What's under attack [in the Middle East] is liberal democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States. ... [T]he right response is renewed strength ... standing with Israel [and] pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran ... [W]e might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Is this not the time to go after the terrorist training camps in Syria and Iran? What in the world are we waiting for? ... [I]f we dither through this one, the next one will be worse. ... Stability is a mirage. Chamberlain had a choice between dishonor and war. He chose dishonor and got war anyway.
Imagine a member of the KKK going on the Bill O'Reilly show and declaring all African-Americans are shiftless crackheads. Imagine the outrage and calls for Fox News to be investigated for promoting racism and hatred. Now imagine an Israeli diplomat going on Bill O'Reilly's show and declaring all Muslims are terrorists. In fact, this happened, and nobody is calling the diplomat, Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, a racist or are there demands Fox News be investigated for promoting racism and hatred. In Bushzarro world, it is fine and dandy to characterize all Muslims as terrorists.
"While it is politically incorrect to say that all Muslims are terrorists, unfortunately, it's true that all terrorists are Muslim," Gillerman said on O'Reilly's show yesterday, July 16.
I picked up this quote from a blog. It was not mentioned in the corporate media. A Google News search returned no results. Either the people who post at the Truth Will Set You Free blog made the quote up or Israelis spewing racist hatred is so common and acceptable nobody bothered to mention it.
Of course, when Iran's Ahmadinejad says anything about Israel, it is front page news. In fact, so eager is the corporate media to demonize Ahmadinejad, it reprints distortions of his comments (Ahmadinejad never said Israel should be "wiped off the map," as widely reported), which are then used to further rationalize "all Muslims are terrorists" comments.
As FAIR noted late last month, the starting point of all discussion in the corporate media about events in the Middle East begins with the assumption Arabs and Muslims are terrorists. For instance, in regard to the Palestinians:
If anything, what "hardly ever varies" is mainstream media's adherence to an attack-retaliation formula that overwhelmingly places the blame on the Palestinian side, though in the ongoing cycle of attacks both sides usually describe their actions as retaliatory.... From the start of the Intifada in September 2000 through March 17, 2002, the three major networks' nightly news shows used some variation of the word "retaliation" ("retaliated," "will retaliate," etc.) 150 times to describe attacks in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. About 79 percent of those references were to Israeli "retaliation" against Palestinians. Only 9 percent referred to Palestinian "retaliation" against Israelis. (Approximately 12 percent were ambiguous or referred to both sides simultaneously.)
A 2002 Glasgow University Media Group report revealed "that television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict [in Britain] confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views.... There is a preponderance of official 'Israeli perspectives', particularly on BBC 1, where Israelis were interviewed or reported over twice as much as Palestinians. On top of this, US politicians who support Israel were very strongly featured.... TV news says almost nothing about the history or origins of the conflict." In America, this bias even more pronounced.
Few television news viewers (or zombies) realize Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, or that Israel occupied southern Lebanon for more than twenty years and this brutal occupation (as documented by human rights organizations) resulted in the formation of Hezbollah.
Few understand Israel has stolen Arab land, including the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms, and common Israeli border provocations result in Hezbollah attacking Israel.
Few understand the magnitude of Israel's abduction of Lebanese, accused of resisting Israel's illegal occupation, or the fact many of them were tortured in the Khiam torture dungeon. "Lebanese detainees held without trial or after expiry of their sentences in Israeli prisons and in Khiam are Israel's forgotten hostages," notes Amnesty International. "Amnesty International knows of 21 Lebanese nationals who have been captured in Lebanon and transferred to Israeli prisons either without ever having been sentenced or held beyond the expiry of their sentences. These are just some of the detainees whom Amnesty International believes Israel to be holding as hostages. Most of them were captured by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) or by one of the pro-Israeli Christian militias in Lebanon, the Lebanese Forces or the SLA. Many of them were held in detention centers in Lebanon under Lebanese Forces' or SLA control before being transferred, usually secretly, to Israel." No mention of this in the corporate media. Instead, we are told, without additional comment, all Muslims are terrorists.
No mention in the corporate media of Israel's continual and repeated violations of Lebanese airspace. "Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Personal Representative for Southern Lebanon today called on Israel to cease its air violations over Lebanese territory," the UN News Center reported on November 4, 2004. "Staffan de Mistura issued his statement in Beirut in response to eight flights involving 11 aircraft and three drones across the Blue Line, as the line of withdrawal is known." Israel has violated Lebanese sovereignty dozens of time, buzzing Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, and other cities, often using sonic booms to intimidate the population. Earlier this year Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN envoy to Middle East, complained of "constant Israel violations against Lebanon," but such stories seem to be of interest only to the Arab media.
