Mohammed and Ahmed Qdeih Dec 15, 2012 Photo- Maher Alaa
Gaza City – Yesterday in al-Faraheen, Gaza, Israeli Occupation Forces shot and wounded an unarmed 22 year old farmer, Mohammed Qdeih, from behind.
Mohamed and nine others went out to their fields in the early afternoon, walking approximately 250 meters from the Israeli border. Within minutes, two heavily armed Israeli military jeeps rushed to the security fence. They issued a warning for the farmers and residents to leave the area and shortly thereafter the Palestinians, intimidated by the heavy military presence, began to head back to the village of Abasan. The soldiers were not satisfied and opened fire, piercing Mohamed’s right arm from the backside. Israeli forces continued to shoot rounds of live ammunition while Mohamed and the others frantically evacuated and waited for an ambulance. Another young Palestinian, 19, was shot yesterday near the border in Jabaliya.
Under the siege, Israeli “closed military zones” have confiscated up to 35 per cent of Gaza’s arable land, which was previously used for fruit and olive orchards, wheat and various vegetables. With nearly half of Gaza’s population designated as “food insecure” by UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the farming industry having been crippled from the inability to export products under the Israeli blockade, this land is essential for the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and residents of Gaza. Even so and given that four Palestinians have been killed and over 50 injured since the November 21st, 2012 ceasefire agreement, one might ask why anyone would risk their life and venture near the border at all.
Palestinians have had varying experiences near the fence. There have been some successes with farming and some incidents resulting in death and serious injuries. The agreement between Israel and Hamas clearly stated that Israeli forces would “refrain from targeting residents in the border areas” and to “stop all hostilities in the Gaza Strip land, sea and air including incursions and targeting of individuals.” Hamas and other factions have held up their end of the bargain with not a single rocket being fired from Gaza.
As a participant in an international solidarity team, I sat down this with Mohammed Qdeih and family members this afternoon to get their perspective on the breach of the ceasefire and why they would risk their lives in pursuit of reclaiming their land. “The ceasefire is without any sense,” said Mohammed. “They attempted to kill me.” Mohammed is single but works the land to help provide for his 15 extended family members who reside together in Abasan al-Kabir. The family has approximately ten dunams of land which fall in the vaguely defined “buffer zone.” He is one of only five who are able to work in the fields and now the family will be without his help for a month at least.
Farmers work with solidarity activists 12.15.2012 Photo- Maher Alaa
After waiting patiently for Mohammed to tell his story, attention shifted to the eldest member of the family, Ahmed Hassan Jabbar Qdeih. Around ninety five years old, Ahmed became infuriated and began to speak up passionately. “What I have seen in my lifetime is too much to bear!” Though they are originally from Abasan, the Qdeih family used to have 500 dunams of land which spread far beyond Gaza’s borders, most of which fell in what is now considered Israel. In 1948 when Ahmed was in his thirties, he was working near the local water well when Zionist militias terrorized his farm. Ahmed was detained, along with his family, and taken to their house where they were forced to watch as his father was murdered in front on them. The militias destroyed their home, bombed the well and set ablaze 60 dunams of land. Additionally, they stole 60 sheep and two cows to take with them.
Mr. Qdeih also spoke of February 7th, 1957. Just before Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in March of that year (under very strong pressure from the United States), Ahmed again barely escaped with his life. Presumably during one of Israel’s last “screening operations” to eliminate members of the Palestine Brigades in which over 500 Palestinians were killed, Israeli forces lined up Ahmed and ten other men who were then mowed down with gunfire and executed. The rifle which targeted Ahmed malfunctioned. When he was later discovered to still be alive, he was arrested and imprisoned in Israel for eight years. While in jail, the prison guards stomped on his hands and beat him mercilessly, leaving him permanently disabled and unable to walk properly. In the process of explaining this, Ahmed almost removed his shirt successfully in front of all present before being discouraged by a relative standing nearby. “Look, look! You can still see the scars on my back,” he nearly screamed in a fashion as if he was still reliving those torturous years.
UNEF forces in Gaza, 1957 Photo- Palestine Remembered
Having a proud persistence in farming and a history of tragedy dating back to the Nakba, the connection to the land runs deep for the Qdeihs and obviously so do the scars. As many Palestinians feel that they have taken the victory from the recent conflict, the present situation holds many possibilities for farmers like the Qdeih family. However, recent events have been no less distressing. Two days after the Israeli Pillar of Cloud offensive, Anwar Qdeih, the twenty year old cousin of Mohamed Qdeih, was shot and killed while participating in an impromptu demonstration near the border.
In a celebratory mood due to the gains supposedly guaranteed by the ceasefire and in defiance of the brutality of the recent Israeli assault, a small group consisting primarily of young men headed to the “buffer zone.” When approached by heavily-armed Israeli soldiers, some threw stones and managed to cross the first security fence, which does not constitute the official border. Upon confrontation with the soldiers, the group turned back and the Israeli forces opened fire striking Anwar in the head and killing him instantly. Eighteen others were wounded, including three children. (There is also a second fence the protesters did not reach which is electrically charged, more heavily guarded and virtually impenetrable to such a group. There are no Israeli houses or civilians in the vicinity. It is also essential to remember that Palestinians have a legal right to resist the occupation through such demonstrations and even armed resistance.)
The Israeli military establishment seems to be confounded that, for all its advanced weaponry and fire power, hundreds of young men like Anwar and Mohammed and elders like Ahmed continue to come out daily to their fields. The right-wing, ruling elite and even many self-proclaimed “liberals” in Israel appear to be in denial that the Palestinians’ claim to their land and will for self-determination is unquenchable. While they talk of more deadly operations like Cast Lead and Pillar of Cloud, they continue with the harassment of farmers and fishermen. While they provide for and forcefully protect more illegal settlements and carry out the demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, they justify the killing of a young man at a check point in Hebron and the following vicious assaults on the media. While strengthening apartheid policies against Arab and non-Jewish Israelis and fortifying new stretches of the separation wall, they feel the need to collectively punish the civilian population of Gaza with siege. While they aggressively stomp any remnants of a two-state solution under their feet and isolate themselves with mantras of victimhood, the United Nations has affirmed the right to Palestinian statehood.
What are the goals and likely consequences of these violent and obstructionist policies? How could they possibly make Israel more secure or lead to a just solution? All the while, resistance is again becoming more and more popularized among Palestinian civilians and the factions are moving towards uniting. Regardless of the new shapes the resistance takes or any path the Israelis choose, as evidenced clearly since 1948 until this very day, the Palestinians’ deep connection to and affection for their homeland cannot be broken.
Joshua Brollier is a co-coordinator with Voices for Creative Nonviolence. He can be reached at Joshua@vcnv.org.
Israel’s navy shot and wounded a Palestinian fisherman in waters off Gaza, and army soldiers shot another Palestinian in the chest inside the Strip on Monday, sources on both sides said.
Israeli forces also arrested nine overnight Sunday in violent West Bank raids.
Nizar Aayesh, head of the Gaza fishermen’s union, said the fisherman was wounded when navy gunfire hit his boat before being taken to a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
“There was a shooting towards a Palestinian fishing boat in the sea off northern Gaza. One fisherman was injured and the occupation’s navy took him to Barzilai hospital,” he told AFP.
Israel, which maintains a paralyzing air, land and sea blockade of Gaza, only allows Palestinian boats to travel six nautical miles from the coast.
The fishing zone was extended from three nautical miles after a November 21 truce ended Israel’s eight-day assault on Gaza that killed over 143 Palestinians.
“It was within the six nautical mile limit, but the Israeli vessels took the boat and whoever was on it and we are waiting for the fisherman to come back to know more details,” Aayesh said.
Israeli attacks on Palestinian fishermen are not uncommon. Army snipers killed a 22-year-old fisherman in September off the coast of Gaza and injured his brother. One week later navy soldiers fired at a fishing boat they said had breached the three-mile limit before detaining the fishermen on board.
In Gaza, locals told Ma’an news agency that Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian in his 20s in his chest near the southern town of al-Qarara.
Israeli soldiers have fired several times across the border since the ceasefire agreement.
The latest incident was Friday, when soldiers shot and injured a 19-year-old man east of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip, medical officials said.
Israel has imposed a no-go zone on the borders, but agreed to stop targeting Palestinians in the area as part of the ceasefire, Gaza’s government has said.
West Bank raids
Meanwhile in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers detained nine people overnight Sunday.
Four men were arrested in the Ramallah village of Beit Rima, locals said, with clashes breaking out that lasted several hours following the arrests of Ibrahim, Firas and Mohammed Rimawi.
Another unidentified man was injured while being detained and taken to the hospital for treatment, witnesses said.
Israeli soldiers also raided several areas in Nablus, arresting five people, locals said.
The headmaster of a secondary school in Balata camp, Farid al-Museimi, 47, was arrested by soldiers in his home. Soldiers also detained a Palestinian security officer Baha Jamil Mohammed, 22.
Saddam Raghib Salah, 20, Diyaa Abdul-Fattah Salah, 21, and Mahdi al-Shafi were also arrested in nearby areas of Nablus.
In another incident just south of Nablus, Jewish residents of the hardline Yitzhar settlement attacked shepherds from the nearby village of Madama, one of whom was hit in the leg by a bullet, a local official said.
“Settlers from Yitzhar attacked shepherds who were tending their flocks south of the village and started shooting with live ammunition,” Madama local council head Ehab al-Qat told AFP.
He said a 27-year-old shepherd was shot in the leg and his brother “was beaten by settlers.” Palestinian medics confirmed they had treated one person for a gunshot wound. An Israeli official told AFP that the shooter was an Israeli soldier.
As Jewish lawmakers lead the push for gun control in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting, the rabbi of Newtown’s small Jewish community has castigated the culture that led to the massacre. Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio, Rabbi Shaul Praver of Temple Adath Israel said he told his congregants:
“We live in a culture of violence. All of our culture is based on violence and we need to teach the kids about the ways of peace. We need to change everything. There’s too much war, too much violence in our streets.”
