Israel building Jewish homes with one hand, destroying Arab homes with the other

By Nir Hasson
Haaretz
Last update - 08:40 19/11/2009


Palestinians attending a rally against the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank on Wednesday. AP

The World Likud movement held a cornerstone-laying ceremony yesterday for the expansion of the neighborhood of Nof Zion, despite - or possibly because of - American pressure against building in East Jerusalem. The Jewish settlement is in the middle of the Arab village of Jabal Mukkaber. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem municipality razed two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem yesterday.

The plan is to add to Nof Zion 105 new apartments to the 90 ones that are already there, most of which are already occupied. The neighborhood is considered "prestigious," but the developers ran into trouble a few years ago after they failed to sell the apartments to Jews from overseas. About a year ago the developers changed their marketing strategy to target the local national-religious market - and the apartments began selling quickly. The developers expect the same for the new part of the neighborhood.

The World Likud's announcement of the ceremony said the neighborhood was near Jabal Mukkaber, "bounded by terraces and with olive trees and grapevines."

In fact, however, Nof Zion is in the middle of the village, near Palestinian homes. In September Haaretz reported that the family of the late actor-comedian Shaike Ophir criticized the municipality's decision to name a street in Nof Zion after him.

A group of American Jews interested in buying apartments in Nof Zion attended yesterday's ceremony. New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who is considered a staunch supporter of the settlers, headed the group.

Addressing the ceremony, MK Danny Danon (Likud) said that Jerusalem will never be a part of negotiations with the Palestinians. He called Barack Obama "naive" and said the U.S. president still does not seem to understand who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in the conflict.

Yesterday the Jerusalem municipality razed two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, one in Isawiyah and one in Silwan. In both cases, local residents battled security forces.

In Isawiyah villagers tried to block the entrance to the village with cars, while in Silwan local residents threw rocks at police officers after the house was destroyed.

Osama Bin Laden Has Been Dead Since December 2001

Written by Abhijay Patel
Pakistan Daily
Sep 24, 2009

“If they didn’t have an Osama Bin Laden, they would have invented one.”
Milt Bearden – CIA agent, in an interview with anchor Dan Rather of the CBS (September 12, 2001)

“The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11″.
(Rex Tomb, spokesman, FBI’s Chief of Investigative Publicity)

Now that even Asif Ali Zardari the President of Pakistan & General Musharraf are stating that Bin Laden is dead, it is high time that we in India began to both debate as well as challenge this sheer calumny.

Basically the truth and the fact of the matter is that Bin Laden has been dead since the latter half of December 2001. So then why did Bush-Cheney & now the Obama-Hillary combine, as well as the Neoconservatives & Zionist ideologues, continue to insist & actively propagate the myth of Bin Laden?

First let us address the ‘Politics of Fear’, that is an integral part of the flawed ‘Global War on Terror’, which is part of the Neo-Zioncon doctrine of ‘Controlled Chaos’. The ghost of Bin Laden serves multiple purposes both at the Global and Indian context. In India, Bin Laden is used to generate fear in the mind of the Hindu community, the epitome of “Islamic terror” and thus distrust & hatred for the Muslim is its natural corollary.

For the Muslims he is meant to be the “false hero” and to wrongly inspire youth to follow the flawed path of extremism and terror.

The other primary strategy in propagating the myth of Bin Laden is so that every political struggle against US-Zionist Imperialism is converted into a struggle for the supposed cause of Islam and Muslims and thus reduce every struggle to a narrow religio-sectarian agenda, to the negation of all political, economic & social factors. Every Bin Laden message appeals to “Muslims to wage a jehad against Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists”. The agenda is to communalise, divide, confuse and thus weaken society. The agenda is also to further isolate and marginalize Muslims from the mainstream struggles & spread Islamophobia. For example the Palestinian national freedom struggle against Israeli colonial occupation is reduced to a mere Muslim cause as per Bin Laden’s announcements & thus weaken the global Palestinian solidarity movement which is today striving for the total “Boycott of Israel”.

Now let us come to a few facts that will help us establish that Bin Laden has been dead since the last eight years and more.

During the period 4-14th of July, 2001 (only two months prior to the 9/11-WTC terror attacks), Bin Laden was in the American Hospital in Dubai. According to the United Press International (Oct 31, 2001), Bin Laden underwent kidney surgery and treatment under Dr. Terry Callaway. According to both the French “Le Figaro” & the “Radio France International”, Bin Laden was visited by a top US-CIA agent. This report and the one below are further substantiated by CBS anchor Dan Rather, Peter Bergen, investigative journalist Barry Petersen and Prof. Michel Chussodovsky.
More astonishing is the fact that just a day prior to the September 11 attacks, Bin Laden was undergoing treatment in the Military Hospital in Rawalpindi itself (Le Figaro – Jan 28, 2002). So both the Pakistani Military establishment and the ISI as well as the CIA were more than aware of Bin Laden’s whereabouts.

A few days later Dr. Sanjay Gupta (a highly respected Indian-American within the Medical fraternity) gave his assessment that both due to the heavy US bombing of the Taliban areas as well as the fact that kidney dialysis requires a special environment, it is impossible for a patient to survive beyond a week.

According to Pentagon sources, Bin Laden’s voice could not be detected beyond December 14, 2001.

Reports of Bin Laden’s death have been so widespread that it is a wonder as to how the myth of OBL has been kept alive. Now consider the following reports:

Dale Watson, the FBI chief of counter-terrorism said on BBC that he thought that OBL was dead.

In fact the announcement of OBL’s death and the funeral as well, appeared in the Egytian newspaper Al-Wafd on December 26, 2001. Also refer to an article by Robert Burns (26/04/02) on this matter.

Even the Israeli intelligence had announced the death (World Tribune). They also said that the new messages are possibly fabrications.

Reports of his death have appeared in the New York Times (July 11, 2002) as well the Guardian (UK) and the Telegraph (UK).

Both Musharraf and Karzai have been reported saying the same on CNN.

Most recently the most remarkable revelation on this matter was made by none other than the late Benazir Bhutto. In an interview with David Frost on Al-Jazeerah English (November 2, 2007), she made the stunning announcement that Bin Laden was dead and had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. Interestingly Omar Sheikh was an ISI operative and was also responsible for the murder of Daniel Pearl. The most telling part is the deafening silence of the International media.

The BBC did carry this interview but edited this line.

WHY??

If this is not “Breaking News”, then what is?

Does not this statement warrant international attention? Would not have this statement guaranteed higher TRP ratings and increased newspaper circulation? But not a word. The complicity of the corporate media is apparent.

But then people ask me and rightly so that, “what about all these Bin Laden-Al Qaeda tapes?, how do you explain that?”. So lets deal with that issue as well.

