SEPTEMBER 2005

Ruminations on the War on Terror...
 

If Palestine declares itself and independent state then it can be held accountable for terrorist activity from within its borders. It worked out okay for Israel when they bypassed the diplomatic road and declared themselves independent in 1948. Of course they had to fight all of their neighbors to make the state a reality. Tough start for a country. Unfortunately this tactic was tried in 1988 in terms of declaring the West Bank and Gaza independent and nothing happened. But Palestine has some political structure today and it would have more impact being declared from within Palestine than from Tunisia in exile.Eeyore. Well, before the Palestians could declare an independent state all of the Israeli Settlements in their territory needs to be removed. Plus the apartheid wall of Israel needs to follow the TRUE 1967 borders and not where they take a huge chunk of Palestinian lands. I find it sickening that the UN (US included) condemend the current wall borders yet has done nothing to stop the construction of it. I don't see anything wrong with them building a wall for protection, but they need to follow the original borders, not take this as an opportunity for major land grabbing.Rickmanx 1) What historically is Palestine is not quite clear. The name Palestine designated several different regions in the area throughout history. But it is sure that it wasn't until 1920 that the other 70% of the British mandate you're talking about was included in Palestine (by the British). 8 months later they split the British mandate again in 2 parts, what is now Israel(30%) and TransJordan (70%,now Jordan). So historically only the 30% now occupied by Israel was ever a part of Palestine. 2) The land that is now Jordan was created by a treaty with the British. The parts of Palestine that Israel occupies were gotten by military force. FreedomFries America's Debate Forum, monitor:Eeyore

 In 1996 Israeli hard-liner Bibi Netanyahu (son of the historian, Ben Zion
Netanyahu) was elected Prime Minister of Israel and made it clear that the Barack
peace offer to the Palestinians would be consigned to the dustbin of history.
You remember that most generous offer which Arafat reputedly spurned…90% of
the occupied territories for a Palestinian ‘’entity’’… that is 90% of 22% or
18% of what had been the original Palestine mandate awarded the British at
Versailles. An entity, not a state with anything approaching full sovereignty on
18% of the land, even though  Palestinians now outnumbered Jews within the
boundaries of the original mandate. (it should be noted that  the current
agreement being pushed by the  Sharon government is far less generous; the
Palestinians will have to accept the outright annexation of 56% of the occupied
territories, which will leave them with 46% of the original 22% for their state, which
 in reality, is at best a Bantustan and at worst a huge open air prison.)
Forty-six per cent of 22%, or approximately 10% of what was the Palestine Mandate.

 
Returning to Mr. Netanyahu: His foreign policy brain trust in 1996 put
together a set of foreign policy initiatives…It was called ‘’ A Clean Break: A New
Strategy For Securing the Realm…Israel, it was argued, should adopt a more
proactive foreign policy, she should shape her own strategic and geopolitical
landscape. At the core of this policy was regime change in those neighboring
states hostile to Israel, especially Saddam Hussein in Iraq but also Syria and
Iran.  Many of the contributors to this paper were American Jews like Richard
Pearle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, individuals who had previously held
policy making positions in various US Administrations … and who would eventually
turn up in more senior positions in the Bush White House, and form the core of
the neo-con cabal that surrounds Bush and has his ear. The foreign policy
initiative by Bibi’s brain trust so eerily parallels Bush’s own foreign policy
that even the neo-cons can't ignore it….so what do they do, they embrace by
saying in effect that what is good for the United States is good for Israel and
vice versa insisting that our interests and those of Israel are virtually
identical. Your familiar with the spin…Israel the only democracy in the Middle East,
our only real ally, our shared values. Mix in the almost non-stop
demonization of Muslims in general and Arabs in particular by the media, ( the heroes of
the silver screen: Swartznegger, Stallone, Willis, Harrison Ford , Denzel
Washington always seem to be in pursuit of evil and maniacal enemies who
invariably answer to the name of Abdul, Ahmad or Mohammed ) and  then add a generous
helping of terrified politicians who wish to endear themselves to the Israeli
lobby AIPAC and you’ve  stifled any possibility of reasoned debate on US policy
toward the Middle East.