Apparently Rabbi Praver saw no irony in decrying a culture of violence on the radio network operated by the Israel Defense Forces which had just been responsible for the deaths of 34 children in its Biblically-named “Pillar of Cloud” onslaught on Gaza. On the contrary, as the rabbi explained in 2005, in Palestine “only one party seeks the destruction of the other”:
Israelis simply want peace and would much prefer spending their time, tending their gardens, doing art, finding a cure for cancer, composing and performing world class music, and inventing more incredible bio-pharmaceuticals and computer technology. Real time internet applications, cellular telephones, color printing are just a few examples of the technology developed in Israel. There is so much brainpower and creative energy emanating from Israel’s diverse ethnic population that benefits every person on the planet. Yet even at a time that Israel pursues territorial concessions for the sake of peace, many people lack the ability to say even a few kind words.
I will say to them then, “Zionism is Beautiful!”
In light of such ideological blindness, Americans should be very wary of those who decry “their” culture of violence.
Maidhc Ó Cathail is an investigative journalist and Middle East analyst. He is also the creator and editor of The Passionate Attachment blog, which focuses primarily on the U.S.-Israeli relationship.
The correct path to statehood is through implementation of international law and UN resolutions and the approval of the international community.
By Stuart Littlewood | Salem-News | December 14, 2012
(LONDON) – Britain’s prime minister David Cameron has again shown why he should stand down from British politics.
In a speech to Conservative Friends of Israel at a lunch the other day he said – and not for the first time – things that are deeply disturbing to people who expect him to put British interests first. He again compromised himself and this country with ridiculous pledges of support for a foreign military power whose behaviour is beyond the Pale and an affront to human decency. Here are some of his remarks…
“I am a passionate friend of Israel – and that’s the way it’s going to stay.”
In that case you shouldn’t be in British politics, Mr Cameron. You have fallen foul of the Seven Principles of Public Life, especially the principle of ‘Integrity’ which says quite simply: “Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties.”
“We promised to stand up for Israel and in Government that’s exactly what we’ve done. We said it was ridiculous that Israeli officials felt unable to visit Britain because of the malicious and unfounded use of arrest warrants so we changed the law to end it.”
Unfounded? Tzipi Livni, for example, was responsible for launching the pre-meditated blitzkrieg four years ago which caused the deaths of 1,400 defenceless Gazans (including 320 children and 109 women), horribly maimed thousands more and caused immense devastation to essential infrastructure and services. She showed no remorse. Livni’s office issued a statement saying she was proud of Operation Cast Lead, and speaking later at a conference at Tel Aviv’s Institute for Security Studies, she said: “I would today take the same decisions.”
“We said we’d resist calls for boycotts on Israel and yes – we are going to keep on working with Israel, doing business with Israel, trading with Israel.”
Even though Israel is in continual breach of EU-Israel Agreement rules and forcibly prevents its neighbours, the Palestinians, from doing business and trade with the outside world…
“To me it is clear what needs to happen… We need the Palestinians to understand there is only one path to statehood, and that is through negotiations with Israel. We made that clear with that UN vote a couple of weeks ago.”
Wrong. The correct path to statehood is through implementation of international law and UN resolutions and the approval of the international community. Only when the illegal occupation is ended and the right of self-determination is restored can meaningful talks begin.
“We said that Britain could not support a resolution that set back the prospects for peace and that did not commit the Palestinians to return to negotiations without preconditions. Well: they did not provide the assurances that we asked for. So… we did not vote for it.”
Pure blackmail. Bullying Palestinians into resuming failed and discredited talks to bargain with the thief for the return of their lands and property when it is still being stolen with impunity, is utterly immoral. There can be no peace under occupation. And nobody ‘negotiates’ with a gun to their head, nor should they be expected to.
“And I have made something else clear that needs to be made clear to the Palestinians. Britain will never tolerate the obscenity of a football tournament named after a suicide bomber who killed 20 Israelis in a restaurant. We will not tolerate incitement to terrorism.”
This is about Wafa Idris. It has become a favourite rant and Cameron was banging on about it a couple of months earlier at another top Jewish gathering. According to The Jerusalem Post (September 2011) a Fatah-affiliated youth centre in the Ama’ari refugee camp near Ramallah named a sports event after female suicide bomber Wafa Idris, a 28 year-old paramedic who had been shot several times by Israeli rubber bullets during her work for the Red Crescent. Relatives said she was angry at seeing children shot and killed by the IDF in Ramallah. Idris was the first Palestinian woman to carry out a suicide bombing. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a subsidiary of Abbas’s Fatah (who are Cameron’s friends in Occupied Palestine), claimed responsibility for the bomb attack although her family said she was not known to be an activist with any Palestinian militant group.
Cameron, before opening his mouth, might have asked what led her to do it. Wafa Idris was born in the Ama’ari refugee camp. Set up by the Red Cross in 1949 it provided tents to refugees from Jaffa, Ramla and Lydda, towns allocated for an Arab state in the UN Partition but subjected to a bloody programme of ethnic cleansing in 1948.
In Lydda the Israelis massacred 426 men, women, and children. 176 of them were slaughtered in the town’s main mosque (See the lurid details here). Out of the 19,000 people who called Lydda home, only 1,052 were allowed to stay. The remainder were forced to walk into exile in the scalding July heat leaving a trail of bodies – men, women and children – along the way.
The slaughter in Lydda was led by a certain Moshe Dayan. The event was witnessed by two American newspapermen who reported that “practically everything in their way died. Riddled corpses lay by the roadside.” They saw “the corpses of Arab men, women and even children strewn about in the wake of the ruthlessly brilliant charge” (emphasis Aletho News ). This appalling war crime didn’t prevent Dayan becoming a great hero in Israel, and later defence minister and foreign minister.
Today Tel Aviv University has a Moshe Dayan Centre named after the war criminal, but I haven’t heard Cameron complain about that. Likewise the Menachem Begin Centre in West Jerusalem is named after the terrorist leader responsible for the bomb attack in 1946 on the British mandate government based in the King David Hotel, killing 91. Has Agent Cameron anything to say about that?
Back to the Ama’ari refugee camp, now run by the UNRWA, where Wafa Idris was obliged to live in squalor as a result of Israel’s criminal land-grab and forcible eviction of her parents from Ramla. At Ama’ari 10,500 people are squeezed into less than 1 square kilometre in dreadful conditions.
However the camp’s football team has won the Palestine football championship several times and qualified to represent Palestine in regional and international competitions.
The Arab media were lavish in their praise for Idris, the “courageous Palestinian girl”, and as a result she became a heroic symbol of Palestinian womanhood in their struggle to throw off the occupation. If it’s OK for Israel to name major institutions after its famous terrorists what right has Cameron to get upset when Palestinian football team similarly commemorates one of theirs?
“So, in Gaza too, Hamas need to know that they must renounce violence and they will not be allowed to dictate the way forward in the peace process.”
Does Cameron have the balls to tell Israel it too must renounce violence? Hamas, in case he has forgotten, is the legitimate democratic authority. He may not like it but he should respect it and work with them, like the good democratic he claims to be.
“Last month, when rockets rained down on Israel, we were unequivocal about the right of Israelis to live free from attack by terrorist groups on their border.”
When Gaza suffers air strikes on a daily basis, how unequivocal is Cameron about the right of Palestinians to live free from attack by the terrorist state occupying their lands?
“I’ve never had to run for cover as the air-raids sound overhead. I’ve never had to give gas masks to my children. I do understand that for the Israeli people, uncertainty isn’t such a great thing. It means instability. Anxiety. Fear.”
If he goes to Gaza he can experience fear and anxiety in abundance under Israeli air raids. I vividly remember as a kid being bombed by the Nazis every night in London – and not with garden-shed whizz-bangs. I remember German bombers flying at rooftop height down our street to avoid the anti-aircraft guns. At least they didn’t use white phosphorus like the Israelis.
Cameron’s hyper-partisan, head-over-heels friendship – no, obsession – with Israel is allowed to steer nearly every aspect of Britain’s foreign policy. What drives this? You need look no further than The Jewish Chronicle which in 2006 reported on the backers bankrolling David Cameron’s bid for power and provided a fascinating insight into how the pro-Israel lobby infiltrates government and destroys the principles of integrity and accountability so vital to public life.
When Cameron became Conservative leader he proclaimed:
“The belief I have in Israel is indestructible – and you need to know that if I become Prime Minister, Israel has a friend who will never turn his back on Israel.”
Agent Cameron is very careful not to let the words ‘justice’ and ‘law’ pass his lips in connection with Israel’s illegal occupation of the Holy Land. And he and his foreign secretary, Hague, will put on a wonderful show of hand-wringing, deploring and urging whenever Israel commits atrocities, but they never condemn the racist regime or use any obvious levers like suspension of trade or other sanctions.
On the contrary, they shamelessly find ways of rewarding the Israeli regime’s crimes against humanity, making us complicit with its racist ambitions.
Occupied Palestine – 5am in Homsa in the northern Jordan Valley. Abdullah Ghanni, his family and his livestock are on the move under the watchful eyes of the Israeli Army. Two days earlier Ghanni had received a visit from soldiers informing him that military training would take place on land belonging to him and his fellow villagers. Ghanni and five other families were evicted from their land for the duration of the training – 7am to 5pm on the 9th December and 5am to 1pm the following day. All people in the village and their animals were required to leave.
Palestinians in the Jordan Valley of occupied Palestine are long-suffering. Ghanni has been farming this land for 40 years, primarily raising sheep. For all that time the Israeli Army has exercised total control over life. Temporary evictions for the purpose of military training are frequent here. Just three weeks ago the inhabitants of Homsa and two other nearby villages were evicted for two days to accommodate large-scale training manoeuvrers performed jointly by the Israeli and US armies. In the past, unexploded ordinance has been left after such drills, resulting in death and injury to children.
A visit to the northern Jordan Valley is a study in contrasts with the inequalities of the occupation laid out in the starkest terms. On the one hand, Israeli settlements are tidy villages of concrete houses. They are surrounded by plantations of grape vines, neat fields of vegetables, rows of greenhouses; a rich fertile green enclosed by double layers of barbed wire fences and floodlights.
On the other side of these fences, the nearby Palestinians struggle to cling to the remnants of their homeland. Villages here are often little more than a collection of makeshift tents yet, despite appearances, the Palestinians here were never nomadic Bedouins. They had homes, farm buildings, wells and water tanks. Designated Area C, large swaths of the Jordan Valley are under direct Israeli governance and military control. Building is forbidden and home demolitions are a common occurrence. The village neighbouring Homsa – Hadidia – had their stone houses demolished just last year.