No mention of Israel's violence around the illegally occupied Shebaa Farms. In response to Hezbollah attacking occupation forces at Shebaa Farms, Israel attacks civilians as a matter of course. "News reports in Beirut said that the Israeli forces started artillery bombardment of Kafer Shouba village and the neighboring villages after Hizbullah fighters fired one missile at a site for the Israeli occupation army in Shebaa farms," the Arabic News reported in February. "The Israeli bombardment resulted in injuring one Lebanese woman and damages to several houses in al-Habareyah and al-Kheyam and in al-Habareyah elementary school. One house in Kafer Shouba was directly hit." In November, 2005, "police explained that one Israeli military tank and artilleries bombarded for 45 minutes several Lebanese villages.... [and Hezbollah] retaliated the Israeli bombardment and fired mortars shelling at three Israeli positions in Shabaa Farms." In October of the same year, the IOF attacked Burket al-Nakkar and Jabal Saddaneh with attack helicopters. Of course, all of this occurred on Lebanese soil, and yet Lebanon did not invade Israel or incinerate school kids on Israeli roads.
Instead, Fox News welcomes comments that all Muslims are terrorists and this feeds into the perception that killing innocent Lebanese civilians is justified because they allowed Hezbollah to capture Israeli prisoners of war. If we are to use such a yardstick, then Hezbollah attacks on Israel are completely justified, as Israel has taken Lebanese prisoners by the dozens, not because they have done anything but rather because they are considered "bargaining chips."
The old adage, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" does not apply to Americans, who have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.
Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and debilitating war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud Party. In the past, some neocons lost their security clearances because of "mishandling" of classified information. According to Insight magazine, "the Pentagon has banned security clearance to Americans with relatives in Israel. Government sources and attorneys said the Pentagon has sought and succeeded in removing security clearance from dozens of Americans, mostly Jews, who either lived, worked, or have relatives in Israel."
Despite questions of dual loyalties, neocons hold high positions in the Bush regime. Ten years ago these architects of American foreign and military policy spelled out how they would use deception to achieve "important Israeli strategic objectives" in the Middle East. First, they would focus "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and permit Israel to seize the strategic initiative by "engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."
Today, this neoconservative plan is unfolding before our eyes. Israel has used the capture of two of its soldiers in Lebanon as an excuse for an all-out air and naval bombardment against Lebanese civilian targets. However, a number of commentators have pointed out that such a massive attack requires weeks if not months of preparation that could not be done overnight in response to the capture of the soldiers.
Regardless, in the first two days of the Israeli military attack on Lebanon more than a hundred civilians, including Canadians, have been killed by Israeli bombs (gifts from U.S. taxpayers). The Beirut International Airport has been repeatedly bombed, as have residential neighborhoods, roads, bridges, ports, and power stations.
Soldiers are a legitimate military target. Civilians, civilian neighborhoods, tourists, and international airports are not. Under the Nuremberg standard used to sentence Nazi war criminals to death, the Israeli government is clearly guilty of war crimes.
Meanwhile, the Israelis are committing identical war crimes in Gaza. Again Israel's excuse is the capture of an Israeli soldier. However, the distinguished Israeli professor Ran HaCohen said that the Israeli army "had been demanding a massive attack on Gaza long before the Israeli soldier was kidnapped."
By blocking UN Security Council action against Israel for its massacre of civilians in Gaza, the Bush regime has made itself complicit in these monstrous war crimes. Just as Germans who supported Hitler were deemed to be complicit in his war crimes, Americans who support Bush are complicit in Bush's war crimes.
Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government. It does not rule Lebanon. Hezbollah is the militia organization founded in 1982 in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli army and drove out the Israeli invaders six years ago.
According to the BBC, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the two Israeli soldiers "were captured to pressure Israel to release the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails," especially the women and children.
The BBC also notes that although Hezbollah operates "from Lebanese territory and the militant group has two ministers in the Lebanese government, the central government is almost powerless to influence the militant group." (Note that the BBC applies the loaded word "militant" to Hezbollah but not to Israel.) Hezbollah, reports the BBC, "is also very popular in Lebanon and highly respected for its political activities, social services, and its military record against Israel."
The prime minister of Lebanon, who was installed with President Bush's approval when Syria, under Bush's pressure, recently withdrew its troops from Lebanon, has twice appealed to Bush to pressure Israel to stop its criminal attacks. Our great moral, democratic, Christian leader has twice rebuffed the appeal from the legal representative of the Lebanese people. Instead, Bush is willingly going along with the 1996 neocon script. Bush is laying the blame on Syria and Iran, exactly as the neocon script calls for him to do.
When Bush demands that Syria "stop Hezbollah attacks," he forgets that he was the one who forced Syria out of Lebanon (to enable Israel to attack Lebanon). If Americans were attentive, they would be ashamed to witness "their" president acting as an Israeli propagandist.
Fox "News," CNN, and the rest of the Bush propaganda ministry are echoing the lie that innocent Israel is under attack from the "terrorist states" of Syria and Iran through their surrogate, Hezbollah. Americans, who are sick of the Iraq occupation and want the troops home, are being fooled again and set up for wider war in the Middle East.
