Monday, July 31, 2006
Gilad Atzmon Discovers Classified Israeli War Document!
12 Official Guidelines for the Israeli Spokesman in Time of War (at the left: poster boy Lt. Col. Israel Israeli)The State of Israel
Classified Document
Gilad Atzmon (1)
The Israeli Foreign Ministry urges the Israeli lobbyists around the world as well as its representatives to spread the message below. This war is all about our survival unlike all the other wars that were all about our survival. We must to stand up firmly and tell the world that:
*Our army is the most humanist army in the world.
*Our army always informs the helpless victims before we drop tonnes of bombs on their heads.
*Is there any other army in the world that spreads leaflets before it commits genocide?
*As if this isn’t enough, we always ‘deeply regret’ after we’ve committed atrocities.
*Didn’t we ‘sincerely apologise’ after smoking four UN peacekeepers?
*Unlike, the Hamas and the Hezbollah, we never kill indiscriminately. We always kill very discriminately. We kill Arabs whether they are Arab women, Arab elders, Arab children, Arab refugees, Arab disabled hiding in a Red Cross shelter in Kafar Quana. We are after Arabs and to speak about us as if we are bombing and killing indiscriminately is an utter anti-Semitic lie.
*Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora must be very happy with our brutal assault against his people. Let’s face it, we are doing his job, we are killing the baddies. We are cleaning his streets. Indeed we start with the Hezbollah, but we will then take the war to Syria and Iran. We have it all planned with our friends in the Pentagon. We can’t really understand why PM Siniora is making such a fuss insisting on ceasefire. Indeed, a third of the Lebanese civilians are now displaced, but as you all know, in war shit happens (especially in the Israeli wars).
*We the Israelis are at the forefront of the fight for democracy and humanism. You European and Westerners should support us. We are engaged in a dirty war you fail to fight. Is it a coincidence that Tony, George and Condy gave us a green light to bring Lebanon back to the Stone Age? Is it a coincidence that the Andrea’le Merkel sent us 3 Submarines as soon as she settled in office? Let’s face it, you all love us, and you better admit it, you love us strong and murderous. You all give us the green light to paint the region in red. And let me tell you, we love painting in red, moreover, we are really good at it.
*And don’t you ever forget, we are the only democracy in the Middle East, when we engage in one war crime or another, when we breach the Geneva Convention, when we violate any possible humanist call, we always express our people’s democratic choice. We always do it in the name of our people. Don’t you forget, this war was launched by an Israeli national unity centrist coalition. This war is the call of the moderate peace-seeking Jewish voice. Unlike the Hezbollah, a tiny group of a paramilitary militias, our terror is nothing but state terrorism in its making. Our state terrorism is our democratic choice and it is supported by the world’s leading democrats: Bush and Blair.
*Unlike the cowards Hamas and Hezbollah who hide behind women and children, we are brave, heroic and technologically superior; we successfully target the women, the elders and the children who may or may not serve the Islamic terrorists as human shields. We smoke them and them alone. We obviously believe in focussed assassination.
*Although we clearly punish the Arabs for the crimes committed against us by the Nazis, we are humanists, we never behave like the Nazis, we never schlep innocent Arabs in trains, we never ship them to death camps, we never gas them, instead, with the support of our American Brother, we bring the death directly to them, we kill them in their homes, in their beds sometime just before dawn when they are still in pyjamas.
*In short, not only we are humanists, we are the notion of humanism. To doubt it is nothing but pure and crude anti-Semitism.
This message must be repeated time after time even if it doesn’t make much sense. It is a message that must be circulated regardless of its truth value. This war is not about truth, it is about the right of the Jewish people to exist in peace.
(1) The document was compiled by IAF reserve Lt. Col. Israel Israeli
It was nicked by Gilad Atzmon
Labels: Atzmon
Please sign Online Petition asking Arab League to Defend Arabs
To: Arab LeagueInsofar as internationally, we Arabs have allowed many organs to represent us, we Arabs and friends of Arab peoples, address you as our representatives. I trust that you hold our interests and our wellbeing in the highest regard, and that is why we take this opportunity to call upon you to act as our true representatives to the world, and insist that all Heads of State in the Arab League, and that all representatives of the International Community that have economic, social and political ties with any of our nations, demand an immediate stop of Israel's belligerent aggression against our brothers and sisters in Palestine and Lebanon.
It is impellent that you take immediate action, to validate the trust that citizens have placed in you, as well as for pragmatic reasons of your own survival as a body that can claim to represent people of Arab nations. There are many ways to diplomatically impose a halt of Israel's violence. There are many peaceful actions that can impose upon it a determined change in policy. All of these tools are able to be implemented in full compliance with international law, and as in the situation of South Africa, have been proven to be effective and furthermore, have gained widespread international support both within the masses and at the level of governments of civilised nations.
In choosing to not take advantage of any of these instruments, you have allowed the onus of the defence of our people to fall on the Hamas and the Hezbollah. Whether or not this has been your intention, the fact remains that you are an internationally recognised representative of the States and therefore of the citizens and residents of the Arab nations, and you are theoretically ultimately responsible for the coordination of their political approaches to situations of international crisis that involve them, especially where the lives of our people are being sacrificed. If you have chosen to abandon the Arab people at this time, it is clear that you serve no purpose whatsoever, and in that case, it would be wise to withdraw from the international scene and disassemble yourselves.
We implore you to act now, or forever disband. Israel must not be allowed to commit any more War Crimes against Arabs, or the UN for that matter. Violence against Arabs must cease and desist. It is your responsibility.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
http://www.petitiononline.com/Umma2006/petition.html
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Oren Ben-Dor's additional insight
Letters
Published: 29 July 2006
Sir: My article "Who is the Real Terrorist in the Middle East?" (26 July) was about the relationship between stifling debate about the immoral core of the Jewish state and the cycle of hatred and violence, the unfolding of which we witness. I make one additional point.
The ideology of the Jewish state means all existing and future descendants of Jewish people worldwide have more rights in historic Palestine than the indigenous Arabs. This makes Israel unique. What other state decrees that many of its own citizens have less stake than millions of potential immigrants?
The colonisation of Palestine is also unique: discussion of this past injustice is inadmissible lest it expose the present immoral statehood. Yet, Israel is hailed as a paragon of democracy in the Middle East. How does Israel get away with its ethnocratic statehood despite its moral resemblance to apartheid-era South-Africa?
In the article, I argued that conscious or unconscious instigation of violence which nourishes victim mentality helps to stir debate away from the core immorality of the Jewish state. I should also emphasis that many non-Israeli Jews, most of whom are perfectly happy as minorities in their respective states, willingly volunteer as missionaries of this victim narrative.
When they are perceived as apologists for Israeli actions justified in the Jewish name, and encounter hostility, this reaction again helps to reinforce their victim narrative.
DR OREN BEN-DOR
Published: 29 July 2006
Sir: My article "Who is the Real Terrorist in the Middle East?" (26 July) was about the relationship between stifling debate about the immoral core of the Jewish state and the cycle of hatred and violence, the unfolding of which we witness. I make one additional point.
The ideology of the Jewish state means all existing and future descendants of Jewish people worldwide have more rights in historic Palestine than the indigenous Arabs. This makes Israel unique. What other state decrees that many of its own citizens have less stake than millions of potential immigrants?
The colonisation of Palestine is also unique: discussion of this past injustice is inadmissible lest it expose the present immoral statehood. Yet, Israel is hailed as a paragon of democracy in the Middle East. How does Israel get away with its ethnocratic statehood despite its moral resemblance to apartheid-era South-Africa?
In the article, I argued that conscious or unconscious instigation of violence which nourishes victim mentality helps to stir debate away from the core immorality of the Jewish state. I should also emphasis that many non-Israeli Jews, most of whom are perfectly happy as minorities in their respective states, willingly volunteer as missionaries of this victim narrative.
When they are perceived as apologists for Israeli actions justified in the Jewish name, and encounter hostility, this reaction again helps to reinforce their victim narrative.
DR OREN BEN-DOR
IN GAZA AND BEIRUT, ASYMMETRICAL BARBARITY
An interview with Gilbert AchcarBy Geraldina Colotti 28 July 2006 il manifesto
Gilbert Achcar, Lebanese political analyst, is a collaborator of Le Monde Diplomatique and author of Clash of Barbarisms, a razor-sharp pamphlet focusing its analysis on the political situation within his own country and the advance of Islamic fundamentalism.
We met with him in Rome, at the end of a series of meetings concerning his book.
Prof. Achcar, according to the North-American media, it has been Hezbollah’s violence—at the center of an Islamic plot of destabilization of the region—that has brought about the Israeli response. Do you agree?
