Michael K. Smith's Blog, page 10

Fake Peace, Real War, and the Road to "Plausible Genocide"

"We have nosolution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave,and we will see where this process leads . . . . You Palestinians, as a nation,don't want us today, but we'll change your attitude by forcing our presence onyou."

-----Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan 

 

" . . . thecommon denominator amongst all the American peace efforts is their abysmalfailure." 

------Cheryl A. Rubenberg

 

USrael's disgraceful conduct in Gaza goes on, and onand on. Leveling hospitals, shooting children in the head; gunning down asurgeon at the operating table, using an emergency call from a little girltrapped in a car with the corpses of family members to lure two rescue workersto her, then killing all three; systematically killing Palestinian journalistsreporting on the slaughter; promising to save three premature babies at ahospital under forced evacuation, then leaving them to slowly die and bedevoured by dogs; singing in chorus of the joy of exterminating Arabs; cheeringthe blocking of food aid to starving Gazans; killing entire families, inducinga Palestinian boy to lay down in the road hoping someone would run over him andend his misery; this is but a small sampling of the consequences of trappingover a million Gazans in the southern half of a 125-square-mile concentrationcamp without food, shelter, or sanitation, then methodically shooting andbombing them while thousands of their relatives decompose under expandingmountains of rubble.

 

Depravity on this scale will not magically disappearby establishing a cease fire and holding peace talks, as urgently necessary asboth these preliminaries are. Only relentless popular pressure on the U.S.government to force it to deny Israel the means to subjugate and murderPalestinians can even hope to get us on the path to de-nazification of theJewish state, without which real peace can never be achieved. Let's recall thatin the midst of the current wholesale slaughter a large majority of Israelisthink Netanyahu isn't using enough violence.

 

Cease fires we have had before, and peace agreements,too, but they didn't solve the underlying conflict because addressing theabsence of Palestinian national rights - the heart of the Palestine conflict -is taboo. 

 

Because of this taboo, massacres of Palestinians are afeature, not a bug, of Zionist ideology, and have stained Israel's history frombefore the state was even formed. 

 

In June of 1982, for example, Israel invaded Lebanonon a surge of Pentagon arms shipments, seeking to disperse the PalestineLiberation Organization (the Hamas of its day) and poison its relations withthe local population while destroying its political and military structures.Tens of thousands of civilians died as the IDF carved up the country inalliance with Christian fascist militias.

 

While claiming to stand tall for human rights,Washington kept arms and money flowing in support of Israel's occupation of notjust Palestine, but Syria and Lebanon as well. 

 

Lebanon was savagely pounded, leaving people roamingthe wreckage of Beirut in clouds of flies, terror in their eyes, their clothesreduced to rags. Mothers howled, orphans sobbed, and the stench of rottingcorpses filled the air. 

 

Cluster bombs leveled whole blocks. White phosphorousburned people alive. Palestinian refugee camps were blasted to rubble, leftpockmarked with blackened craters that filled with dead bodies and otherdebris. An officer in the U.N. peace-keeping force swept aside by the Israeliattack on Rashidiyeh said, "It was like shooting sparrows with acannon." Asked why houses containing women and children were beingbombarded and bulldozed, an Israeli army officer explained that, "they areall terrorists."

 

Surrounded by tanks, gunshots, and hysteria, onehundred thousand people were left without shelter or food, roaming throughpiles of wreckage. Blindfolded men, handcuffed with plastic bonds, were marchedaway to concentration camps where they were tortured, humiliated, and murdered.Their families were turned over to Phalangist patrols and Haddad forces(Israeli allies), who torched homes and beat people indiscriminately. 

 

At the United Nations, the United States gave itscustomary blessing to Israeli savagery, vetoing a Security Council resolutioncondemning Israel. 

 

Much impressed by Israel's "purity of arms, The New York Times saluted the"liberation" of Lebanon.

 

But it was a macabre "liberation." Afterthree months of relentless attack, the southern half of the country lay inruins. Even President Reagan, as ardent a fan of Israel as any of hispredecessors in the Oval Office, couldn't stomach more killing, and calledIsraeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to stop the "holocaust."Offended at the president's use of this word, Begin nevertheless halted thebombardment immediately.

 

An agreement between Israel, the U.S. and the PLO wassigned with security guarantees for the Palestinians. Yasir Arafat and his PLOfighters left for Tunis. On September 16, in defiance of the cease fire, ArielSharon's army circled the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints and allowed truckloads of their Phalangeand Haddad allies into the Palestinian camps. The Phalangists came with old scoresto settle and a long list of atrocities against Palestinians already to theircredit. The Haddad forces acted as part of the Israeli Army and operated underits command.

 

Perched on rooftops, Israeli soldiers watched throughbinoculars during the day and lit up the sky with flares at night, guiding thesoldiers as they moved from shelter to shelter in the camps slaughtering thedefenseless refugees. In mid-massacre, Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitancongratulated the Phalangist command for having "carried out goodwork," offered a bulldozer for scooping up corpses, and authorized thekillers to remain in the camp twelve more hours.

 

On September 18 war correspondent Robert Fisk enteredthe camps and described what he found there: 

 

"Down every alleyway there were corpses - women,young men, babies and grandparents - lying together in lazy and terribleprofusion where they had been killed or machine-gunned to death. . .  Inthe panic and hatred of battle, tens of thousands had been killed in this country.But these people, hundreds of them, had been shot down unarmed . . . these werewomen lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legswide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the backafter being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babiesbecause they had been slaughtered more than 24 hours earlier and their smallbodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heapsalongside discarded U.S. Army ration tins, Israeli army medical equipment, andempty bottles of whiskey. . .. "

 

". . . Down a laneway to our right, no more than50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than adozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each otherin the agony of death. All had been shot at point-blank range  . . . Onehad been castrated . . .  The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old."

 

Such were the results of Israel exercising its"right to self-defense," just as the wholesale slaughter andstarvation of Gazans forty-two years later is rationalized on the same grounds.

 

The moral of the story is that no matter howblindingly obvious its crimes are Israel is never guilty of anything because .. . the Holocaust.

 

Forty-seven years ago the London Sunday Times reported that Israel routinely torturesPalestinians, a devastating revelation at the time. The scope of the torture,said the Times, was so broad that it implicated "all of Israel's securityforces," and was so "systematic that it [could not] be dismissed as ahandful of 'rogue cops' exceeding orders."

 

Among the prisoner experiences detailed by the Times'Insight team were being beaten and kicked, being set upon by dogs, having one'stesticles squeezed, having a ball-point pen refill shoved into one's penis, orbeing raped with a stick and left bleeding from the mouth and face and anus.

 

Israel categorically denied the charges, but refusedto rebut, diverting to side issues and attacking Israeli lawyers who stooped solow as to defend Arabs. Seth Kaplan in the staunchly liberal The New Republic rose in defense ofIsraeli torture, arguing that how a government treats its people "is notsusceptible to simple absolutism, such as the outright condemnation of torture.One may have to use extreme measures - call them 'torture' - to deal with aterrorist movement whose steady tactic is the taking of human life." Ofcourse, every state in the world practicing administrative torture routinelyclaimed it was fighting "terrorists," an infinitely elasticdesignation in the hands of national security officials.

