While refraining from criticising Jews (the people) and Judaism (the religion), elaborating on Jewishness is a must, especially considering the crimes committed by the Jewish state in the name of Jewish people. As long as the Jewish state is shelling civilians with white phosphorous, it is our ethical duty to question: Who are the Jews? What does Judaism stand for? What is Jewishness all about?

Palestine vs Israel– Palestine is a country, Israel is a state.

Palestinians– currently the longest lasting sufferers of racist colonial abuse and state terrorism. Palestinians are the only true indigenous inhabitants of Palestine.  4,300,000 Palestinian refugees are scattered in the Middle East.  There are Palestinians who managed to hold onto their land yet are denied equal civil rights, others live under military occupation.  The Palestinian cause is largely the ethically grounded demand of the Palestinian people to return to their own land. The land that belongs to them and to them alone. The Palestinian cause is the demand to dismantle the Jewish state and to form a State of its Citizens instead.

Zionism– the national colonial practical interpretation of Jewish ideology.  It asserts that Jews are entitled to a national home in Zion (Palestine) at the expense of the Palestinian people. Zionism is a colonial racist philosophy that practices genocidal tactics. It is a biblically orientated precept. Although Zionism portrayed itself initially as a secular movement, from the very beginning it transformed the Bible from a religious text into a land registry.

Israel– the Jewish state is a racist political concept. It is a place where Jewish supremacy is celebrated in an institutional manner.  Israel is a place where 94% of the population supports dropping white phosphorus on innocent civilians. Israel is the place where Jews can pour their vengeance on the Goyim.

Palestinian resistance– the exercise of the ethical right to resist an invader, an ethnic cleanser and a racist.

Demographic bomb– Israel possesses many bombs, cluster bombs, petrol bombs, atomic bombs, WMD bombs, etc. The Palestinians have only one bomb, the demographic bomb. The Palestinians are the majority of the people between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This fact itself defines the temporal quality of the Idea of Jewish state in Palestine.

Zionism vs Jewishness– it is difficult or maybe even impossible to determine where Zionism stops and Jewishness begins. Zionism and Jewishness establish a continuum. As it seems, Zionism has become the symbolic identifier of the contemporary Jew. Every Jew is identified by himself and others in reference to the Zionist compass (Zionist, anti-Zionist, oblivious to Zionism, love Zionism but hate Israel, love Israel but hate falafel and so on).

Secular Judaism and Jewish Secular Fundamentalism– secularity has been a very popular precept amongst Jews in the last two centuries. The Jewish form of secularity is very similar to rabbinical Judaism. It is fundamentally monotheistic, it believes in one truth (God is dead until further notice). It is supremacist, it is extremely intolerant of others in general and Muslims in particular, it even promotes wars in the name of enlightenment, liberalism, democracy and even in the name of the victims to come.

Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder– the kind of mental state that leads 94% of the Israeli population to support air raids against civilians.  Within the condition of the Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Pre-TSD), the stress is the outcome of a phantasmic event, an imaginary episode set in the future; an event that has never taken place. Within Pre-TSD, an illusion pre-empts reality and the condition in which the fantasy of terror is itself becoming grave reality. If it is taken to extremes, even an agenda of total war against the rest of the world is not an unthinkable reaction. Unlike the case of paranoia, wherein the sufferer is subject to his own symptoms, in the case of Pre-TSD the sufferer actually celebrates his symptoms while others are left with the role of the audience or even victim. The sufferers of Pre-TSD within the press and media lobby for global conflict. Once they are in power they just spread death around. They manage to see a threat in almost anything. The Pre-TSD sufferer would call to flatten Iran, he would defend the IDF military campaign in Gaza for his own existential fears. The Pre-TSD sufferer is rather predictable and for one reason or other always to be found in the non-ethical cause.

Jihad– the struggle to improve one’s self and society. Jihad is the attempt to reach a harmony between the self and the world. It is there to bridge the gap between self loving, loving self and the love towards others. Jihad is the answer to chosenness.