“The military operation by Hezbollah, as Nasrallah himself has declared, had been staged for some time and discussed with the allies, but also the Israeli military offensive—as the Jewish press has revealed—has been planned long before. It aimed at destroying Lebanon’s infrastructures, that is to say the population’s means of subsistence. It is meant to apply by force UN Resolution 1559 that was pushed through by the UN Security Council in 2004: Syrian troops’ withdrawal from Lebanon, disarmament of the armed groups in the country, i.e., Hezbollah and the Palestinians from the refugees camps.
When Israel asserts it demands the integral enforcement of Resolution 1559, it shows an unconceivable impudence: in fact, Israel has been expected for nearly forty years to apply Resolution 242 which demands its withdrawal within the borders existing before the Six Days War.
US and Israel are driven by the obsession about their major enemies. Formerly it was the Soviet Union, today—in the Middle East—it’s Iran and the alliance supporting it on strong regional foundations: from the Shiites in Iraq to the Syrian regime (secondary, as well as minor evil enemy to Israel, which otherwise would have chaos at its borders), from Hezbollah (tied to the Iranian ideology) to Hamas (Sunni organization), alliance which serves Iran so as to array against US and Israel a whole Islamic front and not only a Shiite alliance.
In order to put the public opinion against Hezbollah and Hamas, the regimes which are most submissive to the Americans, such as the Saudi, the Jordanian and the Egyptian ones, are trying to play the religious card. By exerting pressure over the basis of the Sunni-Shiite antagonism, they argue that Iran would want to involve the Arabs into a war not concerning them.
Neverthless, today Hamas and Hezbollah are the heroes to a public opinion disgusted by the ineffectiveness of the Arab countries. Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is certainly more popular than Bin Laden, who won credit amongst those who nurtured a more radical animosity against the West but who has alienated most of the public opinion on account of his actions, which are terrorist in the true meaning of the term.”
By the word terrorism, which has nearly become a metaphysical category, one is inclined to define almost all the forms of armed opposition: from resistance to the occupying force, to Bin Laden, even to some forms of radical opposition in the West. Instead, you make use of the concept of asymmetrical barbarity. What does it mean?
“What I mean is that the powerful’s armed actions are terrorism and the victims’ one are barbarities, yet asymmetrical ones. They are different for reasons, responsibilities and consequences and therefore they can’t be put on the same level.
Hamas’ suicide attacks—that now have been broken off—are trifling if compared to the violence of the Israeli oppression: in the last conflict, the number of Palestinian or Lebanese dead is 10 times higher than the Israeli one. And, what’s more, in Lebanon it’s about only verified deaths while who knows how many further ones might be discovered under the ruins of the destroyed buildings. More than the 90% of the victims provoked by Israel isn’t made up of fighters or militants but of civilians. The capture of an Israeli soldier by the Palestinians has led to Gaza’s assault, whilst Israel detains over 10 thousand Palestinian prisoners, most of which is made up of civilians who were kidnapped in the territory Israel has been unlawfully occupying since 1967, infringing international laws. We must not be trapped by the hypocrisy of the western ruling argument.”
By which yardstick are Hamas’ actions against civilians to be judged then?
“In some parts of the world one can’t stand neutral, the priority is to fight occupation and war. And there’s a difference of method between organizations such as that one of Bin Laden and those ones as Hamas and Hezbollah: while the former believes that an armed network, by replacing the mass struggles, can, by resorting to terrorism, force the imperialism to withdraw, the latter are mass organizations which resort to certain armed actions only as an alternative. They have frameworks similar to the great parties and suggest a social organization as substitute of the governmental one.
Their extremist and religious outlook, yet, is substantially similar. Hence, there’s a great difference between this picture and taking reactionary models as revolutionary and allied of the forces striving for the alternative.
From Iraq to Palestine it’s the same tragedy: the total absence of reliable progressive forces and the hegemony over well-deserved popular fights by extremist religious streams which, for instance in Iraq, are carrying out a justified fight against the occupying force, it’s true, but also a far from legitimate war against the Shiites and against that one they call the Iranian occupation, a religious sectarian and reactionary concept.
On the contrary, hundreds of thousands of people, who have marched on the streets many times, have shown that an opposition mass movement can be set up even more effectively than the military one which, by definition, arouses some passivity in the population.”
According to the historian Samir Kassir, killed in 2005, “the Arab unhappiness” lies in the failed achievement of modernity. What do you think about the “Lebanese revolution”, the movement that has brought on Beirut’s major squares a hundred thousand people in the name of the cultural and political pluralism?
“It has been about a contradictory event which has witnessed the rebellion converge against the unbearable behavior of the Syrian army, as well as the anti-Syrian attitude of political and religious factions that ended up with entering the imperialist framework.
To oppose Syria—forgetting that Lebanon is also a piece of the East—a faction of the left has gone around with ultra-reactionary characters, has lost the reference points and stifled the hopes that were aroused at first.
In Lebanon, as in the rest of the region, the leftist and secular ideas have been overwhelmed by the double failure of nationalism on the one hand and of the Soviet Union’s collapse on the other, by the slump of trust in the spirit of Communism and Marxism.
Today, contrarily to what is held by analysts such as Gilles Kepel, the presence of Islamic extremism is the ruling expression of the social and political protest present in nearly the entire Muslim environment. It’s so strong that the room for the development of any other kind of alternative is truly slight.
It’s a part of world where there’s no organized workers’ movement, it having been destroyed by rightist tyrannical governments or oppressed by nationalist dictatorships which have prevented its independent development.
Furthermore, in the fight against progressive nationalism and the Soviet Union, imperialism has availed of the Islamic extremism.
In order that things may change, it’s necessary that these streams—as happened to Arab nationalism in the late 60’s and at the beginning of the 70’s—show their own incapability to face the problems on the ground. But another condition is that a new left project, one that can be trusted by the populations, may emerge.”
Islamic religious extremism, that in its several nuances presents itself as a radical alternative to the oppressed Arab masses, is defined by some as Islamo-Fascism. Do you agree with such a definition?
“My book, Clash of Barbarisms, in French, has a chapter concerning this that is entitled: Neither fascism nor progressivism.
Some fringes of religious extremism bear some characteristics common to Fascism that arose in Europe between the two world wars: the social foundations, mostly made up of lower middle classes, and above all the reactionary character in a real sense, that is to say that will—as Marx argued—to make an end of history. But, apart from this, there are many differences.
In the first part of 20th century, Fascism was a means in capitalistic classes’ hands in anti-worker function while, in most of the countries where the Islamic religious extremism grows, there’s unfortunately no fighting workers’ movement.
Islamic extremism is the distorted expression of the grudge of the populations and masses against foreign imperialist oppression, against the local political despotism and even against their economic situation.
If, nonetheless, we regard Hamas and Hezbollah as fascist organizations, we get to the kind of reaction implemented by Israel or the USA—which, however, should have to explain why they didn’t use the same standard with Pinochet in Chile or why they don’t use it towards Saudi Arabia, a regime more reactionary than the one they would like to attack in Iran--, while it’s about a different phenomenon: the grudge of the population living an unbearable situation of oppression.
On the contrary, rather than bombing and kidnapping the Palestinian or Lebanese population, as the US and Israel are doing, it would be better to uproot the causes of that rancour.”
Do you think that sending UN forces may settle the Lebanese crisis?
“Peace must be negotiated together with all the actors of the conflict, including Hezbollah that demands Israel to release political prisoners and the returning of the last portion of occupied Lebanese territory. To the Lebanese Shiite communities, today Hezbollah is tantamount to what the PLO has been to the Palestinians.
Many observers have stressed that, unlike 1967 when Israel managed to defeat three Arab armies in 6 days, things are going on differently now.
The resistance in Lebanon is supported by the Shiite population, that Israel, in order to overcome, should have to slaughter, and this is the reason why the majority forces within the great coalition that has led the country have always ruled out the use of force. The UN intervention would be useful only if it looked into everyone’s interests, not if it should be NATO’s fig leaf.”
Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es), network of translators for linguistic diversity. It may be freely reproduced, citing the source.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Vera Pegna – In the Israeli project, peace is the danger
Vera Pegna is an authentic cosmopolitan. Born into a Jewish family of antique Spanish origins that found refuge from the persecutions at Livorno, Italy, they moved in the 1800s to Alexandria in Egypt, she does not present herself as a “pacifist Jew”. And this is quite good, since her family has been secular for several generations, and her identity is both Mediterranean and universal.Too often, the term “pacifist Jew” refers to persons who believe in “Israel’s security” as a supreme good that is beyond discussion and that will best be obtained by avoiding excessive violence towards the Palestinians and the other nearby peoples. And far too often, the “pacifist Jew” is invoked by a Left that is terrorised of being accused of “anti-Semitism”: the “pacifist Jew”, who the Left selects to hail purely for ethnic reasons, is given an aura that is not always deserved, therefore becomes the stopgap used to resolve a problem that could better be faced simply with a healthy laugh.