 

So what supposedly made Palestinians"terrorists"? Mainly, that they resisted Israel's steady tactic ofrobbing, swindling, torturing, and murdering all those who had been living inPalestine long before Zionism even appeared on the scene. But Israel simplycouldn't publicly admit that Palestine was not what it told the world it was - a land without a people for a people withouta land. It had to keep torturing and killing Palestinians to induce them tovacate the land, but it could never admit this. At the end of 1996, when theIsraeli Supreme Court authorized the torture of Palestinian prisoners, thejustices called it "moderate physical pressure," which sounds morelike massage than torture.

 

Two major Middle East peace agreements have beennegotiated entirely under the prejudiced assumption that Palestinians areterrorists to be neutralized, not an oppressed people entitled to its rights.In neither Camp David nor Oslo was there any indication that Palestiniangrievances were to be seriously considered, much less honestly dealt with. Hadthe obvious issues been faced with courage then, Gazans wouldn't be gettingslaughtered now. But they weren't, an outcome that could have been foreseenjust by looking at the people who produced the agreements. 

 

The Camp David Treaty was negotiated by EgyptianPresident Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and PresidentJimmy Carter. 

 

Sadat was a former Nazi collaborator whose idol wasthe Shah of Iran, a U.S. client then moving at break-neck speed to Westernizethe country, in the process laying down a human rights record so appalling thatAmnesty International characterized it as "beyond belief." He wasshortly overthrown by the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

 

The year before Camp David Sadat had made his"sacred mission" to Jerusalem to speak to the Knesset, opening theway for peace. But he complied with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan'sinstructions to delete references to the PLO, and he never got off his kneesafter that. At Camp David he threw himself on the goodwill of the UnitedStates, striving for an agreement so goodfor Israel that Begin would invite condemnation should he dare to rejectit.  Dismissed as a traitor and a fool throughout the Arab world, he wasassassinated three years later.

 

Former head of the underground terrorist group Irgun,Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was proud of his role in blowing up 95British and Arabs in the King David Hotel in 1946, as well as the slaughter ofover two-hundred Arab women, children and old men at Deir Yassin in 1948. InWWII, the Irgun had offered to support the Nazis against the British. One ofBegin's first acts when he became Israeli Prime Minister was to issue a postagestamp honoring Abraham Stern, whose group made the proposal.

 

The last thing that Prime Minister Begin's cabinet putone in mind of was peace. His military junta included five generals whomaintained cozy relations with apartheid South Africa and the blood-soakeddictators Augusto Pinochet and Anastasio Somoza.

 

As for Begin's territorial ambitions, they wereexpansive, to say the least. The former Irgun commander had been elected on aplatform calling for the annexation of the West Bank and the East Bank of the Jordan River, a goal that the Likud Partyhas never renounced. He regarded the West Bank and Gaza not as occupied but asliberated - from the indigenous Arabs to whom they didn't rightfully belong,and he called the land "Judea and Samaria," Biblical names for God'sgift to the Jews. He openly regarded the Palestinians as Israel's coolies,corralling them into Bantustans even as he promised them full autonomy, whichhe defined mystically as self-rule for people, but not for the land on whichthey lived.

 

The key figure at Camp David, of course, was U.S.President Jimmy Carter, a fundamentalist Baptist and supposedly a neutralmediator between Begin and Sadat. He confessed to having an "affinity forIsrael" based on its custodianship of the Holy Land, and regarded it as"compatible with the teachings of the Bible, hence ordained by God." Ordained by God!  He had "nostrong feelings about the Arab countries," but condemned the"terrorist PLO." Begin he described implausibly as a man of integrityand honor.

 

Carter instructed Sadat that unless his proposals werepatently fair to Israel, whichregarded Arabs as subhuman, Begin would justifiably reject them. When Egypt'sopening proposals requested compensation for Israeli use of land and oil wellsin the occupied Sinai, free immigration to the West Bank, Israeli withdrawalfrom the illegally occupied territories (including East Jerusalem), and aPalestinian state, Carter was despondent at the "extremely harsh"recommendations. Any treatmentof Palestinians other than as anonymous refugees to be absorbed and pacified incolonial structures was apparently unthinkable to him.

 

At the time, the PLO was the sole legitimaterepresentative of the Palestinian people, and its inclusion in negotiations wasthe only possible basis for establishing Palestinian national rights andreaching real peace. Nevertheless, Carter's national security advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski summed up the U.S. stance at Camp David as "bye-bye PLO."The Palestinians' nationalist aspirations were summarily dismissed, and asolution for the Occupied Territories was postponed until future "autonomytalks," to which the PLO would not be invited. This doomed any prospect ofpeace.

 

Unsurprisingly, Camp David's imagined Palestinian"autonomy" was a substitute for national liberation in the Accords,and was fundamentally colonial. Israel was allowed to retain economic andpolitical power over the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israeli Defense Forceswere permitted to indefinitely remain. The Palestinians were essentiallygranted municipal authority (to pick up the garbage?) provided it didn'tthreaten Israeli "security." Prime Minister Begin openly declaredthat he would never allow a Palestinian state on the West Bank.

 

It's hard to improve upon the summation of Camp Davidprovided by Fayez Sayegh, founder of the Palestine Research Center:

 

"A fraction of the Palestinian people (underone-third of the whole) is promised a fraction of its rights (not including thenational right to self-determination and statehood) in a fraction of itshomeland (less than one-fifth of the area of the whole); and this promise is tobe fulfilled several years from now, through a step-by-step process in whichIsrael is to exercise a decisive veto power over any agreement. Beyond that,the vast majority of Palestinians is condemned to permanent loss of itsPalestinian national identity, to permanent exile and statelessness, topermanent separation from one another and from Palestine - to a life withoutnational hope or meaning."

 

Nevertheless, the United States applauded what itsomehow construed as the birth of peace in the Middle East, while Israelproceeded to "annex" Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, tattoo theOccupied Territories with Jewish settlements, carve up southern Lebanon, attackIraq, and bomb Palestinian refugee camps. 

 

None of this was a surprise. According to Israelistrategic analyst Avner Yaniv, the effect of Camp David's removing of Egyptfrom the Arab military alliance was that "Israel would be free to sustainmilitary operations against the PLO in Lebanon as well as settlement activityon the West Bank."

 

Five years after Israel had reduced southern Lebanonto rubble Gaza rose in rebellion (the first intifada), and six years after that came the Oslo Accords, with theWhite House announcing triumphantly for the second time that lasting MiddleEast peace was at hand. But once again there was no peace. In accordance withlong-standing U.S.-Israeli rejectionism the Oslo Accords called for theincorporation of Palestinian lands in a permanent colonial structureadministered by Israel.

 

In other words, after more than seventy years ofsacrifice and popular struggle for their national rights, the Palestinians weretriumphantly handed a micro-state with no power. A toothless "PalestinianAuthority" was set up in the West Bank. 

 

Once again, Israel remained in possession ofeverything that counted: East Jerusalem, the settlements, the economy, theland, water, sovereignty, and "security." The Oslo settlement wasbased on UN Resolution 242, which only recognized Palestinians as statelessrefugees, not as a people possessed of national rights. 