Bin Laden tapes have appeared prior to his death in December 2001, but since then the world has been subjected to a barrage of fake tapes. Prof. Bruce Lawrence of Duke University, is the world’s leading expert on these tapes and has studied every tape since then and it is his analysis and that of Diana Lee, Wayne Madsen as well as others that I put before you.

The first fake Bin laden tape was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001 and found in a deserted house in Jalalabad. It shows a stout and healthy man posing as Laden and making the claims of the destruction of the WTC. The most glaring error in the video is that the Laden duplicate is signing the confession letter with his right hand. Bin Laden used his left!

Another Laden video appeared just prior to the US presidential election on October 29, 2004, a few days after Bush had lost the first Presidential debate to John Kerry the Democratic nominee. The calls for a jehad against America helped to boost Bush’s ratings and was a factor in his ultimate victory.

The Bin laden audio tapes began to arrive in 2002. These tapes were also meant to achieve and create a climate of fear at the global level. However the experts at the IDIAP, the world’s premier voice identification institute based in Switzerland, have clearly stated that the voice on the tapes was not that of Bin Laden.

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda tapes have also appeared in India and the political agenda is the same. Last year (June 8, 2007) an Al Qaeda tape surfaced in Kashmir claiming that Al Qaeda had established a base in India. It appeared only a day after an Israeli Military delegation arrived in India to advice the government to combat “Islamic terror in Kashmir”. Even certain Indian intelligence and military sources rejected the tape as a fake.

But now the pattern at the global level of releasing the Bin Laden-Al Qaeda tapes has undergone a remarkable change. Earlier there would be a direct relay of the tapes without any fanfare. But now unbelievably the release is accompanied with a curtain raiser at a global scale. The release of the tapes is announced a few days prior to the final release. The news of the same appears in practically every newspaper and channel of note the world over. The ground is prepared to ensure that as many people as possible see the tape and register its message of fear and hatred. It is basically akin to a curtain raiser for a new movie or a music video.

Consider the following:

It was on the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that we were subjected to this mirage. The announcement of the new Bin Laden message flooded the airwaves and newspapers. We then saw a Bin Laden, hale and hearty and with a black beard. The reports stated that Bin Laden’s bodyguard (where did he come from and did he have a name?) had “revealed” that Bin Laden was healthy and was living with his four wives (how cliched!), in a compound (where, which country, city, location?). The media did not ask a single question. Worse was to follow. After a few days we had another Bin Laden photograph plastered all over the front pages, but this time with a “white beard”. Did the dye run off or had he lost his virility?. It was all so ridiculous, but they got away with it.

Then the Mumbai Mirror (29/05/08) reported that a new Laden tape is due in the next 24 hours. What’s more, this time the contents of the tape were also known to the “sources” even prior to the release. So we know then as to who writes all the scripts for these tapes, don’t we?. The report ominously states that the tape “will urge jehadis to use nuclear, chemical and biological weapons against civilians”. It quotes intelligence sources that have spoken to ABC News.

I too was very confused in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks but I began to ask questions and seek answers independent of the corporate media, as the unfolding socio-economic and political scenario did not make rational sense. The incident that made me question and challenge the dominant paradigm was the following.

On the 14th of February 2003, prior to the final US-NATO attack on Iraq, an Al Qaeda tape appeared. It asked the Muslims of the world to unite and wage a jehad against the Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists of the world. I was too stunned because of the simple fact that I was aware that on the next day the Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, people of faith and none, were going to march in their millions across the streets of USA, South America, Canada, Europe, Australia along with their Muslim brethren to oppose the impending war on Iraq. Clearly, the Al Qaeda tape had been released with the specific agenda to divide the masses of the world and further serve to demonize the Muslims. From that day I began to maintain a record of the Al Qaeda tapes and I found a design, a clear objective and purpose that was basically serving the cause of the Zionist empire.

Terror is and has always been an instrument of Imperial Zionist foreign policy. It is the politics of terror that is reshaping the geo-strategic and economic map as well as leading to the deepening of the religio-cultural & ethnic fault lines across the world. It is the myths of terror that seek to confuse and weaken the anti-imperialist masses and their struggles against neo-liberal globalization and perpetuate hatred for Muslims and spread Islamophobia, which itself is now a global phenomenon.

Thus it is imperative that we expose these myths and the lies of Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda. It is actually a very simple task and it must be done. By F Mithiborwala

What Role Did The U.S.-Israeli Relationship Play In 9-11?

By Jeff Gates

September 13, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attack would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: "It's very good. Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)."

Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of "the mark" to staged provocations. Reactions thereby become foreseeable-within an acceptable range of probabilities. When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science, he conceded that "the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel" has turned "Israel into the leading authority in this field."

With a well-planned provocation, the anticipated response can even become a weapon in the arsenal of the agent provocateur. In response to 9-11, how difficult would it be to foresee that the U.S. would deploy its military to avenge that attack? With fixed intelligence, how difficult would it be to redirect that response to wage a long-planned war in Iraq - not for U.S. interests but to advance the agenda for Greater Israel?

The emotionally wrenching component of a provocation plays a key role in the field of game theory war planning where Israel is the authority. With the televised murder of 3,000 Americans, a shared mindset of shock, grief and outrage made it easier for U.S. policy-makers to believe that a known Evil Doer in Iraq was responsible, regardless of the facts.

The strategic displacement of facts with induced beliefs, in turn, requires a period of "preparing the mindset" so that "the mark" will put their faith in a pre-staged fiction. Those who induced the March 2003 invasion of Iraq began "laying mental threads" and creating agenda-advancing mental associations more than a decade earlier.

Notable among those threads was the 1993 publication in Foreign Affairs of an article by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington. By the time his analysis appeared in book-length form in 1996 as The Clash of Civilizations, more than 100 academies and think tanks were prepared to promote it, pre-staging a "clash consensus" five years before 9-11.

Also published in 1996 under the guidance of Richard Perle was A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (i.e., Israel). A member since 1987 of the U.S. Defense Policy Advisory Board, this self-professed Zionist became its chairman in 2001. As a key adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Perle's senior Pentagon post helped lay the required foundation for removing Saddam Hussein as part of a Greater Israel strategy, a key theme of A Clean Break released five years before 9-11.

A mass murder, articles, books, think tanks and Pentagon insiders, however, are not enough to manage the variables in a "probabilistic" war-planning model. Supportive policy makers are also required to lend the appearance of legitimacy and credibility to an operation justified by intelligence fixed around a pre-determined agenda.

That role was eagerly filled by Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, a Jewish Zionist from Connecticut, and Jon Kyl, a Christian Zionist from Arizona, when they co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. Echoing Tel Aviv's agenda in A Clean Break, their bill laid another mental thread in the public mindset by calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein three years before 9-11.