Evangelical "Christians" are part of the propaganda show. Three thousand of them, under the lead of the Rev. John C. Hagee, are heading to Washington for a "Washington/Israel summit" to demand, needlessly, that the neocon Bush regime show "stronger support for Israel."
It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of course, what the "Christian" Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: "There's a new Hitler in the Middle East [he doesn't mean Bush or Olmert]. The only way he will be stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran."
Present at Rev. Hagee's "Washington/Israel Summit" will be Israel's former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary Bauer.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby in Washington, expressed its thanks to Rev. Hagee for demonstrating "the depth and breadth of American support" for Israel. Recently, AIPAC has been under investigation as a suspected nest for Israeli spies.
David Brog, former chief of staff for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for Hagee's evangelical enterprise because "we're bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that." Brog goes on to say that Hagee's evangelicals understand that they are not supposed to talk about Jesus, only about saving Israel: "Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about Jesus. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do."
Gentle reader, is this an admission that evangelicals have set aside Jesus for war? Do these bloody-minded evangelicals really believe they will be wafted to Heaven for helping Israel involve the U.S. in more war? Have evangelicals forgotten that "an eye for an eye" is Old Testament? "Turn the other cheek" is New Testament.
On July 14, Reuters reported that alone among Christians, the "Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon."
Whose delusion is the greatest - the evangelical "rapture" delusion, the neocon delusion about American power, or the Zionist delusion? The three together mean disaster for America, Israel, and the world.
One of the great evangelical/Zionist/neocon myths is that "tiny Israel" armed with 200 nuclear weapons is threatened by Muslim Middle Eastern countries. In actual fact, Egypt and Pakistan, which have the bulk of the Middle Eastern Muslim population, are ruled by American puppets. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates are totally dependent on U.S. protection and, thereby, are also under the American thumb. Iran is Persian, not Arab, and has no common borders with Israel. Hezbollah was created when Israel tried to seize Lebanon in 1982. Hamas is a Palestinian response to the atrocities Palestinians have suffered for a half century at Israel's hands.
Israel's land-stealing policy is the source of Middle Eastern instability. America is hated because American money and weapons are what enable Israel to steal Palestine from Palestinians.
As numerous Middle East experts have pointed out, what is decried as "Arab terrorism against Israel" is, in fact, the only tactic Muslims have for calling the world's attention to the plight of the Palestinians, about which Americans are generally ignorant.
It is absurd for Bush to condemn Syria for not behaving as an American puppet and for not fighting Israel's battles by taking on Hezbollah. Syria and Iran (and Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion) are the only Middle Eastern countries independent of American control. It is far beyond the boundaries of reason and morality to expect these two remaining independent countries to give up their independence in order to enable Israel to steal Palestine and southern Lebanon.
It is the refusal of Syria and Iran (and Saddam Hussein's Iraq) to stand with Israel against Palestine that has made them targets for American attack. Neocons have total control of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush regime, and they have morphed our strategic interests into Israel's.
As the neoconservative architects of Bush's wars revealed in 1996, their concern lies with Israeli strategic objectives.
1. Israel and Democracy
In December 2005, in the most democratic election ever organized in the Arab East, the Hamas Party was elected to power by the majority of Palestinian voters. Even President Bush, before he was chastened by the Jewish Lobby, publicly conceded the democratic character of the Palestinian election process. The Israeli State rejected the outcome and orchestrated a massive well-financed international campaign through its US and European Jewish lobbies to isolate and undermine the newly elected regime. Instead of recognizing the democratic mandate, Israel labeled the regime 'terrorist'; it ignored Hamas unilateral ceasefire and escalated its murderous military attacks. Above all it succeeded in establishing an economic blockade, exercising its hegemony over the US and through the latter over the European Union. Israeli animus to Palestinian democracy and its citizens' role in freely electing its representatives clearly marks Israel an enemy to an open pluralistic Arab society. Obviously the same applies to the major Jewish organizations in the US - AIPAC, ADL, the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations, which parroted Israel's attack on Palestinian democracy, as they have done on every other policy, no matter how unconscionable, as in the murder of Palestinian children and families. The Israeli animosity to Arab democracy is widely transmitted into the US body politic by their Zionist followers in the lobbies, government, mass media and business.
2. Israel and Peace
The week prior to the Israeli invasion, Hamas and the PLO agreed to negotiate with Israel, giving tacit recognition to the State of Israel. Most of the mass media published reports of the accord and the European Union welcomed the agreement, stating it was the beginning of a process. The Financial Times reported: "The crisis (Israeli invasion of Gaza) has overshadowed a vital agreement reached by Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority President, on Tuesday that includes an implicit Hamas acceptance of a two state solution to the Middle East conflict. A copy released by Hamas...refers to the Palestinian goal of a state on all the land occupied in 1967..." (my emphasis) (FT June 29, 2006. p.8). Israel responded by rejecting negotiations and launched the new war to destroy the Palestinian State. In fact the Israeli State never at any point even recognized the elected Hamas government as a negotiating adversary let alone a partner.