If losing their homes wasn’t hard enough, the Israeli settlements and soldiers confiscate water resources. Valuable springs have been taken over and fenced off for the exclusive use of Israelis. Ghanni must travel 40km, past the Hamra checkpoint at the entrance to the Jordan Valley, to get the water he needs for his farm. This is despite the fact there is a spring less than 2km across the valley from his farm, in the Hadidia village. That water is forbidden to the Palestinians, despite it existing far outside the boundaries of any settlement or army base.
An elder in Hadidia pointed out two large tents his village erected to house the people of Homsa over the past two days. The Israeli Armydo nothing to assist the people they displace. No temporary housing, no assistance moving large herds of animals in the early morning. The army do, however, trail behind the villagers in jeeps on their trek across the valley, honking at the animals to hurry their progress,making the herding harder still. They also threaten Ghanni that they will create problems for his family with the settlements if they do not move as told. The frequent evictions disrupt normal family life. Each time, Ghanni is forced to send five of his eleven children to stay with another family close to the Hamra checkpoint so they can continue attending school.
Disturbingly, for Ghanni and the Palestinians in the valley, these incursions and disruptions of life, despite the feelings they provoke, have come to be accepted as normal. Since their 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Israel has deliberately made life in the Jordan Valley as difficult as possible in an attempt to force Palestinians from their land. The Palestinian population of the Jordan Valley prior to 1967 was 320,000. Now it hovers at 56,000. Despite the hardship involved in remaining, Ghanni and his family refuse to leave the land he has known all his life. A move elsewhere holds no promise of any kind of certainty, the fact he remains means his everyday life is a living resistance.
Occupied Palestine – On Sunday 9th December at 4pm the bulldozers rolled into the small sleepy town of Hajja near Kufr Qaddoum, in the northern part of the West Bank. They rolled past the Illegal Israeli Settlements, where many Palestinians from the surrounding villages work, with less workers’ rights than the Israeli Settlers who work in the same factory.
Beneath the factories lies open farmland. Olive trees run up the sides of the hill, this is the land they’ve come to take. A confrontation happens between the Palestinians who own the land and the Palestinians from 1948 that drive the bulldozers that are already ripping up the land. The bulldozer has destroyed everything in its path already, ripping up chunks of soil, trees and shrubs along the way.
During the dispute soldiers appear, they’ve been sent to ‘protect’ the bulldozer drivers. They assure the Palestinians who rightfully own the land that they have received permission. When challenged the story changes, the soldiers have arrived without proof and it seems without permission.
Hajja has ten Illegal Settlements surrounding it to date; already they have lost so much.
We arrive at midday, the day after the first encounter. Today the soldiers come with a map, they have it all planned and regrettably it’s inevitable that the process will continue.
We arrive to the area around 2pm, a 65 year old women is clenching her fists into the sky, wailing and begging, demanding answers for what is about to happen. The soldiers tell the village that the land will be used to build an electricity post, which will also include a road which will be used to access the point. The land is shared between hundreds of people and as a result of this potentially the village would lose access to this land.
Fatima Bora Dean Marsalha tells me ‘Every time they come they destroy our land, Two years ago the settlers came and tried to build here. We just want to be able to live and work on the land that belongs to us.’
The soldiers leave and go, leaving the villagers from Hajja on the land that belongs to them, the soldiers holding their livelihoods in the palm of their hands. The soldiers I’m told are going to find more proof that they can access the land to build the Electricity Line, in the process destroying the land and preventing the Palestinians from accessing it. I am told by a Palestinian that this is how the settlements begin, first they come with a small proposal then they move on caravans, and then houses.
As we begin to walk away a Wild boar pounds down the hill towards us, the Palestinian guys throw stones to scare it away. Released by settlers to intimidate, destroy and damage the land. Wild boar are not native to Palestine, as I leave I realise that there are many manipulative tactics to this occupational game of land steal.
For some time, Swedish Palestinian female TV presenter Gina Dirawi has been chased by Sweden’s Zionist protagonists within the media. Dirawi has been outspoken about Israeli crimes and Palestinian rights. But recently when she referred to Lasse wilhelmson’s book ‘Is The World Upside down?’, all hell broke loose. Wilhelmson is critical of the Jewish state, Zionism and Jewish power. Wilhelmson was one of the first thinkers who pointed at clear ideological and spiritual affiliation between Zionism and the Left, a theme I myself developed in my work. The Swedish media would prefer to keep Wilhelmson in the fringe. The Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet now seems to want him in jail. What we see here is an outrageous and unacceptable assault on freedom of expression. The following are two of Lasse’s answers to his detractors.
Lasse Wilhelmson’s Reply to Åsa Linderborg – Cultural Editor of the tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet
Dear Åsa
In your capacity as Chief Cultural Editor for Aftonbladet, in your article Let’s take a look at this shit (28th November 2012), and in front of the entire Swedish nation you have ‘named and shamed’ me (including a photo) as an evil pershon who deserves condemnation and also probably to be locked up. And why? Simply for holding some opinions. (1)
Reading through the article, which incidentally does not include one single quote from my book Is the World Upside Down?, I ask myself, why would you do that? After all, you’re an educated person, an intellectual, a significant representative of the Swedish cultural elite. You have written a prizewinning book about your childhood, you’re an influential voice of the Swedish left and you have presented yourself as a “free speech fundamentalist”.
You write: “Wilhelmson hates Jews and denies the Holocaust – he always puts inverted commas round it, and he thinks Israel as a nation should be wiped off the map”. I have already accounted for my view on “Holocaust deniers” in my reply to Expo, so here I will do it in the form of some questions for you:
1. Do you consider that what happened to the Jews during the Second World War as a historic event that can be legitimately researched, discussed and revised as we do with other historic events?
If the answer is no then my next question is: Why?
If the answer is yes, the question is: In that case, why is it that, in so many western countries, so many who have done so, have been sentenced to prison?
2. Do you know of any other historic events in our time where people have been imprisoned for having an opinion that differs from the norm?
And lastly to you as a “free speech fundamentalist”:
3. Do you think opinions should be punishable?
Accusations of hating a whole population carries with them, I think, a considerable burden of proof. You have produced none. Asa, I do not hate people, only deeds and ideas, and above all, hypocrisy. But perhaps it is you who hates people who do not share your views – for example, me.
You say that I believe that Israel should be obliterated, though I have never expressed myself in that way. I could say that you are lying, but I prefer to think you are simply deluded..
In my lifetime, I have appeared many times in the media and I have always been given the chance to defend myself when attacked – except that is, when the questions concern Zionism and its short-term goal of a Jewish state in Palestine. Why is this? Could it be that what I have to say is dangerous – perhaps just a little too close to the truth?
Why do you behave in the manner of witch hunts and book burnings when I am simply trying to understand how the world works and which forces lie behind war and misery? My book includes much about this, complete with notes and references.
Over time, I have indeed come to embrace views other than your comfy “leftist” ones. Nowadays, I think ideologies and religions have both light and dark sides – sometimes they are used to liberate people, sometimes to persecute. But, above all, I believe that in order to set ourselves and others free, our thinking must be liberated from the prohibition of forbidden thoughts and from limited thought systems.
In my book you have probably read the introductory ‘chicken’ article, which shows that, even at a basic level, the world can be not exactly as we think it is. And the epilogue too which is an attempt to indicate a direction for our lives which incorporates love and solidarity, without resorting to violence. (2)
You’ve probably also read about my personal background and how my thinking has changed and why. You will know that, in my very full life, I have achieved quite a lot as an activist in the left movement, for the people of Vietnam, as a trade unionist, as a member of one of the contemporary Communist parties and also in many other non-profit organisations. Why, it could be that I am even more versed in Marxism and its classical texts than even you are.
In my home municipality of Täby, I have taken part in local politics for 24 years, working on very real issues there and in the surrounding region. I was a member of the district council and, at one point, I was on the board. I am currently the chairperson of a road committee in the countryside and have just written its Jubilee brochure, with many stories about how an old Swedish farming community has changed over a century.
I have always been a public person and have never hidden behind anonymity. Many know me, or have heard of me, in various contexts. I have five children and many grandchildren and I am married. Have you thought about how your, and the rest of the media’s attempts to make me an object of hate will affect them all? Perhaps that might give you pause for thought?
You know Asa, I think the real reason for your hatred (?) of me lies in the fact that I have pointed out the connection between Zionism and Marxism, between your left and the Jewish Zionist ‘left’, and, of course, the glaring similarity between rightwing-Zionism and Nazism. Zionism is, in fact, both left- and right-wing, its goal is a Jewish state in Palestine. (3)
This is why the Sweden Democrats, the most Israel-friendly party in our parliament, have the same fundamental attitude as most of the “left” that claim to support the Palestinians: that the Jewish state is permanent and that the exiled Palestinians can never, as UN resolutions say they must, return home in any way other than symbolically. They must content themselves with a pseudo-state of 10-20 percent of the original Palestine (the two-state solution) – a situation which can lead to neither justice nor peace between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, nor in the whole of the Middle East and beyond.
Because Zionism (or rather now, post-Zionism), has the whole world as its goal. It is the most significant expression of Anglo-American imperialism and its criminal wars and, to achieve its new world order, its power elite controls the making of ideologies (media) and central banking (the dollar).
Åsa, you don’t have to freak out just because someone suggests that your lifelong right/left map does not actually reflect reality. Such behavior gives the impression that the left that you so personify, is really completely and utterly anti-intellectual.
PS. Do you remember that we once met? It was at a meeting about ten years ago when the social democrats manoeuvred you and other communists off the board of Ordfront (publisher & culture magazine). I gave you a copy of Folket i Bild (leftwing magazine) in which I had published a long article on Zionism. The article included the revelation that Karl Marx had, the somewhat older, Moses Hess as his personal socialist mentor – my “communist rabbi” Marx was wont to call him. Hess wrote three fundamental articles that leave clear tracks in The Communist Manifesto and, soon after, Hess wrote the book “From Rome to Jerusalem”, Zionism’s magnus opus. According to the official founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, this book says everything you need to know about Zionism. I’ve often wondered if you ever read that article. (4)
The above-mentioned article (1), published on November 23rd, 2012, and which has been widely distributed throughout the media, is an assault on Gina Dirawi, a young TV presenter of Palestinian origin.
It is no secret that Expo (Swedish Searchlight) dislikes Gina Dirawi, and any other Palestinians, who occasionally express dismay that their homeland has been stolen and many of its citizens exiled. Expo never criticizes the racist nature of the Jewish state and its genocidal policies (see UN Convention) vis a vis the Palestinians, but rather launches witch-hunts against those that do.