The legislation also appropriated $97 million, largely to promote that Zionist agenda. Distracted by mid-term Congressional elections and by impeachment proceedings commenced in reaction to a well-timed presidential affair involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton signed that agenda into law October 31, 1998 - five years before the U.S.-led invasion that removed Saddam Hussein.

After 9-11, John McCain and Joe Lieberman became inseparable travel companions and irrepressible advocates for the invasion of Iraq. Looking "presidential" aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in January 2002, McCain laid another key thread when he waved an admiral's cap while proclaiming, alongside Lieberman, "On to Baghdad."

By Way of Deception

The chutzpah with which this game theory strategy progressed in plain sight could be seen in the behavior of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, another Zionist insider. Four days after 9-11, in a principals' meeting at Camp David, he proposed that the U.S. invade Iraq. At that time, the intelligence did not yet point to Iraqi involvement and Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding in a remote region of Afghanistan.

Frustrated that President George H.W. Bush declined to remove Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War, Wolfowitz proposed a No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq. By 2001, the Israeli Mossad had agents at work for a decade in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Intelligence reports of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda also came from Mosul - reports that later proved to be false. Mosul again emerged in November 2004 as a center of the insurgency that destabilized Iraq. That reaction precluded the speedy exit of coalition forces promised in Congressional testimony by senior war-planner Wolfowitz.

The common source of the fixed intelligence that induced America to war in Iraq has yet to be acknowledged even though intelligence experts agree that deception on such a scale required a decade to plan, staff, pre-stage, orchestrate and, to date, cover up. The two leaders of the 9-11 Commission report conceded they were stopped by Commission members from hearing testimony on the motivation for 9-11: the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The fictions accepted as generally accepted truths included Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi meetings with Al Qaeda in Prague, Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories and Iraqi purchases of "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Only the last fact was conceded as phony in the relevant time frame. All the rest were disclosed as false, flawed or fixed only after the war began. An attempt to cover-up the yellowcake account led to the federal prosecution of vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, another well-placed Zionist insider.

Did game theory-modeled pre-staging also include the Israeli provocation that led to the Second Intifada? An intifada is an uprising or, literally, a "shaking off" of an oppressor. The Second Intifada in Palestine dates from September 2000 when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led an armed march to Jerusalem's Temple Mount one year before 9-11.

After a year of calm-during which Palestinians believed in the prospects for peace-suicide bombings recommenced after this high-profile provocation. In response to the uprising, Sharon and Netanyahu observed that only when Americans "feel our pain" would they understand the plight of the victimized Israelis. Both Israeli leaders suggested that shared mindset ("feel our pain") would require in the U.S. a weighted body count of 4,500 to 5,000 Americans lost to terrorism, the initial estimate of those who died in the twin towers of New York City's World Trade Center-one year later.

The American Valkyrie?

When successful, game theory warfare strengthens the agent provocateur while leaving the mark discredited and depleted by the anticipated reaction to a well-timed provocation. By game theory standards, 9-11 was a strategic success because the U.S. was portrayed as irrational for its reaction - the invasion of Iraq that triggered a deadly insurgency with devastating consequences both for Iraq and the U.S.

That insurgency, in turn, was an easily modeled reaction to the invasion of a nation that (a) played no role in the provocation, and (b) was known to be populated by three long-warring sects where an unstable peace was maintained by a former U.S. ally who was rebranded an Evil Doer. As the cost in blood and treasure expanded, the U.S. became overextended militarily, financially and diplomatically.

As "the mark" (the U.S.) emerged in the foreground, the agent provocateur faded into the background. But only after catalyzing dynamics that steadily drained the U.S. of credibility, resources and resolve. This "probabilistic" victory also ensured widespread cynicism, insecurity, distrust and disillusionment along with a declining capacity to defend its interests due to the duplicity of a game theory-savvy enemy within.

Meanwhile the American public fell under a regime of oversight, surveillance and intimidation marketed as "homeland" security. This domestic operation even features rhetorical hints of a WWII "fatherland" with clear signs of a force alien to the U.S. with its welcome embrace of open dissent. Is this operation meant to protect Americans or to shield those responsible for this insider operation from Americans?

By manipulating the shared mindset, skilled game theory war-planners can wage battles in plain sight and on multiple fronts with minimal resources. One proven strategy: Pose as an ally of a well-armed nation predisposed to deploy its military in response to a mass murder. In this case, the result destabilized Iraq, creating crises that could be exploited to strategic advantage by expanding the conflict to Iran, another key Israeli goal announced in A Clean Break-seven years before the invasion of Iraq.

Which nation benefitted from the deployment of coalition forces to the region? Today's mathematically model-able outcome undermined U.S. national security by overextending its military, discrediting its leadership, degrading its financial condition and disabling its political will. In game theory terms, these results were "perfectly predictable"-within an acceptable range of probabilities.

In the asymmetry that typifies today's unconventional warfare, those who are few in numbers must wage war by way of deception-non-transparently and with means that leverage their impact. Which nation-if not Israel-fits that description?

Treason in Plain Sight?

Game theory war-planners manipulate the shared mental environment by shaping perceptions and creating impressions that become consensus opinions. With the aid of well-timed crises, policy-makers fall in line with a predetermined agenda-not because they are Evil Doers or "imperialists" but because the shared mindset has been pre-conditioned to respond not to the facts but to manipulated emotions and consensus beliefs. Without the murder of 3,000 on 9-11, America's credibility would not now be damaged and the U.S. economy would be in far better shape.

By steadily displacing facts with what "the mark" can be induced to believe, the few-within-the-few amplify the impact of their duplicity. By steady manipulation of the public's mindset, game theory war-planners can defeat an opponent with vastly superior resources by inducing those decisions that ensure defeat.

Intelligence wars are waged in plain sight and under the cover of widely shared beliefs. By manipulating consensus opinion, such wars can be won from the inside out by inducing a people to freely choose the very forces that imperil their freedom. Thus in the Information Age the disproportionate power wielded by those with outsized influence in media, pop culture, think tanks, academia and politics-domains where Zionist influence is most rampant.

Induced beliefs act as a force-multiplier to wage intelligence wars from the shadows. At the operational core of such warfare are those masterful at anticipating the mark's response to a provocation and incorporating that response into their arsenal. For those who wage war in this fashion, facts are only a barrier to overcome. For those nations dependent on facts, the rule of law and informed consent to protect their freedom, such insider treachery poses the greatest possible threat to national security.

America is far less safe than before 9-11. Tel Aviv clearly intends to continue its serial provocations, as evidenced by its ongoing expansion of the settlements. Israel has shown no sign of a willingness to negotiate in good faith or to take the steps required to make peace a possibility. To date, Barack Obama appears unwilling to name senior appointees who are not either Zionists are strongly pro-Israeli. The greatest threat to world peace is not terrorists. The greatest threat is the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

In the same way that a decade of pre-staging was required to plausibly induce the U.S. to invade Iraq, a similar strategy is now underway to persuade the U.S. to invade Iran or to support and condone an attack by Israel. The same duplicity is again at work, including the high profile branding of the requisite Evil Doer. From its very outset, the Zionist enterprise focused on hegemony in the Middle East. Its entangled alliance with the U.S. enabled this enterprise to deploy American might for that purpose.

