Anti-Palestinism is Hate Speech
By Ahmad Amr | Palestine Chronicle | June 18, 2010
Make no mistake, the likes of Biden will be obliged to eat their words.
I bet you’ve never heard of anti-Palestinism? In Israel and the United States, defaming and delegitimizing the Palestinians is a national sport; but have you ever heard anybody complain about it? Why didn’t Americans get worked up when 1,400 Palestinians were incinerated with Israeli phosphorous bombs? Why did the murder of 300 children in last year’s assault not touch a nerve? Why did it take three long years and the slaughter of eight Turks and a Turkish-American citizen to notice that Israel has incarcerated 1.5 million Palestinians in a concentration camp?
What if you were Palestinian shell shocked by decades of the world’s collective indifference? What would you tell your children? Is there any way to explain to a child why his people were ethnically cleansed to make room for a State as Jewish as England is English?
Why do pundits and politicians in the West get away with denying that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the Holy Land? Why do we allow Israelis and their supporters to denigrate the historic rights of the Palestinians to live in the only homeland they’ve ever known? How is it that we don’t notice that, even today, half the population of historic Palestine is of native stock?
Why do the treasonous intellectuals of the West routinely allow Zionists to unabashedly declare their ‘right’ to settle in the Holy Land? Are they really that ignorant of the ethnic cleansing that dispossessed the Palestinians in 1948 or have they been afflicted by the epidemic of anti-Palisitinism? With or without a state, should we accord the Palestinians the right to exist and what kind of existence are they entitled to?
It’s one thing to talk about the facts on the ground and despair at the remote possibilities of a just solution for Palestinian problem. Because we all know what it would take to accord Palestinians the full spectrum of rights that we all take for granted. We all have the right to leave and return to the places where we were born – to the sacred land where our forefathers are buried. But if the Palestinians make legitimate claims to exercise that most basic of rights, they are accused of denying the right of Israel to exist.
Simply put, if international law applied to Palestinians, we would have to restore their rights to live anywhere in their ancestral homeland. But that’s not in the cards – because they’re nothing more than Palestinians and anti-Palestinism is the law of the land. If we were of a mind to accord them their legitimate rights, we would be obliged to issue every Palestinian refugee a visa to return to the Holy Land and we all know where that might lead – a country where immigrant European Jews and their descendents would be ‘deprived’ of an exclusive Jewish state.
Heaven forbid we should even attempt to persuade Israeli Jews to grant equal rights to the indigenous population. See, that would be considered anti-Zionism which is now deemed indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. The whole notion that there ever was an indigenous population in the Holy Land is a taboo subject. When it comes to the Palestinians, we cast reason aside and conveniently forget history, demographics and DNA. Who died and gave the Israelis and their dispensationalist Armageddon worshiping allies a license to make the absurd claim that Ethiopian and Moldavian Jews are the original natives of Palestine. Who issued the Israeli Lobbyists a pass to substitute their scripture for international law? Who says Jews are chosen and the Palestinians are not. And tell me again; if you’re not chosen, I imagine that means you’re cursed. How derogatory is that?
If you probe Zionist theology, you’ll see the logic behind the core Zionist argument. Palestinian Christians and Muslims deserved to be ethnically cleansed because they abandoned the ‘right’ religious traditions. Think about that because it’s a real simple concept to digest. If the Zionists had shown up on the shores of Palestine and found the natives still practicing Judaism, they wouldn’t have evicted them from their homes or expropriated their lands. Every Palestinian understands that. They also understand that if they had obliged the Zionists and converted to Judaism, they might have been spared an eviction notice and all the carnage that has plagued them for two generations. You want to know the original sins of the Palestinians – some of them put their faith in Jesus and gave up Judaism for Orthodox Christianity and others went a step further and embraced Islam. Had they stuck to their ancient Jewish traditions, they would never have tasted the bitter fruit of exile and dispossession.
Today, we have six million nuclear armed Zionists in full control of the entire historical boundaries of Palestine and another six million Palestinian natives living under the military rule of a Jewish supremacist state. Even in ‘Israel proper’, 20% of the citizens are descendents of the indigenous people of the Holy Land. Just to give you a perspective, at the height of the civil rights movement, only 12% of Americans were of African descent. I challenge anybody to compare the worst excesses of the segregationist south to the draconian laws that apply to Palestinians living under military occupation.
The toll in the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland was 13. Last week, the British finally got around to apologizing for that crime but will they ever get around to making amends for the Balfour Declaration? Even the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa didn’t kill the way Israel kills. In 1976, five hundred Africans were slaughtered in the Soweto uprising. Not that the world paid much attention to the carnage – but compare that figure to the 1,400 civilians who were slaughtered in Gaza last year. Does the State Department keep a tally of how many Palestinians have been butchered since the Zionists came to build a ‘Jewish homeland’ on their native soil?
Did the Palestinians deserve what happened to them? If they had been left unmolested by the British and the Zionists, what kind of country would they have now? That’s what the world looks like from Palestinian eyes? Why us and why doesn’t anybody care? They’ve stolen our homeland – can’t the Israelis at least leave us with the memories of what was and what could have been? Before they set their covetous eyes on our towns and villages in the West Bank, can’t they take a deep breath, hang their head in shame and step back to the land they’ve already vanquished?
Why are the Israelis given a carte blanche to falsify history? Why is Nakba denial not considered beyond the pale? Indeed, why is the ‘Nakba’ not part of our daily vocabulary?
Why was Joseph Biden not taken to task when he publicly avowed his allegiance to Zionist ideology? Where was the public outcry? Why didn’t anybody call for his immediate resignation? What exactly did the Vice President of the United States mean to say? Those words have a very clear meaning – they are an expression of the vilest form of anti-Palestinism? When somebody utters them – every Palestinian understands their meaning? It means that Palestine never had a right to exist – that it was a disposable country that deserved to be eradicated off the face of the earth. I know Joseph Biden is a bigot for uttering those words; the problem is he doesn’t. Worst still, he feels righteous in saying them – as righteous as any true blue segregationist who applauded Jim Crow laws – as righteous as any Nazi German who believed that European Jews deserved to be transferred – as righteous as any Zionist who believes the Palestinians should be ethnically cleansed to make room for Eretz Israel.
The thing about Zionists who openly spew their anti-Palestinism is not their support of the right of Israel to exist but their subscription to the obscene notion that Palestinians deserved to lose their homeland. In formulating a resolution of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, it is one thing to accommodate current demographic and political realities and quite another to say that Israel had the right to come into existence over the carcass of Palestine. We can acknowledge and deal with the end result of the nauseating refuse of Israeli history without justifying the cruelty inflicted on the Palestinians. Tribes have eradicated tribes for centuries. But last I checked, this is the 21st Century. What might have been considered acceptable conduct at the peak of the European colonialism should not be condoned today. We’ve dealt with segregationist southerners and the radical Apartheid regime and we can work a humane resolution to the plight of the indigenous people of the Holy Land without cheering Zionist racists or denigrating their Palestinian victims.
Anti-Palestinism deprives us of the moral clarity that is essential to a resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We need to start recognizing anti-Palestinism for what it is – hate speech. That day will come when every pundit and every politician will rue the day they publicly flaunted their anti-Palestinism. Make no mistake, in the not so distant future, bigots like Joseph Biden will be obliged to eat their words and apologize for their blatant espousal of ethnic cleansing. When anti-Palestinism becomes a crime, Biden is the first person the Palestinians should sue.
– Ahmed Amr is an Arab-American. He is the former editor of NileMedia.com and the author of “The Sheep and the Guardians – Diary of a SEC Sanctioned Swindle.”