  

Stop and think for a moment what the reaction would be if a newly chosen Pope had scrapped Vatican II and then commissioned a think talk made up of American Catholics to come up with a policy for, not only reestablishing the Papal States, but also for rolling back the Reformation by initiating regime change in various Protestant countries…and imagine these guys now holding high positions in the current administration, which coincidentally is carrying out almost the exact same policy, but justifying it as being in the United States’
national interest.? Would the American people stand for it?  

           
One need not dig very far to see the Israeli connection to the current war on
terror…When Netanyahu was asked what was the consequence of 9/11 for Israel
…he said ‘’ good… very good ‘’ and then realizing that his gloating might
offend Americans quickly said ‘’it’s very bad for American but now they will
realize what Israel has been going through for years’’. He would later qualify
what he said by pointing out that Israel has suffered proportionately far
greater losses that the United States did on 9/11 at the hands of terrorists since
she has a far smaller population than the United States. I wonder if
Netanyahu’s calculus of death eased the grief of those who lost loved ones on 9/11?

           
And without going into any of the conspiracy theories about 9/11…and some of
them are quite compelling, is there anyone in this room who doesn't believe
that the Twin Towers would still be standing if the United States had not
displayed such a ‘’passionate attachment to Israel for the past half century.

           
I also remember Senator Orin Hatch being very candid on the eve of the American Invasion of Iraq saying to a reporter that if we didn't take out Saddam, the Israelis would…but as to why it was in the United States national interest that Saddam be taken out he wasn't asked and neither did he offer an explanation. That's analogous to Chamberlain in 1939 telling the British they were going to war with Hitler because if they didn't, Russia would. I thought that the
comment was explosive, don't you? Imagine a senior senator saying that the US was going to war because if we didn't, the Israelis would.…but somehow none of the talking heads thought it worthy of analysis and the comment disappeared down the memory hole. A wonder if the same escapable logic is going to be invoked if and when we decide to lay some ‘’shock and awe ‘’ on Iran. Will some elected official offer the explanation that if we didn't do it the Israelis would? Remember we lived with a nuclear armed Soviet Union for forty years and we continue to live with her similarly armed successor state, Russia…We did not use force or issue ultimatums to the People's Republic of China when she was developing her own nuclear arsenal. So why are we so adamant that Iran not develop such weapons…who has the most to fear from an Iran with a few nukes…the answer is Israel since her nuclear monopoly in the region would come to an end…she could no longer act with her usual unilateral arrogance and she just might have to negotiate a reasonable settlements with her neighbors.

            
Avi Shavit of Haaretz News Service certainly recognized the Israeli
connection to the invasion of Iraq when wrote on April 3, 2003 that ‘’The war on Iraq
was conceived by 25 neo conservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish who
are pushing President Bush to change the course of history’’.

           
Likewise Thomas Friedman of the Times who wrote ‘’I could give you the names
of twenty-five people who if you exiled them a year and a half ago to a
dessert island, the Iraq war would not have happened.’’ Friedman didn't provide us
with any names but left no doubt that most of them are Jews who have worked
for years with groups associated with the Israeli-Jewish lobby. I suspect that
the two lists, Shavat’s and Friedman’s are virtually identical.

           
Interestingly neither Shavit nor Friedman was not denounced as an anti Semites or what's the term, ‘’self hating Jew ‘’ when they wrote these words… but Congressman James Moran of Virginia was vilified when he said something almost identical and so was Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Moran, the Virginia Congressman, told an audience on the eve of hostilities that ‘’ Jewish groups were pushing the United States into a war with Iraq’’. Tremendous pressure was brought to bear by the democratic leadership and he issued a clarification, which in effect was an apology. McKinney eventually lost her seat to a challenger whose campaign was financed by heavy doses of ‘’outside money. Retired Anthony Zinni was also attacked for saying more or less the same thing. So was Senator Hollings.  Pat Buchanan, who has been on Pro Israel hit list ever since his amen corner comment at the start of the Gulf War, has over and over made the point that this is a war for Israel…and over and over again he has been denounced as an anti-Semite.