Only one nation had the means, motive, opportunity and stable nation state intelligence required to take the U.S. to war in the Middle East while also making it appear that Islam is the problem. If Barack Obama continues to defer to Tel Aviv, he can rightly be blamed when the next attack occurs in the U.S. or the European Union featuring the usual orgy of evidence pointing to a predetermined target. Should another mass murder occur, that event will be traceable directly to the U.S.-Israeli relationship and the failure of U.S policy-makers to free America from this enemy within.

Israel’s Fifth Column

By Jeff Gates

August 17, 2009 " Khaleej Times" -- In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a generic term to describe the most challenging combatants when waging unconventional warfare. He called them simply “the people in between.” Those people, a dominant force in mainstream American media, comprise a fifth column in support of those skilled at waging war by way of deception.

The term ‘fifth column’ originated in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to depict forces that clandestinely undermine a populace — from within — to aid an external enemy. The term was later cited as a rationale for interning citizens during WWII, including Germans in the UK and Japanese in the US. Israelis routinely refer to Arab-Israelis as a fifth column residing within what Tel Aviv describes as the Jewish state.

Though misapplied in practice, the term remains an apt depiction of how internal influence can be wielded by a hostile force. In the Information Age, this fifth column focuses on those ‘in between’ domains where modest numbers can wield outsized influence. Television news is optimal as modern-day media operates “in between” a populace and the facts they require for a system of governance reliant on informed consent.

The dominant influence of pro-Israelis in mainstream media is not the focus of this article. Here the focus is Wolf Blitzer at Cable News Network who typifies how “the people in between” manipulate public opinion in plain sight and, to date, with legal impunity.

While working as a Washington correspondent for Jerusalem Post (1973-1990), Blitzer served as an editor of Near East Report, a publication founded by Isaiah Kenen, a registered foreign agent of Israel, who also founded the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC coordinates a network of transnational political operatives known loosely as “the Israel lobby.” Neither AIPAC nor Blitzer has yet registered as a foreign agent in the US.

The son of Polish Ashkenazi émigrés, Blitzer first emerged on the media scene in 1989 with the publication of Territory of Lies, an account of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard that The New York Times obligingly included in its list of “Notable Books of the Year.” Reviewer Robert Friedman described Blitzer’s sympathetic treatment of Pollard’s treason (the theft of more than one million classified documents) “a slick piece of damage control that would make his former employers at AIPAC (not to mention Israel’s Defense Ministry) proud.”

As a writer for Hebrew language newspapers in the 1970s, Blitzer wrote under the name Ze’ev Barak—Hebrew for “wolf lightning.” The Blitzer media presence first emerged with his CNN coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Initially a military reporter for CNN, he became a fixture on television news as CNN’s Clinton-era White House correspondent until 1999 when he became a high profile CNN anchor.

Since August 2005, CNN (marketed as “the most trusted name in news”) has featured the former AIPAC editor broadcasting from a White House-associative studio set branded as “The Situation Room.” CNN colleague John King deploys a similar credibility enhancing set by broadcasting from “The State of the Union.”

On one key media principle US law is clear: the airwaves belong to the public. The nation’s Founders knew that the preservation of self-governance depends on an informed populace. That’s why modern-day lawmakers enacted legislation to ensure that media outlets are not concentrated in a few hands, enabling a fifth column to shape public opinion around a predetermined agenda. Little could America’s first lawmakers have known that an ideologically aligned few would concentrate broadcast media in the hands of those who share an undisclosed bias. When Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell ill in Israel, Blitzer’s broadcast originated from Jerusalem. Likewise, when Israel invaded Lebanon in July 2006. Blitzer again relocated to Israel to focus viewer attention on the situation there.

As Tel Aviv sought to expand the war to Iran, several anti-Zionist rabbis appeared in Teheran alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who echoed their wish that Zionism be “erased from the pages of history” (widely reported as a wish to “wipe Israel off the map”). Rather than interview these dissident rabbis, Blitzer featured David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. Rather than associate the Iranian president with anti-
Zionism, Blitzer used the Situation Room to associate him with racism and anti-Semitism.

Between the US populace and the facts they require for informed consent lies an “in between” domain. In that realm is found a network of like-minded fifth column operatives whose pro-Israeli bias works unseen — yet in plain sight — to shape public opinion around a predetermined agenda. That agenda-shaping “news” routinely features commentators from think tanks who share the same bias.

What is the reach of this media-induced corruption of informed consent? According to CNN’s August 2009 advertising in The New York Times, this cable network delivers trusted news to 70.6 million television viewers in the US. What’s been the cost in blood and treasure of this undisclosed bias — not just to the US but also worldwide?

The most trusted name in news featured National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 when she issued a fact-free warning about Iraqi WMD: “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” From the Pentagon’s perspective, “the people in between” are waging unconventional warfare. From the perspective of this enemy within, the only unconventional aspect of their deception is the fact that a long-deceived public is now learning about it—many of them for the first time. The displacement of facts with what a populace can be induced to believe is the very threat to personal freedom that the Founders sought to escape. The only modern aspect of this ancient form of warfare is the reach of the media technologies with which such deception can now operate — as with CNN — on a global scale.

We Have Given Our Blessing to Israel's Crimes

By Sheila Samples

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers ~~Albert Camus

July 20, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- There is no subject more restricted nor more controlled in the United States than a critical discussion of Israel. Balanced argument is ignored while each word is parsed -- and condemned. It's strange that we are free to rant and rave and point out the war crimes of our own administration -- of all other administrations throughout the world -- but not those of Israel. The few who dare to question the damage Israel has wrought throughout the Middle East for decades are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic," and are in danger of losing their friends, jobs, their reputations and, if they persist, their country -- for America has zero tolerance for those who recognize Israel's brutality.

Why is this? Are not crimes against humanity just that, regardless of who is committing them? For example, when one-and-a-half million human beings are imprisoned like caged animals, with no food, electricity, medical care, clean water, and then are exterminated like so many insects -- cut to pieces, burned to a crisp with illegal weapons banned by the Geneva Conventions -- is that not a crime against humanity? Are the men, women and children trapped behind the walls of Gaza with nowhere to run -- nowhere to hide -- not human?

Kill Them All

If you've been listening to the Israeli leadership for the past 60 years, the last 10 years -- the last year -- you know very well that Palestinians are many things, but not human. In 1982, former Likud leader and prime minister Menahim Begin said Palestinians "are beasts walking on two legs." The next year, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces Raphael Eitan gloated, "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." And, in 1988, Yitzhak Shamir, a Likudnik elected Prime Minister twice, told the settlers taking over the Palestinian land, "The Palestinians will be crushed like grasshoppers...heads smashed against the boulders and walls."