 

Israel made no commitment to giving up its violence orcompensating the Palestinians for 45 years of conquest and dispossession. YasirArafat renounced all nationalist aspirations and discarded Palestinian rights,including the right to resist oppression. He accepted responsibility forguaranteeing Israeli security, turning his people into police for their occupiers.

 

The Palestinians were granted nothing more than"limited autonomy," with no guarantee of Palestinian security, noPalestinian sovereignty, and no autonomous economy. Israeli companies were toset up sweatshops in the Occupied Territories and Palestinians were to continuesupplying the $6-a-day labor. After years of granting concessions to Israel,they were asked to wait three to five moreyears until "final status" talks could determine what Israel's vaguereferences to "improvements" actually meant.  

 

For the majority of Palestinians living in theDiaspora, this represented the final act of robbery, nullifying years ofpromises from the UN, Arab governments, and the PLO itself. 

 

At the celebration of the Oslo Accords on the WhiteHouse lawn, Arafat, the conquered, thanked everyone for the agreementsuspending most of his people's rights, and delivered an emotionally sterilespeech as though he were reading out of a phone book. He barely mentioned thePalestinians. 

 

Yitzak Rabin, the conqueror, gave a long speechdetailing Israeli anguish, loss, and suffering involved in the conquest. Hepromised that Israel would concede nothing on sovereignty and would keep theRiver Jordan, the boundaries with Egypt and Jordan, the sea, the land betweenGaza and Jericho, Jerusalem, the roads, and the settlements.  He did notconcede that Israel was, or ever had been, an occupying power. He made nocommitment to dismantling the maze of racist laws and repressive fixtures ofthe Occupation. He said nothing about the thousands of Palestinians rotting inIsraeli jails. He expressed not a twinge of remorse for four-and-a-half decadesof ethnic cleansing and lies.

 

So the occupation of Palestine continued for yearsmore, severely restricting Palestinian movement, increasing Jewish colonizationof Arab land, and intensifying bureaucratic harassment. On September 28, 2000,Ariel Sharon and a thousand Israeli soldiers touched off the second intifada byinvading the Al Aqsa mosque site in Arab Jerusalem. The next day Prime MinisterEhud Barak ordered riot police to storm the compound where 20,000 Palestinianswere praying. Rocks were thrown and the police opened fire, killing seven andwounding 220. Within days President Clinton dispatched the largest shipment ofattack helicopters to Israel in a decade.

 

Though portrayed by Israel apologists asextraordinarily generous towards the Palestinians, Prime Minister Ehud Baraknever dismantled a settlement or freed a Palestinian prisoner during his entire18 months in office. Like his predecessors, he refused to compromise onsettlements, borders, refugee rights, and Jerusalem. According to RobertMalley, special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs in the Clintonadministration, it is a myth that Israel had offered to meet "most if notall of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations," and equally a myth thatthe "Palestinians made no concession of their own." In fact,Palestinians expressed willingness to accommodate Jewish settlements on theWest Bank, Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, anda limit on repatriation of Palestinian exiles, though all of them are entitled to return. Malley stated that "noother Arab party that has negotiated with Israel . . . ever came close to evenconsidering such compromises." 

 

Meanwhile, Israel offered nothing and demandedsurrender, just as it always had. 

 

According to Israeli military analyst Ze'ev Schiff,the Palestinians were left with three options:  (1) agree to the expandingOccupation, (2) set up Bantustans, or (3) launch an uprising. 

 

Palestinians chose to fight, and Israel pounded thenearly defenseless civilian population with helicopter gunships, F-16s, tanks,missiles, and machine guns. While systematically assassinating Palestinianleaders, Israel cried "immoral" when its victims turned their bodiesinto weapons in horrific suicide bombings at supermarkets, restaurants, poolhalls, and discotheques. Israeli propaganda blamed "hate teaching" bythe PLO, but the real hate teacher was the racist ideology that definedPalestinians as "beasts walking on two legs" (Menachem Begin) and "cockroaches in abottle" (Rafael Eitan), among other terms of endearment popular with Israelis. Thisswelled the ranks of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade with volunteers who had lostclose relatives to the Israeli military.

 

Amidst the firestorm of moral indignation occasionedby the suicide attacks, Israel never considered negotiating in good faith toresolve the longstanding conflict, and the United States applied no pressure tomake them do so. Following in the footsteps of a long line of predecessors,President George W. Bush heaped arms and aid on Israel, vetoed UN resolutionscalling for observers in the Occupied Territories, and continued funding theever-expanding Jewish settlements. With the entire world recoiling in shockedoutrage at Israel's pulverizing of the West Bank, he declared Ariel Sharon"a man of peace."

 

Post-Oslo the stealing of land and dynamiting ofPalestinian homes continued with the same justification as before: Jewish landwas redeemed, Arab land was unredeemed. By the end of thetwentieth-century, over 80% of Palestine no longer belonged to PalestinianArabs. Under Clinton-Barak settlement construction had accelerated dramaticallyand Jews received nearly seven times as much water as Arabs in the West Bankand Gaza. Meanwhile, three hundred miles of Jews-only highways and bypass roadsintegrated the settlements into Israel proper while dividing Palestinian areasinto enclaves of misery completely cut-off from the wider world.

 

Increasing numbers of Israeli Arabs joined with thePalestinians in the Occupied Territories to protest Jewish supremacy rooted innationality rights granting Jews exclusive use of land, better access to jobs,special treatment in getting loans, and preferences for college admission,among other unearned advantages. Military service brought even more benefits,from which Palestinians were excluded. 

 

Founded as a haven for Jews, Israel had become themost dangerous place in the world for them to live. The constant war on Palestiniansthat made this so was still described as self-defense, and the crushing oftheir national culture was still the goal of "peace." Orwell wouldhave loved it.

 

Whatever differences President Biden and BenjaminNetanyahu may be having regarding tactics and media sound bites, the commitmentthey share is to preserving the festering boil of apartheid Israel, rooted inthe conviction that Jews are a master race of chosen people destined to scrubthe Holy Land of unsightly Arabs and rule over Greater Israel forever.

 

The stench of death is its constant gift to the world.

 

 

Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects,(Haymarket, 2010), p. 160

 

"American Efforts For Peace In The Middle East:1919-1986" Quoted in Anti-Zionism:Analytical Reflections, Tekiner, Abed-Rabbo, Mezvinsky eds. (Amana Books,1988) p. 195

 

Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle, (South End, 1983) pps. 155, 359-71, RosemarySayigh, Too Many Enemies, (Zed, 1994)pps. 117-21

 

Sabra and Shatilla massacre account is quoted inSusan Abulhawa, Mornings In Jenin,(Bloomsbury, 2010, 224-6.) The book is a novel, but quotes verbatim from Pity The Nation by war correspondentRobert Fisk.

 

Noam Chomsky, TowardsA New Cold War, (Pantheon, 1973-1982) p. 454n., Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, (Dodd Mead,1978) p. 178-84.

 

Eduardo Galeano, UpsideDown - A Primer For The Looking Glass World, (Henry Holt, 1998), p. 88.

 

Alfred Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection, (Dodd Mead, 1978) p. 153.