The book referred to as ‘anti-Semitic’ is mine. It is “Is the World Upside Down?” (2009), a selection of articles I wrote and interviews I gave from 2003 to 2009. Several articles are co-written with others. The book is about Palestine, the neocolonial wars and Zionism (2), and also contains a re-evaluation of certain “truths” about twentieth century history as imposed by the victors of both the Russian Revolution and the two World Wars. The book can also be understood as a personal journey – an attempt to assume a humanitarian approach, independent of ideologies and religions.
The campaign against Gina Dirawi is a clear case of guilt by association – a common, but extremely distasteful and unethical, tactic. This campaign uses distorted interpretations and a false taboo-image of the book and its author.
A few things to ponder ….
Are we to no longer read books that do not comply with our preconceived ideas? Are we to no longer read books to improve our knowledge and even, perhaps, to understand our lives and the world we live ii? Are we no longer to read books other than for pure entertainment?
Do we need moral gate-keepers to tell us which books we may read? Rather than being openly and freely discussed, are readers and writers to be simply branded? Have we really gone back to book burning? Is it only the elderly among us that remember Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (1953).
Why is it that the media always and routinely publishes Expo’s articles but seldom checks for accuracy, out-of-context facts and quotes, interpretations, value judgments and sources?
I can see no humanitarian and righteous solution to the situation in Israel/Palestine except that all exiled Palestinians be permitted to return home and regain their possessions. This is in full accordance with UN resolution 194. Jewish settlers who do not wish to live in equality and harmony with other Palestinians between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, should return to the countries from which they came. This may seem utopian, but all else leads only to catastrophe – even for the Jews themselves in Israel/Palestine and the surrounding world.
I always try to be careful not to blame whole groups when certain members of those groups behave badly or illegally and, as far as I know, I have never done so. Yet it is often precisely this of which I am accused – but only when it comes to Jews. I still await some substantial, contextual proof of my transgressions so I can correct or explain myself.
I do not hate people, but I do hate double standards – especially hypocrisy – a hypocrisy most blatant when it is about anything to do with Israel/Palestine, Jews and Zionism. Hypocrisy disgusts me as totally incompatible with ethics and morals. It is this which underpins the harsh words I often use in my political articles.
For the most part, I criticize the Jewish “Mafia” who are among the richest and most influential people in the western world, and also all those who serve their cause. I also criticize Jewish lobbies and Jewish settlers. If I speak of ‘Jews’ I do so in the same way I might speak of ‘Palestinians’, ‘Swedes’ or any other group. Obviously, ideologies, religions, mentalities and cultures can be criticized in more general terms.
In my opinion, it is no myth but a fact that there is a Jewish Mafia (just as there are Chinese and Italian Mafias) which has a disproportionate influence on the world economy, ideology (media and Hollywood etc… ) in the western world and on American foreign policy. And this situation is repeated in most European countries. This influence is used, for the most part, quite openly and by many very famous people.
It is also true that Jews often put loyalty to the Jewish state before loyalty to the country in which they live.
It must be legitimate to discuss all these things openly and freely without witch hunting and book-burnings.
Most of what I write, I base on articles found in Israeli newspapers and documents in Jewish libraries, together with books from Jewish professors of history and political scientists. So far, most of the information can still be found on the internet.
I believe that Zionists misuse Judaism, similar to the way in which Crusaders misused Christianity, let alone the Wahhabites’ misuse of Islam. I have warned that the international crimes of the Jewish state and the Jewish Mafia could well have a boomerang effect on all Jews if they are not able to distance themselves from it. After all, the Jewish state is proclaimed in the name of all Jews, and all Israel’s wars are waged by weapons bearing Jewish religious symbols.
In the Expo article I am quoted: “There has been animosity against Jews all through history. But it is often induced by the Jews themselves through their behaviour.” What is wrong with that? The same applies to all groups especially any group of people who see themselves as better than other people and particularly, “God’s chosen people.” But my strongest reaction is reserved for the way Jews have taken upon themselves a monopoly of suffering that overrides the suffering of others and is used to legitimize Israel’s policies and treatment of the Palestinians.
Furthermore, rather than history, always subject to discussion and revision, the Holocaust with its capital H, has, I believe, been transformed into a religious taboo dogma, Most outrageous is when it is used for political reasons to start new wars and legitimize genocide against the Palestinians who, we must always remember, had nothing whatsoever to do with any persecution of Jews.
As far as I know, there are no Holocaust deniers who deny that brutal crimes and atrocities were committed against the Jews, as well as other groups, during the Second World War. All the so-called Holocaust deniers, including those who have been convicted and imprisoned, have merely observed and reconsidered various parts of the official dogma. (3)
The term “anti-Semitism” (4) is no longer viable because of its political use to discredit various critics of Israel, or to vilify people. As Shulamit Aloni, former Israeli MP, said in an interview to the famous American radio/TV reporter Amy Goodman: “It’s a trick, we always use it”. (5)
As far as the term “conspiracy theorist” goes, that too is misused for political reasons. There have, and always will be, conspiracies in the corridors of power, and the powerful and their geeks will always call those who try to understand their conspiracies, conspiracy theorists – meaning some kind of sick fantasists. This is Orwellian doublespeak. There are, indeed, so-called crackpots all over the place – many planted by those in power to create confusion.
And finally: I talk and discuss with everyone. My articles are published anywhere. I am always a public person and I wish to debate facts – something I have rarely been offered to do in the ten years I have been writing about these issues. Free speech, what free speech?
If what I have written here and elsewhere means that I am a “conspiracy theorist”, “anti-Semite” and “Holocaust denier”, then so be it. I hope and expect that soon there will be many more of us.
On 18 November 2012, on the fifth day of the Israeli military offensive “Pillar of Defence” against Gaza, a war bulletin reported 72 people killed, including 19 children, 670 wounded, most of them women and children. That day, the Israeli air force bombed a three-storey building in Nasser Street, Gaza City, wiping out an entire family.
I was, like every day, at Shifa hospital. Suddenly ambulances brought the bodies of the young victims of the brutal attack:
Ibrahim Al Dalu, 11 months old
Jamal Al Dalu, 6 years old
Yousif Al Dalu, 5 years old
Sara Al Dalu, 3 years old
Even their mother died: Samah Al Dalu, 22, and their father, Mohammed Al Dalu, 28. The children’s Aunt also died, Ranin Al Dalu, 22, and the second aunt, Yara Al Dalu, 17, whose body was found just after 4 days in the rubble of the building. And also the two grandmothers died, Suhila Al Dalu, 75, and Tahina Al Dalu, 48. The bombing of the building of the Al Dalu family also hit a building next door, where two people were killed: Mzanar Abdallah, 20, and Amina Mznar, 80. A whole family was wiped out. The bombing took place on the entire three-story building which was completely destroyed.
Shifa hospital, 19 November 2012, bodies of the young victims. By the bodies, Yasser Saluha, the brother of the children’s mother.
On Monday, December 3rd, 2012, I had the opportunity to talk to the brother of the father of the children, Abdallah Jamal Al Dalu (20 years old). He talked about that night. “I was out with my father to to get food, when I received a call where I was told that my house had collapsed. I was shocked.” Abdallah and his father lived in the same building where he lived with the rest of his family.
In Gaza extended families often live together in the same building. Abdallah and his father are the only survivors of the Al Dalu family. All the other members of the family died under the rubble.
“I went home, I saw it destroyed, I could not speak,” continued Abdallah, crying. “My whole family was in the house. Then I went to the hospital and saw the bodies, it was a disaster.” Abdallah’s eyes were reliving what they had seen that afternoon.
Four days after the bombing Palestinian bulldozers excavating the rubble found the bodies of the children’s father, Mohammed Jamal Al Dalu and aunt, Yara Al Dalu.
Now Abdallah and his father are renting another house. They do not have beds to sleep in or the necessary living facilities, nor do they have clothes to wear.
Abdullah has asked us to ask the International Criminal Court to investigate what happened. “Children and women were killed in this massacre.”
Before leaving, I entered another building of the brothers of Mohammed Jamal Al Dalu, and Ahmal Jamal Al Dalu. Ahmal was not in Gaza during the war, but in Turkey, where he lives with his wife and family. “We want justice”, said Ahmal. “We want justice more than financial aid, because the money can go. What has happened is not a mistake, it is a crime. It is inhuman. It is not the first crime, crimes have been repeating for 64 years. We live without water, without electricity. It’s enough. ”
I translated his words in the darkness of the building while a friend lit up my notebook with only the light of the phone, and I said goodbye with a promise to stay in touch.
Our task now is to ensure that these crimes are not forgotten and that the Al Dalu family receives justice by bringing what happened to the International Criminal Court.
Photo of Abdallah Jamal Al Dalu, the brother of Mohammed Jamal Al Dalu
The Al Dalu family bombed home
The Al Dalu family bombed home
More photos:
The building next to the Al Dalu house bombed, in which two people died, Mzanar Abdallah, 20, and Amina Mznar, 80. The old woman was in a wheelchair and was in the kitchen at the time of the bombing. Her wheelchair was found in the rubble. See more photos here.
God bless Philip Weiss, the progressive Jewish blogger brave enough to admit in public those things other Jewish ethnic activists prefer to shove under the carpet. A year ago, Weiss was brave enough to confess to me that it is ‘Jewish self interests’ that stands at the core of his pro Palestinian activism. Also, a few weeks ago, the same Weiss was honest enough to announce that his Jewish ‘progressive’ internet journal, Mondowiess, changed its comment policy and “will no longer serve as a forum to pillory Jewish culture and religion as the driving factors in Israeli and US policy.”
But this week, the very same Weiss published a new polemic on his website. He now thinks that “it’s time for the media to talk about Zionism.” So, now Weiss is happy to join with the rest of us in talking about Zionism – so long as we avoid discussing ‘Jewishness’. Well, I’m afraid that Philip Weiss may have missed the train since, by now, many of us have already grasped that the time is ripe to talk about Jewishness and the role of ‘Jewish culture as the driving factor in Israeli and US policy.’
Weiss’ logic is no doubt fascinating. This Jewish ethnic activist does provide us with an insight into the level of deceit that is, unfortunately, inherent to Jewish left politics.
Weiss thinks Jews should ask themselves whether they really are ‘unsafe’ in America. Well, Weiss must know plenty about ‘safety’ since it was he himself who felt that it may be ‘risky’ to discuss Jewish culture and religion on his own Mondoweiss.