But it was our own Evangelical, oxy-moronic (sic) Judeo-Christian (sic) cloven-hoofed Pat Robertson, who chats often with God who gave us the real lowdown on Israel's "moral" savagery. Robertson explained God's rationale to his 700 Club members in May 1985...

"The wars of extermination have given a lot of people trouble unless they know what was going on. The people in the land of Palestine were very wicked. They were given over to idolatry; they sacrificed their children; they had all kinds of abominable sex practices; they were having sex, apparently, with animals; they were having sex men with men, and women with women; they were committing adultery, fornication; they were worshipping idols, offering their children up; and they were forsaking God.

"God told the Israelites to kill them all -- men, women and children, to destroy them. And that seems to be a terrible thing to do. Is it? Or isn't it? Well, let us assume there were 2,000 of them, or 10,000 of them living in the land, or whatever number there was of them. I don't have the exact number. Pick a number. God said, 'Kill them all.' . . . the abomination was there like a contagion. God saw that there was no cure for it. It wasn't going to change; their hearts weren't going to change; and all they would do is cause trouble for the Israelites, and pull the Israelites away from God, and prevent the truth of God from reaching the Earth. So, God, in love, took away a small number that he might not have to take away a large number."

Beasts. Insects. Victims of a relentless, methodical genocide that grinds away, day after day, year after year, with no analysis, no reflection, no questions -- subsidized with US equipment, US political support, US taxpayers' money.

How easily we have not only excused, but given our blessing to Israel's crimes -- handed over our brothers -- from the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty using US-financed French aircraft leaving 34 dead and 174 injured American sailors, to massacres using US-furnished weapons in Jenin, Rafah, Sabara, Shatila, Lebanon, and repeatedly in Gaza.

How silently we stood on March 16, 2003 when an Israeli soldier in a US Caterpillar bulldozer crushed to death 23-year-old Rachel Corrie -- shot and seriously wounded 26-year-old Brian Avery on April 5, 2003 -- and, on April 11, 2003, shot and killed 21-year-old Tom Hurndall while he was attempting to save three terrified Palestine children who were being shot at as they played.

Political Monsters

Israel's grotesque 22-day foray into Gaza earlier this year shocked the world with its savagery -- with one notable exception -- the United States. Perhaps that's because, according to the Australian Herald, one week before the invasion, the US shipped 989 containers of munitions, including white phosphorous, to Israel. Three months earlier, Congress approved a $77 million sale to Israel of 1,000 Boeing Corp. GBU-39 bunker-buster bombs which arrived just in time to wreck havoc on the Gaza infrastructure.

Despite the layers upon layers of justification Israel cites, there is only one reason it continues its heinous extermination of the Palestinian people -- because it can. Because the United States supports such atrocity. Because the United States finances, arms and equips Israel, and -- more important -- protects it from having to account for any of its crimes. So, who's to blame here? From whose hands does the blood of Palestinian men, women and children run? Israel or the United States? Who are the monsters?

Speak, memory.

Scarcely a week after the "war" on Gaza began, the jubilation in both houses of Congress was palatable. Members elbowed each other out of the way to co-sponsor and vote for resolutions condemning Hamas for forcing Israel to maim and kill its Gaza population. Resolutions were submitted and passed by voice vote on Jan. 8. The Senate Resolution had 34 co-sponsors; the House Resolution chalked up 116. The votes and the blame were shamefully one-sided, with Hamas being blamed for both the war and the death of its own citizens. Israel did not receive a single rebuke; was praised throughout -- ironically, for facilitating "humanitarian aid to Gaza with hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian assistance and numerous ambulances entering the Gaza Strip since the war began."

Three days later, investigative journalist Max Blumenthal covered a 10,000-strong rally in New York City. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) whipped the crowd into a frenzy, shouting about the morality of Israel text-messaging Palestinians to "vacate their homes because there were weapons in them..." Schumer, giddy with pride, his fist waving in the air, cried -- "What other country would do that!"

According to Blumenthal, the rally was pulsating with hate. He said...

"Right in front of the stage, a man held a banner reading, 'Islam Is A Death Cult.' Rally attendees described the people of Gaza to me as a 'cancer,' called for Israel to 'wipe them all out,' insisting, 'They are forcing us to kill their children in order to defend our own children.' A young woman told me, 'Those who die are suffering God’s wrath.' 'They are not distinguishing between civilians and military, so why should we?' said a member of the group of messianic Orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch group that flocked to the rally."

"No one I spoke to could seem to find any circumstance in which they would begin to question Israel’s war. No number of civilian deaths, no displays of extreme suffering -- nothing could deter their enthusiasm for attacking one of the most vulnerable populations in the world with the world’s most advanced weaponry. There are no limits, no matter what Israel does, no matter how it does it."

As I watched those caught up in the shockingly racist excitement of that rally, I could not help but wonder what these people -- what US politicians -- would do if the children being blown to bits, the homes bombed and bulldozed, the families mutilated, the livelihoods destroyed --were theirs. And, I also am forced to wonder -- is the inability to hold back tears at the sight of so much inhumane lust for blood anti-Semitic -- even anti-American?

Blame the Jews?

Perhaps I am the wrong person to address this issue. I was raised, for the most part, in the wilds of New Mexico by parents completely devoid of racism, bigotry or hate. Those ugly ideologies weren't just ignored -- they didn't exist. This may sound naive, but I never met a Jew until I was married, my husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Monmouth in Long Branch, New Jersey. We rented a bedroom "apartment" from the Brodskys, a Jewish family -- wonderful, joyous, good-natured people who welcomed us into their midst as if they had been waiting for us all their lives. For me, for years, the Brodskys personified all Jews.

So, when I look to the Middle East and see human beings abused, without food or adequate health care, their infrastructure destroyed, their children slaughtered for sport, it is difficult for me to believe such barbaric savagery is being committed, or even condoned, by Jews who are aware of what is happening. American Jews, Jews in Israel, Jews around the world are vigorously opposed to such treatment. Far more Jews than non-Jews in this country speak out about Israel's relentless execution of Palestinians. They protest, engage in "die-ins," hold 24-hour vigils with signs heralding their dissent. They scream to heaven -- but their voices are silenced and the media steadfastly refuses to cover their views.

There was no mention in the US media of the rally in New York City in support of Gaza on the same day as the Schumer Screamer; no mention of IDF soldiers who refused to serve because of the violence against innocent Palestinians; no mention of the 700 Israeli citizens arrested in the first two weeks for protesting the assault; and no mention of a Jan 8 meeting of prominent Canadians who spoke out against the war on Gaza.