Terry Gross has no empathy for Palestinians
By Susie Kneedler on June 16, 2010
Terry Gross once ended an interview with Palestinian human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh by asking whether he wanted to “mov[e] someplace else so that you wouldn’t be subjected to this… Israeli incursion.” Shehadeh retorted gently, “life…under Occupation” has “never been as difficult and as dangerous…and as frustrating as it is now. But, no, I will not leave.” NPR transcript here.
Terry Gross boasts in her new ad that “often when I’m interviewing people on Fresh Air, they give me a different way of looking at the world,” but her condescension to Shehadeh, a founder of Al-Haq (The Truth), shows how blind she is to Palestinian rights under International Law and how much she assumes Palestinians must make way for Israel’s expansion.
Gross has done no reports on the flotilla raid, and this just bears out her historical pattern. I’ve wondered for years about Gross’s cowardice in the face of Israeli injustice. She truly sides with the oppressors, imagining that they’re still victims. I listened to all three interviews that Gross had with Raja Shehadeh. And each time she administered an immediate antidote of airing an Israel booster, and not just any Israelis, but rightwingers: Yossi Klein Halevi, February 6, 2002; Michael Oren, June 11, 2002; and now Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz, October 28, 2003.
In the prologue to her interviews with Shehadeh, Gross palms off Israeli propaganda as truth: “his town Ramallah was occupied by the Israeli army…This was part of a larger Israeli military operation to root out terrorists in response to suicide bombings” (Oct. 28, 2003). Gross omits the then-35-year Occupation, depicting Israeli aggression rather than Palestinian resistance as self-defense. No, only Ramallah was “Occupied.” Context is all, with news and with history.
Having introduced Shehadeh by reciting Israel’s hype, Gross heralds David Horovitz by peddling Horovitz’s own claims as fact:: “He told me that in Israel fear of suicide bombers is profound and unrelenting.” Gross’s preconceptions bow to establishment stereotypes: Occupied Palestine is riddled with homocidal attackers; mighty Israel is besieged by terror. Gross poses different questions to her two guests, and gets similar replies about great threats. But Gross responds unequally to the comparable answers–not least in neglecting to point out the false equivalency of their suffering. For Shehadeh is Occupied, whereas Horovitz speaks for Occupier. Worse yet, Gross ignores Shehadeh’s plight, the devastating fear in every bit of life–and death–in living under Occupation. Her only reaction is to change the subject.
By contrast, Gross chortles appreciatively when Horovitz chats about the ordeal of being searched at stores, despite being so blond–with a blond family–“we all look like recent arrivals from Sweden.” Terry Gross’s rare talent–one I used to love–is her engaging laugh. Gross’s mirth graces her interviews with ingenuous delight (especially compared to many witless hosts’ awkward guffaws). She could just as easily find glimmers of fun in Shehadeh’s self-deprecating relief that, when the IDF (sic) invaded his house, at least his gate kept the soldiers from terrifyingly banging on his door. Or the IDF’s bewilderment about how unmenacing he was: “I’m not a big person and perhaps that disarmed them.” Gross cuts Shehadeh off from her sympathetic sense of the ludicrous. She withholds empathy even when Shehadeh winningly confides his dread–“Would I break down?”– or describes his efforts to brave danger calmly, without belligerence.
That’s the pattern: Terry Gross refuses to converse with Shehadeh, but, rather, issues a series of insulting non-sequiturs that allow for no actual interaction. When she switches the topic to Israel’s “barrier fence,” Shehadah corrects her by explaining why it is an “Apartheid Wall,” stealing Palestinian land as it encircles their towns. But when Gross later asks Horovitz about the Wall, she reverts to “barrier,” not deigning to press Horowitz on links between Israeli tyranny and South Africa’s Apartheid.
With Horovitz, rather than changing subjects, Gross follows up with concern: “Has [suicide bombing] affected your views of Palestinians?” Horovitz generalizes: “Well, I can only relate to the Palestinian people by the opinion polls,” which “troublingly,” say that “most Palestinians say they support the bombers.” Horovitz justifies Israel scuppering peace talks.
Raja Shehadeh by contrast, speaks sadly of how extremists on both sides try to de-humanize the other. During the soldiers’ raid, ” I found young people dressed in such gear that you could hardly see them.” However, “I tried to make some human contact with them, but it was impossible….So I…felt some pity for them.” He could imagine how “they’d been told perhaps that every Palestinian hates them, and they live with this burden.” What largeness of mind.
But Gross doesn’t inquire whether IDF actions have embittered Shehadeh’s views of Israelis. Instead, Gross prods him to deprecate the president of Malaysia’s “anti-Semitic” remark, which he emphatically does.
Gross examines Shehadeh on his opinion of current Israeli-Palestinian informal peace proposals, but she locks out Shehadeh’s point, that Palestinians would accept compensation in lieu of Actual Return to the land of their ancestors. Gross hears intransigence rather than qualified enthusiasm: “Sounds as though you couldn’t really back this plan because it has no right of return.” Gross’s deafness betrays her prejudice: she imputes to Shehadeh Israel’s obstinacy–and her own?
Gross hops on again, insinuating that Shehadeh might “know anybody who’s directly connected to” “suicide bombers.” No, of course not, but Raja Shehadeh opens his conscience to say that he wants never “to compete in the horror and the tragedy because both sides have suffered horror….But I know victims… Israelis and Palestinians.” Shehadeh “cannot understand why [bombers] are driven to this,” but reminds us, “life in the Occupied Territories is to live in such despair.”
“The fact that Israel is killing babies and children does NOT justify such acts” he declares, explaining that there was “No possibility that anyone would do something like” blowing himself up before 1994, when [illegal] settlers killed worshippers.
Raja Shehadeh offers a beautiful introspection: “What has happened to us? We are at the edge.”
Gross leapfrogs; Shehadeh offers leaps of faith: “The beauty of Palestine historically has been a place of tolerance between the three religions…because Christians, Jews, and Muslims were living side by side….My struggle is for attaining freedom and…tolerance.”
Gross jumps on, disdaining to invite Shehadeh’s exploration of how despair warps the tyrannized–a logical, though deplorable–concomitant of more deplorable Israeli aggression, or his vision of a harmonious future Palestine. She fixates instead on her abhorrence of the bombers: have you, she prods, “witnessed extremist groups manipulating the despair, to try to create the environment where people are willing to blow themselves up?” Terry Gross misses his point: Israel created the environment of despair. Shehadeh though gives Gross the benefit of the doubt, describing how extremists on both sides take advantage of their people’s suffering. Gross might condole with him for all his endearing admissions, but she moves on. Nothing to see here, folks.
David Horovitz extends no such self-examination; he simply blames others, demanding that Palestinians: “stop the bombers,” “because then we can settle down to peace talks.” Horovitz even promises that the Israeli leadership then “would be rushing back to the peace talks.”
Of course, Palestinians have now stopped such bombings. Has Horovitz urged Netanyahu to “rush back to the peace talks”? No. Horovitz now proves his bad faith. He demands new concessions from Palestinians:
“Let Abbas speak in Arabic, to his own people – with his leadership colleagues on hand to publicly support and applaud him – and let him tell them that the Jews, too, have historic rights to Palestine.”
We need to study what Israel’s incessant moving of the proverbial goalposts does to the people of Palestine. Humans perceive such trickery with standards as taunting, and taunting–I know from being a child and now a parent–creates the greatest rage.