“Zionism,” he continues, “draws on a person’s worldview and has a religious character, it supplies meaning to his or her life.” Well again, Weiss should know because, like all Zionists, both overt and covert, he operates within a Jews-only political cell namely “Jews Voice for Peace’ (JVP). For some reason, just like his less enlightened brethren, this very ‘progressive’ activist prefers to surround himself with members of his own tribe.
Weiss well knows why the media avoids discussing Zionism, “it would involve a lot of squeamish self-interrogation on the part of Jews,” and Weiss knows what this means. That’s why he, and his Jewish partner Adam Horowitz, banned Jeff Blankfort from commenting on their site – Blankfort was critically discussing Jewish related topics. Weiss couldn’t allow it.
Weiss is brave enough to admit that “the acknowledgment of Jewish prominence in the Establishment, and of the power of Zionism, would make a lot of Jews uncomfortable”, but he isn’t bold enough to admit that the problem is far worse, since Jewish anti-Zionists like himself and JVP are relentlessly seeking a similar hegemony within the Palestinian solidarity discourse and openly campaign against prominent activists who challenge Jewish power. Is it possible that what we are dealing with here is a tribally-driven, power seeking tendency that is inherent to Jewish politics? The answer is a categorical yes, and I provide all the relevant information on this in my latest book The Wandering Who.
Weiss regards himself as an anti-Zionist while, as far as his language is concerned, he actually manifests every possible Zionist symptom. “Silence” on issues to do with Zionist power is “bad for Jews,” says Weiss. Like any Hasbara parrot he repeats the old mantra of ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ for the Jews. But then isn’t this just what you would expect from a Zionist?
It doesn’t take Weiss too long to drop his political bomb: the silence over Zionist power “allows people who are justifiably angry over our foreign policy to believe that all Jews support Israel.” Here, Weiss is absolutely correct. It is about time to deliver the message to the American people and the entire world – Not all Jews support Israel! In fact, at least two dozen American Jews including Weiss oppose Zionism because, as Weiss confesses, because “it is really bad for the Jews.”
If you think you’ve had enough of Weiss’ Judeo-centrism read this: “Zionism came out of the real condition of Jews in Europe in the late 19th and 20th centuries. I can well imagine being a Zionist at other periods of Jewish history. I would have been a Zionist if I had been in Kafka’s circle in Prague in the 19-teens with the rise of anti-Semitism. I would have been a Zionist if I had been born into the family of my mother’s best friend in Berlin in the 1930s.”
In this embarrassing passage, Weiss, the so-called ‘anti’ Zionist, actually admits that considerations of Jewish safety would justify the colonization of Palestine. This non-ethical vision is also apparent in JVP’s latest ‘educational’ video. It is clearly consistent with the Zionist take on the primacy of Jewish suffering. Which is exactly what you would expect from a Jew who operates politically within Jewish racially-segregated cells. There is only one possible conclusion – Jewish anti Zionism is a myth. Jewish opposition to Zionism is just another form of Zionism-lite that, just like it’s right-wing counterpart, locates Jewish self-interest firmly at its core.
Weiss is a pretty clumsy spin-doctor. He argues that the current militant and totalitarian aspects of Israeli society flow from a ‘Zionist belief system’. Here, Weiss misleads his readers and I think he does this consciously. Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and as the true embodiment of Jewish culture. Its barbarism is the direct outcome of its interpretation of Jewish texts and spirit. If anything, Zionism was born to ‘civilize’ the Diaspora Jew who, certain 19th century emancipated secular Jews found so repellent. So it is not Zionism that makes Israel barbarous, it is the way Israelis interpret their cultural, spiritual and textual heritage. Of course, Weiss is welcome to suggest that there is another possible interpretation to Jewish heritage, but he should be precise and point to those Jewish texts that preach universal ethics and world peace.
Weiss reckons that once we should be brave enough to deal with Zionism, “liberal Zionists will be pressed to decide what they believe in more, liberalism or Zionism.” But still I’m puzzled. If Weiss is so open and tolerant, surely he would allow discussion on his own website concerning the Jewish character of the Jewish State. He would invite a discussion concerning the Jewishness of the Jewish Lobby. I believe that Philip Weiss is operating unwillingly and unwittingly as a Zionist fig leaf. He invests all his intellectual energy diverting attention from the root cause of the problem – namely Jewish culture and Jewish identity politics. And why? Probably because of his own unease with is own Anti Zionist Zionist behaviour.
Activists in France have launched a campaign to disband the French branch of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), which is reportedly protected by the French government, Press TV reports.
Pointing to numerous acts of violence committed by the JDL, the activists censured the French government’s tolerance of the Jewish group and reaffirmed their determination to continue their campaign to ban the JDL.
The United States considers the JDL as a terrorist group. It is a Jewish far-right organization whose stated goal is to expel Palestinians from their homeland and “protect Jews from anti-Semitism by whatever means necessary.”
Under former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the group’s ties with the French government surfaced after French police allowed JDL members to use their sports facilities for military training.
The group has committed hundreds of violent acts in France, but their crimes have gone unpunished and even unreported, with merely a single conviction on record.
In a latest instance of violence, JDL thugs recently attacked Olivia Zemor, a leader of the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, sprayed a very toxic paint all over her body and posted the video of the assault on their website. French police arrested no one with regard to the attack.
“Any time they see a Palestinian voice, they attack them and they run away, because the French government is an accomplice to that,” said Nicolas Shahshahani, Zemor’s husband.
The JDL also attacked Shahshahani’s bookstore in 2006, using tear gas and dousing his books with cooking oil, but none of the perpetrators was apprehended.
It all started out simply enough. The nonprofit Council for the National Interest, of which I am president, recently tried to buy an advertisement in American History magazine.
The ad was to promote a new book by CNI’s founder, former Congressman Paul Findley, offering discounted copies through the CNI website.
The book, Speaking Out: A Congressman’s Lifelong Fight Against Bigotry, Famine, and War, is a fascinating memoir of Findley’s nine decades of life. It describes his depression-era childhood, World War II service in the South Pacific, experiences as an editor of a small town corn-belt newspaper, and 22 years as a Congressman grappling with everything from farm issues, to Vietnam, to Israel-Palestine.
The ad featured the cover of Findley’s book and four strong endorsements, including the following by Bill Moyers:
“There is a place in America called Findley Country. Inspired by its founding father, the people who live there cherish principled politics, political courage, and speaking truth to power (even when it hurts). Paul has given us a lively recollection of a robust and honorable life in public service, grounded in a patriot’s devotion to the country he loves.”
American History magazine refused to run our advertisement.
In fact, Advertising Director Julie Kershenbaum gratuitously informed us that they would not publish it in any of the 10 other U.S. history magazines owned by the same company. She said that the chain’s CEO and publisher, Eric Weider, had personally made the decision.
The reason? CNI is allegedly “anti-Israel.”
In reality, CNI is a nonpartisan organization founded 20 years ago by highly principled former U.S. Congressmen and diplomats. Our board members include several ambassadors.
CNI provides in-depth, transparently sourced information on the history and current situation in Israel-Palestine, on U.S. Middle East policies, and on their impact on American citizens, in line with our mission to work for U.S. Middle East policies that serve the national interest; that represent the highest values of our founders and our citizens; and that work to sustain a nation of honor, decency, security, and prosperity.
We oppose failed national policies that prolong the tragic violence in the Middle East, that place perceived Israeli interests over American ones, and that drain billions of dollars from the American economy.
Although many Americans are unaware of this, Americans are closely connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We give well over $8 million per day to Israel, a state smaller than New Jersey. On average, Israelis receive 10,000 times more U.S. foreign aid per capita than other people throughout the world. And this costs us significantly more – some analysts have placed the total cost at approximately $15 million per day.
We feel that it is essential that Americans become thoroughly informed about this conflict, which has cost multitudes of lives and created potentially catastrophic instability in the Middle East for over 60 years.
Yet, because the owners of what may be the world’s largest publisher of history magazines are partial to Israel, readers of 11 key American history magazines will neither be permitted to read about Findley’s autobiography nor even see the CNI name.
Troubled by this censorship, I phoned Publisher Eric Weider to discuss his decision. When he failed to return my calls, I began to research his company. Who were the people deciding what information could or could not reach American history fans?
While many people might picture the publishers of these magazines as scholars dedicated to the disinterested study of history, I discovered a very different situation.
Instead, I found out that the magazines are part of a massive and lucrative empire based on bodybuilding and related products: an empire that has been investigated and convicted for using false claims to sell potentially dangerous “nutritional supplements” and for publishing “obscene” magazines, run by powerful people with powerful friends in high places who’ve opposed the regulation of such supplements.
Not the profile readers might expect, though Publisher Weider is now interviewed in the media as an expert on American history – one whose commentary supports the alleged necessity of American wars in the Middle East.
The Weider History Group’s Eleven Magazines
The entity known as the Weider History Group publishes several history-related websites and eleven magazines: America’s Civil War, American History, Aviation History, Armchair General, British Heritage, Civil War Times, Military History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Vietnam, Wild West, and World War II.
All but one of these publications were originally independent magazines. Some of them are decades old. Civil War Times has been around for half a century; American History since the 1960s.
In 2006 the Weider History Group took over them all, acquiring them from another magazine chain.
Not everyone was pleased with the change. Civil War Times Editor Chris Lewis eventually resigned over the new direction the magazines were taking. He circulated an email explaining why he had decided to leave:
“I am a lifelong reader and care a great deal about this publication—which is why I cannot be a part of the ‘new direction’ that the magazines in this group are either already going in, or will be going in soon. There is no respect here anymore for history, historians or the core audience.”
The Empire that Owns American History
The Weider History Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Weider Health and Fitness, Inc., which in turn is part of a larger Weider empire valued at a billion dollars. The Weiders were initially Canadian promoters who are known for largely creating the business of modern bodybuilding and its multitude of spin-off products. Brothers Ben and Joe Weider founded the empire 70 years ago. Ben later said that his original dream had been to be an architect but that anti-Semitism had prevented this. Today, the principals are Joe Weider and Ben Weider’s son, Eric.
By the 1990s the Weider empire consisted of numerous brands and over a thousand products. These include bodybuilding extravaganzas and competitions; a wide range of exercise equipment and purported body enhancing devices; diverse publications; and a dazzling collection of “fitness products” and “nutritional supplements”– pills, powders, potions, and programs.