           
Let's hear what Joe Klein of Time Magazine had to say on Feb. 5, 2003. ‘’A stronger Israel is the rationale for war with Iraq. It is part of the argument that dare not speak its name, a fantasy quietly cherished by the neo conservative faction in the Bush Administration and by many leaders of the American Jewish community.

           
The fantasy involves the domino theory. The destruction of Saddam’s Iraq will
not only remove an enemy of long standing but will also change the basic
power equation in the region. It will send a message to Syria and Iran about the
perils of support for Islamic terrorists. It will send a message to the
Palestinians too: Democratize and make peace on Israeli terms, or forget about a stat
e of your own.

           
And Michael Kinsley on Oct. 24, 2002: ‘’ The lack of public discussion about
the role of Israel in the thinking of President Bush is easier to understand
but weird nevertheless. It is the proverbial elephant in the room (Joe Sobran
saw it as the 800lb gorilla) Everybody sees it but no one talks about
it…neither supporters nor opponents of the war wish to evoke the classic anti-Semitic
image of the king’s Jewish advisors whispering poison into his ear and
betraying the country to foreign interests’’.

           
James Rosen of the Sacramento Bee on April 6, 2003: ‘’In 1996 as Likud PM
Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to take office, eight Jewish neo-conservative
leaders sent him a six-page memo outlining an aggressive vision of government. At
the top of their list was the overthrowing of Saddam and the replacing of him
with a monarch under the control of Jordan….Fred Donner a professor of Near
Eastern History at the University of Chicago was struck by the similarities
between the ideas in the memo and the ideas at the forefront of Bush’s foreign
policy’’…aren’t we all I might add

           
And Dr.Henry Makow got it half right when he said on Feb. 10, 2003 ‘’If the U.S. gets bogged down with heavy casualties , Americans are going to blame big oil and Zionism for getting them into this mess. ‘’ It is increasingly evident to about half the country that we are in a mess and just as Makow predicted, with many are blaming big oil…remember the bumper sticker…’’no blood for oil’’ but the 800 lb Zionist gorilla or was it the elephant, has yet to be recognized as a primary factor for our involvement.
           
He went on to say that:

1) American Jewish conservatives planned this war in 1998 and succeeded in
making it Bush’s foreign policy.                                                  
2) The purpose of the war is to change the balance of power in the middle
east so that Israel can settle the Palestinian issue on its own terms.                                             
3) Congress trembles in fear before the Israeli Lobby, AIPAC
           
He also made this observation: Zionists have succeeded in making support for
Zionism synonymous with Jewish. They have made Israel appear to be a
vulnerable country facing annihilation in a sea of blood thirsty Arabs. The fact is
that Israel has 200-400 nuclear bombs and is one of the most powerful nations on
earth. It has evaded many opportunities for peace because its secret agenda is
to dominate the region…there is virtually nothing in Dr. Markow’s analysis
that I would disagree with

And here is what Israel Shamir has to say: ‘’There is an old adage that
says, when visiting a foreign country, if you wish to ascertain who really runs
things, one need only to determine who is spoken about in whispers, if at all.
Judged by this measure, the Jews, rule supreme!’’
            
The current conflict in Iraq would come as no surprise to Jack Bernstein author of ‘’The Life of an American Jew in Racist Israel who made the following prediction in 1984: ‘’ The Zionists who rule Israel and the Zionists in America have been trying to trick the U.S. into a Mid-East war on the side of Israel. They almost succeeded when the U.S. Marines were sent to Lebanon in 1982. The blood of 250 American Marines who died in Lebanon is dripping from the hands of Israeli and American Zionists’’
           
If more Americans are not made aware about Zionist Israel, you can be sure, sooner or later, these atheists who claim to be God’s Chosen People will trick the U.S. into a Mid East war against the Arabs who in the past have always been America’s best friends’’ ( notice he says ‘’atheistic Jews as if religious feel otherwise about Israel’s legitimacy)
 
Saying that we are fighting the War on Terror for the benefit of Israel raises the question of ‘’Why’’?. Just what is it about this country that makes the United States willing to expend its blood and treasure, alienate its traditional allies and submit to the curtailment of fundamental civil liberties and freedoms in the name of wartime security? And why has the United States underwritten the state of Israel since its creation by providing it with a cutting
edge military, hundreds of billions in financial assistance and blanket diplomatic cover, not the least of which have included numerous United Nations’ vetoes on her behalf, turning an official blind eye to her human rights abuses and officially ignoring her very potent nuclear arsenal