Holocaust– an overwhelmingly devastating chapter in recent Jewish past. It would be difficult to imagine the formation of the Jewish state without the effect of the holocaust. Yet, it is impossible to deny the fact that Palestinians ended up paying the ultimate price for crimes that were committed against the Jews by other people (Europeans). Hence, it would make sense to argue that if Europeans feel guilty about the Holocaust, they better take extra care of its last victims, i.e., the Palestinians.

It must be mentioned that due to some legislation that restricts the scrutiny of the holocaust in an open academic manner, the holocaust is no longer treated as an historical chapter.  Instead it is regarded by many scholars as a religious narrative (namely, Holocaust Religion). Those who do not obey the religion or follow its restrictions are chased, excluded and jailed. The failure to maintain the holocaust as a vivid historic chapter turned Jewish history into a Pandora’s box sealed by prohibitions, legal restrictions and different forms of threats. In an ideal “free world”, we would be able to look into the holocaust, to regard it as an historical chapter and to draw some lessons out of it.  That would mean also questioning its meaning. In an ideal (free) world, we may as well be allowed to wonder how come, time after time, Jews ended up despised and detested by their neighbours. In an ideal (free) world Jews may have a chance to learn from their mistakes in the past. For the time being, as long as we want to keep free, we better avoid questioning the past.

The Meaning of the Holocaust– the Holocaust provides the Jews and others with two obvious lessons. One is universal and almost simplistic, it says: “NO to racism”. As some Jewish intellectuals predicted after the war, Jews were supposed to lead the fight against racism. Seemingly, it didn’t happen. Not only did it fail to happen, but the Jewish state had become the ultimate form of racist practice. Three years after the liberation of Auschwitz the newly formed Jewish state brutally ethnically cleansed the vast majority of indigenous Palestinians. As time goes by, the Jewish state doesn’t try to disguise its racist agenda, i.e., Jews only state.

The second lesson that can be drawn out of the holocaust is far less abstract, it is actually very pragmatic. It suggests to Jews “to be aware of their deed”. It suggests to Jews “to act ethically, or at least to pretend to do so”.  Seemingly, this lesson is totally ignored. In the Jewish state young IDF soldiers wear T-shirts depicting pregnant Palestinian women caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, with the disturbing caption “1 shot 2 kills”.  In the Jewish state, civilians had been caught picnicking watching their army dropping unconventional weapons on their Palestinian neighbours. The Israeli reality and the forceful Jewish lobbying around the world portray a complete dismissal of any ethical judgment or moral conduct. Whether it is the genocidal practice against the Palestinian people or the lobbying for more and more global conflicts. If the meaning of the holocaust would have been internalised, different appearances of such inhuman behaviour would have been addressed and tackled.

However, within the prohibition to re-visit our history we may still be entitled to reflect over Nazi brutality towards Jews in the light of the Jewish state’s crimes in Palestine. Seemingly, there is no legislation that prohibits us from doing that as yet.

Hamas– political party that was elected in 2006 by the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. Since then Israel has withheld payments owed to Gaza, causing the Palestinian economy to collapse. It has blockaded Gaza for months, starving the civilian population. And yet, Hamas proved once again that the Palestinian people are resilient. In spite of Israel’s genocidal tactics, in spite of the IDF targeting children, women and the elderly, Hamas’ popularity increases by the day and more so especially after the last Gaza conflict. It has now become clear that Israel does not possess the means of combating Islamic resistance. In other words. Israel’s days are numbered.

Gatekeepers– for many years the Palestinian solidarity discourse had been shattered by those who claimed to know what is right and what is wrong.  They also claimed to know what should be discussed and what subject must be dropped. Initially, gatekeepers tried to recruit the Palestinian movement to fight antisemitism. Another bizarre agenda was to use the Palestinian people as another Guinea pig in a dogmatic socialist exercise.

Due to the growing success of Palestinian and Islamic resistance, the power of Gatekeepers is now reduced to none. Though gatekeeping operators still insist upon exercising their powers, their influence is totally restricted to primarily Jewish cells.