As Noam Chomsky has documented, at every point since the 1980's, that the PLO have carried out a ceasefire, proposed a two state solution and explicitly recognized the State of Israel, the Jewish state launched the invasion of Lebanon, assassinated prominent leaders or launched military assaults, killing activists and civilians, in order to force the Palestinians to withdraw their offer.
The Israeli regime absolutely refuses to accept a negotiated prisoner release and exchange proposed by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, US client Mubarek and most of the European Union. Israel holds at least 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners including 335 children and several hundred women, most of whom have not been charged, almost all have been tortured, and the great majority are civilians seized in their homes or in the street. In a word, most civilians are kidnap victims of the Israeli Defense (sic) Forces, not captured combatants as is the case of the lone Israeli soldier. The Palestinians have repeatedly called on Israel to free the five hundred kidnapped Palestinian children and women hostages in exchange for their captured soldier. Israel responded by intensifying its military assaults and widening the net to include all Palestinians. At a cabinet meeting on July 2, Olmert stated, "I have given instructions to intensify the strength of action by the army and security services to hunt down these terrorists, those who sent them...and those who harbour them" (Aljazeera July 2, 2006). In other words, the resistance organizations (dubbed 'terrorists') combating Israeli military incursions include all major Palestinian organizations; those who "send them" - includes all the elected political authorities; and those "who harbour them", includes hundreds of thousands of families, friends, neighbors, community and civic groups, doctors and nurses - in a word, civil society. This is a totalitarian order to criminalize and target almost the entire political and civil society of Palestine.
3. Israel and Political Rights
Israel's re-occupation of Gaza and imposition of martial law is accompanied by the criminalization of the entire electoral political class: cabinet ministers, parliamentarians and party activists. Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Perez told CNN (July 2, 2006), "They (Palestinian government officials) will be put on trial and they will be accused of participating and supporting terrorist acts against the civilian government (sic)." To make its point in the best traditions of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Israelis bombed the executive offices of the Palestinian Prime Minister, setting the building on fire. As if to demolish even the memory or thought of a Palestinian government, the Israeli military juggernaut is destroying the entire Palestinian infrastructural basis for political life: buildings, leaders, parties and elections.
Systematically and with a bureaucratic efficiency, which would have won the admiration of Adolf Eichmann, the Jewish State proceeded with daily demolitions of every conceivable structure necessary for civilized life. On July 3, 2006 it bombed the university in Gaza City. On July 4 it bombed the Ministry of the Interior. On July 5 Israelis invaded Northern Gaza and the criminal story continues. For those who believed that this invasion was merely an episode in search of a prisoner of war, Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's secret police, Shin Bet, stated that the "...operation in Gaza could last months."(Aljazeera July 2, 2006). With monumental cant and hypocrisy, Major General Amos Yadlin, Israeli Army Chief of Intelligence, having arrested or driven underground the entire Palestinian leadership declared that "...mediation efforts were stymied because no one knows whom to talk to about Shalit (the Israeli POW)."
4. Israel and Terror
While Israel was destroying the very basis of Palestinian existence as a people, it was launching 24 hour artillery assaults, continual sonic booms by low flying jets, forcing the dehydration of the entire population in scorching heat by destroying drinking water supplies, living in darkness, deprived of food and confined to their homes or shelters. An entire people, without an army of their own, under military siege is holed up in an ever shrinking territory. This is the State of Terror in its most expressive and malignant form: "Collective Punishment" is not directed at securing the release of the Israeli POW; it is directed at making life for the Palestinian people so unbearable, so lacking in the most basic conditions for survival, that they will either be forced to flee or rise up in a heroic last stand, to which Israel will respond with all its murderous military might or as the distinguished academics, journalists, ideologues and Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations will describe it : "a vigorous Israeli response to Palestinian terrorism".
5. The Jewish Lobby: The Central Issue
While the Israeli assault on Gaza grinds on so does the propaganda and activism in its favor by all the major Jewish/Zionist organizations in the US andEurope. In a review of the Daily Alert (the daily organ prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in the US) since the beginning of the invasion of Gaza, one finds automatic and uncritical support for every single Israeli assault on Gaza: electrical power plants because they have "dual use"; water supplies and sewage treatment plants are "military targets" because they are used by the captors; terrorizing children and civilians is to "let them know what Siderot (an Israeli border community and home of the Defense Minister) have been going through"; intensified and prolonged Israeli repression of the Palestinian population because "Hamas and Fatah are terrorist organizations and they must be treated as terrorists and crushed by all means necessary". (Daily Alert July 3, 2006).
There is a Zionist international division of labor: the military assassins operate in Israel, the verbal assassins operate out of the plush suites of the head offices of the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations.