           

I submit United States support for Israel, rests on two pillars…one religious and the other historical; the Bible and the Holocaust. The first is grounded on faith and the second, in spite of the 80,000 or so books that have written about what has been described as history’s greatest crime, is also a matter of faith given the limited forensic evidence that it actually occurred. The fact that both pillars are matters of faith for their true believers, make them virtually impregnable to rationale argument. That the legitimacy of Israel is grounded in these two beliefs there is little doubt. The Israeli Declaration of Independence stated ‘’ The catastrophe that recently befell the Jewish people-the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe –was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by reestablishing in Eretz-Israel a Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer on the Jewish people the status of fully privileged member in the comity of nations’’. And on another occasion when the same Ben Gurion was reminded that the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and Balfour Declaration gave certain guarantees to the native inhabitants as well as restrictions on the Jewish State, he thundered that ‘’The Bible is our mandate’’…an interesting response from eastern European Socialist who made no secret that he was atheist.


           
To understand America's attachment to Israel we must turn to the Bible…specifically to the Book of Genesis which records a conversation between an Iraqi shepherd, Abraham (he was from Ur which is in Southern Iraq) and a local God Yaweh back in the Bronze Age. It was a kind of real estate deal…he would give to Abraham and his descendants  land if they would accept him as their god and obey his laws: ‘’To you and your offspring I will give this land … from the river of Egypt to the great River Euphrates and ‘’I will bless those that bless you and whoever curses you I will curse’’….I suspect a great many Americans, George Bush included believe they are going to be blessed by Jehovah for their blessing of Israel, while millions of Arabs, particularly Palestinians have
suffered dispossession and death for having apparently cursed the self described ‘’chosen children of god’’. Interestingly…such a real estate transaction, the one between Yahweh and Abraham, would be illegal in the current United States, since if violates Federal Fair Housing Act that outlaws such discriminatory real estate covenants.

           
For Zionists and their Christian supporters in the United States, primarily among the Evangelicals this is not just a quaint folktale like Washington never telling a lie or throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac…it is the absolute bedrock of Israel's legitimacy. As Abba Eban said ‘’ The unity of the Hebrew people has been sustained throughout the ages by a vision of descent from a single ancestor, Abraham’’.


And what exactly was promised to the seed of Abraham forever…what are the borders of the promised land…Again Ben Gurion; ‘’the present map was drawn by the British…the Jewish people have another map that our youth should strive to fulfill…from the Nile to the Euphrates’’ I fear that this belief makes Israel ‘’a work in progress’’ it also goes a long way toward explaining the Judaic Jihad being waged against those who stand in the way of her claiming her divine patrimony. It is a blueprint for endless wars of expansion against her neighbors. Did Harry Truman realize the consequences of what he had recognized in 1948? Are the American People prepared to back the biblical claims to ‘’Greater Israel’’…remember for the faithful there is no compromising the word of God…this is the attitude of the Gaza settlers as well as many Evangelical
Christians…should it also be the foreign policy of the United States?

           
Ask any pro-Zionist to complete this sentence: The Jews are the rightful owners of the land of Palestine because…The answer you will get will ultimately be something like, ‘’because God gave it to them’’. That you would expect to get such an answer from Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians should come as no surprise.  The irony is however that you will also get this answer from
liberal ‘’so called secular humanist types; Christians and Jews for whom everything in the Bible is essentially a mythology except the part that says that God gave the land to Abraham and his descendants forever!