 

Edward Said, TheQuestion of Palestine, (Vintage, 1979) pps. 14-15, 44, 57, 138, 195, 204,206-7; Alfred Lilienthal, The ZionistConnection, (Dodd Mead, 1978) pps. 144, 191, 279, 351, 398, 683. NoamChomsky, The Fateful Triangle, (SouthEnd, 1983), p. 95n.; Jimmy Carter, KeepingFaith: Memoirs of a President, (Bantam, 1982) p. 334, 347)

 

Jimmy Carter, KeepingFaith - Memoirs of a President (Bantam, 1982) pps. 274-5, 338-40; AlfredLilienthal, The Zionist Connection,(Dodd Mead, 1978) p. 651.

Edward Said, TheQuestion of Palestine, (Vintage, 1979) p. 212.

 

 

Edward Said, ThePolitics of Dispossession, (Chatto and Windus, 1994), p. 244; Larry Shoup, The Carter Presidency and Beyond,(Ramparts, 1980) pps. 120-3)

 

Noam Chomsky, World Orders Old and New, (Columbia, 1994) p. 213.

 

Edward Said, ThePen and the Sword, (Common Courage, 1994) p. 110; Edward Said, The Politics of Dispossession, (Chattoand Windus, 1994) p. xxxiv, xxxv-xxxvii; Christopher Hitchens in Edward Said, Peace and Its Discontents, (RandomHouse, 1993) p. 3.

 

Stephen Shalom, "The Israel-PalestineCrisis," Z Magazine, May 2002;Edward Said, "The Desertion of Arafat," New Left Review, September-October 2001; Rezeq Faraj, "Israeland Hamas," Covert ActionInformation Bulletin, Winter 2001; Rania Masri, "The Al Aqsa Intifada- The consequence of Israel's 34-year occupation, International Socialist Review, November-December 2001.

 

Max Elbaum, interview with Phyllis Bennis,"For Jews Only: Racism Inside Israel," ColorLines, December 15, 2000. Edward Herman, "Israel's EthnicCleansing," Z Magazine, April2001. Rene Backmann, A Wall In Palestine,(Picador, 2010), p. 170.

 

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Satan of Moscow Seems Remarkably Like A Human Being

In the wake of Tucker Carlson's interview with Vladimir Putin, it's a good time to review the characterization of the Russian head of state as a genocidal maniac incapable of reason, the usual portrayal of official enemies of the United States . . . 

Imperial Demon Watch: Vladimir Putin

Russia wants a peaceful Ukraine, Americans prefer one at war.

---Israel Shamir, "Putin Prefers a Bad Peace"

by Michael K. Smith

Even before the current round of nuclear brinksmanship in Ukraine, U.S.-Russian relations had descended to a lower point than U.S.-Soviet relations reached during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We've been courting nuclear annihilation for some time.

Those who would like to exempt Washington from blame now will have to account for U.S. hostility towards Russia and the USSR, both of which long pre-date anything that could remotely be construed as provocation by Putin. After all, the United States invaded and occupied the former USSR from 1918-1920, maintained a harshly belligerent stance all during the Cold War, and unleashed a plague of financial locusts to loot state enterprises throughout the former USSR as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, while enrolling the newly "independent" states into an anti-Moscow military alliance that extended to the very borders of Russia. Standards of living plunged, death rates soared, diplomacy suffocated, and Boris Yeltsin's proposed U.S.-Russian partnership was immediately forgotten.  

If a China-Russia alliance had installed hostile governments in Canada and Mexico at the end of WWII, after which all of Latin America went full Communist while narco-terrorists began killing Anglo Texans and banning English, it's unlikely any blame would fall on Washington if it attempted to resolve the situation by force, as it surely would. So we can dismiss pious moral grandstanding about the "evil" Putin as the boundless hypocrisy it transparently is.

Furthermore, we should note that the rhetoric employed in this mad rush to terminal war is curious and irrational. For example, labeling Putin a "war criminal" actually legitimizes war, since it implies there is some ethical or at least inoffensive way to conduct mass slaughter, which is all that modern warfare is. Transparent attempts to miss this point by labeling massacre "collateral damage" should be dismissed with ridicule.

And it can hardly be repeated too often that the USA is far and away the guiltiest "criminal" where war is concerned, having by far the greatest war industry ever seen in human history headquartered on its soil and forming the heart of its economy (the Defense Industrial Base), which it has used to fight an endless series of wars directly or by proxy throughout the world for the past eighty years. No other contemporary or historical power has achieved anything close to this commitment to mass killing.

So it is absurd to define the situation in Ukraine as a uniquely evil instance of military aggression by Vladimir Putin. In a world of asymmetrical power with no effective world government, technically sophisticated powers always have the upper hand in violent conflicts with their neighbors, which are inevitable. And, of course, they insist on having friendly neighbors, preferably cooperative, though submissive will do. 

Hostile neighbors no one accepts. How much of the Americas does the United States permit be part of a hostile military alliance? According to the Monroe Doctrine, not one square inch. How did Washington react to Cuba installing Soviet nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida in 1962? (Spoiler alert: it nearly blew up the planet.) What did the media do when  Rafael Correa jokingly proposed an Ecuadorian military base in Miami to balance Washington's Mena Air Base in Ecuador? It laughed, though the punchline is far from a joke.

A majority of the world is fed-up with the hypocrisies of unilateral world order under U.S. control, and is not averse to accommodating an emerging China-Russia-India based new world order. Yes, the current war in Ukraine is causing further expansion of NATO (supposedly a good thing), but this, in turn, is devouring resources needed to stave off European economic collapse, while an emerging Russia-China-India alliance accelerates the collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency. 

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, a U.S. client state, Biden's phone calls in the early stages of the current war went unanswered while Putin's were cordially received. Got respect?

Our mind managers warn us of the horrors of forced neutrality via Finlandization, and urge instead that we strive for regime change in Moscow. Strange. Finland is a success story, having achieved balance and stability via social democratic prosperity. On the other hand, U.S.-fostered regime change converts countries into corpse-strewn wastelands on a regular basis. Think Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. Trying out this strategy on Russia obviously carries a high risk of nuclear annihilation. What stupendous prize awaits us if we successfully navigate this potentially species-terminating risk? The preservation of "our interests and our values," as Hillary Clinton so loves to say.

In other words, converting whole cities to radioactive ash is a small price to pay for preserving our favorite abstractions. Got it.

We hear Putin is a strongman, an authoritarian, a totalitarian dictator, though we also hear people are fleeing Russia in droves. Why are they at liberty to do that in a "dictatorship"?

By the way, was Abraham Lincoln also a dictator, he who suspended habeas corpus, jailed journalists, shut down hundreds of newspapers, and locked up thousands of political enemies? And what about Woodrow Wilson, who destroyed unions, imprisoned editors, closed newspapers, and assumed dictatorial control of finance, the press, farms, and commerce and transportation? 

Or maybe FDR was a dictator, who imprisoned over 100,000 U.S. citizens without charge and burned more civilians alive in a single night than either atomic bomb killed six months later? 

What do we actually mean when we call Putin a dictator? That the media isn't free? But a major part of Russian, state-owned media has long transmitted pro-Western, anti-Russian content, paid for by Russian taxpayers. Try and find taxpayer-funded, Putin-sympathetic content that reaches mass audiences in the U.S. Good luck.