In this article, far from the usual “nice guy” writings on the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, that always avoid delving deeply into the argument, Vera Pegna goes to the root of the Zionist question. It is a text that should be read with great attention.
Miguel MartinezIn 1968 an Israeli writer, Marc Hillel*, wrote that peace represents a danger for Israel. Worried about the future of his country, Hillel asked whether or not an Israel in peace didn’t run the risk of seeing the enthusiasm and the economic aid from the European and American Jewish communities come to an abrupt halt, since every new war and every victory celebration were reason enough for the organisation of charity funds, in spite of the diminishing flow of immigrants that would be indispensable for its survival.
Few will remember the origins of the Zionist project of Greater Israel that with the antique Zionist aspiration of cultivating in Palestine a religious centre of prayer that shares with it only the name. It was in the anti-Semitic Europe of the ghettos, of the pogroms and of the Dreyfus Affair that the Zionist leaders, convinced that the Jews were destined to always be persecuted, launched an entirely political project of Greater Israel. The slogan that they chose was “A land without people for a people without land.”
That Palestine, then under British mandate, was populated by Palestinians was a well-known fact. Yet, that the world’s Jews formed a single people was something that had not been heard of since the days of the Old Testament. But in the Europe of the Nation States and of colonialism, having a State meant that there had to be a people for it, and in the Eurocentric logic (as alive today as it was then) to make the persecuted Jews of Europe into a single people together with those of Yemen, Baghdad, Cairo or New York caused only a slight amount of perplexity.
It instead had some heavy repercussions on the Jewish communities of the Arab nations, having found themselves to be a people, therefore linked to a common destiny, with people of different cultures, who spoke a different language and who had in their history a story of suffering and persecution.
People who, like my grandfather used to say, “walked with their backs against the walls.” Just how catastrophic for the Arab Jews the arrival in Israel was is indicated well in these verses sung by the Iraqis who were made to immigrate in Israel whether they wanted to or not: “What a shame. What a shame it was that they put us on the plane. If we had left with the mule, we would still not have arrived.”
In its fundamental Law, Israel has written that it is the State of the Jews of the entire world and it then established the “Law of Return”. That means that there are then fifteen million people who, luckily for everyone, haven’t got the slightest desire to transfer themselves in Israel. In place of them, though, Israel has opened its doors to Russian, Polish or Romanian immigrants who are not Jews – but are still white Europeans – whose immigration to Israel contributes to the completion of the Zionist project. And this is despite the Rabbinical approval, which is an official requisite in order to obtain Israeli citizenship, according to which a Jew is he whose mother is Jewish. What better requisite could there be for a Democratic State? And don’t dare go saying that Israel isn’t one. You better look out if you even imply that this criterion was the same that was used by the Nazis to send the poor devils in the concentration camps and in the ovens.
The Palestinians have been asked to change their constitution and to officially renounce their aspirations over all of Palestine. They did just that. Why not ask the Israelis to change their fundamental law and renounce being a State of all the world’s Jews? The Palestinians are asked to recognise the State of Israel, but what State, with what borders? Including the wall? The Palestinians know that this would mean accepting by rote the confines of their future State that extends on less than 20% of pre-Mandate Palestine and they know that they would forever lose the possibility to have Jerusalem – or even part of it – as their capital. I remember that in 1947 the UN General Assembly had attributed 45% of Palestine to the Palestinians and had foreseen for Jerusalem the status of International City.
When Hillel wrote his book, the project of Greater Israel was in full development. Since then, 38 years have gone by, more than a generation, and on the Zionist project, a veil of silence has dropped. No Israeli party or political leader has ever dissociated himself from it, except the very small Communist Party. Therefore, either one or the other; that the Israeli political leaders and their parties declare that the Zionist project has been officially concluded with the State of Israel within the borders of 1967 or they have to take into account with anguish that the project is still underway.
Therefore, it is legitimate to ask oneself if all of these failed attempts to reach a peace agreement as well as the facts on the ground (continuous construction of new settlements and new roads that divide the Palestinian territory, discrimination and increased hardships of the Palestinians of Israeli citizenship) are really functional and premeditated. Even the kidnapping by the Israelis of 64 parliament members of Hamas and the bombing of Gaza took place at the very moment that authoritative leaders of Hamas and al Fatah who are imprisoned in Israeli jails had declared that they would recognise the legitimacy of the existence of two States.
And still: several days later, in response to the launching of missiles and the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, the Israeli army has razed to the ground the civil infrastructures of southern Lebanon, part of Beirut, the airport and the electrical plants. In total contempt for the civilian lives, given that a future of peace does not interest them, just as peace with the Palestinians is of no interest to them. Lebanon isn’t part of the confines of the Zionist project, this much is true, but the disproportionate use of weapons enters into the concept that peace for Israel is a dangerous concept because the weapons industry that produces both for its own use as well as for an exportation market, gives work directly or indirectly to a large proportion of the active population of this country.
I believe that we can put forward a debate that presents the primary causes of the conflict. At least, let us talk about it. Let’s talk of the occupation, let’s talk of the Zionist project and of the objective difficulties that the State of Israel would have in converting its successful bellicose industry into a peace industry. Let’s talk about it, if we want to make the perspectives of peace in the Middle East more than an illusion.
* Marc Hillel, Israël en danger de paix, Fayard, Paris 1968
il manifesto
25 July 2006
Originally published in Italian on: http://kelebek.splinder.com/post/8805381
Translated from Italian by Mary Rizzo and revised by xxxxxxxxxx, members of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es), network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation is on Copyleft and may be freely reproduced citing the source.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Mauro Manno - Two Lines in the Struggle against Zionism
At this point, the real dimension of the danger that Zionism represents for peace and for human coexistence should be clear. If the Jewish lobby supporting it didn't exist, Zionism itself wouldn't be such a big problem for mankind. Let's imagine for a minute an isolated Israel, secluded in Palestinian territory, hated by the Arabic people, despised by democratic people and anti-racists around the world; without any great power supplying it with weapons, nor defending it; countless times condemned at the UN (without the Usamerican vetoes); without the team of journalists, newspapers, and televisions fighting today tooth and nail to defend it.The international community could have eliminated the Zionism/Israel problem in a second with a UN Resolution establishing a democratic state in Palestine. The problem persists only because the Usamerican-Israeli lobby — supported to a large extent (although not by all of it) by the Jewish community— has succeeded, according to the words of Sharon, to "control" the Congress and the Usamerican culture. This fact has created an imperialist monster — by now most people call it "USrael"— which has adopted the racist, colonialist and warlike ideology of Zionism, especially with the neoconservative Likudniks on the summit of the Usamerican power and firmly heading the two political parties of Congress.
What is left for the activist, for the democrat who wants to fight against Zionism to do? What can possibly be done against USrael and against the dangers of the current war — more threatening day after day — given the situation in the Middle East and the possibility of an Israeli assault on Iran, something that would drag Usamerica and Europe into a generalized war?
First of all, to eliminate internal enemies. This is a necessity and a characteristic of all struggles. It is an absolute necessity because, internal enemies, the gilders of the Zionist pill, paralyse the struggle, they disparage the generous efforts, they divert the fight from the right objectives, they sabotage and they derail the train of the struggle for peace. Who are the internal enemies?
They are all those:
1) sustaining that to attack Israel, Zionism or even the Jewish lobby is "Anti-Semitism." You will particularly find false anti-Zionists who say they fight Zionism but at the same time defend the "Israel’s right to exist" as a Jewish state, and they deny the existence of the Jewish lobby; or they accept its existence, but they do it only to diminish its role and its power. Not by chance these people are against the idea of a single democratic state in Palestine.
2) sustaining that the people who condemn the Jewish lobby and its power in Usamerica and in Europe resort to the "theory of the Jewish plot," a secret plot of the Hebrews to dominate the world. They don't call it the "Elders of Zion" but the concept is the same. Beware of those accusing the anti Zionists of being supporters of the theory of the "Jewish plot," because they are accusing them in an indirect way of "anti-Semitism." There is no secret Jewish plot. Everything happens in broad daylight. The bond between Israel and the majority of the Usamerican Jewish community is of course founded on racist-ethnic-ideological relations, but also, and above all, on material relations, because of the common material interest that Israel and the lobby draw from their control over the Usamerican superpower politics.
3) sustaining that the war in Iraq is not a Zionist war to benefit Israel, a catastrophic war from the point of view of the Usamerican people and of the material interests of the US imperialism itself.
4) sustaining that the war in Iraq has been made for US oil interests. Usamerica would have been able to have more Iraqi oil, much more, by coming to an agreement with Saddam Hussein, instead of imposing sanctions which have limited the Iraq oil exportations to less than 1/5. This is valid for the war too. Due to the disorder and the sabotages, the Iraqi oil production hasn't been able to take off. The shortage of Iraqi oil in the world market brings about the extraordinary increase of oil prices. We thank Israel that the price of gasoline is sky-high.