Now what Jews choose to believe about themselves should really be of no concern to me. If they wish to believe they are the chosen of god…so what…so do the Irish, so do the Italians and so does just about every ethnic group. The Jews are not the first people nor will they be the last who believe they have a divine mission. ‘’Manifest Destiny’’, Lebensraum, Mare Nostrum, The Greater
East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, China's concept of being ‘’The Middle Kingdom. And I don't even have a problem if Jews insist that they are all the lineal descendants of Abraham or that they must keep their bloodlines pure…although I must confess that I got angry when my 15 year old daughter was called a Shiksa by her boyfriend's parents… I don't even have a problem with their belief that they are the central characters in this drama we call creation and the rest of us, the goy or nations, are merely extras or part of the scenery. What I do have a problem with is that they have been able to make the myths of their creation, the foreign policy of the United States …And to accomplish this, they have used their immense assets in finance, academia, politics and the media in
a way that will destroy any public figure who opposes the Zionist agenda.

           
Again my attitude toward the Zionists would be no different from my attitude toward the Masai who believe their God has given them all the cattle on earth accept that their belief, has brought the United States into an unnecessary conflict with 1.2 billion Moslems. The belief of the Masai on the other hand, is simply a footnote in an anthropology textbook.

           
There is no shortage of books by Jews reciting the crimes of Christianity, real, imagined or simply exaggerated. Yet one fact stands out, and that is that the overwhelming majority of Jews chose to remain in the Christian world where they multiplied and most certainly prospered. Furthermore, it is unimaginable that Jews could have attained their current levels of wealth and influence (they are by any measure the most successful group in the United States) in Hindu, India, Confucian or China. Part of this stems from the individualistic ethos that characterizes the West as opposed to the more corporate mentality of non-western societies. But another factor is that Christianity is an outgrowth
of Judaism…the Jewish Bible with all its Biblical claims is also the Christian Bible and to the extent that Christians accept the Bible as the word of God, they are compelled to buy into the Zionist agenda….more or less: more if you are an Evangelical Christian, less so if you are a Roman Catholic for whom the Bible is not necessarily to be taken literally, but instead is a ‘’vehicle of faith’’.

           
To this end, Jews have promoted a concept that is designed to link Christian faith to their agenda, which includes among other things, the continued support of the state of Israel.  Jews are the promoters of the term Judeo-Christian and they are also the sole beneficiaries…on the one hand it gains for them access into the mainstream…Judaism becomes just another style of worshipping the
one god but it also a way of reminding Christians of their obligations and debts to the Jews, who, in effect become their spiritual older brothers.

           
I said this concept was one sided and here's what I meant. Have you ever heard a Jew refer to his Judeo-Christian heritage…of course not. His heritage is Jewish…there's nothing Christian about it. Most Jews will even avoid saying the very word Christ lest they tacitly affirm that Jesus was in fact the Messiah. From a purely theological point of view the Trinitarian God of the Christians is a false God to Jews who are rigidly monotheistic. The Jesus component is held in particular contempt. ( unlike Islam which at least regards Jesus as a prophet) Talmudic literature describes him as a false prophet whose punishment is to boiled in reproductive fluid or excrement for all eternity while being strangled by four knotted rags. The term Judeo-Christian was invented and promoted by Jews and is completely self serving to remind Christians of the moral and religious debt they owe to the Jews….and unfortunately the reminder is welcomed by many Christians because it ultimately legitimizes their own faith and beliefs. These are the starry eyed Evangelicals and Fundamentalists who donate lavishly so that Jews can settle in Israel, these are the Christians that Likudniks like Netanyahu and Sharon curry the favor of, these are the Christians who write open letters to president that insist they not ‘’abandon Israel’’. These are also the Christians who scare the living daylights out of the more secular oriented Jews and Christians who fear their ascendancy, since it could well bring about the end of the tradition of separation of church. Mid Eastern politics certainly makes some very strange bedfellows.

           
Now as said in earlier, there are two pillars of support for Israel in the United States. The first, the Bible, has just been discussed. The second one is the Holocaust and by that term I mean the alleged slaughter of six million Jews, primarily in gas chambers as part of a state sponsored program of the Third Reich. The Israeli Declaration of Independence establishes a clear link to the Jewish state's legitimacy and to what happened to Europe's Jews at the hands of the Third Reich.