Toronto psychotherapist Judith Weisman, a Jew who is a member of Independent Jewish Voices, Jews for a Just Peace, the Jewish Women's Committee to End the Occupation of Palestine, and a founding member of Not In Our Name, said, "Zionism is the scourge of the Jewish people. It is Zionism that has created all of this." (editors emphasis) Weisman, herself a former "committed Zionist," said, "it took many years for the scales to literally fall off of my eyes and for me to see what Israel has wrought among the Palestinians."

Weisman says she is frightened at the influence Israel now has around the world, and of the "power that Israel and the United States are using to control so much of what is happening around the world."

It's not that nobody is listening, it's that -- for those hog-tied to the US media -- there's nothing to hear but silence, propaganda and lies. Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz that fully a third of those killed were children. Levy said...

"The public's shocking indifference to these figures is incomprehensible. A thousand propagandists and apologists cannot excuse this criminal killing. One can blame Hamas for the death of children, but no reasonable person in the world will buy these ludicrous, flawed propagandistic goods in light of the pictures and statistics coming from Gaza."

No matter. We here in the United States have moved on. We have given our blessing to the great political monsters. We now live in a world where, as George Orwell wrote in his prescient 1984...

"Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."

Sadly, Israel is no Longer Democratic

By Shulamit Aloni

May 03, 2009 "Haaretz" -- Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin and philosopher Asa Kasher, two respected men around here, published an article entitled: "A just war of a democratic state," (Haaretz, April 24, Hebrew).

A remark about the first part: There are wars that are necessary for self-defense or to fight injustice and evil. But the expression "just" is problematic when speaking of war itself - which involves killing and destruction and leaves women, children and old people homeless, and sometimes even kills them.

Our sages have said: "Don't be overly righteous." And there is absolutely no question that dropping cluster bombs in an area populated by civilians, as we did in the Second Lebanon War, does not testify to great righteousness. The same thing can be said of using phosphorus bombs against a civilian population.

Apparently, according to the Yadlin and Kasher definition of justice, in order to eliminate terrorists it is just to destroy, kill, expel and starve a civilian population that has no connection to the acts of terror and no responsibility for them. Perhaps had they adopted a more decent and less arrogant approach they would have tried to explain the reasons for the fury and intensity that brought about the shocking killing and destruction, and even apologized for the fact that these exceeded any reasonable necessity.

But after all, we are always right; moreover, these things were done by "the most moral army in the world," sent by the "democratic" Jewish state - and here is the meeting point of the two concepts in the title of Yadlin and Kasher's article.

As for the army's morality, it would have been better had they remained silent and thereby been considered wise. This is because the statistics on the destruction and harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip are familiar to everyone, and not divorced from the oh-so-moral behavior of our army in the occupied territories. In the context of this behavior, for example, the army operates with great efficiency against farmers who demonstrate against the theft of their lands, even when the demonstrations are not violent.

The long-term evidence of abuse by soldiers against civilians at the checkpoints - including repeated instances of expectant mothers who are forced to give birth in the middle of the road, surrounded by armed soldiers who laugh wickedly - is no secret either. Day after day, year after year, the most moral army in the world helps to steal lands, uproot trees, steal water, close roads - in the service of the righteous "Jewish and democratic" state and with its support. It's heartbreaking, but the State of Israel is no longer democratic. We are living in an ethnocracy under "Jewish and democratic" rule.

In 1970 it was decided that in Israel religion and nationality are one and the same (that is why we are not listed in the Population Registry as Israelis, but as Jews). In 1992 it was determined in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty that Israel is a "Jewish state." There is no mention in this law of the promise that appears in the state's formative document, the Declaration of Independence, to the effect that "The State of Israel will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex." The Knesset ratified the law nonetheless.

And so there is a "Jewish state" and no "equality of rights." Therefore some observers emphasize that the Jewish state is not "a state of all its citizens." Is there really a democracy that is not a state of all its citizens? After all, Jews living today in democratic countries enjoy the full rights of citizenship.

Democracy exists in the State of Israel today only in the formal sense: There are parties and elections and a good judicial system. But there is also an omnipotent army that ignores legal decisions that restrict the theft of land owned and held by people who have been living under occupation for the past 42 years. And since 1992, as we mentioned, we also have the definition "Jewish state," which means an ethnocracy - the rule of an ethnic religious community that strictly determines the ethnic origin of its citizens according to maternal lineage. And as far as other religions are concerned, disrespect for them is already a tradition, since we have learned: "Only you are considered human beings, whereas the gentiles are like donkeys."

From here it is clear that we and our moral army are exempt from concerns for the Palestinians living in Israel, and this is even more true of those living under occupation. On the other hand, it is perfectly all right to steal their land because these are "state lands" that belong to the State of Israel and its Jews.

That is the case even though we have not annexed the West Bank and have not granted citizenship to its inhabitants, who under Jordanian rule were Jordanian citizens. The State of Israel has penned them in, which makes it easy to confiscate their land for the benefit of its settlers.

And important and respected rabbis, who are educating an entire generation, have ruled that the whole country is ours and the Palestinians should share the fate of Amalek, the ancient tribe the Israelites were commanded to eradicate. At a time when a "just war" is taking place, racism is rife and robbery is called "return of property."

We are currently celebrating the 61st anniversary of the State of Israel. We fought in the War of Independence out of a great hope that we would build a "model society" here, that we would make peace with our neighbors, work the land and develop the Jewish genius for the benefit of science, culture and the value of man - every man. But when a major general and a philosopher justify - out of a sense of moral superiority - our acts of injustice toward the other in such a way, they cast a very heavy shadow on all those hopes.

The One-State Solution

By Op-Ed Contributor MUAMMAR QADDAFI
The New York Times
Published: January 21, 2009

THE shocking level of the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which ended with this weekend’s cease-fire, reminds us why a final resolution to the so-called Middle East crisis is so important. It is vital not just to break this cycle of destruction and injustice, but also to deny the religious extremists in the region who feed on the conflict an excuse to advance their own causes.

But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions.

Although it’s hard to realize after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed. In fact, many of the divisions between Jews and Palestinians are recent ones. The very name “Palestine” was commonly used to describe the whole area, even by the Jews who lived there, until 1948, when the name “Israel” came into use.

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.

The history of Israel/Palestine is not remarkable by regional standards — a country inhabited by different peoples, with rule passing among many tribes, nations and ethnic groups; a country that has withstood many wars and waves of peoples from all directions. This is why it gets so complicated when members of either party claims the right to assert that it is their land.

The basis for the modern State of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable. The Jews have been held captive, massacred, disadvantaged in every possible fashion by the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Russians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites and, most recently, the Germans under Hitler. The Jewish people want and deserve their homeland.

But the Palestinians too have a history of persecution, and they view the coastal towns of Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and others as the land of their forefathers, passed from generation to generation, until only a short time ago.