And then, all those who:
5) speak of the "escalation of war-terrorism." These words are dangerous. There is no war on terrorism. It is a war against the peoples and the nations that don't submit to USrael. A great part of what is defined as "terrorism" are indeed liberation struggles. The true terrorism is the aggression of USrael against those peoples. In Palestine there is no terrorism, there is resistance to the Zionist expansionism. In Lebanon there is no terrorism, it is the defense of the national community, the desires of self-determination of the oppressed Shi'i masses, and the resistance to the Franco-USA-Israeli project to bring Lebanon in the western orbit, using the Christian Maronites and Saudi Arabia against the Shi’i majority (in strong demographic growth, furthermore). In Afghanistan there is no terrorism, but a struggle against a corrupt pro-western regime imposed by the NATO. The government of Karzai consists of heroin traffickers and of masters of war. The outcast masses identified with the Taliban resistance. In Iraq there is no terrorism, there is a struggle against the Usamerican-British military occupation. This struggle is destined to become larger, gradually involving the Shi'i masses, which until now has remained still, encouraged by the Shi'i leaders who expect the Usamericans to eliminate the Sunni resistance for them.
6) who openly or covertly sustain that a corrupt secular regime is preferable to a popular, genuine and anti-western Islamic government.
7) who directly or indirectly encourage or support the war of civilization against Islam, defining it as "repressive," "antifeminist," "fanatical," "violent," "expansionist," etc.
Beware of anybody in the ranks of the antiwar movement or supporting Palestine sustaining and spreading similar positions. They are the ones who have made a movement which has involved millions of people powerless, and that had enormous potentiality. Those who consciously or unconsciously have sustained (or still sustain) similar positions, have acted (or act) according with a political line settled by Zionism. The correct, winning line is the one that carefully avoids all these traps and obstacles.
Translated by Barbara Maseda and Revised by Mary Rizzo. Mauro Manno, Barbara Maseda and Mary Rizzo are members of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es), the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation is Copyleft.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Lebanese Foreign Minister - Hezbollah's disarmament is an internal affair
by Emanuele PianoFrom the Print Version of "Liberazione" (Italy) 27/7/06
Fawzi Salloukh, Lebanese Foreign Minister, has abrupt and direct ways. We meet with him while he is peeping out of a small corridor at the Italian Foreign Ministry, the Farnesina, as the final press conference of the conference is underway. Salloukh, within the complex political and governmental Lebanese picture, is a Shiite considered to be quite close to Hezbollah and, by some, is seen as one of their spokesmen.
Diplomat since the 60’s (he has been ambassador in several African states and also in Austria and Belgium), he was political advisor to Mohammed Mehdi Shamseddine, Shiite imam who had studied in Najaf’s school, in Iraq, founder of the Islamic University of Lebanon and upholder of the first Islamic militias that were later to become Amal, Shiite fighting group that’s led by the present speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri.
What do you think about the French proposal for the resolution?
“That of France is an important initiative as it finally calls into question the UN Security Council. Our priority remains a complete and general ceasefire. This is a pre-condition to every further negotiation. Once the end of hostilities is attained, we’ll be able to begin talking about the rest of the issues that are still unsolved: the prisoners’ release—both the Israelis and the Lebanese prisoners detained in Tel Aviv’s prisons—the returning of Sheeba farms, and the map of the mines laid by Israel’s army along the border”
One of the key-issues remains that of Hezbollah’s disarmament….
“Hezbollah is a national resistance movement and not a militia (note: the Resolution 1559 refers to “the dismantling and disarmament of both the Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias”) and it has aided Lebanon to free 10% of its own national soil from the occupying Israelis.
Hezbollah are also a political party which is part of the Lebanese institutional framework, which took part in the last elections, which has two ministers in the government and fourteen members in the parliament. Given this, the question of Hezbollah’s disarmament is being addressed inside the so-called “Lebanese national dialogue”, an assembly made up exclusively of internal interlocutors that gathered last Tuesday for the second time.
In this context we’re speaking about a strategy of national defence that may be able to cope with the challenges and the aggressions from within and without, in which Hezbollah plays an important role”
In this respect of defence of the national unity, is the idea one of letting the Shiite militants flow into the army, as has happened to other militias in the past?
“This will be dealt with in a successive stage of the dialogue, we’re still at an introductory phase. A crucial point, however must be understood: Hezbollah’s disarmament will have been discussed by the “Lebanese National Dialogue” only when the “God’s Party” have brought an end to the liberation of the Lebanese territories that are being occupied by Israel. I want to very clearly stress that, however might the event get on, the issue of the disarmament will be arranged only within our country.
The enforcement of the Resolution 1559 will be run by the Lebanese and by no other foreign government. Of course not by Israel, that is still required to apply the UN resolutions 194 (note: of 1948, about Jerusalem’s special status and the Palestinian refugees’ return), 242 (note: of 1967, after the Six Days War, demanding the Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied during the conflict), 338 (note: of 1973, after the “Yom Kippur” War, demanding the ceasefire and the application of the resolution 242) and 425 (note: of 1978, blaming the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, demanding the immediate Israeli withdrawal and calling the UN for monitoring of the borders). Some of these resolutions are at least 50 years old…”
What’s your opinion about the dispatching of an international interposition force?
“It’s a fact that in Lebanon not everyone regards as acceptable the idea of sending foreign troops into the country. The proposal, at any rate, will be dealt with inside the Ministers’ Council.
It’s clear that, should we take a glance at what happened in the past about sending international forces, as happened in the 80’s during the civil war and in which also Italy took part, we have to remember that those missions were a failure. We shall see.”
Translated from Italian by Diego Traversa and revised by Mary Rizzo, members of Tlaxcala (www.tlaxcala.es) the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation is in Copyleft.
Jihad Abu Az Zamman - Jihad and the Wolfowitzes of the World
So, how did it really happen? How could a tiny paramilitary group such as Hezbollah manage to shake the almighty, American-supported Jewish state; something that the Arab states have relentlessly failed at doing for almost six decades? In fact a similar question may be raised in reference to Iraqi insurgency. While it is rather evident that Saddam’s army was defeated by the overwhelming Anglo-American destructive power, Islamic resistance is winning the battle on the ground both in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither America nor Britain seem able to come up with a reasonable excuse for the growing number of deadly attacks against their invasion forces.
Though the armies of Arab states are occasionally defeated in the battlefield, though too many Arab statesmen happen to follow the path drawn by Washington with resolute determination, Islamic resistance, which is not recognised in any national form, is there to fight back. Moreover, Islamic defiance is unbeatable. The Israelis have been watching the growing wall of Muslim resistance for over two decades. In Palestine it is the Hamas and in Lebanon it is the Hezbollah. In this theatre, Islamic militants deliver one blow after the other to Israel. Similarly, the American army is chased on a daily basis by insurgency both in Iraq and Afghanistan. As much as the far more powerful Soviets failed in Afghanistan, neither Israel, nor America nor Britain have the capability of responding effectively to the emerging Islamic guerrilla warfare.
Once and for all we better face it. Arabs are far from being at their very best if they are operating in the format of a ‘national state’. The Arab soldier may lack the necessary will to die for an idiotic flag. Both in the case of Saddam’s Iraq or Nasser’s Egypt, once within a conflict, a growing gap reveals itself between the charismatic, assertive, far over the top demagogue leader and some serious malfunctioning performance in the battlefield. Unlike the American, British, French, and Israeli soldiers who have proved throughout history to have some real tendency towards collective suicide for some empty promises shaped as ‘ideology’, the Arab platoon is slightly behind in exhibiting this kind of idiotic national patriotic militant zeal. He may as well be just too clever for those kind of deadly games.
Should it be a big surprise? Not at all. Nationalism is a European concept, it has very little to do with the Arab mentality, history and general affairs. National patriotism has never made serious headway into the Arab psyche. The division of Arabia and the Middle East into small national states with borders and flags has never been a natural evolvement of the indigenous Arab people themselves. Instead it was the outcome of some international political manoeuvring imposed upon Arabs by the superpowers. The slicing of the near east into small national states was intended to serve the interests of Western imperial forces. In practice it was Britain and France who drew up the borders of the Middle East already in 1916 (The Sykes-Picot Agreement) and it was America who joined in later just to reshape those borders to guarantee Israel’s safety as well as a constant oil supply.
With the lack of crude nationalist zeal, it isn’t a big surprise that Arab state armies fail to provide the goods in the battlefield. Yet, the Hezbollah, the Hamas and the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan are agonising the Western armies. They manage to do so just with light weaponry: without tanks, without cruise missiles, without satellites, without a navy. They win without airplanes and without the support of a superpower. All they have at their disposal is merely a belief, namely Jihad.