Gross surmises that Shehadeh might want to solve his problems by just leaving his home and people and seems almost exasperated. She’s in a muddle: as if she wants to commiserate–except that she can’t–for that means acknowledging Israel’s crimes–so she niggles Shehadeh to abandon all that’s right–though what’s right is giving up whatever Israel covets. Gross’s graceless query reminds me of the false concern and real prejudice of the father, Yaakov Levinson, in Heart of Jenin, to the Palestinian man, Ismail Khatib, who saved the life of Levinson’s tiny daughter. Khatib hoped to create ties through his acts of mercy, but the best gratitude the illegal-colonist Levinson could muster was a patronizing rebuff, “Can’t he emigrate?….There’s nothing for him here.”
What would have been really new sights–and sounds–from the show that labels itself as offering fresh air, is Gross truly listening to those our culture demonizes as Other. But Gross would have to care enough about the unexpectedness of the world–if not her job–to stretch beyond her preconceptions. Emily Henochowicz gives us an exquisite image for such elasticity of vision in an entrancing work of art (below), “Me to then-Me.” Henochowicz depicts her 2010 canvas stretching out to pull her 2009 model forward to catch up with her always-growing self. She posted it on the very eve of the protest where the IDF shot out her eye. Not many of us can equal our Emily’s indomitable ardor–her glorious sense of motion, of play–, but we can try.
Perhaps Terry Gross, the host who sells new ways of looking, can learn from Emily Henochowicz’s “Visual Adventure” to discern anew. Yesterday, Gross’s show featured the one-year anniversary of Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari’s arrest by Iran, then John Powers’s review of Philip Kerr’s thriller about the Nazi era–topics that are both acceptable to the Israel lobby. Why hasn’t Gross tackled recent Israeli attacks, asking Emily Henochowicz to describe her work defending the people of Palestine she has come to love? So brilliant an artist and dedicated a peace-worker has much to teach. When will Gross invite surviving activists from Free Gaza to speak?
Maybe Gross will then reminisce about Raja Shehadeh’s generosity of spirit, his long-suffering valor, to discover new perspectives on Palestine. We all can exercise our spirits, extending ourselves to catch up with Shehadeh’s charity and mercy. We’re lucky to have such reaching souls, among many in Palestine and around the world, to inspire. We, too, can imagine, and thus create, a future that sees the alien, that perceives beyond our expectations, and onward still.
Friday night, Terry Gross, the longtime host of Fresh Air on National Public Radio, will submit to questions in an event at Town Hall in New York, hosted by Brian Lehrer, a talk-show host at WNYC.
Israel cannot be its own judge and jury
By Linda S. Heard | Online Journal | June 16, 2010
Once again, the White House has set aside right in favor of Israel’s self-interest.
The United Nations and the majority of its member countries seek an international inquiry into the killing of eight Turkish activists and one American of Turkish origin who tried to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza. Turkey is adamant that an independent, transparent process should take place and demands that the siege be lifted.
But Israel rejects calls to end its blockade and says it would not cooperate with any such investigation. Instead, it plans to investigate itself. Nothing surprising there! But it is certainly galling for those who care that justice is seen to be done that the United States has apparently blessed Israel’s plan, which is akin to allowing an individual accused of murder to set up his own court of law and try himself. No other country on the planet would be given a similar green light.
Moreover, the White House has endorsed Israel’s rejection of an international inquiry with a statement that reads, “Israel has a military justice system that meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation.” This is simply laughable. When has anyone in the Israeli Defense Forces been held accountable for anything apart from minor infractions during past decades? Even the few declared to have done wrong get away with a rap on the knuckles.
It’s particularly telling that although Ariel Sharon was found by an Israeli commission to have been “indirectly” responsible for the massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon’s Sabra and Shatilla camps, he was eventually rewarded with the post of prime minister. Since then, dozens of soldiers who would be declared war criminals by any other nation have been awarded medals.
A striking example of this is the drunken IDF bulldozer driver Moshe Nissim, nicknamed “Kurdi Bear,” who, in 2002, demolished homes in the Jenin refugee camp without caring whether anyone was inside them. “If I am sorry for anything, it is for not tearing the whole camp down,” he said, before launching into how much he enjoyed his work. For that, he became a national hero and received a medal of honor from the Israeli Army. The UN actually set up a team to investigate Jenin while the evidence was still in place but as soon as Israel said, “We’re not playing ball,” they all went home.
Likewise, Israel has heaped honors on Jewish terrorists involved in what came to be known as “the Lavon Affair” in the 1950s — people who placed bombs inside American and British installations within Egypt as part of a false-flag operation endorsed by Israel’s current president, Shimon Peres. After decades of denying any connection with the terrorists, in 2005, Israel showered the surviving operatives with medals. The then US President George W. Bush didn’t care about the admission that Israel had authorized the bombing of American buildings in the same way that no US leader has cared to punish Israel for its attack on America’s research ship, the USS Liberty, in 1967.
President Barack Obama is either incredibly naïve and misinformed or is being willfully blind for fear of upsetting America’s pro-Israel Congress and lobby. How on earth can he believe that Israel will conduct an honest and fair inquiry when it has torn up the Goldstone report on Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza suggesting that Israelis may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity?
Even more to the point in this particular instance is the fact that Israel’s hard-line, right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his propaganda machine have been spewing lies since the flotilla incident took place. They’ve called the peace activists terrorists with links to Al-Qaeda and have suggested they were armed and ready to murder Israeli commandos.
Yet, Israel not only released those “terrorists” to their home countries, the only weapons on display from the Mavi Marmara were chair legs, slingshots, marbles and metal bars. Let’s face it, could you honestly imagine that Al-Qaeda guys would board that ship with marbles to face off against the full might of the Israeli military? And, secondly, if it was their pre-planned intention to kill Israelis, why did they leave alive the three Israelis who were captured and deprived of their guns?
It’s interesting that the US Defense Minister Robert Gates blames the European Union’s reluctance to embrace Turkey’s membership for Ankara’s drift away from the EU and Israel toward new partnerships in the Middle East. In this case, is he also prepared to blame President Obama for throwing Turkey to the wolves in an effort to appease Tel Aviv and its rah-rah crowd in Washington?
The signs are clear. Israel’s murderous attack on the flotilla will be pushed under the carpet like every other nefarious thing it has perpetrated. And even though the blockade of Gaza has been deemed illegal by the UN, it’s not about to be lifted. The International Committee of the Red Cross has described it as “collective punishment” which violates the Geneva Conventions and is a “crime under international law” but who’s listening? I suspect that Israel will ease the flow of goods into Gaza for awhile to take some heat off itself and then everything will return to the status quo, which is an insult to those courageous Turks who sacrificed their lives.
Now, there’s another storm brewing. Uri Brodsky, an Israeli wanted by Germany in connection with illegally obtaining the German passport that was used by an alleged Mossad agent to assassinate a Hamas commander in Dubai has been arrested in Poland.
Germany seeks his extradition but Israel insists he should be flown to Tel Aviv for investigation there. Here we go again! Israel admits that the accused is an Israeli citizen and is demanding his return so an Israeli probe can be launched. I know. Feel free to laugh out loud. All eyes are now on Warsaw to see which way this dedicated friend to Israel will jump.
In the meantime, Dubai is mulling whether or not to request extradition itself which will largely depend on whether Brodsky is directly linked to the assassination. Dubai’s police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, says Israel is not a country governed by laws but one that settles its scores “in a gang-like manner.” At least there’s one person in the world who says it like it is!
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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Haaretz: Officers Shot Palestinian Lying On Ground
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – June 16, 2010
The official Israeli version of an incident last Friday, in which a Palestinian motorist from East Jerusalem was killed by Israeli border officers after a motor vehicle accident, has been challenged by a new report released today by the Israeli paper Haaretz.
Ziad Jilani (photo from haaretz)
According to the new report, witnesses say that the motorist accidentally hit a group of Israeli border officers walking on the road, and was then killed in revenge by the other officers.