Antisemites– in the old days, antisemites were those who didn’t like Jews, nowadays, antisemites are those the Jews don’t like. Considering the growing chasm between the Jewish state and its lobbies and the rest of humanity, we have good reason to believe that before not too long, the entirety of humanity will be denounced as antisemitic by one Jewish lobby or another.

Antisemitism– a misleading signifier. Though it refers largely to anti-Jewish feelings, it gives the impression that these feelings are racially motivated or orientated. It must be clear that Jews are not a race and do not establish a racial continuum. Thus, no one hates the Jews for their race or their racial identity.

Bearing in mind Israeli crimes and Jewish lobbying around the world, anti-Jewish feeling should be realised as a political, ideological and ethical reaction. It is a response to a criminal state and its institutional support amongst world Jewry. Though resentment to Zionism, Israel and Jewish lobbying is rather rational, the failure to distinguish between the “Jew”, and Zionism is indeed very problematic and dangerous especially considering the fact that many Jews have nothing to do with the Zionist crime. However, due to the extensive Jewish institutional support of Israel, it is far from easy to determine where the “Jew” ends and the Zionist starts. In fact, there is no such demarcation line or spot of transition. The outcome is clear, Jews are implicated collectively by the crimes of their national project. One obvious solution for the Jew is to oppose Zionism as an individual, another option is to oppose Zionism in the name of the Torah, it is also possible for the Jew to shun the tribal ideologist in himself.

Self loving– the belief that something about oneself is categorically and fundamentally right, moral and unique. This is the secular interpretation of being chosen.

Self Hatred– the belief that something about oneself is categorically and fundamentally wrong, immoral and ordinary. This state of being may also be a point of departure of a spiritual ethical quest.

Chicken Soup– is what is left once you strip Jewish identity of Judaism, racism, chauvinism, White Phosphorous, supremacy, cluster bombs, secularity, Zionism, Israel, intolerance, Nuclear reactor in Dimona, cosmopolitanism, genocidal tendency, etc. The Jew can always revert to chicken soup, the iconic symbolic identifier of Jewish cultural affiliation. The Jew is always more than welcome to say: “I am not religious nor am I a Zionist, I am not a banker, nor is my name Madoff. I am not a “Labour friend of Israel” nor I am a Lord or look like a cash machine.  I am just a little innocent Jew because my mama’le used to feed me with chicken soup when I was slightly unwell.”  Let’s face it once and for all, chicken soup is not that dangerous (unless you are a chicken). My grandmother taught me that it was very healthy. In fact I tried it once in winter 1978, I had the flu then. It helped, I feel better now.

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June 14, 2010: American Jews Challenge Zionism

Israel’s Unjust Gaza Blockade and Zionist Myths

By Ira Chernus

Activists on the Ship ‘Rachel Corrie’ Challenge Israel’s Unjust Gaza Blockade and Zionist Myths

The MV Rachel Corrie is steaming across the Mediterranean toward Gaza, flying the flag of Ireland, loaded with humanitarian supplies, and posing another impossible dilemma for the government of Israel.

The root of the dilemma is not the conflict between Israel and the Free Gaza Movement, nor even the conflict between Israel and Palestine. It’s ultimately a conflict between two visions of Zionism that go back to the origins of Zionism itself.

Israel’s government is caught in a debate between two factions, representing those two visions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is no doubt searching for a way to act upon both. But it’s an impossible task, like trying to square a circle, because the two visions contradict each other. So however the Israelis choose to meet the MV Rachel Corrie, they lose.

One side in the debate sees Israel rapidly losing its respect around the world, which was once quite considerable. Israel’s famous novelist Amoz Oz speaks for them: “We’re putting ourselves under international siege, which is much more dangerous to us than the blockade of Gaza is to Gazans. Israel is turning into Apartheid-era South Africa, a country that the nations of the world do not want among their ranks.”

This faction warns that if Israel repeats the kind of bloody attack it launched on the Mavi Marmara, it could well lose whatever shred remains of its international standing. And they say that Israel simply cannot survive in a world that condemns and isolates it.

