[THS] The Second Worst Thing That Ever Happened to the Jewish People

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25694.htm


The Second Worst Thing That Ever Happened to the Jewish People

By William Blum

June 11, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- The worst thing that ever happened
to the Jewish people is the Holocaust. The second worst thing that ever happened to
the Jewish people is the state of Israel.

Things internationally are so dispiriting there's nothing left to do but fantasize. I
picture Turkey, as a member of NATO, demanding that the alliance come to its
defense after being attacked by Israel. Under Article 5 of the NATO charter an armed
attack on one member is deemed to constitute an armed attack on all members. That
is the ostensible reason NATO is fighting in Afghanistan — the attack against the
United States on September 11, 2001 is regarded as an attack on all NATO members
(disregarding the awkward fact that Afghanistan as a country had nothing to do with
the attack). The Israeli attack on a Turkish-flagged ship, operated by a Turkish
humanitarian organization, killing nine Turkish nationals and wounding many more
can certainly constitute an attack upon a NATO member.

So, after the United States, the UK, Germany, France and other leading NATO
members offer their ridiculous non-sequitur excuses why they can't ... umm ... er ...
invoke Article 5, and the international media swallows it all without any indigestion,
Turkey demands that Israel should at least lose its formal association with NATO as a
member of the Mediterranean Dialogue. This too is dismissed with scorn by the
eminent NATO world powers on the grounds that it would constitute a victory for
terrorism. And anti-Semitism of course.

Turkey then withdraws from NATO. Azerbaijan and five other Central Asian members
of NATO's Partnership for Peace with Turkic constituencies do the same. NATO falls
into a crisis. Remaining member countries begin to question the organization's
policies as never before ... like please tell us again why our young men are killing and
dying in Afghanistan, and why we send them to Kosovo and Iraq and other places
the Americans deem essential to their endlessly-threatened national security.

When Vice President Biden tells the eminent conservative-in-liberal-clothing pseudo-
intellectual Charlie Rose on TV that "We have put as much pressure and as much
cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them [Gaza] to get building materials in," 1Rose
for once rises to the occasion and acts like a real journalist, asking Biden: "Have you
threatened Israel with ending all military and economic aid? ... Have you put the
names of Israeli officials on your list of foreigners who can not enter the United States
and whose bank accounts in the US are frozen, as you've done with numerous
foreign officials who were not supporters of the empire? ... Since Israel has
committed both crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity, and since
these are crimes that have international jurisdiction, certain Israeli political and
military personnel can be named in trials held in any country of the world. Will you be
instructing the Attorney General to proceed with such an indictment? Or if some
other country which is a member of the International Criminal Court calls upon the
ICC to prosecute these individuals, will the United States try to block the move? ...
Why hasn't the United States itself delivered building materials to Gaza?"

When Israel justifies its murders on the grounds of "self-defense", late-night TV
comedians Jay Leno and David Letterman find great humor in this, pointing out that
a new memoir by China's premier at the time of the 1989 Tiananmen Square violent
suppression defends the military action by saying that soldiers acted in "self-defense"
when they fired on the democracy activists. 2

When Israel labels as "terrorists" the ship passengers who offered some resistance to
the Israeli invaders, the New York Times points out that the passengers who resisted
the 9-11 highjackers on the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania are called "heroes".
(As an aside, it's worth noting that the United States uses 9-11 as Israel uses the
Holocaust — as excuse and justification for all manner of illegal and violent
international behavior.)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reminds its readers that in 2009 Israel attacked a
boat on international waters carrying medical aid to Gaza with former
congresswoman Cynthia McKinney aboard; and that in 1967 Israel attacked an
American ship, the USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding about 173, and that
President Johnson did then just what President Obama is doing now and would have
done then — nothing.

And finally, Secretary of State Clinton declares that she's had a revelation. She
realizes that what she recently said about North Korea when it was accused of having
torpedoed a South Korean warship applies as well to Israel. Mrs. Clinton had
demanded that Pyongyang "stop its provocative behavior, halt its policy of threats of
belligerence towards its neighbors, and take irreversible steps to fulfill its
denuclearization commitments and comply with international law." 3 She adds that
the North Korean guilt is by no means conclusive, while Israel doesn't deny its attack
on the ship at all; moreover, it's not known for sure if North Korea actually possesses
nuclear weapons, whereas there's no uncertainty about Israel's large stockpile.

So there you have it. Hypocrisy reigns. Despite my best fantasizing. Is hypocrisy a
moral failing or a failure of the intellect? When President Obama says, as he has
often, "No one is above the law" and in his next breath makes it clear that his
administration will not seek to indict Bush or Cheney for any crimes, does he think
that no one will notice the contradiction, the hypocrisy? That's a callous disregard for
public opinion and/or a dumbness worthy of his predecessor.

And when he declares: "The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a
field of battle or bury missiles in the ground", 4does it not occur to him at all that he's
predicting a bleak outlook for the United States? Or that his conscious, deliberate
policy is to increase the size of America's army and its stockpile of missiles?

Comrades, can the hypocrisy and the lies reach such a magnitude that enough
American true believers begin to question their cherished faith, so that their number
reaches a critical mass and explodes? Well, it's already happened with countless
Americans, but it's an awfully formidable task keeping pace with what is turned out
by the mass media and education factories. They're awfully good at what they do.
Too bad. But don't forsake the struggle. What better way is there to live this life? And
remember, just because the world has been taken over by lying, hypocritical, mass-
murdering madmen doesn't mean we can't have a good time.
Bad guys and good guys

In Lahore, Pakistan, reported the Washington Post on May 29, "Militants staged
coordinated attacks ... on two mosques of a minority Muslim sect, taking hostages
and killing at least 80 people. ... At least seven men armed with grenades, high-
powered rifles and suicide vests stormed the mosques as Friday prayers ended."