The witnesses reported that the motorist, 39-year old Ziad Jilani, was lying prone on the ground when the officers shot him in the face at point-bank range after kicking him in the head.
The incident took place in the Wadi Joz neighborhood, an area of increased tension since Israeli authorities declared it to be part of a planned expansion of Jewish settlements in what has historically been a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
According to witnesses, a number of Israeli border officers on horseback and on foot entered the Palestinian neighborhood on Friday afternoon as Muslim prayers were getting out, creating a tense situation in the midst of heavy traffic. Jilani was driving along the heavily-trafficked road when some Palestinian youth began throwing stones at the officers.
Two witnesses said they saw one of the stones hit Jilani’s front windshield, causing him to swerve to the left and hit the officers. The officers began firing at Jilani, who drove away and pulled into an alley nearby, where they continued to pursue him, firing their weapons.
A witness who lives along the alley said she saw the vehicle pull in, and saw Jilani get out with the officers close behind him. She told a reporter from Haaretz, “There was shooting and I started to scream. My mother ran toward me and threw me to the ground. Everything happened within seconds. I realized he wasn’t walking normally, and saw the shattered windshield of the car, maybe from a stone. He ran until he fell over. He got out of the car, and they came after him. Not just one of them shot, but many of them, and then they started yelling in Hebrew for people to go back into their homes.” She said she saw the officers kicking Jilani in the head and then shooting him twice with rifles at close range, killing him.
A spokesman for the border police refused to comment on the eyewitness reports, instead claiming that the striking of the officers was an intentional act by Jilani, and that “Individuals have been killed and dozens wounded in vehicle attacks in Jerusalem between 2008 and 2009 … All of those attacks were committed by East Jerusalem residents, and in each case those close to the perpetrators described the incidents as ‘accidents.’”
Jilani was married with three daughters. His widow is a US citizen.
Obama’s contempt for international standards
By Paul Woodward on June 14, 2010
The National Security Strategy of the Obama administration says: “if nations challenge or undermine an international order that is based upon rights and responsibilities, they must find themselves isolated.”
Israel is currently resisting international pressure to accept an international investigation into the circumstances in which at least nine Turkish civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers on board the Mavi Marmara while the ship was in international waters moving away from Israel.
The UN Security Council, under pressure from the Obama administration, watered down a call for an international investigation into the massacre by saying that such an inquiry should merely meet “international standards.”
When team Obama came up with that phrase — as they surely did — did they first consult with George Bush’s former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton? It’s his kind of language. It cynically gives a passing nod to the idea that an inquiry needs international legitimacy, yet leaves it to Israel — a state that views the international community with contempt — to determine how that requirement might be met.
The answer, as far a Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned, is to toss in a couple of international figures who can observe the workings of the Israeli commission — a three-man body whose members have an average age of 85.
One of the two internationals is David Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland. Are his the eyes that can ensure this commission conducts “a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation”?
On the day of the Israeli assault, the Jerusalem Post reported on the launch of the “Friends of Israel Initiative,” a new project in defense of Israel’s right to exist, led by Spain’s former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar. This group of international leaders includes none other than, David Trimble.
The initiative is being launched now, its sponsors said in a statement, because of their outrage and concern about the “unprecedented delegitimation campaign against Israel, driven by the enemies of the Jewish state and perversely assumed by numerous international authorities.”
So will a commission in which there is an international observer with a declared suspicion of international organizations, meet “international standards”?
The White House calls this “an important step forward” and says:
We believe that Israel, like any other nation, should be allowed to undertake an investigation into events that involve its national security. Israel has a military justice system that meets international standards and is capable of conducting a serious and credible investigation, and the structure and terms of reference of Israel’s proposed independent public commission can meet the standard of a prompt, impartial, credible, and transparent investigation.
Credible perhaps to an American president who serves at the pleasure of the Israel lobby, but on this matter Obama doesn’t even have the support of the New York Times.
Flotilla attackers to feast in Italy
Press TV – June 15, 2010
Leader of Rome’s Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici
The leader of the Jewish community in Rome has arranged a recreational trip to Italy for two Israeli forces involved a deadly attack on a Gaza aid convoy.
Riccardo Pacifici, chief of Rome’s Jewish community, invited the Israeli navy troops to Italy during his visit to Israel, where he praised and lionized them as “heroes,” IRNA reported on Monday.
Israeli commandos killed at least 20 human rights activists and injured 50 others during a May 31 onslaught on a six-ship fleet carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid and 700 international activists from 42 countries to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israel also arrested hundreds of the civilians on board the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the years-long siege of Gaza.
The campaigners were captured and forcefully taken into Israel from the international waters where they were attacked, but were soon released under international pressure on Tel Aviv not to deepen the crisis.
The attack sparked outrage across the globe and led to a chorus of calls for lifting the siege on the impoverished Gaza Strip.
What happens when a country has no borders?
By Paul Woodward on June 14, 2010
In the hours leading up to the Mavi Marmara massacre, Israel extended like a cloud whose shadow spread deep into the Mediterranean. The Turkish ship’s captain took evasive action but it’s hard to escape the reach of a nation whose borders are so elastic.
Anyone who reads the Israeli press will sooner or later notice one of the curious features about Israel’s geographic identity. Politicians talk about threats from the north and the south in such a way that Israel sounds like a legendary kingdom on whose periphery are regions of darkness. It doesn’t have borders as such but instead margins of indeterminate depth where it is dangerous to venture.
This might explain in part the mythopoetic imagination through which Israelis see themselves heroically standing up against the forces of evil. It also suggests why it is that a very modern state has a medieval view of the world.
Benjamin Netanyahu warned his cabinet this weekend: “Dark forces from the Middle Ages are raging against us. I have received calls from concerned officials in the Balkans and Eastern Europe who are very worried about these developments.”
The mission of the Mavi Marmara, Netanyahu seems to hint, signaled the beginning of an attempt to re-establish an Ottoman Caliphate that once again threatens to take control of the Holy Land. Nevertheless, at such a historic juncture, it’s perhaps surprising that the commander of Israel’s military forces was apparently asleep.
Was this an expression of the unshakable confidence IDF’s commander in chief has in his soldiers, or (more likely) the blasé attitude with which Israel operates in the international arena?
Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi was not present in the IDF’s Tel Aviv command center during the first part of the maritime takeover of the Gaza-bound Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on May 31, Haaretz learned Sunday.
Instead, the most senior officer supervising the raid was Major General Tal Russo, IDF Chief of Operations, with Ashkenazi arriving only after the takeover had taken a turn for the worse.
The absence of both Ashkenazi and his second in command, Major General Benny Ganz, will be one of the issues to be reviewed by the specialist panel named by the IDF chief to probe the raid, headed by retired major general Giora Eiland.
No wonder Israel has been dragging its feet in responding to calls for an international investigation. But now, thanks to the Obama administration, it looks like Israel may once again avoid being held accountable for its actions.
Israel last night flouted pressure for an independent international inquiry into the lethal assault two weeks ago on a flotilla of ships attempting to break the blockade on Gaza, announcing an internal investigation with two foreign observers.
The White House gave its approval for the Israeli formula, which will be confirmed by the Israeli cabinet today.
The inquiry into the raid, in which nine Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara were killed, will be headed by a former Israeli supreme court judge, Yaakov Tirkel. The foreign observers are the former Northern Ireland first minister David Trimble and a Canadian judge, Ken Watkin. They will have no voting rights.
The inquiry falls short of a UN proposal for an international investigation, but was agreed after consultation with the US. The White House said last night that the Israeli inquiry meets the standard of “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation”.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told Fox News on Sunday:
“We think that an international component would strengthen the investigation and certainly buttress its credibility in the eyes of the international community, and we’ve had discussions with Israel as to how and whether they might go about doing that,” Rice said.