 
‘’ The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews was another clear demonstration of the urgency of reestablishing in Eretz Israel the Jewish State ‘’

           
But even if we accept all the major components of the holocaust story, which is increasingly difficult to do in the face of Revisionist scholarship which is as meticulous as it is compelling, what is the moral logic of making the Palestinians pay for the sins of others. To say that the Holocaust gives legitimacy to the establishment of Israel is for a Palestinian an obscene non sequitur…Auschwitz was in Poland and staffed by Germans, it was not in the Middle East run by Palestinians. Its been reputed that King Saud of Saudi Arabia, who apparently accepted the Holocaust story in its entirety, felt the survivors of the death camps should have been awarded the choicest provinces of Germany as territory for their homeland. And furthermore, in what has to be the most remarkable propaganda coups of all time, the Zionists have been able to successfully portray themselves to most Americans as the victims in this conflict and the Palestinians who resist their dispossession and their ongoing oppression, as terrorists.

           
That Israelis and Zionist Jews the world over see nothing morally inconsistent about their own resurrection and the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians to make it possible is not unusual…most counties have their own self –serving myths of creation. But what makes the founding myths of Israel’s creation unique is that they have been able to successfully peddle it to much of the western world and particularly the United States where it acts as a prism through which all foreign policy decisions are made regarding the Middle East.


           
Using their considerable media assets, Jews have made sure that the memory of the Holocaust has not faded, hardly a day goes by that the word does not appear in the New York Times…usually it is some 90 year old retired Ukrainian born auto worker in Cleveland who  is  finally being brought to justice for having been conscripted at the age of fifteen to work in a concentration camp… or two Jewish siblings being reunited after being separated sixty years ago at Auschwitz  by the infamous Dr. Mengele…or some company being named in a class action suit for having aided and abetted history’s greatest crime…the holocaust is an extremely  valuable asset for Jews since it provides them with virtual immunity from criticism, and in the case of Israel, it is a veritable strategic
asset which they are not loathe to access when international pressure builds for them to make some minor concession to the Palestinians.

           
The circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Zionist State are truly extraordinary…a people lay claim to a land, that in spite of what Hertzl said, is a land with people, on the basis of a claim that their god gave it to their ancestors three thousand years ago. And although the Balfour Declaration gives the claim international recognition, nothing really comes of this claim…few Jews are willing to emigrate to a backwater of the former Ottoman Empire. For the great bulk of European Jews, the United States is, if not the promised land, the land of promise. It is World War II or specifically the holocaust that creates climate that makes the creation of a Jewish state both a physical necessity and a moral imperative. If six million Jews could be annihilated by a civilized European nation, how could Jews ever again entrust their safety to anyone but themselves. The parameters of guilt were eventually expanded…first it was a Nazi crime, then a German Crime, then a European crime, then all of Christendom was to blame and finally the world was held responsible for the slaughter…and since the world was responsible the world had to make amends and the expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinians was a small price to pay for what the world did to god’s Chosen. If you think I'm exaggerating this is what Abraham Foxman, National Director of the anti-Defamation League had to say about the place of the Holocaust in history: ‘’The Holocaust is something different. It is a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus on God Himself. It is an event that is the antithesis of creation as recorded in the Bible; …and it must be remembered from generation to generation’’.

           
That Jews would see in the Holocaust a religious significance should come as no surprise. Neither should it come as a surprise that the religious aura which surrounds the Holocaust would be exploited to serve the Zionist agenda. What is remarkable is the degree to which Jews have been able to market this idea to the American People. I submit that a major reason for their success is that they packaged the Holocaust in a way that mimics Christianity…see if you don't see the parallels: If the Holocaust is a religious event, so must be Israel which arose Christlike from its ashes. This is why, for the supporters of Israel, Revisionism is such a cause for alarm…the holocaust with its religious overtones provides a wellspring of support for Israel among the American People…should people begin to doubt the official version of it, support for Israel would diminish in direct proportion. 

           
Questioning the official story of the Holocaust and questioning the ‘’special relationship that Israel has with the United States are two the fundamental taboos of American life…there is absolutely nothing comparable….Sixty Minutes would explore the merits of NAMBLA before they would critically examine either subject. We have even had mainstream reviews of books that suggest certain races are genetically inferior to others, the ‘’Bell Curve ‘’ for example …but on these two topics … deafening silence. I submit that until these subjects can be discussed in the marketplace of ideas without fear of retaliation, we are not the free society that we claim to be.