Looking at Iraq (or what is left of it), at Bin Laden (the myth), at the Hamas (the democratically elected Palestinian government) and the Hezbollah (the ultimate success story) it is rather clear. The Arab wins when and only when he fights as a Muslim, as a believer. Unlike the shallow Westerner soldier who gives his life for empty manmade slogans, the Muslim would give his life for a divine cause. I will spit it out: if there is any meaningful notion behind ‘Arab nation’ this notion is Islam. The Muslim takes orders from the Almighty Lord. I may admit that if I myself, being a secular had to choose between the call of a retarded American president and the Lord, I would obviously go for the latter.
However, it is rather obvious that the Wolfowitzes of this world fail to realise that Arab nationalism as defined in independent states is basically a myth. They mistakenly consider the Arab territorial landscape as a genuine national reflection of some real authentic ethnic aspiration as well as geo-political considerations. In fact, such a perception has nothing to do with reality. Lebanon and Syria are one country, at least in the eyes of very many Syrians and Lebanese. The north of Palestine is no different from Lebanon and the West Bank has been long considered a unified territory with Transjordan. When Lebanon is demolished by the Jewish state’s air might and around a third of its population is displaced, the Syrians would be the first to provide humanitarian support. When Gaza is murderously and indiscriminately bombarded by the IDF, the Hezbollah would be there to open a second front and to ease the pressure on their Palestinian brothers. When American and British expansionist forces insist upon robbing Iraqi oil, it is the Muslim brotherhood who would stop them rather than the Iraqi army. Arab resistance is in practice an exercise in Islamic brotherhood. For those who still fail to get the picture, Jihad goes far beyond any Western sense of local national patriotism. Jihad is cosmic, yet it is personal.
While the Wolfowitzes of this world would insist upon dominating the Arab world in the name of democracy and some other quasi liberal ideas, it is the Islamic freedom fighter who crosses lands and seas just to serve the American GIs with the ultimate performance of human devotion. While the Wolfowitzes of this world insist upon transforming Britain and America into an Israeli mission force, it is the Muslim brotherhood that gives us good reason to believe that eventually, when the time is ripe, peace will prevail.
For those amongst us who refuse to acknowledge what Islam is all about, I will mention that the Arabic ‘root’ of the word ‘Islam’ is Salama which originates from the words Peace and/or Submission, a submission to God and peace to all humanity.
Indeed Jihad itself is a word that bears further analysis. It stems from the Arabic root word J-H-D, which means ‘strive.’ Other words derived from this root include ‘effort,’ ‘labour,’ and ‘fatigue.’ Essentially Jihad is an effort to practice religion in the face of oppression and persecution. At its highest form it is fighting the enemy of Muslims and Islam. Certainly, Condi, Bush, Olmert and his Jewish state are the bitterest enemies of Islam. And yet, Islam defines the boundaries of Jihad.
The Quran tells us (Quran 2:190-193):
• Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loves not transgressors.
• And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.
• But if they cease, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
• And fight them on until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression.
In short, unlike the brutal Israeli aggression and the murderous American zeal that know no limits, Islam restricts violence, furthermore, its aim is not domination, but peace. This will obviously happen when Israeli occupation is ended and Palestinians return to their land and home. This will happen when Zionised Anglo-American colonialism is totally defeated. This message is clear and not open to negotiation.
Looking at the Hezbollah, at the Hamas and the insurgent war in Iraq doesn’t leave much room for doubt. While many Arab nations have been defeated, Arab brotherhood, i.e., Islam is winning. If I were an Israeli who lived in occupied Palestine I would be rather worried. The excessive use of power and indiscriminate killing of Lebanese, Palestinians and UN peace keeping soldiers is the direct outcome of deep Israeli anxiety. The Zionist tactic is failing and they all know it. Their army doesn’t provide the goods anymore. By now, you may be able to guess why. Nationalism is foreign to Jews almost as much as it is foreign to Arabs. In fact, Zionism ceased being a local national movement a long time ago. Since the Balfour Declaration (1917) more and more Zionists operate as a Jewish Ethnic lobby promoting Jewish global interests. For more than a while Zionism is not interested solely in Eretz Israel i.e., ‘promised land’, instead, it intends upon transforming our universe into a ‘Promised Universe’. This idea is known as Neoconservatism and its largely Elder Zionist messengers who spread it are active in London (http://eustonmanifesto.org/), NYC and Washington (http://www.newamericancentury.org/).
But time is running out for Neocon philosophy as well as its practitioners. I do not know whether history repeats itself in general but somehow, as far as Jewish History is concerned, the same tale keeps rewriting itself: it is a story of an obsessive relentless will to power that always ends in tragic circumstances. It happened in the Middle Ages in Spain, it happened in17th century Poland and Ukraine (Bogdan Chmielnitzki), it happened in 20th century Europe and it seems as if something dramatic is about to happen in America.
When the American Jewish Committee (AJC) is manifestly engaged in dragging America into war in Iran all in the name of world Jewry http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/{42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF}/Al_Qaida_Iran_Hizballah.pdf ) .When the Wolfowitzes of this world happened to be the architects behind the criminal war in Iraq, one may find oneself wondering whether Jews themselves ever learn anything from their own history. I really prefer not to think about what is going to be the outcome of the current blunt Jewish war waging. Considering the emerging American defeat in Iraq and growing international isolation, it is just a question of time before a charismatic American figure points the finger at the Israeli lobby. Devastatingly enough, it isn’t only Jews, many of them totally innocent, who are going to suffer when that happens. By the time all the Wolfowitzes of this world realise that it is time to evade the American vengeance (what may evolve into a new Jewish tragedy namely Coca Colacaust), they will probably try to escape to Palestine, God Forbid.
Clearly, Zionists and their Jewish state are highly engaged in perpetrating a new world war, we have a good reason to believe that Olmert didn’t rule out the possibility that the current conflict in Lebanon may lead towards a further escalation with Syria and Iran. It obviously didn’t stop him. Why should it stop him? As soon as the Israelis started to drop bombs on Beirut Bush and Blair rushed to support Israel’s right to defend itself.
The Wolfowitzes of this world have different names for the conflict they themselves created. They often call it a cultural clash and they are pretty good in wrapping their naked murderous zeal with some quasi humanist reasoning. More than anything they love to present themselves as the messengers of democracy. Yet, if indeed their notion of democracy is anything like the ‘single- race Democracy’, practiced in their dearly beloved murderous Israel, it isn’t that surprising why their ideas do not gain ground anywhere.
Seemingly, for the sake of keeping their little racist Jewish state alive, the Wolfowitzes are happy to wage an all out war against Islam. So far Condi, Bush and Blair are showing support. The Wolfowitzes are over the roof but how to say it, half a million Lebanese have lost their homes as a result.
Somehow, the Wolfowitzes of this world always fail to internalise that human beings are morally orientated creatures. Indeed nations and people can live through some evil phases. Not that many years ago it happened in Germany, it now happens in America. Yet, human beings have something the Wolfowitzes lack. They have an ethical correction mechanism; humans regret their wrongdoing, they have a conscience. America lived through McCarthyism but recovered, it still tries to deal with its racist past and current racial discrimination, it has been dealing with its war crimes in Vietnam. America, no doubt will shake itself of its Zionist murderous phase. It just doesn’t have any other choice. When this happens the Wolfowitzes of this world will have to hide behind the rock and tree, and the rock and tree will say: “oh American, there is a Wolfowitz behind me, I am scared, take him away! Help, help!”
Labels: Atzmon
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Oren Ben-Dor: Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?
What exactly is being defended? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state?Published: 26 July 2006 Independent UK
As its citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defence. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Nahariya, as justifying this claim.
While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.
What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.
Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.
The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible. Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs", those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons", but really to acquire their lands for Jews.
Surely Holocaust memory and Jewish longing for Eretz Israel would not be sufficient to justify ethnic cleansing and ethnocracy? To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews.
To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them: the myth that it is a peace-seeking victim which has "no partner for peace" is a key panel in the screen with which Israel hides its primordial and continuing immorality.
Israel's successful campaign to silence criticism of its initial and continuing dispossession of the indigenous Palestinians leaves the latter no option but to resort to violent resistance. In the wake of electing Hamas - the only party which, in the eyes of Palestinians, has not yet given up their cause - the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank were subjected to an Israeli campaign of starvation, humiliation and violence.
The insincere "withdrawal" from Gaza, and the subsequent blockade, ensured a chronicle of violence which, so far, includes Palestinian firing of Kasem rockets, the capture of an Israeli soldier and the Israeli near re-occupation of Gaza. What we witness is more hatred, more violence from Palestinians, more humiliation and collective punishments from Israelis - all useful reinforcement for the Israeli victim mentality and for the sacred cow status of Israeli statehood.
The truth is that there never could have been a partition of Palestine by ethically acceptable means. Israel was created through terror and it needs terror to cover-up its core immorality. Whenever there is a glimmer of stability, the state orders a targeted assassination, such as that in Sidon which preceded the current Lebanon crisis, knowing well that this brings not security but more violence. Israel's unilateralism and the cycle of violence nourish one another.