Thus the Palestinians believe that what is now called Israel forms part of their nation, even were they to secure the West Bank and Gaza. And the Jews believe that the West Bank is Samaria and Judea, part of their homeland, even if a Palestinian state were established there. Now, as Gaza still smolders, calls for a two-state solution or partition persist. But neither will work.

A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point. Further, a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would do little to resolve the problem of refugees. Any situation that keeps the majority of Palestinians in refugee camps and does not offer a solution within the historical borders of Israel/Palestine is not a solution at all.

For the same reasons, the older idea of partition of the West Bank into Jewish and Arab areas, with buffer zones between them, won’t work. The Palestinian-held areas could not accommodate all of the refugees, and buffer zones symbolize exclusion and breed tension. Israelis and Palestinians have also become increasingly intertwined, economically and politically.

In absolute terms, the two movements must remain in perpetual war or a compromise must be reached. The compromise is one state for all, an “Isratine” that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.

A key prerequisite for peace is the right of return for Palestinian refugees to the homes their families left behind in 1948. It is an injustice that Jews who were not originally inhabitants of Palestine, nor were their ancestors, can move in from abroad while Palestinians who were displaced only a relatively short time ago should not be so permitted.

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Assimilation is already a fact of life in Israel. There are more than one million Muslim Arabs in Israel; they possess Israeli nationality and take part in political life with the Jews, forming political parties. On the other side, there are Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israeli factories depend on Palestinian labor, and goods and services are exchanged. This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.

If the present interdependence and the historical fact of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence guide their leaders, and if they can see beyond the horizon of the recent violence and thirst for revenge toward a long-term solution, then these two peoples will come to realize, I hope sooner rather than later, that living under one roof is the only option for a lasting peace. (author's emphasis throughout)

NOTE:

Despite his notorious reputation in much of the West, Qaddafi made several points above with which I am in agreement. However, it is a matter of historical fact that the pre-Israeli "defense" force (Irgun) conducted a campaign of ethic cleansing in which thousands of innocent Arab Palestinians were killed (i.e. violence of a horrific kind did indeed happen). It included later building new cities on the sites of Palestinian towns and settlements in such a way as to erase all evidence that they once existed. Actual not simply rumors of violence occurred.

Until recently, I favored a so-called 2-state solution. I now believe as do many others that it is politically and demographically impossible. As long as Israel allows a radical form of Zionism to determine its foreign policy, no accomodation can be reached with its neighbors. While it might theoretically be possible--if Israel abandoned Zionism-- to effect some kind of 2-state solution, such a scenario seems extremely unlikely--in the absence of Divine intervention. The entire scenario to establish a modern Israel in Palestine is a Zionist enterprise through and through.

If the status quo persists, the Palestinian Arabs will eventually prevail due to an Israeli guaranteed demographic suicide. Even within Israel proper (discounting Gaza and the West Bank) the Arab population of Israel will before long outnumber that of the non-Arab Israeli's.

--Dr. J. P. Hubert

Holocaust Denied

The lying silence of those who know

By John Pilger

January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- -"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled."

Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.

Gaza: the logic of colonial power

As so often, the term 'terrorism' has proved a rhetorical smokescreen under cover of which the strong crush the weak.

By: Nir Rosen
Guardian.co.uk
Monday 29 December 2008, 08.00 GMT

I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.

Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.

The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.

I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.

Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.

Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.

Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?

In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.

Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.

It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.

I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.

Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.

The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?

A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, à la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?

Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.

A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?

George Washington's warnings and U.S. policy towards Israel

By: Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday Dec. 30, 2008 05:33 EST
Salon.com

University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- July 1, 2008:

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

CQ Politics, yesterday:

Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle rallied to Israel’s cause Monday as it pressed forward with large-scale air attacks against Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip. . . .

“I strongly support Israel’s right to defend its citizens against rocket and mortar attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza, which have killed and injured Israeli citizens, and to restore security to its residents,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev. . . .

His view was echoed by leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Israel has a right, indeed a duty, to defend itself in response to the hundreds of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza over the past week,” Howard L. Berman , D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the House committee, also expressed support for the Israeli offensive. . . .

The White House on Monday also took Israel’s side in the fighting, demanding that Hamas halt its rocket fire into Israel and agree to a last ceasefire.

Earlier this week, Nancy Pelosi issued an identical statement, and yesterday Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer did the same.

There sure is a lot of agreeing going on -- one might describe it as "absolute." The degree of mandated orthodoxy on the Israel question among America's political elites is so great that if one took the statements on Gaza from George Bush, Pelosi, Hoyer, Berman, Ros-Lehtinen, and randomly chosen Bill Kristol-acolytes and redacted their names, it would be impossible to know which statements came from whom. They're all identical: what Israel does is absolutely right. The U.S. must fully and unconditionally support Israel. Israel does not merit an iota of criticism for what it is doing. It bears none of the blame for this conflict. No questioning even of the wisdom of its decisions -- let alone the justifiability -- is uttered. No deviation from that script takes place.

By itself, the degree of full-fledged, absolute agreement -- down to the syllable -- among America's political leaders is striking, even when one acknowledges the constant convergence between the leadership of both parties. But it becomes even more striking in light of the bizarre fact that the consensus view -- that America must unquestioningly stand on Israel's side and support it, not just in this conflict but in all of Israel's various wars -- is a view which 7 out of 10 Americans reject. Conversely, the view which 70% of Americans embrace -- that the U.S. should be neutral and even-handed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict generally -- is one that no mainstream politician would dare express.

In a democracy, one could expect that politicians would be afraid to express a view that 70% of the citizens oppose. Yet here we have the exact opposite situation: no mainstream politician would dare express the view that 70% of Americans support; instead, the universal piety is the one that only a small minority accept. Isn't that fairly compelling evidence of the complete disconnect between our political elites and the people they purportedly represent?

There is, of course, other evidence for that proposition: the fact that overwhelming majorities of Americans have long wanted to withdraw from Iraq was completely dismissed and ignored by our bipartisan political class, which continued to fund the war indefinitely and with no conditions. But at least there, Democratic leaders paid lip service to the idea that they agreed with that position and some Democrats went beyond rhetoric and actually tried to stop or at least limit the war. But in the case of Israel, not even that symbolic nod to American public opinion occurs among the political leadership.

The other striking aspect of this lockstep American consensus is that the Gaza situation is very complex, and a wide range of opinions fall within the realm of what is reasonable. Even many who believe that Israel's attack is morally and legally justifiable as a response to Hamas rockets and who generally side with Israel -- such as J Street -- nonetheless oppose this attack on strictly pragmatic grounds: that it won't achieve anything positive, that it will exacerbate the problem, that it makes less likely a diplomatic resolution, that there is no military solution to the rocket attacks. Others condemn Hamas rocket attacks but also condemn the devastating Israeli blockade and expanding settlements. Others still who may be supportive of Israel's right to attack at least express horror over the level of Palestinian suffering and urge greater restraint.