But she added it’s “obviously ultimately the Israelis’ choice” whether to participate in such a group evaluation.
“Our view is that Israel, as a democracy, as a country with a tradition of strong military justice, can conduct an investigation of this sort however it chooses to constitute it,” she said, adding, “We are not pressuring Israel to participate in anything that it chooses not to participate in.”
In effect, what the United States is saying is that unlike any other country on the planet, Israel has the right construct its own definition of the term “international.” Israel when operating outside even its own self-determined boundaries of sovereignty, when conducting an assault on a ship operating under a Turkish flag and killing Turkish citizens, nevertheless has the “right” to say, “this is our business” — and Washington agrees.
Sefi Rachlevsky describes what happens when a nation refuses to set its own limits.
Israel gave itself a nice present to celebrate the 43rd anniversary of losing its borders. The raid on the Gaza flotilla in international waters is like the first Lebanon War – as if in a nightmarish experiment, we seem to be examining the question: What happens when a country has no borders?
Israel’s maritime attack did not happen by chance. A border is one of the fundamental factors that defines a country. Decades without one have distorted Israel’s thinking.
It is self-evident that, just as a person cannot build in an area that he does not own, a country cannot build settlements outside of its borders. And yet Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens in areas that, according to its laws, are not part of the State of Israel.
It is self-evident that any couple can marry “without regard to religion, race or gender.” And yet in Israel a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman cannot legally marry. It’s self-evident that there is no arbitrary discrimination, and yet it’s enough to use the magic words “I’m a religious woman” or “I’m an ultra-Orthodox man” and the obligation to serve in the military evaporates.
It’s self-evident that the education provided to children be based on democracy and equality. And yet in Israel, 52 percent of first-graders defined as Jews study in various religious school systems that teach students things like “You are considered a human being and the other nations of the world are not considered human beings.”
They are taught that a non-Jew is not a human being, and that anyone who kills a non-Jew is not supposed to be killed by human hands; that women are inferior, and it is an obligation that males and females be separated; and that secular people, or anyone with secular family members, cannot enter these schools.
It is self-evident that racist education cannot be funded by the government and is illegal. And yet most of the country’s first-graders receive such “compulsory education” from their government.
The results of this nightmarish experiment are self-evident. In the most recent elections, 35 percent of voters defined as Jews cast their ballots for avowedly racist parties – Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, National Union and their friends.
Critics in the Israeli media wake up only when mistakes are made. That is why – after initially cheering the declaration that “the flotilla will not pass” – they changed their tune following the imbroglio, turning into advocates of the twisted logic “be smart, not right.” But what justice is there in an attack on civilians by soldiers on the open seas?
Like the territories, international waters are not Israel; they are outside its borders. A Turkish ship on the open sea is, in effect, a floating Turkish island. An Israeli attack on such an island is not all that different from sending the Israel Defense Forces to take on demonstrators at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. There, too, unpleasant people who are not friends of Israel can sometimes be found.
Turkey, which is a member of NATO, was not in a state of war with Israel before the attack. Attacking its citizens on territory that is by definition Turkish is another expression of the Israeli lunacy that lacks any kind of boundaries.
An attack beyond the border must be reserved for extreme cases involving a military target that represents an entity fighting against the country and when citizens are in danger. But civilian ships, that are not carrying weapons, but are bringing civilian aid to a population that is denied chocolate, toys and notebooks, are not nuclear reactors in Iraq, Syria or Iran.
A person who grows up without external borders tends to create distorted internal borders. That is the reason for the attack on Arab MK Hanin Zuabi and her colleagues. While there were certain Arab public figures who went too far in their statements, joining a civilian aid flotilla is one of those legitimate acts which are supposed to be self-evident.
And yet, what was self-evident became betrayal. And citizenship, one of the unconditional foundations of existence, has turned into something that can be revoked – in this case on the basis of ethnicity, a tactic used in fascist regimes. The street has returned to the atmosphere that prevailed under “responsible” opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and led to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – and the next murder is in the air.
The Israeli deed at sea is liable to reach The Hague. The problem is that Israel has genuine enemies who want to destroy it. A country that does not do everything in its power to accumulate legitimacy, along with turning Iran into an entity that is losing legitimacy and can therefore become a target of activities to undermine it, is a country losing its basic survival instinct. Without borders, it turns out, you lose even that.
Young Israelis who have grown up without borders are now dancing and singing “In blood and fire we will expel Turkey” and “Mohammed is dead.” If this keeps up, Israel will not make it to The Hague. The entity gradually replacing the State of Israel is liable not to exist long enough to get there.
Neocon Krauthammer Sees Israel as Victim in Flotilla Massacre
Stephen Sniegoski | June 12, 2010
While the inhabitants of Gaza are suffering under a stifling blockade and a number of peace activists have been killed (bullets in the head at close range) and wounded by Israeli commandos, whom does prominent neocon columnist Charles Krauthammer view as the victim: Israel, of course. For hyper-Zionists such as Krauthammer, Israel is always the victim (Krauthammer: “Those troublesome Jews,” Washington Post, June 4, 2010).
To Krauthammer, none of the international concern is about the suffering of the Gazans because there is no suffering. Krauthammer does not even feel it necessary to try to rebut the reports from International Committee of the Red Cross, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the UN Environmental Program and other international organizations that describe a dire situation in Gaza resulting from the blockade.
No, according to Krauthammer the international concern about Gaza, instead of being a humanitarian act, is really a conscious effort to “de-legitimize” Israel by stopping a perfectly justified blockade. Krauthammer emphasizes that the purpose of the blockade is “to simply prevent enemy rearmament” by Hamas, though, in actuality, is hardly selective, and restricts the importation of food, medicine, building supplies, and many other commodities needed for civilian society. And a recent Israeli government document reveals that the blockade is actually designed to conduct “economic warfare” against Hamas by collectively punishing the Gazan people, which will presumably cause them to turn against Hamas rule.
On the real purpose of the blockade, also see: “Recasting the Gaza blockade as a humanitarian project,
Poor little Israel, Krauthammer laments, has to resort to a blockade because the world “de-legitimizes its traditional ways of defending itself,” which included Israel’s “forward and active defense”—i.e., attacks on its neighbors. Of course, this “forward and active defense” is simply a violation of modern international law that is embodied in the UN Charter. It might be added that participating in such a “forward and active defense” got a number of German generals convicted at Nuremberg in 1945-1946…
Krauthammer bemoans that if Israel cannot maintain its blockade then it has nothing with which to defend itself. “The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense,” he opines. Krauthammer, however, fails to depict any lethal threat to Israel—or even that destructiveness committed against Israel compares to the lethal damage Israel has meted out to the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza. For example, during Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008–January 2009 (code named Operation Cast Lead), there were 3 Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers killed, while Palestinian deaths exceeded 1000, the majority of whom were civilians.
To Krauthammer, the international assault on Israel goes far beyond the issue of Gaza.
He laments that the “Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons — thus de-legitimizing Israel’s very last line of defense: deterrence.” But in an effort to bring about a nuclear free Middle East (and Obama has talked of a nuclear free world), it would seem perfectly appropriate to single out the only country in the region that actually has a nuclear arsenal. It is not apparent why nuclear “deterrence” should only be allowed to Israel. It could actually be more justifiably argued that it is Israel’s neighbors who need nuclear weapons to serve as deterrence against Israel’s sizable arsenal of 200-300 nuclear warheads.
Krauthammer ends his article by comparing the situation to the Holocaust. “The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.”