The latter are a large part of the Weider empire’s moneymaking machine. They include weight gain products, weight loss products, muscle health products, etc. An example is Weider BodyShaper Diet & Energy tablets “for Mental Energy and Thermogenesis.”
While many people purchase Weider products and some may deliver fully on their extravagant promises, federal investigations have found that a number of them do not.
Weider merchandise has been the subject of a number of federal investigations, and Weider companies have been found guilty of fraud on several occasions. The Weiders have worked to prevent legislation that would have further restricted the kinds of supplements sold by their companies.
In the 1970s U.S. postal officials found the Weider company had engaged in false claims involving a number of its products: “Slimmer Shake,” also known as “Weider’s Weight Loss Formula, XR-7;” “Slim Guard;” “Joe Weider’s Crash Weight Gain Formula #7;” “5 Minute Waist Slimmer Plan;” “5 Minute Body Shaper Plan;” and “Beauti-Breast of Paris,” a device which promised to enlarge breasts.
In 1981 the FTC found the company had made fraudulent claims regarding its “Slim-Quick formula.” The FTC also concluded that under some circumstances the weight-loss concoction could be significantly dangerous to health and required the company to add warning labels.
In 1986 the FTC forced Weider Health & Fitness Inc. to refund the purchase price paid by those who bought its “Anabolic Mega-Pak” or “Dynamic Life Essence” pills.
In 2000 Weider Nutritional International settled an FTC complaint involving false claims for PhenCal and was required to pay $400,000, a sum unlikely to have caused much pain to a billion dollar operation.
An Empire Built on Bodybuilding
The foundation of the Weider empire was originally the business of bodybuilding, and this still remains a significant part of its focus. According to anthropologist Alan Klein, the Weiders own “the largest conglomerate of bodybuilding products in the world.”
The Weiders founded the International Federation of Body Builders (IFBB) in 1946 and Joe Weider has been called the “czar” of bodybuilding.
In a 1998 book, former Mr. Universe Bob Paris stated that the Weiders “control bodybuilding.” (To learn more about bodybuilding see the montage at the IFBBpro website. As of this writing, the Weider history magazines have a banner ad on the site.)
Paris writes that the Weiders would pressure the most promising young bodybuilders into signing contracts with them. Anyone who publicly criticized or questioned any of the policies of the IFBB or its officers, Paris wrote, could be suspended. The officers seem to have mostly been the Weiders themselves or their friends.
Paris states:
“[T]he Weider brothers claim that the IFBB and the Weider companies are separate and completely unrelated. Only the most naive fool would believe that. They should simply say that, yes, they are completely linked… but of course if they did that, then nasty words like monopoly or conflict of interest would start getting thrown around….”
Another writer reported that a connection to the Weiders spelled success for an aspiring bodybuilder, but for a price: “…from that point on, the bodybuilder’s career is owned by the Weider corporation.”
The Arnold Schwarzenegger Connection
It was the Weiders who discovered future movie star/California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and brought him to America. They got the aspiring bodybuilder an apartment, bought him a car, and crafted him into a celebrity, tutoring him on everything from his exercise regimen and real estate investments to how to wear his hair. Joe Weider told the New York Times, “We created Arnold.”
The Weiders supported Schwarzenegger for California governor and remain close to him. Schwarzenegger declared July 9, 2007 “Joe Weider Day.” As we will see, there is a further connection. But first, we need to examine another aspect of the Weider business machine.
The Weider empire has also long included an array of magazines, mostly focused on bodybuilding and fitness. A few in past years seem to have crossed the line into lewdness and Joe Weider was twice indicted for producing and distributing obscene literature. In 1957 he was placed on a five-year probation.
In 2003 the Weiders sold this line of publications (the more obscene ones had been abandoned) to American Media, which also publishes the National Enquirer and Star tabloids, for $350 million.
This was less than a clean break, however, as the businesses seem to have arranged a mutually beneficial association, some of it apparently touching on Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Joe Weider remained in charge of the magazines under American Media, while American Media director David Pecker signed a contract to co-sponsor major bodybuilding contests with the Weiders.
With this new Weider-Pecker alliance came a change in how American Media’s tabloids covered Schwarzenegger, who was then running for California governor, and whose previous steroid use, sexual affairs (one allegedly with a minor), bullying groping incidents, etc. were the kind of fodder that often fuels tabloids.
According to an article in the San JoseMercury News, “Tabloids Starry-Eyed for Schwarzenegger,” by Dion Nissenbaum, Pecker promised Weider that his tabloids would “lay off’’ Schwarzenegger and “not dig up any dirt” on the gubernatorial candidate. In fact, following its deal with Weider, American Media now seemed to be promoting Schwarzenegger.
The Mercury News reported that American Media produced a 120-page glossy magazine called Arnold, the American Dream, “crammed with flattering photographs” that auspiciously hit the streets just as Schwarzenegger headed into the final lap of his campaign for governor.
The next year, after Schwarzenegger became governor, Pecker made him executive editor of Flex and Muscle & Fitness, promising him an estimated $8 million over the next five years for helping to “further the business objectives” of the company, according to the LA Times.
If anyone wondered how a sitting governor of one of the nation’s largest states would have time for such a position, Advertising Age reported that this was “a largely honorary position” and according to a Schwarzenegger aide “would only take up a ‘nominal amount’ of the governor’s time.”
The following year Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have cracked down on the use of supplements by student athletes.
A number of these supplements have been tied to serious health consequences. The medical community has warned that potential health effects include liver cancer, heart disease, impaired testicular function, and neurodegenerative effects.
Following Schwarzenegger’s veto, critics accused him of a conflict of interest, since supplements constituted a large portion of the advertising in the magazines that were paying him so generously for his work.
Advertising Age also made a point of noting that Schwarzenegger’s veto of legislation that would have regulated supplements “highlighted Mr. Schwarzenegger’s decades-long relationship with Joe Weider, the godfather of the supplement business.”
While Schwarzenneger was governor, and since, he has also worked to promote Israel. In a speech at an event at the Israeli Consulate Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “I love Israel. When I became governor, Israel was the first country that I visited.”
“I’ve had the pleasure of being there many times,” Schwarzenegger said, “and have seen it from a bodybuilding point of view, from a tourist’s point of view, from an entertainer’s point of view, from the governor’s point of view, forming trade relationships with Israel in order. I have been a long-time friend of Israel.”
The Orrin Hatch Connection
The Weiders have a history of working against public health regulation of supplements, despite evidence that some supplements can be dangerous to health – sometimes fatally so.
In 1994, according to a report on Weider Nutrition International in the International Directory of Company Histories, Vol.29, the Weiders worked with Utah Senator Orrin Hatch to successfully counter the FDA’s attempts to regulate supplements. Many Weider companies are headquartered in Utah.
The company history reports that a bill sponsored by Hatch entitled “the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act” was passed “to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from over-regulating the health products industry.”
“Later that year,” the report states, “Weider Nutrition honored Senator Hatch for his work on the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Salt Lake City to present Hatch with Weider’s first annual award for major health contributions.”
A 2001 article in the Washington Monthly, “Scorin’ with Orrin: How the gentleman from Utah made it easier for kids to buy steroids, speed, and Spanish fly,” gives the details.
Washington Monthly reports that the FDA had not bothered to participate in debates over Hatch’s bill, because it believed the law was so obviously bad it would never pass. However, Hatch sneaked the bill through in a late-night session, the magazine reports. Afterward, a pharmacist and public health expert appalled at the bill remarked: “I do not understand how a single member of Congress voted for it.”
Washington Monthly concludes, “Thanks to Hatch, the U.S. now has standards as low as those in many Third World countries for the sale of many products with serious, pharmacological effects. The results have been deadly. Between 1993 and 1998, the FDA linked at least 184 deaths to dietary supplements, which are now suspected of contributing to the sudden deaths of three football players in August.”
Six years later, a number of athletes who had taken American supplements were devastated when they failed drug tests at the 2000 Olympics. Unbeknownst to these athletes, the supplements contained substances banned internationally because of the dangers they posed to health.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) warned athletes to avoid American supplements, particularly those manufactured in Utah, which had become known as the “Cellulose Valley of the U.S. supplement industry.”
When Olympic officials and others specifically blamed Hatch for the problem, Weider and other manufacturers met with him to encourage him to keep the supplements as unregulated as possible. Washington Monthly reports that Hatch’s office “apparently reassured them that the senator would continue to defend their interests.”
While Hatch is reportedly a true believer in alternative medicine, the article pointed out: “There’s big money in dietary supplements, and Hatch has taken his fair share in campaign contributions.”
Loren Israelson, executive director of the Utah Natural Products Alliance, which represents the Utah supplement industry, lauded Hatch’s commitment: “He is by far our greatest advocate. No one rises to the issue the way Sen. Hatch does. He’s a true believer in natural health.”
Weider Foundations
The Weider empire is not limited to the U.S. The Weiders have promoted bodybuilding (and Weider products) worldwide. There are now IFBB groups in 182 countries, and there are photos of Weider with diverse government officials, including Ronald Reagan, Yasser Arafat, and Menachem Begin.
Multimillionaires often set up tax-deductible foundations and the Weiders have created several.
The Ben Weider foundation has donated gyms around the world as part of their bodybuilding outreach, including in Israel and Palestine. Ben endowed what is now known as the “Ben Weider Jewish Community Center in Montreal” and also supported two Lubavitch institutions, a charismatic and sometimes controversial branch of Orthodox Judaism. He was an admirer of Lubavitch head Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, a religious leader who was a major force in Israel; Israeli leaders – including Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, and Benjamin Netanyahu – would often visit him when they were in the U.S. and seek his advice. A widely revered but controversial leader, Schneerson was held by some followers to be the Messiah. Less widely known is the fact that he made statements that Jews are a different and superior species to non-Jews.
There is also a Joe Weider Foundation; Joe Weider is CEO and Eric Weider has been CFO and is currently President. This entity has given several large grants to a Los Angeles-based organization called American Friends Of Aish HaTorah. Aish HaTorah is an Israeli organization that opposes Jewish assimilation and promotes Israel in the United States. It has been connected to the production of pseudo-documentaries promoting Islamophobia that were distributed in the U.S.
Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, a strong Israel proponent himself, calls Aish “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today. Its operatives flourish in the radical belt of Jewish settlements just south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, and their outposts across the world propagandize on behalf of a particularly sterile, sexist and revanchist brand of Judaism.”