What about free speech? Well, the Russian people have never had it, and therefore don't care much about it. Americans have it in theory, but find its political potency nullified in practice by tsunamis of state and corporate propaganda.  The most popular use of speech in the contemporary U.S. is not to reveal errors of argument and evidence, but to denounce others for being "idiots." How free are we then?

Is Putin a nationalist? In recent years state-enterprise CEOs in Russia were seen earning millions of rubles a year while everyone else had to tighten their belts. The Russian central bank bought U.S. Treasury Bonds and supported the U.S. dollar at the expense of the ruble. Where is the nationalism in such policy?

Is Putin anti-democratic? The annexation of Crimea was overwhelmingly supported by Crimeans (97% vote).

Didn't Putin back Assad? Yes, because he was the legitimate head of state in Syria, while the alternative was rule by Islamic terrorists supported by the United States and Israel, but no sane person in Syria. Israel wants the dismemberment of Syria in order to keep the occupied Golan Heights forever. 

Much demonology is spouted from the simple fact that Putin is the former head of the K.G.B. But Putin is critical of the Bolsheviks and is not himself a Communist. Nevertheless, he considers the demise of the USSR a "world tragedy," since overnight twenty-five million Russians found themselves foreigners living in fourteen new countries.

Is Putin anti-Israel? Well, Daesh oil flowed to Israel, and Putin said nothing, valuing his relations with then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel, of course, supported Al-Nusra, and they were declared terrorists by the United Nations. But Israel is admirable by definition, because . . . the Holocaust. Strange, though, that Putin gets no credit for aiding the Holy State.

We are told that no threat to the Russian state exists, so therefore no cause for war in Ukraine exists. But the Russian state and everything else can be blown off the map in a matter of minutes. The fact that the world is wired up to explode in a nuclear holocaust has been an American initiative from the beginning, and its dominant enemy has been (1) the USSR, and (2) Russia. NATO is by definition hostile to Russia, and lost even an ostensible reason for existing in 1991 with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Why is it still around? Because Russia is still around, and Washington doesn't like that fact. Its efforts to achieve regime change in Moscow can and may end human civilization, which isn't likely to improve matters for Ukrainians. 

Is Putin an extremist? No. There is nothing radical in him. He has no plans for social re-arrangement. He merely seeks to have Russia respected as an independent, wealthy, and "great" nation, and yes, he wants Russia to be treated as an equal. But he also wants to fit into the world, not rebel against it. These modest ambitions are a threat to US/NATO hegemony and world dominance, which represent the triumph of Western extremism.

Keeping things in perspective, Putin is a Russian patriot. He wants to see Russia be a strong, healthy country where people lead good lives, are happy, and Russia occupies a prominent position internationally. He's not a chauvinist or reactionary nationalist. 

The Orange Revolution was totally unexpected in Russia, which can't really be said to have a political opposition because there is no one who embodies and represents the views of a Russian majority. Having said that, Putin has been something of the "golden boy" in Russian politics for the past generation. He is good at addressing issues and speaking in clear terms that average people understand. The initial "democracy" of the Yeltsin period has been curtailed, but the middle class has developed rapidly on Putin's watch.  

Yeltsin spoke to the U.S. Congress in 1992, and offered Washington a partnership in which each nation would treat the other as an equal. For thirty years now the U.S. has rejected this. In the year of the U.S./NATO attack on Serbia (1999), Yeltsin protested, "Russia is not Haiti. You can't treat us like Haiti."* Washington considers Haiti a "shit-hole" country, as one of America's more honest presidents memorably put it.

Washington is incapable of giving Russia its due diplomatic respect. According to the reigning "Wolfowitz Doctrine," the U.S. should dominate the world and not allow any rivals for power to emerge. Russia therefore is and should be treated as a second rate power. This is a non-negotiable position. 

Naturally, Putin does not accept this, and never accepted the U.S. view that Russia lost the Cold War. Russia saw the end of the Cold War as an opportunity for them to become part of the international community. At the core of Russian beliefs is that Russia must be a Great Power. The Russian people have never doubted that Russia is a great country. Having their noses rubbed in the Wolfowitz Doctrine year after year is insulting, degrading, and an open invitation to mutual suicide.

The USSR's forcing its rule onto Eastern Europe was a big mistake, though understandable given two Western invasions in a generation that left much of the country a smoldering ruin. The U.S. ignoring the possibility of Russia "coming back" to international prominence was a big American mistake. Washington continues to think of Russia as at most a regional power whose wants and needs can be ignored. But no nuclear-armed country can be ignored.

At the end of the Cold War the U.S. promised not to expand NATO - not one inch - to the East, a promise it quickly violated.

Now we wait to learn if our three-decade refusal to concede Russia minimal diplomatic respect and cooperation will eventuate in nuclear war.

* Vladimir Pozner, "The Present State of Russian-American Relations," Monterrey Summer Symposium, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, July 24, 2020

 

Netanyahu Snubs Biden On Two-State Solution

Netanyahu: "From the river to the sea, Israel must reign free."

Biden: "Well, Gazans can have a micro-state with no power, can't they?"

Netanyahu: "Drink my diarrhea, goy."

Biden: (placating) . . .  "I'm an optimist. I see the glass as half-empty."

Netanyahu: "I'll fix that. From my ass to your mouth."

Biden: "Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle."

Trans-Class Pride Celebration

 

Trans-Class Pride CelebrationPlanned

 

By Frank Scott

 

A spokesperson forTrans-Class-Pride said a massive parade and rally for the hundreds of millionsof working class and poor Americans who feel rich but are disrespectfully notallowed to be what they feel is planned for a weekend soon.

“ A day would be much tooshort for all our members to be able to participate and we may need a weekrather than a weekend’ said cis-working class member George Melissa Mulatto whodelivers for amazon but feels like the people he delivers to - a member of theupper middle class.

 

“We are sick, tired and fedup with being denied the American dream and forced to live the Americannightmare of the gig economy at best and street poverty at worst” said thepoorly dressed but academically rich even though only having been to college tomake deliveries and clean toilets spokesperson, whose pronouns are homeless/houseless.

 

‘When we march together wefeel stronger and at peace without seeing therapists which we cant afford orusing drugs which we cant afford either.”

 

“I have a good friend who isa woman with a penis and shim gets to use toilets of shims choosing, play onmen’s sports teams and is respectfully treated as trans female. If shim canhave their feelings acknowledged why cant we? Just because some of us have nobank accounts is no reason to deny us credit or because we are without wardrobesdeny us money for rent. After all, Americans spend billions on our animals andeven call them members of our families. Cant we give that much respect to themajority of us Americans who struggle to get by let alone the substantialminority of us who have no shelter and are forced to live under conditions manyof us would not tolerate for our pets. We may no more be middle class than myfriend with a penis is an actual female but we deserve at least the transrights being enjoyed by so many citizens. How about trans class Americans whoare possessed of testicles, vaginas, both or neither but nonetheless aremembers of the human race who deserve at the very least what a tiny minority ofus have: equality of transism!”

 

Congress is consideringlegislation to ban any public display of trans-classism unless it can be shownthat all trans classists are not inspired by Chinese or Russian or Socialist orCommunist or Catholic or Jewish or Agnostic or Atheistic propaganda and all havetestacies, vaginas, both or neither and firmly believe in the Americanconstitution and the right of people to spend trillions of social dollars onwar, hundreds of billions on pets, while poverty, injustice and othermarketable commodities remain available to all Americans withoutdiscrimination.