In Krauthammer’s hysterical presentation, the fact that absolutely no actual constraints have been placed on Israel is completely omitted. Israel has only been faced with purely verbal complaints. It has essentially gotten away with a piratical raid and abduction in international waters in which it killed and wounded a significant number of innocent people with no concrete punishment. The international community has taken no forceful steps to try to stop Israel’s comprehensive blockade of Gaza. Nothing has been done about Israel’s maintenance of a nuclear arsenal, which it can rely on to threaten its neighbors. At the same time, sanctions are imposed against Iran, which essentially guarantee Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly (if, in fact, Iran were really attempting to develop nuclear weapons.)
There is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is planning for a “final solution” for Jews but Israelis and Israel’s American supporters have made repeated references to a possible Israeli air attack on Iran. Krauthammer’s contention that Israel is being “ghettoized,” while Gaza is the victim of a comprehensive Israeli blockade, is mind boggling. In short, all the physical suffering has been inflicted by Israel on others. Yet, in all of this, Krauthammer sees another Holocaust of the Jews!
It is apparent that Krauthammer, as Andrew Sullivan puts it in his article “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” has entered an “alternate reality,” which is actually an inverted reality, where things are just the opposite of how they are in the real world.
Sullivan provides an apt description of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome”:
“This is a form of derangement, or of such a passionate commitment to a foreign country that any and all normal moral rules or even basic fairness are jettisoned. And you will notice one thing as well: no regret whatsoever for the loss of human life, just as the hideous murder of so many civilians in the Gaza war had to be the responsibility of the victims, not the attackers. There is no sense of the human here; just the tribe.”
Note the Sullivan points out that Krauthammer’s only concern is his “tribe”—as opposed to concern for humanity, justice, the interests of his country (the United States), and even truth itself. One would think that educated Americans and especially liberals, with their constant preaching of universal values and denunciation of racism, would be aghast at what Krauthammer has to say. But, unfortunately, that is not the case.
Krauthammer is not a lone nut, or an exponent of a small, insignificant minority viewpoint, as some would like to believe. Of the 1840 comments on Krauthammer’s article on the Washington Post website, it appears that a substantial majority express a favorable view. Washington, DC is a politically liberal area. There are a substantial number of Jews, but they are liberal Jews who consistently vote for Democratic candidates. It would seem, therefore, that this type of thinking must resonate with many liberal Jews and others, as well.
And, of course, liberal Democratic politicos (along with almost all other elected officials in the US) have completely backed the actions of Israel, maintaining that the peace activists were responsible for their own deaths. High profile liberal Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), for example, held that “violent force [was] in fact initiated by those whose boat was boarded.” Representative Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York) maintained that the ships were actually “filled with hate-filled provocateurs bent on violence.” Of course, politicians, in general, are not motivated so much by their own views, as by the views of people with political power.
Sullivan realizes that Krauthammer’s type of outlook influences American foreign policy. He writes:
“Something has been wrong here for a very long time, and now it is inescapable. Until the discourse is rescued from the victims of Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israel and America will slowly be drawn into wars they cannot ultimately win, lose every other ally they ever had, and embolden and fortify the very Islamist forces we are seeking to defuse and defeat.”
For another analysis of Krauthammer’s piece, see Kevin MacDonald
In assuming that the United States and Israel will act in tandem under the influence of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome,” Sullivan essentially acknowledges the influence of the Israel lobby on American foreign policy. However, I would like to make a slight correction of what Sullivan has to say. It is not that the United States would be “drawn into wars” but that this “Israel Derangement Syndrome” will cause the US to initiate or provoke wars—such as an attack on Iran. It is clearly those afflicted with this syndrome who pose a threat to the world, while believing the entire world is attacking helpless, innocent Israel. Their influence on American political culture makes Israel’s enemies America’s enemies and embroils the United States in wars that these Israel – Firsters believe will help Israel.
Sullivan initially was a supporter of the war on Iraq, who even went so far as to imply that the United States might need to make use of nuclear weapons. However, Sullivan came, somewhat belatedly, to recognize publicly the role of the pro-Israel neocons. He would write in February 2009:
“The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right. That’s the conclusion I’ve been forced to these last few years. And to insist that America adopt exactly the same constant-war-as-survival that Israelis have been slowly forced into. . . . But America is not Israel. And once that distinction is made, much of the neoconservative ideology collapses.”
Slow learners such as Andrew Sullivan are infinitely more successful than those who early on were able to discern the obvious neocon/Israel connection, which might indicate that intellectual weakness is not an explanation for their initial false analyses. Nonetheless, Sullivan now provides an excellent description of the mindset of Israel and its American supporters, and, for people in important positions who have something to lose, it is still a view that takes a significant degree of courage to mention publicly. But it is necessary that influential individuals publicly express the truth in order to prevent the United States from engaging in endless, destructive wars at the behest of people, such as Krauthammer, who are under the influence of the “Israel Derangement Syndrome.”
Israel’s Cult of Victimhood: ‘Barefoot’ Soldiers on the High Seas
By Jonathan Cook | June 9, 2010
Why are Israelis so indignant at the international outrage that has greeted their country’s lethal attack last week on a flotilla of civilian ships taking aid to Gaza?
Israelis have not responded in any of the ways we might have expected. There has been little soul-searching about the morality, let alone legality, of soldiers invading ships in international waters and killing civilians. In the main, Israelis have not been interested in asking tough questions of their political and military leaders about why the incident was handled so badly. And only a few commentators appear concerned about the diplomatic fall-out.
Instead, Israelis are engaged in a Kafkaesque conversation in which the military attack on the civilian ships is characterised as a legitimate “act of self-defence”, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it, and the killing of nine aid activists is transformed into an attempted “lynching of our soldiers” by terrorists.
Benny Begin, a government minister whose famous father, Menachem, became an Israeli prime minister after being what today would be called a terrorist as the leader of the notorious Irgun militia, told BBC World TV that the commandos had been viciously assaulted after “arriving almost barefoot”. Ynet, Israel’s most popular news website, meanwhile, reported that the commandos had been “ambushed”.
This strange discourse can only be deciphered if we understand the two apparently contradictory themes that have come to dominate the emotional landscape of Israel. The first is a trenchant belief that Israel exists to realise Jewish power; the second is an equally strong sense that Israel embodies the Jewish people’s collective experience as the eternal victims of history.
Israelis are not entirely unaware of this paradoxical state of mind, sometimes referring to it as the “shooting and crying” syndrome.
It is the reason, for example, that most believe their army is the “most moral in the world”. The “soldier as victim” has been given dramatic form in Gilad Shalit, the “innocent” soldier held by Hamas for the past four years who, when he was captured, was enforcing Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza.
One commentator in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper summed up the feelings of Israelis brought to the fore by the flotilla episode as the “helplessness of a poor lonely victim, confronting the rage of a lynch mob and frantically realising that these are his last moments”. This “psychosis”, as he called it, is not surprising: it derives from the sanctified place of the Holocaust in the Israeli education system.
The Holocaust’s lesson for most Israelis is not a universal one that might inspire them to oppose racism, or fanatical dictators or the bullying herd mentality that can all too quickly grip nations, or even state-sponsored genocide.
Instead, Israelis have been taught to see in the Holocaust a different message: that the world is plagued by a unique and ineradicable hatred of Jews, and that the only safety for the Jewish people is to be found in the creation of a super-power Jewish state that answers to no one. Put bluntly, Israel’s motto is: only Jewish power can prevent Jewish victimhood.