Nothing captures the power of the Jewish lobby as much as the Euro-American response to Israel's full scale assault on Gaza. Bush supports Israeli action even when it grossly violates Washington's 'rules' for the IDF offense: it destroyed a US financed power plant, it blew up bridges, roads and water lines contrary to Bush's admonition to "avoid damaging infrastructure and harming civilians". Israel can stick their fingers in both of Bush's eyes and have his backing because it knows that the Jewish lobby will mobilize a near unanimous Congressional endorsement, a favorable media focus on the Israeli 'hostage' and a virtual blackout on massive Palestinian suffering. Thanks to the Jewish lobby, Israel's totalitarian terror directed toward a 'Final Solution' only elicits laughable proposals from the United Nations to negotiate a peaceful resolution, when the only legitimate elected negotiators are in jail or hiding and threatened with assassination.
On July 5 the European Union (EU) castigated Israel's "disproportionate measures" and not Israel's invasion and violation of the United Nations Charter on the rights of nations to self-determination. This meek, shameful betrayal of the EU's own principles is exacerbated by its equating Israel's invasion with the Palestinian capture of an active military combatant. (La Jornada (Mexico City), July 6, 2006). The difference between Lobby-dominated US backing of Israel's invasion and the EU boils down to the "appropriate amount of force" which Israel should apply in invading Gaza.
What accounts for US support for Israeli ethnic cleansing, despite impudently and blatantly repudiating the US "moderate" guidelines on destroying Palestinian democracy? No one in their right mind can claim that the Israeli assault on Gaza is because of US policies, interests or US imperial power. The entire campaign from the beginning to end to destroy the democratically elected Hamas government was made and packaged in Israel and executed with the willing complicity of the executives among the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations in America - including but not confined to AIPAC. The daily assaults and assassinations in Gaza and the West Bank were carried out under the direction of Israeli Generals, Shin Bet and Mossad, approved by the Israeli Defense Minister and Prime Minister without consulting or even feigning to advise Washington. The campaign to isolate and destroy Hamas was overwhelmingly organized by the Jewish Lobby; it succeeded in securing a near unanimous endorsement in the US Congress and complete backing in Washington. It successfully got the Bush Administration to pressure the European Union to boycott the Hamas government.
There is no evidence that implicates Big Oil in the Israeli drive to 'cleanse' Palestine of Arabs. There is no evidence that Israel was acting on behalf of US strategists. There is a wealth of reports, documents, statements and actions taken by the Israeli regime and its US transmission belts that they imposed US complicity, engineered the entire operation in accord with their own totalitarian methods at the service of their own designed strategy to secure the 'Final Solution': Jewish rule over the entire Palestinian territory.
The Jewish Lobby has dutifully followed every twist and turn in the Israeli propaganda line on its devious road toward a purely Jewish Palestine.
For example, Israel claimed it couldn't negotiate with the Palestinians because they refused to recognize Israel (even Arafat publicly and categorically proclaimed he favored a Two State solution in the 1980's). The Lobby ignored Arafat's pledge, then labeled his proposal as unreliable, then turned around and endorsed his role as a legitimate interlocutor at the Oslo meeting after Israel passed the line that he was a statesman and not a terrorist. With Sharon scuttling the agreement, the Lobby switched to re-labeling Arafat a terrorist and blamed the PLO for failing to accept the creation of separate Palestinian Bantustans.
The Jewish State claimed that it couldn't deal with an illegitimate undemocratic regime. The Lobby parroted the line, calling Israel the "only democracy in the Middle East", while it exercised colonial rule over 3.5 million Palestinians. Subsequent to the free elections which were won by Hamas, the Israeli State rejected the democratic outcome; the Lobby "forgot" about its democratic rhetoric and again parroted the line of its Israeli masters - democratically elected authorities who are not approved by Tel Aviv are not acceptable.
Israel launched a series of measures to destroy the Palestinian economy and blockade trade and financial life; the Lobby automatically endorsed it, promoted US complicity and supported the collective punishment of the Palestinian people for having been so irresponsible as to support a nationalist government inclined to eliminate corruption.
Israel blew up US financed power plants; the Lobby supported Israel over their own government.
Israel built the segregation wall. The World Court condemned it. The Lobby defended it repeating the Israeli State line: It's a 'Security Fence'.
In other words, the evidence of the Lobby acting as a transmission belt for Israeli state policy under all conditions is overwhelming. In the face of all rational considerations, the Lobby automatically gives unquestioned support to Israel's violations of peace, democracy, human rights, international court rulings, United Nation's resolutions. This is especially true even when the Israeli State blatantly ignores US policy. There is no question that the Lobby's primary political loyalties lay with the State of Israel.
The Jewish Lobby's whole-hearted backing of Israel's assault of Gaza illustrates once again that there is no crime, no matter how terrible and perverse, which Israel commits, which will not be supported by the respectable professors, investment bankers, journalists, surgeons, policy advisers, real estate moguls, lawyers, school teachers and other ordinary folk who make up the activist base of the Major Organizations.