Nice, really nice, very civilized. It's no wonder that decent Americans think that this is
what the United States is fighting against — Islamic fanatics, homicidal maniacs, who
kill their own kind over some esoteric piece of religious dogma, who want to kill
Americans over some other imagined holy sin, because we're "infidels". How can we
reason with such people? Where is the common humanity the naive pacifists and
anti-war activists would like us to honor?

And then we come to the very last paragraph of the story: "Elsewhere in Pakistan on
Friday, a suspected U.S. drone-fired missile struck a Taliban compound in the South
Waziristan tribal area, killing eight, according to two officials in the region." This, we
are asked to believe by our leaders, is a higher level of humanity. The United States
does this every other day, sending robotic death machines called Predators flying
over Afghanistan and Pakistan, to send Hellfire missiles screaming into wedding
parties, funerals, homes, not knowing who the victims are, not caring who the victims
are, many hundreds of them by now, as long as Washington can claim each time —
whether correctly or not — that amongst their number was a prominent infidel, call
him Taliban, or al Qaeda, or insurgent, or militant. How can one reason with such
people, the ones in the CIA who operate the drone flights? What is the difference
between them and a suicide bomber? The suicide bomber becomes one of the
victims himself and sees his victims up close before killing them. The CIA murderer
bomber sits safely in a room in Nevada or California and pretends he's playing a
video game, then goes out to dinner while his victims lay dying. The suicide bomber
believes passionately in something called paradise. The murderer bomber believes
passionately in something called flag and country.

The State Department's Legal Advisor justifies the Predator bombings as ... yes, "self-
defense". 5 Try reasoning with that.

These American drone bombings are of course the height of aggression, the ultimate
international crime. They were used over Iraq as well beginning in the 1990s. In
December 2002, shortly before the US invasion in March, the Iraqis finally managed
to shoot one down. This prompted a spokesman for the US Central Command, which
oversees US military operations in the Middle East, to call it another sign of Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein's "campaign of military aggression." 6

This particular piece of hypocrisy may have actually been outdone by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld's comment about the US flights and bombings over Iraq
during that period: "It bothers the dickens out of me that US and British pilots are
getting fired at day after day after day, with impunity." 7

Send me a stamped self-addressed envelope for a copy of the revised edition of "An
arsonist's guide to the homes of Pentagon officials".
When politicians misbehave. By speaking the truth.

The German president, Horst Koehler, resigned last week because he said something
government officials are not supposed to say. He said that Germany was fighting in
Afghanistan for economic reasons. No reference to democracy. Nothing about
freedom. Not a word about Good Guys fighting Bad Guys. The word "terrorism" was
not mentioned at all. Neither was "God". On a trip to German troops in Afghanistan
he had declared that a country such as Germany, dependent on exports and free
trade, must be prepared to use military force. The country, he said, had to act "to
protect our interests, for example, free trade routes, or to prevent regional instability
which might certainly have a negative effect on our trade, jobs and earnings".

"Koehler has said something openly that has been obvious from the beginning," said
the head of Germany's Left Party. "German soldiers are risking life and limb in
Afghanistan to defend the export interests of big economic interests." 8

Other opposition politicians had called for Koehler to take back the remarks and
accused him of damaging public acceptance of German military missions abroad. 9

As T.S. Eliot famously observed: "Humankind can not bear very much reality."
What is the opposite of being a conspiracy theorist?

David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker magazine and former Washington Post
reporter, has a new book out, "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama". In
the three pages Remnick devotes to Obama's 1983-4 employment at Business
International Corporation in New York he makes no mention of the well-known ties
between BIC and the CIA. In 1977, for example, the New York Times revealed that
BIC had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries during earlier
years of the Cold War; 10BIC also attempted to penetrate the radical left, including
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). 11

Did Remnick not think it at all interesting and worthy of mention that the future
president worked for more than a year with a company that was a CIA asset? Even if
the company and the CIA made no attempt to recruit Obama, which in fact they may
have done? It's this kind of obvious omission that helps feed the left's conspiracy
thinking.

Because Remnick has impeccable establishment credentials the book has been widely
reviewed. But none of the many reviewers has seen fit to mention this omission. And
the way it works of course is that if it's not mentioned, it didn't happen. And if you
mention such a thing, you're a pathetic conspiracy theorist. Like me, who discussed it
in the January edition of this report. 12
Spam, myself and my readers

As some of you now know, someone hacked into my website and used my address
book to send out emails to many of the readers of this report. The emails indicated
that they had been sent by me and directed people to a website which sells
handbags, shoes and watches. What bothers me the most about this incident is that
several of my readers believed that it was actually me who had sent out the emails,
that I was peddling handbags, shoes and watches. The only thing I sell are books.
But I think these readers have now learned something about spam. And hopefully
about me.

Oh, by the way, can I interest any of you in some nice T-shirts, hats, or sunglasses?
Notes

   1. Charlie Rose Live, June 2, 2010 program ?
   2. Associated Press, June 4, 2010 ?
   3. State Department press conference, May 24, 2010 ?
   4. Talk given in Moscow, July 7, 2009, text released by the White House ?
   5. National Public Radio, March 26, 2010 ?
   6. Washington Post, December 24, 2002 ?
   7. Associated Press, September 30, 2002 ?
   8. London Times Online, May 31, 2010 ?
   9. Associated Press, May 31, 2010 ?
  10. New York Times, December 27, 1977, p.40 ?
  11. Carl Oglesby, "Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar
Movement" (2008), passim ?
  12. William Blum, The Anti-Empire Report, January 3rd, 2009 ?

–

William Blum is the author of:

    * Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
    * Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
    * West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
    * Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at
www.killinghope.org