The thinking of this side goes back to the very beginning of Zionism. We Jews have been persecuted outcasts long enough, the early Zionists said. If we respect ourselves enough to break out of our long exile and become a normal nation, like all the other nations, we will earn the world’s respect and be treated as equals in the family of nations.

These first Zionists assumed that if they built a successful state they would escape the constant anxiety that had plagued their ancestors. They worked in a spirit of confidence that Jews could not merely survive, but thrive, as their nation developed friendly relations with the other nations of the world.

Yet ultimately they could not escape anxiety. Their test of the success of Zionism was how well the Jewish state was received by the gentile world. Though they broke free of the grip of the gentiles, they always had to be watching over their shoulders to see how the gentiles were viewing them. They are watching still, as the MV Rachel Corrie approaches Gaza, still worrying about what it will take to insure that the Jewish state survives, still feeling like the victims of history.

The other side in the Israeli debate within the government takes a very different approach. Why bother even thinking about the world’s response, they ask. The world hates us anyway. Nothing we do now can make the gentiles hate us more. Since we are surrounded by eternal enemies, let’s forget about world opinion. The only way to insure our survival is to maintain our strength and dominance — by any means necessary.

This viewpoint, too, goes back to the very beginning of Zionism. The same Zionists who confidently pursued the goal of a normal nation also assumed that, as long as Jews lived among the gentiles, they would always be victims of persecution. For them, anti-semitism was an eternal fact of life, to be escaped only by taking refuge in a Jewish state.

Today’s Israeli hawks see the world in much the same way, except that they see no escape. We’ve discovered, they say, that even though we have our own nation we still live among the gentiles, and they still hate us so much they’d like to see us disappear. Our only option is to keep on fighting back, and let the blood fall where it may.

They are cheered when they hear Defense Minister Ehud Barak tell the commandos who attacked the Mavi Marmara: “We live in the Middle East, in a place where there is no mercy for the weak. … You were fighting for your lives.” They see every fight that Israel wages in the same simplistic light. Thus a top Israeli Navy commander warns that Israel will use even more aggressive force in the future to prevent ships from breaking the Gaza blockade: “We boarded the ship and were attacked as if it was a war. We will have to come prepared in the future as if it was a war.”

Though each side in this debate throws barrages of facts at the other to prove its point, no facts can ever prove either side right or wrong. Both sides let their chosen narratives decide what facts they can see and what can count as a fact for them. When narrative takes precedence over facts, we are dealing with myth. In that sense, the debate within the Israeli government about how to meet the MV Rachel Corrie is a debate between two versions of the Zionist myth.

Since each side’s view is so narrowed by its mythic vision, both (though especially the hawks) ignore the most critical facts: the daily suffering of the Palestinians, in the West Bank and even more so in Gaza; the total military domination that Israel already has, which guarantees its ability to overpower a Palestinian state indefinitely; the anger at Israel that grows around the world precisely because it poses as a weak victim, despite its display of overwhelming strength; the fact that Israel lashes out in bully-like fury because it is caught in the contradiction between myth and fact, which it cannot see.

These facts are ignored because they simply do not fit into either version of the Zionist narrative. Both versions see only a Jewish state struggling desperately to survive and gain self-respect — either by being accepted as a legitimate equal among other nations or by doing whatever it takes to fend off enemies in an anarchic international jungle, where only the strong live to see another day.

Netanyahu, like all Israeli leaders before him, is caught in the web of inherited myths, trying to act on both versions at the same time. He wants to lead a country that can get support from others and maintain good international relations. He also wants to lead a country that proves that it’s tough enough to overcome every threat by using excessive force.

He’s pursuing a self-defeating goal, for two reasons. First, it’s impossible, because the two views of Zionism contradict each other. The only point they agree on is that the Jewish state is imperiled and must survive. But no nation can expect to survive if it ignores reality and relies instead on its own mythic version of the facts. That’s the second reason Netanyahu’s aim is self-defeating. In trying to save his nation from imagined danger (the foolish notion that ships bringing humanitarian goods to Gaza could threaten Israel’s existence, for example) he is exposing Israel to very real dangers.