6. Israel and Prisoner Exchanges: The Record
The Israeli government and all its principle spokespeople have repeatedly rejected negotiations directed toward a prisoner exchange, calling the demand "outrageous", "extortion" and likely "to encourage terrorism". The Jewish State's line was predictably echoed and amplified by its representatives in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations (CPMJO) repeatedly throughout the Israeli invasion in their propaganda sheet, Daily Alert. The editorial pages of the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were full of opinion pieces supporting the Israeli line opposing prisoner exchanges written by members or supporters of the (pro-Israel) Jewish Lobby.
The historical record provides a totally different account of Israel's policy on prisoner exchange and extortion. Israel has on numerous occasions negotiated with so-called 'Palestinian terrorists' the exchange of prisoners and consummated deals. As Esther Wachsman, the mother of an Israeli soldier who died in an operation to release him, emphatically stated (and as everyone in Israel knows), "All this talk about not speaking to the terrorists is nonsense, in the end they released Palestinian prisoners with blood on their hands for three dead soldiers and they released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin for two Mossad agents." (BBC News July 1, 2006).
Equally the misplaced indignation of Israeli officials and the officials of the Jewish lobby against "extortion" is laughable, were it not so tragic. Israel systematically holds family members, relatives and entire neighborhoods of suspected activists hostage, some are even imprisoned and tortured in order to extort information or force the suspects to turn themselves in.
The practice of accusing the victims of the crimes which the executioners are about to commit, as Albert Camus once noted, is the hallmark of totalitarian regimes.
Beyond the Jewish State and Lobby's hypocrisy, cant and outright lies accompanying the refusal to negotiate a prisoner exchange is an equally important question: Why has the Israeli regime, contrary to its past practices, refused to negotiate? The explanation for Israeli intransigence is that it does not want their soldier released, at least not until they have devastated and re-occupied Gaza. The refusal to negotiate this time is a coldly calculated and cynical move to prolong the invasion and increase their stranglehold on the Gaza economy in order to accelerate the "voluntary" departure of the Palestinians. The lowly corporal is being sacrificed to the Greater Good of Greater Israel; for all the sentimental photos of the lad published in the Lobby influenced mass media, there is no accompanying concern with the cynical refusal of the Jewish State to negotiate his release.
The danger is that Israeli fundamentalism is implicating not only the US mass media and state, it's happening in US civil society, which already is suffering from police state regulation from our own rulers in the White House. Beyond the terrible plight and injustices of the Palestinians in Gaza, and US complicity is the larger question of a new air war against Iran. If Israel, through its Jewish lobby and backers in the government, can induce a US invasion of Iraq, if it can secure US and EU complicity in destroying a democratically elected government in Palestine in the course of ethnic cleansing, could the same power configuration lead to a full scale attack on Iran? The precedents have been established. The political machinery is in place. Is it a question of timing or pretext? Can some as yet unforeseen or unpredictable event or political force intervene to forestall the Zionist juggernaut? The first step is to explain the problem: to name the pro-Israel power bloc at work, to expose the issue of dual loyalties, to face down the vicious slander campaigns emanating from the agents of the Israeli state and to begin a nationwide educational and political campaign to end Israeli crimes against humanity and its Lobby's shameful apologetics for the 'Final Solution'.
"An Israeli newspaper said Israel's offensive had so far destroyed a quarter of Hezbollah's fighting capabilities. [But the REUTERS continues] It has also killed 176 people and wounded more than 500, Lebanon's health ministry said. All but 13 of them were civilians. The dead include seven Canadians killed in a strike on a southern village on Sunday." [UPDATE - REUTERS: Israel's campaign has killed 203 people, all but 13 of them civilians, and wounded more than 500. Twenty-four Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 12 civilians hit in rocket attacks.]This is just the beginning and it's just about Lebanon. The Palestinian Genocide by the Mass Murdering Israeli Beast is not even in the news anymore.
"Director of Public Relations at Gaza City's Al Shifa Hospital, Dr. Juma Al Sakka, confirmed the Palestinian Ministry of Health's report from earlier this week which stated that Israeli forces are using toxic weapons in the Gaza Strip. The doctor spoke on Thursday, giving the death count at 85 Palestinians in the Strip since the latest Israeli attack began. Among the dead are 34 children under the age of 13. And as of Thursday afternoon, 300 Palestinians are injured. Dr. Al Sakka told Voice of Palestine Radio that the Israeli army is using new types of non-conventional weapons against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the recent attacks. He said, "They are targeting the Palestinian body with unconventional weapons and with that comes a phenomena we have not seen before in any Israeli bombardment we have lived through for many years." He continued, "The hospital is central and sees almost all cases of injuries and deaths as a result of Israeli against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. These Israeli bombings are entering the body and fragmenting, causing internal combustion leading to up to fourth degree internal burns, exposing the bone, and affecting the tissue and skin." The doctor added, "These tissues die, they do not survive, which obliges us to perform arm or leg amputations, and there are fragments which penetrate the body and do not show up on X-rays. When entering the body they spark like a combustion firearm, but not chemically. They seem radioactive." (...) He called on the international community to examine the latest weapons however the doctor reported that "no one has lifted a finger." Dr. Al Sakka complained that he did not see any foreign medical institution interested in the use of new weapons and their affects on the human body. He said, "What we found were journalists who came to take pictures, but as for the medical community, nothing.""The banality of evil gets into our homes between a talk show and the weather forecast when "our" TV channels normalize the unthinkable of massive crimes against humanity perpetrated by the racist, nuclear theocracy with the support of the other two genocidal regimes of Washington and London.