That is why Israel acquired a nuclear weapon as fast it could, and why it is now marshalling every effort to stop any other state in the region from breaking its nuclear monopoly. It is also why the Israeli programme’s sole whistle-blower, Mordechai Vanunu, is a pariah 24 years after committing his “offence”. Six years on from his release to a form of loose house arrest, his hounding by the authorities — he was jailed again last month for talking to foreigners — has attracted absolutely no interest or sympathy in Israel.
If Mr Vanunu’s continuing abuse highlights Israel’s oppressive desire for Jewish power, Israelis’ self-righteousness about their navy’s attack on the Gaza flotilla reveals the flipside of this pyschosis.
The angry demonstrations sweeping the country against the world’s denunciations; the calls to revoke the citizenship of the Israeli Arab MP on board — or worse, to execute her — for treason; and the local media’s endless recycling of the soldiers’ testimonies of being “bullied” by the activists demonstrate the desperate need of Israelis to justify every injustice or atrocity while clinging to the illusion of victimhood.
The lessons imbibed from this episode — like the lessons Israelis learnt from the Goldstone report last year into the war crimes committed during Israel’s attack on Gaza, or the international criticisms of the massive firepower unleashed on Lebanon before that — are the same: that the world hates us, and that we are alone.
If the confrontation with the activists on the flotilla has proved to Israelis that the unarmed passengers were really terrorists, the world’s refusal to stay quiet has confirmed what Israelis already knew: that, deep down, non-Jews are all really anti-Semites.
Meanwhile, the lesson the rest of us need to draw from the deadly commando raid is that the world can no longer afford to indulge these delusions.
– Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jkcook.net.
Jewish ideology and psychosis – a danger to world peace
By Gilad Atzmon | June 8, 2010
“… then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.” (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)
“… do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them… as the Lord your God has commanded you…” (Deuteronomy 20:16)
I am here to announce as loud as I can: There is no need for any “international”, “impartial” or “independent” inquiry into the latest Israeli massacre on the high seas. Although the Israeli opposition to such an inquiry suggests that the Israelis have much to hide, the truth of the matter is actually deeper. If you want to grasp what underlies the deadly Israeli barbarism, all you have to do is open the Old Testament.
Although it is certain that there is no ethnic or racial continuum between the biblical Israelites and the Khazarians who lead the Jewish state and its army, the similarities between the murderous zeal described in Deuteronomy and the current string of lethal Israeli actions cannot be denied. Israel’s is a murderous society not because of any biological or racial lineage with its imaginary “forefathers” but because it is driven by a fanatical tribal Jewish ideology and fuelled by a merciless, poisonous psychotic biblical zeal.
The Jewish state is beyond the law. It doesn’t follow any recognized universal value system either. In recent years Israel flattened Lebanon (2006) and left more than 3,000 civilians dead; it managed to shell a United Nations Relief and Works Agency shelter with white phosphorus (2009); and it left Gaza with 1,500 fatalities, most of them women, children and elderly people. Earlier this year it carried out an assassination in Dubai using forged foreign passports, and last week we saw the kosher navy slaughter peace activists in international waters.
The emerging forensic reports of the massacre suggest Israeli executions on board the Turkish aid ship, the Mavi Marmara. Viewed together with the eyewitness accounts of the Turkish survivors and the Israeli spokesmen’s justifications for their killing squad’s actions, this leaves no room for doubt. The Israeli society has passed the no return zone. In fact, it must have drifted away from humanity a long time ago. Also, it would be reasonable to argue that the initial Zionist attempt to “build a new civilized Jew” should be regarded as a total failure. In fact, the Israeli Jew is the most brutal of them all, even more deadly than the fictional character depicted by Tarantino’s film, Inglorious Bastards.
One way to explain the rapid moral deterioration of the Jewish state is to point out that Zionists have never really been committed to ethics. They were quick to learn that rather than truly internalizing the meaning of humanism, a spin would serve their cause as effectively.
The entire hasbara (propaganda) project is grounded on a dissemination of lies. For years the hasbara project, which has been supported by sayanim all along, was there to present Israel as a “Western”’ and “democratic” nation in a “sea of Arabs”. All that time the Jewish state was inflicting pain on its neighbours, murdering, starving and ethnically cleansing the indigenous people of the land.
Enough is enough! It is time to name and shame every Israeli and Zionist infiltrator within political circles, the media and academia. This shouldn’t be complicated at all because until very recently those sayanim and traitors within our midst were doing it all in the open.
From aggression to victimhood
However, the Israelis are not just an ordinary murderous collective. As much as they were enthusiastic to unleash hundreds of their most brutal military unit (Fleet 13) against unarmed peace activists, the Israelis also insist on regarding their commandos as innocent victims. It was amusing to follow Israeli officials and representatives talking about their “lynched commandos” who were “attacked” as soon as they were dropped from helicopters. “What did the commandos expect pro-Palestinian activists to do once they boarded the ships – invite them aboard for a cup of tea with the captain on the bridge?” asked a Guardian newspaper editorial just one day after the massacre.
The inability of the Israelis to understand that they were the aggressors in a military raid that they themselves initiated is symptomatic of the Jewish political incomprehension of the notion of history and of historical causality. From a Jewish perspective, history always starts where a Jewish suffering is detected. For the Israelis, the event on the Mavi Marmara started only when the first kosher commando faced resistance on the upper deck. In the Israeli press, the fact that Israeli commandos were actually the attackers was completely ignored. They in fact took part in a criminal military raid; they were dropped from Israeli military helicopters; they landed on a civilian ship carrying humanitarian aid in international waters. For the Israelis, the Mavi Maramara massacre event was isolated from the conflict or any understanding of the conflict.
Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse, every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain is established. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can think only as far as “two- state solution” within the framework of the 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the Holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbours in the 1920s-1940s.
I am pretty convinced that Israel and the Jewish national project will not recover from this last massacre on the high seas. The reason is simple. In order to save itself from its doomed fate, Israel would need to look in the mirror. This is not going to happen. By the time Israel looks in the mirror it will become a self-hater. Israel won’t take the risk.
Instead of looking in the mirror the Jewish tribal agitator reverts to spin. The hasbara man releases a clumsily produced video that can be easily dismissed.
In case some Westerners have failed to see it until now, it is not just the Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims who fall victims to the deadly biblical practice. In fact, Zionism doesn’t really distinguish between goyim [gentiles]. From a Zionist perspective, every gentile is a potential enemy. This must explain why Israel possesses so many nuclear bombs.
As one may guess, an atomic bomb is not exactly something you use against your next-door neighbour. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is not there to deter the Palestinians or the Syrians. The Israeli bomb is there for us, the Britons, the Turks, the French, the Russians, the Chinese – in short, the rest of humanity. Israel’s nuclear arsenal should be realized in reference to the Masada, the first century fortified kosher bunker where a few Jewish extremists committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.
The new Israelites have an Armageddon scenario in mind. Their philosophy is pretty simple. From Auschwitz they took the “never again” (like a lamb to the slaughter) slogan. From the Masada they deduced their survival motto: “if we are going down, this time we take everyone with us”. This is in fact the true Israeli interpretation of the story of Samson, the biblical genocidal murderer who pulled down a Philistine shrine on himself together with some 3,000 children, women and elderly people.
I guess that with Israeli nuclear submarines stationed in the Gulf and last week’s slaughter on the high seas, other nations do not need any more warnings. In fact, there is no way of getting the Israeli nation “off the tree”. What world leaders must do is decide together how to dismantle this morbid collective without turning our planet into dust.
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born musician, writer and anti-racism campaigner. His latest jazz album, “In loving memory of America”, was released on 1 March 2009 and can be purchased here.
Flotilla Raid Fires Up Israel Lobby
By David Cronin | IPS | June 4, 2010
BRUSSELS – Within three days of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Monday, the pro-Israel lobby in Brussels was already seeking to deflect attention from the killing of nine peace activists in international waters.