 

 

 

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ANTISOCIAL NOTES ON WHAT PASSES FOR SOCIAL REALITY

 

 

ANTISOCIALNOTES ON WHAT PASSES FOR SOCIAL REALITY

 

Manyof us are so mentally abused by the lies of ruling power that we believe onlythe most far fetched tales of plots seemingly conducted by forces of evilinvisible to all but the anointed who can spot false flags a mile away but areblind to political economics staring them in the face.

 

 Reduced to an endless mob of consumers buyingbullets, cosmetics, pizza, fashion, beer or pet food, and a parade of prolescarrying plastic bags filled with merchandise, garbage or dog shit, most of usare innocently swept up in whatever trend of the moment comes via our networksof believability. And all those networks are directly or indirectly owned bythe same financial powers which have nothing to do with fantastic schemes orthe illuminati but everything to do with what is quite visible, material andthreatens the world we all live in whether compelled to wave fabric painted redwhite and blue or coerced to carry mentally false banners denoting a sub-humanstatus forced upon us as alleged minorities.

 

We are legitimately upset about the dangerous decline in relations among Americans, not least over the police controversies but we need to remember the police are not vigilantes who appoint themselves to uphold law. They are state workers who have nothing to do with creating low income communities of higher crime than affluent communities - at least on the streets where people suffer drive by shootings and more while the affluent don’t even have streets - but police are sent to regulate reality when social breakdowns occur. If we don't un-create low incomes, poverty, and all the other injustices which help create if not necessitate street crime, and the larger crimes of the people in the suites who rule and run society, things will get much worse. Defund the police? We need to defund the pentagon, get the hell out of the rest of the world unless invited by the people to visit in friendship, and stop swallowing mythology about how everyone is evil and plotting to destroy America when the evil and plotting originates right here.

 

Among the more destructive aspects of the private profit market religion of capitalism that keeps us at each others throats rather than acting as a democratic majority and transforming our political economy into something that’s serves all of us rather than only some at the expense of others is the information and thought control that teaches us nonsense about the world and murderous lies about our relations to foreigners and one another. Thus we are reduced to alleged minorities- identity groups while being subjected to mind menacing horror that describes war as some sort of natural way of living. Ruling power minorities reign supreme by keeping people divided, as in the cases of human beings suffering the outrageous realities that deny comfortable survival for all by creating luxury for only some while the majority are forced into competition and resentment for one another instead of joining forces and taking on ruling minorities before they destroy all of us.

 

These two areas, the division of humans into allegedly different races when there is only one human race, and rationalizing mass murder as some natural act of life because some identity group or other is an enemy of some other identity group though the only identity group that should concern us is the small minority that owns and controls material reality while we are used to seeking a better life for disabled polish American gay Jews of color while not noticing the enormous numbers of people without food clothing or shelter who represent the identity group all of us belong to: the human race.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Individuals are racists,brutes, sadists, killers, rather than social policies and social influences andcultural training, as in grunts raping and killing, cops killing unarmedp.o.c…never the result of social always the result of individual evil, whetherat the bottom, middle or top…the leader is a demon-monster-killer, the cop is ademon monster killer, the soldier is a demon monster killer…at worst, theycommit “war” crimes, which like hate crimes that mean there must be a lovecrime, insure that there most be a legal war and by george we have it…angelicfolks in business suits, with law and other degrees, figure out how to commitmass murder the politically correct way…

 

of course,  grunts and other monsters carry it out underthe command of a demon, for the losing side, while heroic figures operatingunder the sway of an angelic leader are the winners…

 

and big Pharma operates rethe above…you have a problem which must/can/should be solved by drugs..us? noproblems at all…you have a.d.d, depression, hdba, neurosis, xxfuckedupdisorder, etc… but just because millions like you have the same problem, meansit is exclusively individual, demanding a personal solution meaning a drugadministered to thousands, millions, whatever number makes the biggestprofits…if you can afford it and/or have coverage you can go to a shrink –legal- and get your prescription for the drug that will ease your socialdilemma and buy it – legally- from a legal dope peddler – hmo, Walgreens, riteaid, blue cross, etc…if you can’t afford it and/or you have no coverage, youcan go an illegal drug dealer – or undocumented pharmacist – and get the stuffyou need to ease your social dilemma…both sides of the legal coin deal withindividual problems having nothing to do with society, but they are dealt withdifferently based on economic power, but all of that, too, is individual andhas nothing to do with any social arrangements, especially class membership andeconomic status…

 

war state/capitalstate/police state cure? democratic state, when the state becomes an “us”, notan “it”

 

 

when we cannot pay for thecar, the house, whatever, what do the private insurance companies, banks,financial institutions do? They “repo”, as in repossess…who insures the banks?What is fdic? The taxpayers insure the banks? We insure one another, as well asmost especially them? When the banks under private control cannot pay, thepeople should, need to, must, “repo” the banks!

 

 

 

 

 

Gated communities at one endwith split levels, moats , sun decks and armed guards & gated communitiesat the other end with bars, cell blocks, isolation holes and armed guards…america…

 

 

 

 

An environmental, political,economic and growing mental breakdown is being attributed to every conceivableoutside force or source but its core which threatens ultimate destruction ofhumanity itself. Capitalism didn’t just bring us a pandemic which has killedmillions but has long sustained vicious poverty and warfare which have killedmillions in pursuit of lucrative market profits that benefit fewer each day andthreaten more each stormy overheated undernourished experience being sufferedby the poorest among us first, as always, but all of us, eventually.

 

 

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Feminist Imperialism Liberates No One

 "The entanglement of the 'liberating women' agenda with America's endless and ever-expanding War on Terror gave birth to 'securo-feminism,' a term described by the scholar Lila Abu-Lughod to indicate the collusion between international women's rights advocates and the global security enterprise referred to as CVE (countering violent extremism). Securo-feminism holds that fighting against terrorism is in itself a kind of feminism. The national shock and grief around the 911 attack located this foreign war in a very different category from any that America had fought before. The threat was not abstract or hypothetical, and it was not happening somewhere far away. It felt tangible, immediate, personal. . . . . 

"Americans promoted a 'liberation lie' that positioned them as the saviors of downtrodden Afghan women. From this superior perch, white liberal feminists imagined gender-based violence as something found only in faraway lands. 

"In 2002, a coalition of women's organizations sent an open letter to President George W. Bush, asking him to 'take emergency action to save the lives and secure the future of Afghan women.' Its signatories included Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation in Virginia, together with other notable feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Eve Ensler, Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon. U.S. women overwhelmingly support the war, they noted, because 'it will liberate Afghan women from abuse and oppression.' The National Organization of Women (NOW) put out statements in support of the war and its allegedly 'feminist' objectives. Everyone in the mainstream American and British establishment including white feminist heroines like eventual Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, signed on wholeheartedly to the cause of fighting the War on Terror via any means that the military, the CIA, or the president thought necessary. The disconnect between the practice of American brutality and preaching of American saviordom managed to escape notice. 