Amidst the violence and despite the conventional discourse which hides the root of this violence, actuality calls upon us to think. The more we silence its voice, the more violently actuality is sure to speak.
In Hebrew, the word elem (a stunned silence resulting from oppression or shock) is etymologically linked to the word almut (violence). Silence about the immoral core of Israeli statehood makes us all complicit in breeding the terrorism that threatens a catastrophe which could tear the world apart.
okbendor@yahoo.com
The writer teaches the philosophy of law and political philosophy at University of Southampton
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Israeli war censorship guidelines
from Redress23 July 2006
Subject: Military Operations in the North -- Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations.
1. Following are the main censorship guidelines regarding the continuation of military operations in the north, with emphasis on ground warfare on the northern border.
2. The guidelines in this document are comprehensive and refer to the option of large-scale military activity. The relevant guidelines should also be applied to the current ground operations.
3. Please brief editors, producers, broadcasters, correspondents with emphasis on field correspondents and other network employees on these guidelines in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
4. Due to the frequent broadcasts and the many live updates considerable attention should be given to what is said by the correspondents in the field. Please make sure that any correspondent/analyst in the field knows the censorship guidelines. The potential error during a live update is very high and you are held responsible for everything broadcast during a live update.
5. This document has been sent to local news agencies as well.
6. This document is the follow-up to the former document "The Fighting In The Northern Arena".
Sincerely,
Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil
Chief Censor
The Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations In The North For Reports And Live Updates.
General
1. This document will detail the main guidelines regarding operations on the northern border by the Censor.
2. This document contains three main topics: general guidelines for news coverage, coverage of activity leading to the ground operation and the coverage of the combat itself.
3. Any news item that is not within these boundaries must be submitted to the Censorship before it is published.
General guidelines
4. Coverage of any kind, that states intent, specific/general abilities and/or any operational activity (in a live broadcast) is not authorized by the Censorship. In principle, analysis based on matters that were approved for publication is allowed.
5. In a case where a news item is not within the boundaries given by the Chief Censor, the issue should be dealt with by the two censorship bases either in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
6. There is a special emphasis on matters regarding the activity of special forces and the use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry.
7. In principle, news items on the intelligence abilities / lack of abilities during the operation will not be authorized.
Coverage of activity leading to ground operation
The censorship does not approve any verbal information or visual photography that attest to:
8. The military order-of-battle.
9. The type of force, the forces' special abilities and warfare equipment.
10. Movement routes.
11. Assembly areas and deployments.
12. Information on forces transferring from one area to another (thinning of forces).
13. Locations of command posts.
14. It is strictly forbidden to mention the time and location in which the army forces might enter the enemy's territory.
15. The codename of the operation will be approved for publication only from the moment it begins.
16. Pictures of the army forces will be approved as long as the location in which they were taken is not disclosed.
The live coverage of the combat itself
17. It is strictly forbidden to show a picture of the full battle coverage, with an emphasis of identifying the location (long shot pictures).
18. It is strictly forbidden to mention military targets while these targets are being pursued.
19. It is strictly forbidden, until the information is cleared by the censorship, to publish information concerning missing personnel and captives (from both sides).
20. Coverage of aerial accidents in Israeli territory can only be approved by the censor. In hostile territory, this information will not be approved until the evacuation of the staff and equipment from that area is completed.
21. It is strictly forbidden to conduct real time coverage on visits of officials. Interviews and photography will be approved later, after the end of the visit.
22. During an incident authorization for coverage of the reasons for the incident will be given as long as there is no breach of Israeli security concerns (thus personal opinions and analyses for the reasons of the incident are allowed).
23. Coverage of an incident with casualties as always, must be submitted to the censorship.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Gilad Atzmon - Learn Math with Israel: 2 = 500,000
This is obviously the outcome of the newly emerged Hebraic arithmetic laws. For 2 kidnapped Israeli soldiers who are still kept alive, 500,000 innocent Lebanese civilians are displaced. For 2 abducted Israeli soldiers, Lebanon, a sovereign state, is brought back down on its knees. Its civil infrastructure is ‘gone’. Some of its capital’s residential quarters and southern villages are already wiped out. Indeed, ‘two equals half a million’ is the new arithmetic the Israelis insist upon imposing on the region. Is it that surprising? Not at all, as predicted by Gershon Sholem already in the 1930’s: once the Jews start to speak Hebrew, it won’t take long before they consider themselves to be God.In the Bible Sodom and Gomorrah were "brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven" (Genesis 13:13; 18:20; 19:24, 29; Hosea 11:8). The two towns where erased by God for the sins of its inhabitants. In the Biblical narrative (Genesis 18), God informs Abraham that he intends upon demolishing the city of Sodom because of its gross immorality. Abraham pleads with God not to do it. God is willing to agree as long as there were 50 righteous people in town, then 45, then 30, 20, or even just 10 decent people.
While the Biblical tale is saturated with God’s fury and vengeance, it is Abraham, a morally orientated human being who insists upon saving the inhabitants of Sodom. Yet, not many contemporary Abrahams have been raising their voices within Israeli society. In a demonstration against the emerging brutal attack against Lebanon, less than one thousand Israeli showed up. But far more worryingly, not many Abrahams are noticeable amongst our world leaders. While Bush was clearly caught up welcoming the brutal wiping out of yet another Arab country, his twin ideological brother, PM Blair, supports Israel’s “right to defend itself”.
One should ask the British PM the obvious question: if indeed Israel is solely engaged in merely “defending itself” how come there is no Navy rescue mission of Britons from Tel Aviv or Haifa? Somehow, Mr. Blair, it is rather apparent that Israel’s aim of ‘defending itself’ is so extensive in its brutality that it is actually Beirut and southern Lebanon that are wiped out.
Following Sholem’s prophecy, it is rather clear that the almighty Israelis indeed endorsed the role of a cruel God. Flying American F-16’s, the Israelis ‘brimstone and fire’ Lebanese cities and villages out of existence. Last night, the IAF angels dropped 23 tons of explosives on a one single bunker in Beirut. They really want to kill so it seems.
However, within the Biblical tale, even God is willing to bargain, “just present me with 50, 40, 30, 20 righteous people,” he tells Abraham. Seemingly, Israel, the almighty regional God, is far less willing to bargain. Till this point in time, it has rejected any ceasefire initiatives. The Israelis want to ‘finish the job’ so they say.
One may wonder what exactly is that job which they want to finish. Indeed they spread collateral damage all over Lebanon but seemingly they do not touch the Hezbollah. Instead, rather murderously, they punish the entire Lebanese people. They flatten Beirut’s southern neighbourhoods, they destroy the Lebanese civil infrastructures, they destroy the state’s economy, half a million Lebanese are now displaced, hundreds are dead. And guess what, they don’t win. Ostensibly, the Hezbollah is gaining power. In fact, from this point onwards, the Hezbollah can only win. In other words, the Hezbollah has won the battle already.
More than anything, it is the Hezbollah that made Israel reveal its very devastating notion of blood arithmetic i.e., 2 = 500,000. For those who fail to understand, people who believe in ‘two equals half a million’ can easily nuke whoever they consider to be their enemies with out the slight hesitation. 2 = 500,000 is there to suggest that Israel isn’t just a regional danger, it is the biggest threat to world peace. This is something I’ve known for a while but now thanks to the Hezbollah this will become common knowledge.
While in the history of the conflict, no Arab army has yet to defeat the Israeli military might, the Hezbollah, a tiny paramilitary group of patriotic warriors has managed to transform northern Israeli cities into ghost towns. They did it without a navy, without an air force, without tanks.
For those who don’t know, Israel is all about ‘good life’. It is all about trading in the stock exchange. Having a BBQ party on the beach. Big imported pop acts in open-air concerts. Rather than Peace Israelis are after ‘Shalom’ which really means: one-sided security for the Jews only. The Hezbollah (as well as the Hamas) made it clear to the Israelis, you will never live in Shalom unless you dig into the notion of Peace.
It is important to mention that Israel could never win this war, it could only lose and in fact it lost already. Israel’s power of deterrence is minced to pieces by a lightly armed paramilitary organisation. Considering the emerging humanitarian crisis in Lebanon, the world public attention from now on will be dedicated to the growing devastation the ‘God-like’ Israelis have left behind. Israel on its side is going to be left with a war of attrition. It took the Hezbollah 20 years to get the IDF out of Lebanon. The Israelis know very well that if the IDF failed miserably in defeating the Hezbollah, no army in the world can do the job any better. Hezbollah is there to stay. Israel is now left with a very hostile neighbour and a very strong Hezbollah on its very vulnerable northern border.