You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East. ... You're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?
They love to start wars, not fight them. That's for the poor schmucks who don't know any better and sign up to run the fool's errands Kristol wants to send them on. On Thursday, we had Ben Barnes, the former Lt. Governor of Texas on our show talking about how he got all the rich kids of Texas out of the Vietnam War, including George W. Bush. There was something about hearing him say it that struck me. It isn't just theoretical; they really do get their kids out of war while they send poor kids to get ground up by the war machine. There is something infinitely sick about that.
And here's Kristol now on Fox News channel today talking about how we need more war, a wider war, a bigger war. He says it's "a great opportunity." You could almost see him drooling. Watch this clip:
Bill Kristol on Fox News Channel
First of all, I'd like to congratulate Juan Williams for finally calling him out on this nonsense. Second, I loved Kristol's reaction to Williams. Shrug it off -- yes, of course, I want more war. No skin off his ass.
For those of you lucky enough to not know Bill Kristol, he is the top neocon intellectual (how's that for a gigantic oxymoron) in the country. He is the editor of The Weekly Standard, the bible of neo-conservatism and warmongering. He is in effect their propaganda minister. And like all good propaganda ministers, he will never bring his pampered, powdered soft ass anywhere near a battle line. But he can't wait for your kid to die in the wars he starts.
He goads the country by calling it weak and does what all people trained in propaganda do - unless you attack the country I tell you to, I will call all of you weak and cowardly. The oldest trick in the book. Read it for yourself in his latest article here.
The chickenhawk is calling the rest of us chickens. How's that for rich irony?
In the video clip, Kristol mentions that Israel is now fighting four out of five of our enemies. He says that the only enemy of ours not in this current battle is Al-Qaeda. He neglects to mention that they are the only people who actually attacked us! The other four are only our enemies because the neocons have convinced this administration to threaten them. Those people never attacked us -- we threatened to attack them.
Frankly, I don't give a damn what Kristol's motivations are. I don't care if he has some other interests in mind or if he just loves blood. Maybe the sight of other people bleeding for his ideas turns him on. But anyway, you slice it, it's maniacal and unacceptable.
Right now, we should be spending all of our time and energy trying to figure out a way to avoid a broader Middle Eastern War, a war that could suck us into World War III. We have 130,000 troops waiting in Iraq like sitting ducks. What happens when Israel and Iran start exchanging bombs? It's obvious -- we get sucked into fighting Iran ... and the Iraqi Shiites, and the Iraqi Sunnis, and the Syrians, and the Lebanese and ...
That's a world of pain. If you thought the Iraq War has gone poorly, wait till you get a load of the broader Middle East War -- where everyone in the region is against us.
How haughty and arrogant could we be? What are we going to do, bomb, fight and occupy the whole Middle East? We couldn't even handle Iraq. How in the world are we going to handle Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon at the same time? We are asking for a terrible war we can't possibly win.
We wouldn't even know what winning means. Since it's not our interests we're fighting for, when do we know we won? When we obliterate the whole Middle East? When they bow down to our military might? When they stop fighting us? There is no winning because there's nothing to win.
Yet, instead of calling for calm and a halt to the bombings our President encourages Israel to go further because of dangerous neocons like Kristol whispering in his ear (notice how Kristol gave Bush a little pat on the head on Fox by saying he likes the administration's reaction from the last couple of days - good boy, good boy). If we don't do something right now, we are going to be in the middle of an intractable, bloody war before we know what hit us.
Don't get me wrong, I think Hamas and Hezbollah started the hostilities in this case. They sent a terrible message to Israel by attacking from territories Israel withdrew from. That precedent can only do tremendous damage to their own people because it encourages occupation. Then Israel overreacted and has killed far more civilians than necessary in a foolhardy effort to send a message. What's the message? We'll kill your women and children if you keep it up?
But at this point, it's futile and unproductive to be worried about who started it. Instead, we need to focus all of our energies on how to stop it. Unfortunately, we have a couple of roadblocks here at home preventing us from trying to come up with a peaceful and productive solution. One of those roadblocks goes by the name of Bill Kristol.