If the Israelis meet the MV Rachel Corrie with any kind of violence, they take another big step toward alienating their nation from the rest of the world, and especially from the European community, which is of critical importance to Israel. The Israelis are acutely aware that the Corrie is an Irish ship, and the head of Ireland’s government has warned them of “the most serious consequences” if any harm comes Irish citizens.

On the other hand, if Netanyahu allows the Corrie to dock at Gaza unimpeded, he can expect a stormy reaction and very possibly rejection from Israel’s powerful political right. They’ll say that he’s weak and shameful, because he lets Israel be pushed around by the gentiles. That charge could stick and move the nation much closer to political chaos.

Either choice will make it harder for Israel to gain the one thing it needs most to escape from danger: a peace settlement with Palestine. As long as there is no settlement, Israel remains caught in a cycle of conflict and insecurity that makes the Jewish state its own worst enemy.

As the MV Rachel Corrie approaches Gaza to confront the Israeli blockade, it forces the Israeli government to confront this dilemma. Perhaps at last, under this pressure, the Israelis will see that both of the dominant Zionist myths have reached a dead end. The effort to build a nation on imagined threat and constant fear of what outsiders will say or do was doomed from the start. Fear keeps a nation paralyzed, unable to see the facts clearly and respond to them creatively.

The voyage of the MV Rachel Corrie could give Israeli leaders a chance to awake from their paralysis and remember that they have another alternative. There is a third vision of Zionism, which is also rooted in the earliest days of the movement and can open the way to a future of genuine peace and security. It’s a vision of a Jewish state that embodies the highest moral values enshrined in the Hebrew Bible: the peace that comes only from justice.

There have always been Zionists committed to this approach. And they have always set out a clear test for the Jewish state: Will it act on those highest values in its treatment of the Arabs of Palestine? Anything less than fair, equitable, and peaceable relations with the Arabs would mean a failure of Zionism.

Sadly, these Zionists were always a minority in the movement. They still are. But their voice is still heard in the mainstream of Israeli life. And they understand the power of the mainstream myths that keep Israel locked in its self-destructive ways.

Listen, for example, to the famous Israeli writer David Grossman: “How insecure, confused and panicky a country must be, to act as Israel acted! … It killed and wounded civilians as if it were a band of pirates.”

The attack on the Mavi Marmara was the “natural continuation” of the blockade of Gaza, Grossman writes. And the blockade is “the all-too-natural consequence of a clumsy and calcified policy, which again and again resorts by default to the use of massive and exaggerated force, where wisdom and sensitivity and creative thinking are called for instead. Above all, this insane operation shows how far Israel has declined. … Already there are those here who seek to spin the natural and justified sense of Israeli guilt into a strident assertion that the whole world is to blame. Our shame, however, will be harder to live with.”

Or listen to Carlo Strenger, a regular columnist for Israel’s most respected newspaper, Ha’aretz, speaking to the faction that worries most about Israel’s image in the world:

“Israel’s policy of dispossession in Jerusalem and in the settlements is reactionary and repressive and cannot be justified by any security interest. Israel will have to decide: it cannot rebrand itself as a liberal, creative and progressive country without being one. Our business sector, our artists and academics are mostly progressive, liberal and creative. But their impact on how Israel is perceived will remain negligible as long as Israel’s politicians and emissaries keep harping on victimhood and survival and as long as its policies are repressive.”

Eloquent writers like Grossman, Strenger, and many others keep alive the vision of a truly moral Zionism, which was part of the movement from its birth. Since their voices do not yet prevail in Israel, we in the U.S. have a greater responsibility to make them heard. We must explain to our fellow Americans — and especially to our elected leaders — that Israel’s claims of victimization, persecution, and weakness arise not from facts, but from the Zionist myths that blind too many Jews, here as well as in Israel, to the facts.

Perhaps Barack Obama already knows this. If he does not, it is up to us to teach him. If he does, it is up to us to change American public opinion, to make it politically safe for Obama to act upon what he knows and push the Israelis toward the peace that they, as well as the Palestinians, so desperately need.

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Read more of his writing on Israel, Palestine, and American Jews on his blog: http://chernus.wordpress.com.