Among its multitude of activities, Aish has a program to create and equip advocates for Israel on American campuses. These “Hasbara Fellows” as they’re termed, operate on over 120 campuses.
Joe Weider is one of six North American chairmen of The Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah. This focuses on bringing political leaders, corporate executives, investors, and entertainment personages on private trips to Israel to increase their support for Israel.
Weider Empire Acquires History Magazines
The same year the Weiders sold their muscle and fitness magazines they began their foray into history magazines. Working out of the same San Fernando offices, they published the first in their new chain, Armchair General, the following year. A Reuters story on the launch announced:
“The Los Angeles publisher that made its fortune on the dreams of armchair musclemen everywhere now wants to get Americans pumped up on a new avocation — becoming armchair generals.
“Eric Weider, whose family firm sold mainstream America on bodybuilding and Arnold Schwarzenegger, on Tuesday launched Armchair General, an ‘interactive’ war magazine aimed at selling military history to the masses.”
The Weiders’ market analysis showed a potential readership of “more than 35 million lifelong devotees.” Eric Weider, who had moved to California from Canada many years before, became an American citizen around this time.
While Eric Weider appears to be a genuine history buff, he apparently has no training or degree in history. He has a Master’s degree in business administration and has spent most of his life working in his family’s business empire, mostly in its bodybuilding and “nutritional supplements” divisions.
A Business Week c.v. lists the following positions: President and Chief Executive Officer of Weider Health and Fitness Inc., President of the Joe Weider Foundation, Chairman of Schiff Nutrition International Inc., Director of a number of public and private companies in the United States and Canada, including Nutripeak, Inc., Hillside Investment Management, Inc., Organ Recovery Systems and Life Science Holdings, and Weider Health and Fitness, a subsidiary of Schiff Nutrition International Inc.
Nevertheless, TV and radio shows hosted by such people as Tucker Carlson and Al Rantel feature Eric Weider as “an historian” to provide what is promoted as expert commentary on current events and today’s wars.
Weider is an engaging speaker, but the history he cites is highly selective and is used to support military action in the Middle East. On the Rantel show he suggested that American presidents should ignore polls indicating what Americans want and instead “instill the will” to fight.
The Weider History Group and Israel-Palestine
A survey of the publications’ website, HistoryNet, shows most articles and commentaries regarding Israel-Palestine to be Israel-centric. They often extol the Israeli military.
The publications’ articles during and following Israel’s 2008-9 massive attack on Gaza largely consisted of cheering Israel’s victory. The articles failed to mention that this allegedly proud conquest (fueled by massive American money and weaponry) was over one of the world’s poorest populations (largely thanks to Israeli policies). They also failed to mention that Palestinians have no navy, no air force, and no real army, and that their resistance groups are minimally armed.
When Israel finally ended its three-week long invasion of the densely populated enclave (during which Israeli forces had killed 1,400 Palestinians, 470 of them women and children; many others elderly men), a Weider HistoryNet article bemoaned Israel’s decision “to break off its punitive expedition into Gaza prematurely—despite the superb performance of the Israel Defense Force….”
The HistoryNet articles emphasized Israel’s need “to defend itself” against Palestinian rockets, but they failed to report that these are largely small, homemade projectiles and that Palestinian resistance forces began firing them only after Israel had already invaded Gaza numerous times and killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians of all ages.
They also neglected to mention that, before the invasion, these rockets had killed a total of approximately 19 Israelis – ever. (The total fatalities from Gaza rockets through November 2012 are 29. During the same time, according to the Israeli organization B’Tselem, Israeli forces killed over 4,000 Gazans.)
The articles erroneously claimed that Israel invaded Gaza because the Palestinian Hamas group had violated a ceasefire agreement with Israel. In reality, it was Israel that had violated the ceasefire three times – killing seven Palestinians – before some Palestinian groups then resumed rocket fire.
Finally, the Weider articles failed to inform readers that Israel had been planning the invasion for six months ahead of time, as revealed by a Jewish Chroniclearticle applauding Israel’s effective “hasbara” (propaganda) campaign during the operation.
Eric Weider himself has occasionally posted pro-Israel comments on the site’s forums. In one he responds to a member’s posting about Israeli fighters flying over Gaza several times a day to create sonic booms in order to frighten the people below, who would dive for shelter. Weider comments: “Next thing you know the Israelis will start talking excessively loudly! Their cruely [sic] knows no bounds!” In another thread, Weider states, “It is important to recognize that there is a lot of anti-semetic [sic] inspired Anti-Israel sentiment in the world.”
Eric Weider and George Washington
Eric Weider expresses great admiration for George Washington and has begun a petition to restore his birthday as a federal holiday. He has written: “If I have a historical role model I would say that I most admire George Washington and I do my best to conduct myself in a way that he (and my father) would approve of.”
Yet, Weider seems to be violating one of Washington’s major recommendations:
In his Farewell Address, Washington warned against a “passionate attachment” to any foreign nation, saying that such attachments were “particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot.”
If Eric Weider looked at the CNI website when he decided to censor it from his 11 magazines, he saw prominently displayed on the homepage a picture of the American forefather who he has called “first in his heart.”
Under this he saw an excerpt from his role model’s famous speech in which Washington warned: “Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.”
On our homepage Weider would have also seen a history article on the U.S.-Israel relationship that contains considerable new, somewhat explosive information. Much of this would quite likely be of interest to readers of American history magazines, if they were allowed to learn of it.
Determining the future through controlling the past
It is disturbing to find that a chain targeting American history enthusiasts is exploiting its considerable power in furtherance of a political agenda of such monumental significance.
Multitudes of lives have been lost and destroyed in Middle East wars – many thousands of them American. Israel is the core issue in the Middle East and key cause of hostility to the U.S., is a factor in the American economic crisis, is embedded in U.S. electoral politics, and plays a significant role in many aspects of American policy formation. It is essential that Americans become well informed on Israel and on our relationship to it.
Author George Orwell’s words capture the profound significance of the Weider censorship within its history magazines: “Who controls the past controls the future.” Or, in the words of someone who posted to an online bodybuilding forum about the Weiders’ ownership of history publications: “Of course, if you control the writing of history… you gain power.”
The way to avoid a dangerously darkening future, I feel, is to free the past to full, open, and unfiltered inquiry. Our forefathers created freedom of the press because they rightly understood the necessity of a fully informed populace for the survival of our democratic republic.
The only way to counter the manipulation of powerful media owners is to expose their actions widely and to demand better. I hope all those who love knowledge, who care about the United States, and who value the lives of others on the other side of the world will help disseminate this information. It is time to stop allowing those who own the press to abuse their massive power.
In a recent interview with the Jewish Journal, unfunny comedian Bill Maher has once again praised Israel for its restraint in only committing rampant war crimes in Gaza rather than a full-scale nuclear genocide of a civilian population.
Two-and-a-half years ago, I wrote a lengthy post about Maher’s appalling anti-Islam bigotry and staggering ignorance regarding the factual history of his favorite colonial-settler ethnocracy, Israel. While Maher’s vitriolic attacks on Muslims, grotesque caricature of Palestinians in particular and unconditional fealty to Zionist propaganda has continued unabated in the intervening years, comments made in his Jewish Journal interview – conducted just days after the Israeli military concluded its latest criminal bombardment of besieged Gaza that succeeded in murdering over 160 people, including 42 children – concisely illustrate his warped understanding of reality.
Condemning religious people for ignorance of their own doctrinal scripture, Maher says, “I think if they read the bible, especially the Old Testament, I think they would be appalled,” adding that if biblical stories were de-contextualized and read only as a vengeful deity “wiping these people out and ethnically cleaning [sic] them for no apparent reason, how he does things on a whim and how he’s jealous; They’d go, ‘This is terrible.'”
While Maher may be correct on this point, he then claims that Judaism is “certainly not as dangerous as Islam and Christianity. Those are warlike religions.” One is left to wonder if Maher knows what the Old Testament actually is.
Maher finds elements of Judaism “insane” and “funny” and, in his world, the religion seems to boil down to kooky inventions like the Shabbos Elevator which “doesn’t really threaten anybody’s life.”
For Maher, who seems to be channeling the myopia of Jon Stewart here, every Muslim is a brainwashed terrorist, while every Jew is just a hapless nebbish – one part Catskills-era Jackie Mason, one part whining Yiddish Bubbe. Muslims are violent fanatics who blow things up, whereas Jews are more concerned with hikes in bus fares and guilt-tripping their children. Never in Maher’s mind could Jewish people be seen as racists, occupiers, ethnic cleansers, and colonists. Never could they level neighborhoods, attack civilian populations with the most high-tech killing machines and chemical weapons, or discriminate against communities based solely on their religion or ethnicity. They are victims – always – never aggressors.
It is therefore unsurprising that Maher stated, “Y’know, maybe Arabs and Jews are both crazy, but Jews save a tiny piece of their mind for science, math, and writing sitcoms. Arabs, on the other severed hand, seem to spend all their time handing down grudges from one generation to the next.”
Maher has apparently never stopped to wonder what the world would be like without coffee, carpets, windmills, parachutes, soap, fountain pens, romantic poetry, algorithms, trigonometry, rose windows, pointed arches, scalpels, forceps, dissolving stitches, anesthesia, cataract surgery, cameras and the science of optics – to name just a few – all products of Arab and Muslim minds. And where would we all be without Khalil Gibran, Steve Jobs, and 1980’s pop sensation Tiffany, whose last name is Darwish?
Because he is generally seen as “liberal” in mainstream discourse, the inconsistencies and ignorance in Maher’s conception of world religions and his passionate attachment to Israel are cause for concern.
To his credit, Maher is honest about his proclivities. “I’ve never hid the fact that I don’t think it’s a conflict where both sides are equally guilty,” he told Danielle Berrin, who writes the “Hollywood Jew” column for the Jewish Journal. “I’m more on the side of the Israelis; that’s why Benjamin Netanyahu did my show a few years ago, before he was Prime Minister.”
Is Maher saying here that Netanyahu will only do interviews with Zionists? Maher also neglects to mention that his interview with Netanyahu was in 2006, soon after Israel had decimated southern Lebanon for a month, killing 1,180 people (about a third of whom were children), wounding over 4,050, and displacing about 970,000 others as direct result of the more than 7,000 air attacks by the Israeli Air Force and an additional 2,500 bombardments by the Israeli Navy that deliberately contravened international law and targeted civilian infrastructure.