Comment on this Article
"On the eve of the 1982 invasion [of Lebanon], US Secretary of State Alexander Haig told Ariel Sharon that, before starting it, it was necessary to have a "clear provocation", which would be accepted by the world." - Uri Avnery, 'The real aim of Israel's attacks on Lebanon'
"The idea of installing a Quisling in Lebanon is nothing new. In 1955, David Ben-Gurion proposed taking a "Christian officer" and installing him as dictator. Moshe Sharet showed that this idea was based on complete ignorance of Lebanese affairs and torpedoed it. But 27 years later, Ariel Sharon tried to put it into effect nevertheless. Bashir Gemayel was indeed installed as president, only to be murdered soon afterwards. His brother, Amin, succeeded him and signed a peace agreement with Israel, but was driven out of office. (The same brother is now publicly supporting the Israeli operation.)" [ibid]
[It] is clearly impossible under the present Lebanese regime, a delicate fabric of ethno-religious communities. The slightest shock can bring the whole structure crashing down and throw the state into total anarchy - especially after the Americans succeeded in driving out the Syrian army, the only element that has for years provided some stability. [ibid]
"3 Killed and 11 Injured, including 2 Journalists & 2 Paramedics; Forced Exodus of Families in Rafah & Beit Hanoun; and the Gaza Strip is Isolated from the Outside World" - 'IOF Occupy & Isolate Beit Hanoun, and Destroy the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Report', PCHR, 17 July 2006
"What is Israel's running wild likely to achieve? Not much. As for the captured soldiers, any action other than negotiations is gambling with their lives, as their families now start to say out louder. As for the missiles shot from Gaza, the military could not stop them when it was sitting inside the Strip - obviously, it cannot stop them by casual incursions and air bombing. As for Lebanon, the disproportional Israeli reaction made Hezbollah fire missiles at the whole of northern Israel, both at communities that had enjoyed relative quiet since 2000 and at places that had never experienced any Lebanese missiles before." 'The Army Wants Action: The great fiasco' Ran HaCohen, 16 July 2006
"As I write, Prime Minister Olmert is about to speak to Parliament so I've been asking people on the street what they think of him. Three to one they seem to be pretty enthusiastic about what he's done."
' The civilian toll continued to mount in Lebanon yesterday as Israeli planes struck dozens of targets. Nine civilians, including two children, were killed when they were hit by a missile that struck a bridge in the southern port city of Sidon . In the southern city of Tyre , rescue workers pulled nine more bodies from the civil defence building that was hit on Sunday in an Israeli strike. Close to 200 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began last week, when Hizbullah attacked an Israeli border patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Five more soldiers were killed when they gave chase into Lebanon .'Hizbullah sent rockets on Israel again Monday, with four hitting Haifa, including a strike that collapsed a building and injured 11 persons. Since the outbreak of the fighting last Wednesday, 24 Israelis have been killed, 12 soldiers and 12 civilians.
I find this particularly inexcusable on Blair's part -- after all, English is his mother tongue.
But the really crucial part of the dialogue, I think, was this bit:
Blair: Look -- what does he think? (It appears from the context that the PM is talking about Syrian President Bashar Assad) He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine. If you get a solution in Israel and Palestine. Iraq goes in the right way . . .Bush: Yeah -- he's [indistinct]
Blair: Yeah . . . He's had it. That's what all this is about -- it's the same with Iran.
This is fascinating as well as terrifying. It suggests that Bush and his faithful water carrier both really believe their own bullshit -- not just in terms of viewing Hezbollah and Hamas as the mindless tools of Syria and Iran, but also in their rosy-lensed assessments of how things are going in the Middle East these days.
Consider what Blair seems to be saying, and Bush grunting between mouthfuls of food (Yeah . . . Yeah.) These fools actually seem to think that Syria and/or Iran ordered their Hezbollah and Hamas minions to stir up trouble with the Israelis because Assad and/or the mullahs are worried that:
A.) The "Cedar Revolution" will create a strong, united Lebanon (Presumably one in which Syrian influence and Hezbollah muscle vanish into thin air.)
B.) There will be a peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. (Due, no doubt, to the heroic efforts of these two great humanitarians.)
C.) Things in Iraq will "go in the right way."
I mean, how much more out of touch with reality could the killer Bs possibly be? Their own wishful thinking about the consequences of their own pathetic follies appears to have left them with some wholly fantastical ideas about what motivates their enemies in the region. Either that, or they've completely bought the sugar coated lies being spoon fed them by their subordinates. My guess is that it's probably a bit of both -- creating a perfect, impenetrable feedback loop of flattery, deception and wish fulfillment.
Juan Cole says reading the transcript left him "shaken and trembling." I guess I would be too, if I hadn't already come to the conclusion that we're completely fucked. Pessimism does have its advantages.
Still, it's hard not to be impressed with the level of delusion picked up by that treacherous microphone. I hate to violate Godwin's Law (and you all know how much I hate it) but this conversation reads, psychologically at least, like table talk between Hitler and one of his remaining puppet allies, circa the winter of 1945. The Germans even had a name for this kind of thinking (I use the word loosely.) They called it "Cloud Cuckoo Land."