"Securo-feminists were not simply invested in fighting the War on Terror, they were also committed to using American military power to promote American values all over the world. Just as imperial feminism during the British colonial era had convinced themselves of their own benevolence in improving the lives of native women, so too did securo-feminists believe that they were 'saving' Afghanis and Iraqis from themselves.

"Securo-feminism . . .  bound white American feminists  to the neoimperial and neoliberal project of nation-building around the world  . . . .Caught in its fevers, American feminists did not question loudly enough the wisdom of exporting feminism through bombs and drones. Trickle-down feminism, everyone assumed, would miraculously fast-forward the realization of a gender-equal, free market world created in the self-image of America." 

" . . . Notably, there was no mention of investing in Afghan women's political participation, perhaps because if Afghan women had political freedom they would prioritize ending the American occupation over anything else." 

-------- Rafia Zakaria, Against White Feminism - Notes on Disruption, pps. 84-7 

Nutcase Netanyahu Calls For War With Everyone

 "If you take away the Soviet Union and its chief proxy the PLO, international terrorism would collapse."

--------Benjamin Netanyahu, 1982

"If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you, that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region."

--------Benjamin Netanyahu, 2002

"Obviously, we'd like to see a regime change, at least I would, in Iran, just as I would like to see (one) in Iraq. The question now is a practical question, it's not a question of whether Iraq's regime should be taken out, but when should it be taken out. It's not a question of whether you'd like to see a regime change in Iran, but how . . . ."

--------Benjamin Netanyahu, 2002

Congressman Dennis Kucinich: "Are there other nations that you would recommend the United States launch pre-emptive strikes upon at this point?"

Netanyahu: "The answer is, categorically, yes, is Iraq and Iran. But a third nation, by the way, is Libya, as well. Libya is trying very rapidly to build an atomic bomb capability." (2002)

"We must all stand together to stop Iran's march of conquest, subjugation and terror."

--------Benjamin Netanyahu, 2015

Source:

Video clip aired on Jimmy Dore (You Tube) December 2, 2023. See "Netanyahu Says He Wants Wars With Iran, Iraq, Libya and Russia"

Jewish Apartheid State Opposed From the Beginning

A STATEMENT TO THE PEACE CONFERENCE*

"As a future form of government for Palestine will undoubtedly be considered by the approaching Peace Conference, we, the undersigned citizens of the United States, unite in this statement, setting forth our objections to the organization of a Jewish State in Palestine as proposed by the Zionist Societies in this country and Europe and to the segregation of the Jews as a nationalistic unit in any country.  

"We feel that in so doing we are voicing the opinion of the majority of American Jews born in this country and of those foreign born who have lived here long enough to thoroughly assimilate American political and social conditions. The American Zionists represent, according to the most recent statistics  available, only a small proportion of the Jews living in this country, about 150,000 out of   3,500,000. (American Jewish Yearbook 1918, Philadelphia.) 

"At the outset we wish to indicate our entire sympathy with the efforts of Zionists which aim to secure for Jews at present living in lands of oppression a refuge in Palestine or elsewhere, where they may freely develop their capabilities and carry on their activities as free citizens.

"But we raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misinterprets the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a 'national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.'

"Zionism arose as a result of the intolerable conditions under which Jews have been forced to live in Russia and Roumania. But it is evident that for the Jewish population of these countries, variously estimated at from six to ten millions, Palestine can become no homeland. Even with the improvement of the neglected condition of this country, its limited area can offer no solution. The Jewish question in Russia and Roumania can be settled only within those countries by the grant of full rights of citizenship to Jews. 

"We are all the more opposed to the Zionists, because they, themselves, distinctly repudiate the solely ameliorative program. They demand and hail with delight the 'Balfour Declaration' to establish 'a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine,' i.e., a home not merely for Jews living in countries in which they are oppressed, but for Jews universally. No Jew, wherever he may live, can consider himself free from the implications of such a grant. 

"The willingness of Jews interested in the welfare of their brethren to aid in redeeming Palestine from the blight of centuries of Turkish misrule, is no acceptance of the Zionist project to segregate Jews as a political unit and to re-institute a section of such a political unit in Palestine or elsewhere.

"At the present juncture in the world's affairs when lands that have hitherto been subjected to foreign domination are to be recognized as free and independent states, we rejoice in the avowed proposal of the Peace Congress to put into practical application the fundamental principles of democracy. That principle, which asserts equal rights for all citizens of a state, irrespective of creed or ethnic descent, should be applied in such a manner as to exclude segregation of any kind, be it nationalistic or other.  Such segregation must inevitably create differences among the sections of the population of a country. Any such plan of segregation is necessarily reactionary in its tendency, undemocratic in spirit and totally contrary to the practices of free government, especially as these are exemplified by our own country. We therefore strongly urge the abandonment of such a basis for the reorganization of any state."

OBJECTIONS TO SEGREGATION OF JEWS AS A POLITICAL UNIT

"Against such a political segregation of the Jews in Palestine or elsewhere we object:

1. "Because the Jews are dedicated heart and soul to the welfare of the countries in which they dwell under free conditions. All Jews repudiate every suspicion of a double allegiance, but to our minds it is necessarily implied in and cannot by any logic be eliminated from the establishment of a sovereign State for the Jews in Palestine.

"By the large part taken by them in the great war (WWI), the Jews have once and for all shattered the base aspersions of the Anti-Semites which charged them with being aliens in every land, incapable of true patriotism and prompted only by sinister and self-seeking motives. Moreover, it is safe to assume that the overwhelming bulk of the Jews of America, England, France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland and the other lands of freedom, have no thought whatever of surrendering their citizenship in these lands in order to resort to a 'Jewish homeland in Palestine.' As a rule those who favor such a restoration advocate it not for themselves but for others. Those who act thus, and yet insist on their patriotic attachment to the countries of which they are citizens, are self-deceived in their profession of Zionism and under the spell of an emotional romanticism or of a religious sentiment fostered through centuries of gloom. 

2.  "We also object to political segregation of Jews for those who take their Zionistic professions seriously as referring not to 'others' but to themselves. Granted that the establishment of a sovereign Jewish State in Palestine would lead many to emigrate to that land, the political conditions of the millions who would be unable to migrate for generations to come, if ever, would be made far more precarious. Roumania - despite the pledges of the Berlin Treaty - has legally branded her Jews as aliens, though many are descended from families settled in that country longer than the present Roumanian government has existed. The establishment of a Jewish State will manifestly serve the malevolent rulers of that and other lands as a new justification for additional repressive legislation. The multitudes who remain would be subject to worse perils, if possible, even though the few who escape might prosper in Palestine.

3. "We object to the political segregation also of those who might succeed in establishing themselves in Palestine. The proposition involves dangers, which, it is manifest, have not had the serious consideration of those who are so zealous in its advocacy. These dangers are adverted to in a most kindly spirit of warning by Sir George Adam Smith, who is generally acknowledged to be the greatest authority in the world on everything connected to Palestine, either past or present. In a recent publication, Syria and the Holy Land, he points out that there is absolutely no fixity to the boundaries of Palestine. These have varied greatly in the course of the centuries. The claims to various sections of this undefined territory would unquestionably evoke bitter controversies. 'It is not true,' says Sir George, 'that Palestine is the national home of the Jewish people and of no other people.' 'It is not correct to call its non-Jewish inhabitants  "Arabs,"  or to say that they have left no image of their spirit and made no history except in the Great Mosque.' 'Nor can we evade the fact that Christian communities have been as long in possession of their portion of this land as ever the Jews were.' 'These are legitimate questions,' he says, 'stirred up by the claims of Zionism, but the Zionists have not yet fully faced them.'