The Old Testament’s almighty God is indeed merciless at times, he acts with fury and vengeance but he isn’t vulnerable. In Genesis 18 the people of Sodom do not fight back, they just pass away. The one who looks back with awe is transformed into a salty statue. But the ‘God-like’ Israelites are rather vulnerable. One billion Arabs are waiting for them behind the corner. One billion Arabs who are humiliated daily by an Anglo-American Zionised west that backs ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’.
One billion Arabs that are looking at stolen Palestine, smashed Gaza and torn apart Lebanon. Those Arabs have a good reason to be cheered by the Hezbollah. It is the Hezbollah that gives them a very good reason to look forward with pride. But the Hezbollah is not the only winner. Clearly, the Israeli attack leads towards a huge humanitarian crisis. While the Americans and British are concerned mainly with rescuing their citizens in Beirut (many of them indeed Lebanese by origin), Syria is there to offer safe shelter to a growing flood of thousands of Lebanese refugees. While Blair and Bush engage in giving the green light to Israeli brutality, it is Syria that gives a hand to the real victims. It is about time we shake off our views and admit that from a purely ethical point of view. It is Syria and Iran who support the oppressed people in this battered region. i.e.. the Palestinians and now the Lebanese. For me this is more than enough to suggest that at least ethically, Iran and Syria are the most progressive powers around.
And just one final word about the God-like Israelites; indeed, it is very clear that they do not love their neighbours. But how to say it, people who inflict so much pain on others probably do not like themselves either. Even murderers don’t like themselves being murderers.
Labels: Atzmon
Monday, July 17, 2006
Gilad Atzmon - NEVER AGAIN
Editor's note: Who can watch as a "spectator" the wanton destruction first of Gaza and now of Lebanon and not feel immediately, after the rage settles down a bit, an enormous and frustrating sense of impotence? It is almost as if such gross, vulgar and indecent violence unleashed against a group of innocent men, women and children is "somebody else's business, let's just get the Europeans safely out of there" and we can only just wait for the "international community" to sort it out and in the meantime shake our heads in regret and wash our hands of it all.
Gilad Atzmon isn't going to keep quiet about it, bless his soul. As a person who spent the first 30 years of his life there, and was raised to be convinced of the righteousness, or at least the reasonability of his country of birth, the land where he served as a soldier, he is well acquainted with the mindset, the policy and the structure of Israeli society. He, as an "insider" can help us to see through the mist of deception and the continual grotesque excuse-making for violent atrocities committed against the Arabs of the Middle East. He is well aware of the violent undertones, which he calls aptly, "thug", in a society where men and women are judged by their racial, religious or ethnic composition and are treated (or mistreated) accordingly. Nothing he says is a secret, it simply doesn't usually make it through the censors on all sides, who have vested interests either in instability, war or maintenance of a myth.
He is chipping away at the block of "Israeli righteousness" splinter by splinter. It's possible that no sledgehammer of words will ever make a dent in that stone, because the foundations seem to be sunk quite firmly in the ground, and no matter how he hammers away, the stone seems to grow, the taboo against criticising anything remotely connected to the Jewish State and the driving forces behind it is so immense, that it seems unshakeable. The Western world prefers to look elsewhere but at Israel itself.
The photo at the left is not a pornographic image of a Rabbi giving oral pleasure to a newly born Jewish baby. It is actually Mohel Rabbi Yosef David Weisburg sucking blood from a baby’s penis while performing a circumcision.
(The Jerusalem Post Magazine, Nov. 5, 1976, p. 14)[1]
Just six and a half decades ago, Jews were brutally spat out of Europe. As it happened, when the majority of European secular Jews were totally convinced that the condition of emancipation had finally matured into a comprehensive assimilation, the Nazi Judeocide was there to prove them wrong. Just two weeks ago, when the vast majority of the Israeli people were convinced that Peace was just about to prevail thanks to Sharon’s unilateral ‘peace initiative’, the Hamas and Hezbollah were there to prove them wrong.
And so it happened that Germany, which was nothing less than the promised land for Fritz Haber (the man who invented the WMD), Einstein (once a pacifist, later the man who convinced Roosevelt to allocate funds to the Manhattan Project), Buber (a German patriotic warmonger), Sholem, Benjamin, Adorno and many more, suddenly changed its spots. Within the short space of several years it transformed itself into the bitterest enemy the Jews have ever known. But Germany wasn’t an isolated case. As we all know it wasn’t Nazi Germany or the German people alone who actually exercised the destruction of European Jewry. The industrial homicide was indeed largely administrated by Nazi officers and operators, yet, most European nations willingly submitted their Jews to the Nazis[2]. Whether we like it or not, it was the Europeans who somehow collectively found themselves to be rather enthusiastic about transforming Europe into a ‘Jew-free Zone’.
Rather worryingly it is now evident that the Hebraic people failed to learn their lesson. In their attempt to erect a Jewish national home, namely Zion, they made every possible mistake. Rather than endorsing peaceful manners and loving their new neighbours, they have endorsed and exhibited the most brutal conduct possible. For almost six decades the Israeli army inflicts pain on Israel’s close neighbours in the name of the Jewish people. For almost six decades millions of Palestinians are living in refugee camps in atrocious conditions and the Jewish State does not permit them to come back. For almost six decades the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine are discriminated by the new colonialists.
However, one seems almost compelled to admit it, but it was indeed the devastating impressions of liberated death camps which transformed Zionism from being a very marginal Jewish nationalist racist fantasy into the voice of world Jewry. Yet, it was in 1948, just three years after liberation of Auschwitz when Zionism underwent the transformation from being a nationalist racist philosophy into a murderous reality. It was just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz when Zionists proved beyond doubt that they properly internalised the most devious Nazi tactics, philosophy and precepts. Already then in 1948 the Israeli legislators found themselves engaged in setting racist laws that were no different from Nuremburg Laws. Already then, in 1948, the IDF together with paramilitary groups were practicing some Nazi-like ethnic cleansing strategies. As we happen to learn, the Israeli ethnic cleansing agenda has never faded. Israelis, like their Zionist Elders, very much like their Asheknazi Rabbinical ancestors don’t really like to mix with Goyim. Contemporary Israel is a clear resurrection of the European Jewish ghetto. However, the Israeli ghetto is a vast improvement compared with the old east European Shtetl. In the Jewish State, it is the Goyim who are locked behind walls in places that seem to be no different from concentration camps.
In defence of the post-war Jewish inclination towards Zionism, one may suggest that considering the vast impression of the Holocaust, the collective move towards Zionism was rather reasonable. Being totally traumatised by the scale of hatred against them, Jews all over the world collectively agreed; ‘Never Again’. I know about it all just because I myself was raised on the ‘Never Again’ philosophy.
‘Never Again’ Jews would be led to the slaughter, I was taught year after year in an Israeli school located obviously on occupied Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem. ‘The new Jew’ i.e. Israeli, so they said, ‘would fight back’. And indeed we were ready to fight back. Moreover, we were keen to do so, in the name of the Jewish people, in the name of our history. We were launched to punish the Arabs for our unfulfilled future in lost Europe.
It took me many years to realise that the ‘Never Again’ that was initially portrayed as a moral argument, was actually non-ethical to the bone. It took me far too many years to realise that ‘within the Judeo-Centric universe, ‘Never Again’ means: ‘from now on, Never Again Jews go to the slaughter, instead, it is going to be the Jews who take others to the slaughter. Looking at Beirut and Gaza, this is indeed what Israel is all about: ‘a barbarian political system that is fuelled by others’ pain’.
While Emanuel Levinas, the post-war Jewish philosopher believed that after Auschwitz Jews would stand firmly at the forefront of any battle against inhumanity, discrimination, racism and other malaise of modern civilization, it seems that very much the opposite turns out to have happened. The Jewish State, with the support of their far too many Wolfowitzes and Dershowitzes, became the absolute embodiment of modern evil. Day by day we see the ‘strongest army in the Middle East’ squashing innocent civilians, whether in Gaza, Beirut or Jenin. The Israeli Army is blitzing civilian infrastructure of States that can never defend themselves. You may wonder why did the Israelis have to erase Beirut Airport? The answer is simple - just because they were capable of doing so. The Israelis are indeed thugs, but they are far from being ordinary ones. The Israelis are actually nothing but ‘self loving’ thugs. Very much like the stereotype Jewish mother, they are totally in love with their symptoms. They really have fun flattening their neighbouring countries. Seemingly they have never taken in the possibility that one day, sooner or later they will have to live in peace with all those one billion Arabs around them. Again, thugs always think in the ‘short term’.