The European Friends of Israel, a grouping of parliamentarians, issued a statement Jun 3, which made no reference to the assault earlier in the week. Instead it highlighted the findings of a survey published by the Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, which named Israel as the economy most resilient to variations in the global economy and as a top spender on scientific research and innovation.
These findings might help explain why the collective response of the European Union’s 27 member states to the attacks has been weak. For despite growing revulsion at Israel’s occupation of Palestine among ordinary people throughout the world, the EU has been so impressed with the robust performance of the Israeli economy that it has integrated it into many of its activities in recent years.
While some individual EU governments made plain their displeasure with the attacks by summoning Israeli ambassadors to an urgent meeting, the Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton merely described the attacks as a “tragedy”, a term usually reserved for accidents. Initially Ashton called on Israel to conduct its own investigations. When she released a subsequent statement – during a visit to Russia – urging a “full and impartial enquiry of the events and circumstances”, she did not specify if this should be undertaken by Israel or by a United Nations-appointed team.
Over the past decade Israel has been integrated into several EU programmes, ranging from satellite navigation to business promotion. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, administers many of these programmes. Yet José Manuel Barroso, the Commission’s president, would not comment when asked if he would be seeking a review of Israeli participation in the EU’s activities. “I fully agree with the position taken by the EU High Representative Cathy Ashton,” he told IPS, declining to elaborate.
Barroso is one of several top-level politicians in Brussels to have cultivated strong links with the pro-Israel lobby. Last year, he was guest of honour at the opening of a new EU affairs office for the European Jewish Congress (EJC), where he praised the organisation for “being fully committed to the resumption of the peace process” in the Middle East.
The EJC has subsequently mounted an intense campaign designed to convince the European Parliament not to approve motions critical of Israel’s conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The EJC responded to Monday’s massacre perpetrated by Israeli troops on board the Turkish-owned vessel the Mavi Marvara by calling on the EU to officially declare one of the key groups in the Free Gaza campaign as a terrorist organisation. Moshe Kantor, the EJC’s president, accused the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (known by the acronym IHH) as having links to al Qaeda. The Israeli government has made similar claims recently, but these have been fiercely contested by international peace activists and supporters of the Palestinian solidarity movement, who insist the allegations are baseless.
Scientific research has been among the largest areas of cooperation between the EU and Israel. The EU has become a major provider of research grants to Israeli firms and research institutes over the past decade, thanks to Israel’s status as the main foreign partner for the EU’s multi-annual research programme, which has been allocated 53 billion euros (64 billion dollars) for the 2007-13 period. Companies such as Motorola Israel, Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries are taking part in the programme’s activities.
Although these companies have manufactured weapons and components used in attacks on Palestinian civilians, Israel’s war against Lebanon in 2006 and by the US-led alliance in Afghanistan, Janez Potocnik, the EU’s research commissioner between 2004 and 2009, expressed no regrets about the firms’ involvement in a programme financed by the European taxpayer. “What we have tried to provide is something that is of benefit of European partners,” he told IPS. “We are talking about research itself and nothing more than research.”
The EU, meanwhile, would not support a motion brought before the United Nations Human Rights Council Jun 3 condemning Israel’s attacks. Most European states on the council abstained from the vote, with Italy and the Netherlands siding with the US in voting against the resolution, which was carried by 32 votes to 3. The resolution demanded that Israel lift the blockade of Gaza and that it immediately allow food, medicine and other essential supplies to be delivered there.
Maysa Zorob, Brussels representative with the Palestinian human rights group Al Haq, said she was a “bit sick” of how the EU has been willing to call for Israel to conduct its own investigations into human rights abuses by its armed forces. “This whole ‘let’s ask for investigations’ approach is getting us nowhere,” she added. “Nothing concrete is being done by the EU or anyone else.”
New liberal fans: Meet Anthony Weiner, ultra-hawkish backer of Israel
By Alex Pareene | June 1, 2010
Rep. Anthony Weiner’s completely non-measured, non-conciliatory remarks on the Israeli attack on the humanitarian aid flotilla are proof that he’d rather be a successful New York politician than a prominent national liberal.
It’s a little odd, actually. Weiner has spent the last year becoming the sort of unapologetic liberal Democrat that netroots activists and cable news bookers love.
After deciding not to run for mayor of New York last year, Weiner dedicated himself to being a relentless advocate for the Democratic healthcare reform plan. (He blogged on HuffPo and everything.) He’s great with a sound bite and he’s a born street fighter in a party full of timid moderates. He’s Jon Stewart’s old college roommate. He’s taking on Glenn Beck and sparring with Bill O’Reilly. He’s easily one of the most prominent liberal politicians in the nation.
But at the end of the day, he still wants to be mayor of New York, once billionaire Mayor-for-Life Michael Bloomberg finally grows bored and steps aside.
Will the liberals who only know Weiner from his feisty MSNBC appearances and his staunch support of the president’s domestic initiatives be put off when they hear him taking the “Israel can do no wrong” side in the debate over Israel’s botched raid, in international waters, of a humanitarian aid flotilla?
Weiner’s statement is comical. “Even if we are the only country on earth that sees the facts here,” Weiner says, “the United States should stand up for Israel.” That’s the statement of a man with whom there can be no reasoning.
And it’s not, by any means, outside the norm for Weiner. He’s precisely the sort of liberal establishment politician that Peter Beinart accused of failing young American Jews in the New York Review of Books recently. In the past, Weiner has matter-of-factly accused Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of being anti-Semitic. And not just them!
“I would argue that in many cases, the New York Times has” anti-Israel bias, Weiner told Amy Goodman in 2006. The idea of any elite, establishment newspaper in New York having an “anti-Israel bias” makes sense only if you consider any criticism of any action taken by the state of Israel to be out of line.
Also in 2006, Weiner introduced legislation banning aid to the Palestinian Authority and barring the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. (and kicking them out of the county). Weiner insisted that the PLO was a terrorist organization. And the delegation, he said, “should start packing their little Palestinian terrorist bags.”
His demagoguery on this particular issue largely stopped once he decided he couldn’t beat Bloomberg. But he’s hawkish enough that Ronn Torossian, a scummy publicist who once told a journalist that he wants a thousand Arabs to be killed for every Jew, threw Weiner a “breakfast reception” in January. I doubt Torossian (who’s represented right-wing religious cranks Benny Hinn and John Hagee) appreciates Weiner for his advocacy for single-payer Medicare for all Americans.
Support for Israel in all its conflicts is still the bipartisan norm in Congress, but the rise of the neocons in the Republican Party has made unquestioning support of Israel’s current right-wing government increasingly a right-wing concern in the U.S. Democrats face pressure from the young, activist base to be more critical of Israeli actions than they were expected to be a generation ago.
But Weiner needs the support of New York’s Orthodox and Hasidic communities if he wants to be mayor. And it’s bad enough that he recently married a Muslim woman! (Check out the comments here if you want to see how quickly some right-wing Israel supporters can turn on one of their most steadfast political allies.) Philip Weiss says Weiner just repeats the talking points of the Israel lobby because that’s what his constituency wants to hear. If that’s true or not, he’ll continue repeating the far-right line on Israel.
It will be interesting to see what sort of statement Sen. Chuck Schumer makes, if he makes one. Schumer’s untouchable in New York, and he’s been, like his protégé Weiner, a staunch ally of Israel throughout his carer. But Schumer wants to be the Senate majority leader. And a good portion of the senators who might support Schumer want an unapologetic liberal leader. I imagine Schumer will put out something equally uncritical of Israel, but way less confrontational than Weiner’s statement.
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Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue
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