"To subject the Jews to the possible recurrence of such bitter and sanguinary conflicts which would be inevitable, would be a crime against the triumphs of their whole past history and against the lofty and world-embracing visions of their great prophets and leaders.

4. "Though these grave difficulties be met, still we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish.

"Whether the Jews be regarded as a 'race' or as a 'religion,' it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases. America, England, France, Italy, Switzerland and all the most advanced nations of the world are composed of representatives of many races and religions. Their glory lies in the freedom of conscience and worship, in the liberty of thought and custom which binds the followers of many faiths and varied civilizations in the common bonds of political union. A Jewish State involves fundamental limitations as to race and religion, else the term 'Jewish' means nothing. To unite Church and State, in any form, as under the old Jewish hierarchy, would be a leap backward of two thousand years.

"'The rights of other creeds and races will be respected under Jewish dominance,' is the assurance of Zionism. But the keynotes of democracy are neither condescension nor tolerance, but justice and equality. All this applies with special force to a country like Palestine. That land is filled with associations sacred to the followers of three great religions, and as a result of migration movements of many centuries contains an extraordinary number of different ethnic groups, far out of proportion to the small extent of the country itself. Such a condition points clearly to a reorganization of Palestine on the broadest possible basis.

5. "We object to the political segregation of the Jews because it is an error to assume that the bond uniting them is of a national character. They are bound by two factors: First, the bond of common religious beliefs and aspirations and, secondly, the bond of common traditions customs, and experiences, largely, alas, of common trials and sufferings. Nothing in their present status suggests that they form in any real sense a separate nationalist unit.

"The reorganization of Palestine as far as it affects the Jews is but part of a far larger issue, namely, the constructive endeavor, to secure the emancipation of the Jews in all the lands in which they dwell. This movement, inaugurated in the eighteenth century and advancing with steady progress through the western lands, was checked by such reactionary tendencies as caused the expulsion of the Poles from Eastern Prussia and the massacre of Armenians in Turkey. As directed against Jews these tendencies crystallized into a political movement called Anti-Semitism, which had its rise in Germany. Its virulence spread (especially) throughout eastern Europe and led to cruel outbreaks in Roumania and elsewhere, and to the pogroms of Russia with their dire consequences.

"To guard against such evils in the future, we urge that the great constructive movement, so sadly interrupted, be reinstituted and that efficient measures be taken to insure the protection of the law and the full rights of citizenship to Jews in every land. If the basis of the reorganization of governments is henceforth to be democratic, it cannot be contemplated to exclude any group of people from the enjoyment of full rights.

"As to the future of Palestine, it is our fervent hope that what was once a 'promised land' for the Jews may become a 'land of promise' for all races and creeds, safeguarded by the League of Nations which, it is expected, will be one of the fruits of the Peace Conference to whose deliberations the world now looks forward so anxiously and so full of hope.  We ask that Palestine be constituted as a free and independent state, to be governed under a democratic form of government recognizing no distinctions of creed or race or ethnic descent, and with adequate power to protect the country against oppression of any kind. We do not wish to see Palestine, either now or at any time in the future, organized as a Jewish State."

*Handed to President Wilson on behalf of the signers by Congressman Julius Kahn on March 4th, 1919, for transmission to the Peace Conference at Paris. 

1. The statement was prepared conjointly by the Rev. Dr. Henry Berkowitz, of Philadelphia, Mr. Max Senior, of Cincinnati, and Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Source: Anti-Zionism - Analytical Reflections, Amana Books, 1988, pps. 341-349

  

Genocide Isn't About Mass Killing - It's More Identity Politics

Norman Finkelstein is all over the media recently; he even got a solo appearance on Piers Morgan. While it's wonderful to see him get the attention his brilliant 40-year investigation of Israel-Palestine deserves, he nearly always does something irritating as well . . . Yesterday he was interviewed by Krystal Ball on Breaking Points, and he dismissed with contempt the line we've been hearing the past six weeks, i.e., "The October 7 attacks were the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust." Finkelstein snorted and replied, "What the hell do 1400 deaths have to do with the Holocaust?" He accused Israel of always "dragging in" the Holocaust as moral backing for its endless outrages against the Palestinians, but if that disproportion (1400 to 6 million) is absurd, can't a similar argument be made that 15,000 Gazans killed, less than one percent of the Gazan population, cannot constitute genocide, whatever Israel's intentions? 

Too much of the legal definition of genocide hangs on intent, which is not likely of much concern to the victims of - take your pick - massacre, ethnic cleansing, extermination, genocide, slaughter, etc. If Israeli attacks in Gaza today constitute a genocide, whereas European colonizers' wiping out of 97%-99% if the indigenous populations of the Americas is NOT genocide, as few talking heads think it is, then massive killing is really not the central issue defining "genocide," and we need to start saying so. 

By the way, if Israel were to agree to a permanent cease-fire in return for the sterilization of all Palestinian women of child-bearing age, would that be a peace proposal or more genocide?

In any event, it does not appear that Israel's intent in the current massacre has anything to do with genocide, if that word is taken to mean utter annihilation. It's ethnic cleansing, which is not a synonym for genocide, though it's often treated as though it were. Jewish supremacists want to keep killing Gazans until international horror forces open the Rafa crossing so the despised Gazans can be dispersed throughout Egypt and the Gulf States. "Transfer," it's called in Zionist commentary, and that goal has been a constant from the beginning. Every time there's a "war," Israel takes more land and drives more Arabs off it. A land without a people for a people without shame.

Finkelstein also dropped into his conversation with Krystal Ball the claim that "10,000 Jews a week were gassed at Auschwitz," which, if true, also makes the charge of genocide in Gaza seem pretty absurd by comparison. In case you're wondering, here's the current genocide scorecard, according to various experts in the topic:

Gaza 2023: under 1% killed, definitely genocide.

Indians 1500-1900 98% killed, NOT genocide

European Jews 1933-1945 - 66% killed, the worst genocide ever, don't even try to compare it to anything else.

One wishes that there were some sense in this, but alas, it appears there is not. And Finkelstein always plays into the idea that his being the son of "Holocaust survivors" is what makes his voice relevant, even as he stresses that the only thing that matters is the facts and a logical accounting of them. Consistency, please, could we please just have some consistency, one in a while, even just as a holiday treat?

Remember also that genocide experts claimed a generation ago that Slobodan Milosevic was guilty of it in the war over the break-up of Yugoslavia, though that was a three-way ethnic fight with massacres on all sides. Furthermore, Germany was said to be redeeming its guilt for the Holocaust by bombing Belgrade, just as the Nazis had done!

Go figure.

 

Bulletin! Zionists Have Known They Were Lying From The Beginning

 "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?

--------First Prime Minister of Israel David Ben Gurion 

Source:

Anti-Zionism, Analytical Reflections (Amana Books, 1988), p. 135