Anyone minimally objective and well-intentioned finds Hamas rocket attacks on random Israeli civilians to be highly objectionable and wrong, but even among those who do, one finds a wide range of views regarding the Israeli offensive. But not among America's political leadership. There, one finds total, lockstep uniformity almost more unyielding than what one finds among Israeli leaders themselves -- as though Israel's wars are, by definition, America's wars; its enemies are our enemies; its disputes and conflicts and interests are, inherently, ours; and America's only duty when Israel fights is to support it uncritically.

* * * * *

All of that underscores one vital point I want to emphasize with regard to the commentary I've written on Israel and Gaza the last couple of days. Yesterday, George Mason Law Professor David Bernstein wrote another thoroughly childish response to something I wrote, and it merits very little attention [he continues to insist that I let him pay for me to vacation in Sderot so that I will see the light on the justifiability of Israel's assault on Gaza, which is exactly the same type of "argument" as if I offered to sponsor an online fundraiser to pay for him and his family tomorrow to travel to and vacation in Gaza City so he can blog from there about how restrained and justified and necessary the Israeli strikes and blockade are, which -- one would have thought (wrongly) -- anyone above the age of 12 would recognize as a juvenile and emotionally manipulative means of argumentation].

Bernstein's mentality is echoed by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who defends Israel's actions by approvingly quoting Barack Obama's statement that "If someone was sending rockets on my house where my daughters were sleeping at night, I would do everything to stop it, and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." But that mindset justifies any and all actions by any group with a legitimate grievance, as in: "if my family and I were forced to live under a 4-decade foreign occupation and had our land blockaded and were not allowed to exit and my children couldn't access basic nutrition or medical treatment, I would do everything to stop it, and I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing." That happens also to be the same mentality that was used to justify the 9/11 attacks ("if my family and I were forced to live in a region in which a foreign superpower dominated our politics and propped up brutal dictators for its own ends, I would do everything to stop it, and I would expect Muslims to do the same thing").

But -- just like those who insist that American Torture is different because American leaders use it for noble ends -- this is nothing more elevated than an adolescent refusal to view the world through any prism other than complete self-centeredness, where one's own side merits infinite empathy and the "other side" merits none. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute -- like most intractable, bloody, hate-driven, decades-long wars -- there is endless blame to go around to countless parties. Commentary which fails to recognize that, or, worse, which insists it's not true, is almost certainly the by-product of this blind self-regard.

* * * * *

The real point here is that none of these intractable disputes between Israel and its various neighbors should be a focal point of American policy at all. Yet the above-documented orthodoxy has ensured that it is. And -- at least in the U.S. -- that is the real issue, the reason why the Israeli attack merits so much discussion in the U.S. even among those who would just as soon refrain from having any involvement. In his reply yesterday, Bernstein wrote:

I find it rather amusing that Greenwald refers to me as an "Israel-obsessive." I blog a fair amount about Israel, not least because I'm there twice a year and my wife is Israeli. Greenwald, meanwhile, blogs far more about Israel, without similar ties. What does that make him?

Bernstein obviously has absolutely no idea what "ties" to Israel I do or don't have; he simply fabricated that claim. But (other than for those interested in Bernstein's honesty -- and I'm not one of them), that point is entirely irrelevant. The reason Americans need to be interested in what Israel does is obvious, and it has nothing to do with one's "ties" to that country.

As I wrote on Saturday regarding Israel's varied wars, walls and blockades: "since we fund a huge bulk of it and supply the weapons used for much of it and use our veto power at the U.N. to enable all of it, we are connected to it -- intimately -- and bear responsibility for all of Israel's various wars, including the current overwhelming assault on Gaza, as much as Israelis themselves." With our bipartisan policy of blind and absolute support for Israel -- not just rhetorical but military and material as well -- our political leadership has inextricably (and foolishly) tied American interests to Israel's interests.

Matt Yglesias made a similar point yesterday:

Jonathan Zasloff offers the futility argument with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

All those who insist that the United States should “solve” the problem should explain how. And if they can’t do that, then maybe they should take some quiet time.

I think that would be an appealing solution to a lot of people who have no real desire to try to sit in delicate judgment weighing the moral balance between a Hamas movement that seems indifferent to human life, and an Israeli government that’s lashing out brutally as part of a domestic political drama. But as long as Israel is by far the largest recipient of US foreign assistance funds and by an even larger margin the largest per capita recipient of US foreign assistance funds, then I don’t see how “quiet time” is a realistic option.

Americans shouldn't be in the position of endlessly debating Israel's security situation and its endless religious and territorial conflicts with its neighbors. That should be for Israeli citizens to do, not for Americans. But that distinction -- between the U.S. and Israel -- barely exists because our political leaders have all but eliminated it, and have thus imposed on U.S. citizens responsibility for the acts of Israel.

In doing so, they have systematically ignored the unbelievably prescient warnings issued by George Washington in his 1796 Farewell Address, and have thereby provoked exactly the dangers he decried:

Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? . . . . .

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.

It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. . . .

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. 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 a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.

It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

Uncritical support for someone's destructive behavior isn't "friendship"; it is, as Washington said, slavishness, and it does no good either for the party lending the blind support nor the party receiving it. It's hard to overstate the good that would be achieved if the U.S. simply adhered to those basic and self-evidently compelling principles of George Washington, who actually knew a thing or two about the perils of war.

* * * * *

If someone asked me to recommend just one must-read article on the Israeli-Gaza conflict, I would select this column... from yesterday in The Guardian by Israeli-American journalist Nir Rosen. I disagree with several of his points, particularly some of the specific ones about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but his generalized explanation about how the concept of "terrorism" is distorted and exploited by stronger countries can't be emphasized enough.

*UPDATE: To underscore the point: during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, the Bush administration purposely expedited shipments of bombs to Israel to enable Israel to drop those bombs on Lebanon. We fed Israel the bombs they used on the Lebanese. A similar American action seems to have occurred with regard to the bombs that the Israelis are now dropping on Gaza.

*UPDATE II: Polls taken in the U.S. during the 2006 Israeli incursion into Lebanon bolster the above point regarding American public opinion. A USA Today/Gallup poll (.pdf) asked: "In the current conflict, do you think the United States should take Israel's side, take the side of Hezbollah, or not take either side?" A large majority (65%) answered "neither," while only 31% wanted to take Israel's side.

A Washington Post poll actually found that a plurality of Americans (46%) blamed "both sides equally" (Israel and Hezbollah) for the war and believed (48%) that Israel's claimed "bombing [of] rocket launchers and other Hezbollah targets located in civilian areas" was "not justified." The lockstep, uncritical support for everything Israel does in the political class is completely unrepresentative of American public opinion.