Maher repeatedlypraised the assault in which Lebanese men, women and children were being blown to pieces, claiming that condemning Israeli war crimes (which he benignly referred to as Israel being “forced to kill people in its own defense”) was the same thing as anti-Semitism. Maher seemed blissfully oblivious to the facts, including evidence that Israel had actually instigated the conflict and willfully continued the “widespread destruction of apartments, houses, electricity and water services, roads, bridges, factories and ports… even when it became clear that the victims of the bombardment were predominantly civilians, which was the case from the first days of the conflict.”
At the end of his fawning interview with the once-and-future Prime Minister, Maher quotes a Jerusalem Post article: “The Foreign Ministry would do well to watch Bill Maher to learn how to sell Israel’s case to a TV audience… ,” then asks Netanyahu, “What do you think? I could roll that way!”
Netanyahu’s response? “Hey Bill, watch it, if I’m Prime Minister, you’ll get the job.”
Clearly, they both got their wish.
Maher’s original admission that he is “more on the side of the Israelis” acknowledges that he finds Palestinians – an indigenous population that was dispossessed, displaced and all but destroyed by militarily superior Zionist forces and which has lived as refugees under perpetual occupation, deliberately denied sovereignty, self-determination and self-defense for over six decades; a people demonized, dehumanized and traumatized who are routinely condemned in their desperate resistance to subjugation, colonization and collective punishment for not taking enough care to protect the lives and collective identity of its oppressors and occupiers – far more culpable for the persistence of a century-old “conflict” than the Israelis – a nuclear-armed, superpower-backed, settler society that institutionally discriminates against the non-Jewish communities whose lives it controls.
And this guy is called “liberal”?
Maher’s take on Israel/Palestine boils down to this: “It’s not that complicated: Stop firing rockets into Israel and perhaps they won’t annihilate you,” he told Berrin. Perhaps. Annihilate. That Israel might cease its occupation, blockade, night raids, airstrikes and land theft is obviously not the problem here. No, it’s the futile and frustrated reaction to such trifles that is beyond Maher’s pale. Again, one hundred years of history is erased and replaced by an invented narrative of violent Arabs endlessly attacking innocent Israeli Jews. Maher is obviously unaware that, according to a 2009 study, “it is overwhelmingly Israel, not Palestine, that kills first” following a ceasefire, thus instigating retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza. “Indeed,” the study concluded, “it is virtually always Israel that kills first after a lull lasting more than a week.” The recent Israeli bombing campaign against Gaza is no exception.
Moreover, Maher seems to be unaware that four years have passed since Israel’s massacre in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009, claiming that Palestinians “lost over 1,000 people” in the recent Israeli offensive. Keeping abreast of facts, of course, isn’t Maher’s concern when describing a week of devastation wrought upon a caged population of 1.7 million with nowhere to run and no viable means to protect itself as Gaza gets, in Maher’s words, its “ass kicked.” One can assume that, in his childhood, Maher spent many an hour kicking the asses of ants with a magnifying glass.
But all this is merely prologue to where both Maher and his interlocutor Berrin were about to go. Berrin posed a leading question to Maher about proportionality and the vast discrepancy between Israeli and Palestinian death tolls and got the answer she was hoping for:
Its obvious that Israelis, in all of their battles with the Palestinians, show restraint. Because they have nuclear weapons. And if the situation was reversed, I don’t doubt for a second that Palestinians would fire them immediately. They’d use the maximum of what they have available and the Israelis don’t.
Ok, ignore the hypothetical nature of role-reversal (how would an indigenous population occupy and colonize parts of its own land?) and leave aside the sheer stupidity of assuming Palestinians in Gaza would launch nuclear weapons at a state in which 20% of the population are themselves Palestinian or that Tel Aviv is roughly 50 miles away from Gaza meaning that Palestinians would essentially be dropping a nuke on themselves. Or the weirdness of suggesting that the Palestinian goal of self-determination, statehood and equal rights in their historic homeland could be achieved by physically obliterating that very homeland and making it literally uninhabitable. And forget that the “restraint” Maher lauds in Israel’s recent round of murder is a casualty ratio of 33-1.
Maher actually contends here that Israel shows “restraint” merely by not engaging in the complete nuclear holocaust of Palestinians, a desperate refugee population Israel itself created through ethnic cleansing and continued occupation. The fact that Israel’s conventional military might and capacity for lethal destruction far surpasses that of most countries on the planet is obviously irrelevant, as is the tragedy that such “restraint” in late November included the murder of ten members of the al-Dalou family, including four children, crushed to death when Israel bombed their three-story home in Gaza. Such is the Israeli conception of “restraint” and Maher’s explicit endorsement of excessive Israeli force against a civilian Palestinian population.
Maher has said similar things before. A few years ago he suggested that, if rockets were fired into the United States from Canada, “we would have nuked them a hundred times by now,” despite the fact that the analogy literally makes no sense. In fact, Maher’s penchant for recycling material is nothing new. On November 21, when a ceasefire was announced, Maher tweeted:
Obviously, for Maher, those “reloading” are the Palestinians and not the Israelis, who are annually gifted with $3 billion in military aid from the United States, have their own booming arms industry, and have some of the planet’s most sophisticated and deadly weaponry in its own perennially loaded arsenal. Maher used the same line on March 18, 2011 during an obsequious Real Time interview with Israeli ambassador Michael Oren because, hey, when it’s disingenuous and not funny the first time, why not roll it out a year-and-a-half later?
Before wrapping up the Jewish Journal interview, Maher resorted to tossing out some hackneyed hasbara talking points. While it should be remembered that “the Palestinians do have gripes,” he said (yes, gripes), the real threat to Israel is “becoming a minority Jewish state within their own country.” Whose country? Oh, and, yeah, calling for demographic engineering isn’t particularly progressive, Bill. It’s just racist.
Maher of course can’t let the interview end without interjecting the mother of all hasbara canards: that Israeli actions against the Palestinians in Gaza (aka war crimes) are motivated primarily by “self-defense.” As always, the occupied indigenous refugees with homemade rockets and smuggled AK-47s are transformed into eliminationist aggressors while the colonizing occupiers armed with drones, Apache helicopters, F-16 jets, tanks, warships, white phosphorous and nuclear bombs are the innocent victims of senseless anti-Semitic violence. It goes without saying that, for Maher, Palestinians are never entitled to defend themselves.
But remember, as Maher told the Jewish Journal, Judaism simply isn’t a “warlike religion” like the others – despite the fact that a self-proclaimed “Jewish State” was established atop Palestine, its native inhabitants massacred or driven from the land by Zionist militias, its towns, villages, groves and orchards razed and reduced to rubble by Israeli bombs, tank treads and bulldozers.
Never mind that, during the 2008-9 massacre of Gaza known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military rabbinate actively called upon Jewish soldiers not to “show mercy” towards its “enemy,” comparing Palestinians to ancient Philistines, ripe for righteous slaughter. It disseminated material declaring “a biblical ban on surrendering a single millimeter of it [the Land of Israel] to gentiles, though all sorts of impure distortions and foolishness of autonomy, enclaves and other national weaknesses,” and insisting, “We will not abandon it to the hands of another nation, not a finger, not a nail of it.”
Never mind that chief army rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Rontzki, made it perfectly clear that the rabbinate’s goal in relation to Israeli soldiers was “to fill them with yiddishkeit and a fighting spirit.” In that campaign, the Israeli military killed over 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of whom were non-combatant men, women and children, and wounding thousands upon thousands more in just over three weeks. Despite the worldwidecondemnationofIsraeliwarcrimesinGaza, Rontzki remained convinced that “[i]n Israel’s wars, warriors are God-fearing people, righteous people, people who don’t have sins on their hands.”
Never mind that, in November 2009, rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, an Israeli settler who lives in the illegal West Bank colony of Yitzhar near Nablus, published The King’s Torah, which “describes how it is possible to kill non-Jews according to halakha (Jewish religious law).” According to the Israeli press, “the book contains no fewer than 230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guide for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew” and states that, as non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature,” even children are legitimate targets for murder. “One must consider killing even babies,” the book says, “because of the future danger that will be caused if they are allowed to grow up to be as wicked as their parents.”
Never mind that during the most recent Israeli attacks, with the Biblical moniker Operation Pillar of Cloud, Gilad Sharon, son of former Prime Minister/comatose war criminal Ariel Sharon, declared in The Jerusalem Post that – because Hamas won a majority in Parliamentary elections in January 2006 – “the residents of Gaza are not innocent,” urging the Israeli military to “flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza,” just like the United States decimated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. “There is no middle path here,” Sharon concluded, “either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”
Never mind that Knesset minister Michael Ben-Ari echoed Sharon’s sentiments, saying, “There are no innocents in Gaza,” imploring the Israeli military to “mow them!” Referring to Gaza as the Biblical Sodom, Ben-Ari addressed soldiers directly, asserting that “there are no righteous men, turn it into rubble. Paint it red! We are worried about you and rely on you. We all do, all of the Nation of Israel,” an unmistakable reference to all Jewish people worldwide, not merely citizens of the State of Israel.
Never mind that, on November 21, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon declared that “most of the people” in Gaza killed by Israel “deserved it,” falsely claiming that those killed and wounded “were just armed terrorists,” when in fact the vast majority were unarmed civilians, including dozens of women, children and babies.
Never mind that more than 90% of Jewish Israelis supported Israel’s November 2012 bombardment of Gaza. Never mind that roughly 94% supported Cast Lead. Never mind that, according to a recent study, Israel remains the single most militarized nation in the world, a distinction it has held for nearly 20 straight years.
Back in September 2010, Maher told Larry King that, along with Saudi Salafis and the Afghan Taliban, he thought “Hamas is crazy.” When King asked how “a civilized world” should “deal with crazies,” Maher replied, “I would say, first thing is don’t use the Army.” Considering his obvious affinity for and justification of Israeli violence against Palestinians in Gaza, either Maher somehow exempts the Israeli military from such a prescription or, more appropriately, he doesn’t find Israel to be part of the “civilized world.” It is doubtful Maher would pick the latter option.
To make the point that Maher is uninformed on the topic of Israel and Palestine is obvious. That his enthusiastic promotion of Zionist propaganda and apologia seems not to affect his reputation as a mainstream liberal mouthpiece is considerably more alarming.
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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