I am left puzzled. Just six and a half decades ago Jews were kicked out of Europe. With the support of the United Nations the Israelites had a perfect chance to make the tragedy of their departure into a new peaceful start. They could easily look into their history and learn from their mistakes. Indeed very few did. One of them is Israel Shahak, another is Lenni Brenner. But as painful as it may sound, most Jewish secular institutes and scholars did quite the opposite. They made their past mistakes into their claim for fame. They made the newly-formed Jewish thug, the Israeli, into a cultural icon. In Israel, the thug culture made it into a norm. Time after time, Israelis have managed to vote in war criminals and mass murderers to be their prime ministers. Strangely enough, in the last election, when they were sure that peace was just about to prevail, they had voted a non-military prime minister. Yet as soon as the recent violent crisis erupted, Olmert and Peretz were very quick to use the ultimate military measures. They probably realise very well that arrogance, violence, brutality and barbarism is the Israeli raison d'être.
Sadly, we have to admit that Levinas’s prophecy was not forthcoming. Not only had Jews failed in collectively leading any recognised humanitarian cause, in the name of ‘Never Again’ global Zionism together with the Israeli lobby they are consciously pushing us all into WW3. This time in the name of a cultural clash.
History, Revisiting the Present
The Historian may suggest that knowledge of the past would help us to understand the present or even serve to safeguard the future. On the contrary, I would argue that any understanding of the past is in itself the direct product of the present discourse. In other words, it is our symbolic order currently in place that shapes our vision of any historical narrative. Practically speaking, it is the present carnage in Beirut and in Gaza inflicted by the Jewish State that will inevitably shape our take on Jewish history. The present Jewish State’s brutality will certainly lead towards the total collapse of the official Jewish historical narrative and its dominance in western discourse.
Though Simon Wiesenthal won’t agree, history isn’t merely a collection of some sporadic anecdotes i.e. historical facts, but rather a tale that links anecdotes into an intelligible narrative. Historical Narrative is a message that survives the present discourse and symbolic order. Considering the crude Israeli brutality, the Judeo-centric historical narrative in which Jews are the victims is doomed to collapse. At least dialectically, it is rather fascinating that the ‘Never Again’ attitude, happens to be a self destructive mechanism, a Judeo-centric, historically orientated precept that aims towards the end of Jewish History.
Without referring to the truth value in the Medieval tales of blood libel; without trying to suggest whether or not Jews made Matzos out of young gentile blood, the growing quantity of images of orchestrated murderous Israeli activity helps us to realise where such accusations may have come from. Without suggesting any historical narrative to do with WWII and the events leading to the destruction of European Jewry, it is the current Israeli murderous zeal against its next-door neighbours that may throw light onto the collective European tendency to brutally spit out the Jews. One may sit in front of the TV watching Beirut burning and say, “if indeed this is what these barbarians are doing to their neighbours, no wonder why no one wants them as a neighbour.”
It must be mentioned that Jewish collective blood-thirstiness isn’t exactly a Zionist invention. Amos Elon, the author of one of the largest compendiums of Jews in Germany, provides us with a very shocking chapter of Jewish patriotic warmongering to do with WWI. On the eve of the war, Chaim Weizmann, a prominent Zionist and later the first President of the Jewish State, admitted to the British Ambassador in Berlin saying “seemingly Jewish intellectuals were the most arrogant and belligerent of all Germans.”[3] Martin Buber, the iconic symbol of left Zionism and Jewish poetic peaceful pacifism, could not stop himself from celebration at the point of departure of the global slaughter. “Not in faith but in devotion is the divine revealed,” said he, the prophet of the Jewish cultural renaissance[4]. “For Buber,” says Amos Elon, “the war was a ‘sacred spring’ a wonderful purification through violence, he basked in the sheer moral beauty of it.” Yes this wasn’t Adolf Hitler but the adorable ‘Zio-pacifist’ Martin Buber. But Buber was far from being alone, during the first weeks of the war even Freud succumbed to the general euphoria: “He couldn’t wait to see German troops march triumphantly into Paris.”[5]
Probably the most famous practitioner of poetic hate-mongering was the Jew Ernest Lissauer with his “Hymn of Hate against England”:
“We shall hate you with a long lasting hate.
A hate that endures and will never abate
Hatred by sea and hatred by land
From those who wear crowns and those who work by their hand
Seventy million all as one man
United in love and united in woe
United in hatred of one single foe
England”
James W. Gerard, the American Ambassador in Berlin, reported in his memoirs that German Jews took pride of the ethnic origin of the above-cited sickening hate hymn. But the party didn’t last for very long. According to Elon, “the Anti-Semites were quick to turn the poem against Lissauer and the Jews. “Only Jews are capable of such hatred.” Whether this is indeed the case, isn’t for me to judge. Yet, there is something worrying about the rapid transition of some secular Jews into war-mongers (Wolfowitz, Dershowitz), mass murderers (Kissinger, Sharon), and war criminals (Haber, Olmert, and the Israeli society). This is very concerning because Rabbinical Judaism though being far from an ethical worldview is far from being violent, aggressive or even sadistic.
Seemingly, the Israeli, a secular Jew, has managed to kill God. He has managed to set a civil law rather than a civilised one but somehow he failed to defeat the Jewish tribal barbarian zeal. Like Buber, Freud, Deshowitz, Haber, Wolfowitz and Lissauer, the Israeli man loves war (as long as he wins), he is ‘united in hatred of one single foe’ - the Arabs.
The modern Israeli Jew is no doubt a modern man, he doesn’t follow the bible, he doesn’t practice Judaism, he dumped God long time ago but bizarrely enough, he still chops his male baby’s foreskin when this infant is just eight days old. The modern Israeli is circumcising his son, he mutilates his son’s young body following a primitive tribal blood ritual, he lets a rabbi (a Mohel) injure his new born baby and then he watches the very same rabbi to suck the blood from his newly born son’s penis. Evidently, the modern secular Jew may have managed to assimilate but failed in merging into humanity. He is still an active participant in an ancient tribal bloodsucking ritual.
I am not an anthropologist, I cannot determine whether it is exactly the bloodsucking culture that turned Buber, Haber, Sharon, Peretz, Wolfowitz and Kissinger into mass bloodsuckers. But I do know that in my road in London, there are no participants in any ancient blood rituals. Somehow, it feels very safe. I think to myself that it is rather possible that once we enforce or at least convince Israelis and modern Jews to stop celebrating their bizarre rituals they may learn to love their neighbours almost as much as they love themselves. By the time this happens the cultural clash between Jewishness and humanity may be resolved. It is crucial to take into consideration that our collective image of Hamas and Hezbollah as mass murderers and bloodthirsty fanatics is just a projection made by those who happen to be active participants in blood rituals. In Lacanian language the 'unconsciousness is the discourse of the other' . In the Israeli practice the murderous inclination the Zionists referring to Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the Hamas is just a mirroring reflection of Zionist murderous tendecies that are far from being repressed anymore.
The above is far from being an adequate logical or an analytical argument. It is merely a desperate suggestion made by a man who grew up there, in Zion, amongst self loving thugs and bloodsucking Mohels. It is a call made by a man who is trying for many years to get to the bottom of the notion of hatred. It is a call made by a man that was dreaming of playing a concert in Lebanon, a country he visited as a soldier 22 years ago. A country that was flattened to dust but has spent the last two decades resurrecting itself. A country that had a dream, a country that is once again being wiped out by its next door neighbour.
[1]http://www.sexuallymutilatedchild.org/mohel.htm
"There are three stages required for the performance of a ritually correct circumcision in Jewish law: the removal of the foreskin; the tearing of the underlying membraene so as to expose the glans completely; and the sucking away of the blood, m'tsitsah." Roger V. Pavey. The Kindest Cut of All. Bognor Regis, W. Sussex: New Horizon. 1981. pp. 87-88.
[2] If this isn’t enough, as Hanna Arendt pointed out already in the 1960’s, the Jewish death toll wouldn’t have been as great if not for Zionist and local Jewish leaders actually collaborating with Hitler in such an extensive manner. Seemingly the Hebraic leaders didn’t learn their lesson, rather than endorsing peaceful thinking they have chosen brutal conduct. For almost six deacades the Israeli army inflicts pain on Israel's neighbours.
[3] Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All, Penguin Books 2004 pg 318
[4] ibid pg 319
[5] ibid pg 318
Author's note: While rabbinical Judaism refers to circumcision as a spiritual ritual filled with some deep religious spiritual meaning, the secular and assimilated Jews keep performing the blood ritual as a matter of maintenance of the tribal exclusive identity.
Gilad Atzmon isn't going to keep quiet about it, bless his soul. As a person who spent the first 30 years of his life there, and was raised to be convinced of the righteousness, or at least the reasonability of his country of birth, the land where he served as a soldier, he is well acquainted with the mindset, the policy and the structure of Israeli society. He, as an "insider" can help us to see through the mist of deception and the continual grotesque excuse-making for violent atrocities committed against the Arabs of the Middle East. He is well aware of the violent undertones, which he calls aptly, "thug", in a society where men and women are judged by their racial, religious or ethnic composition and are treated (or mistreated) accordingly. Nothing he says is a secret, it simply doesn't usually make it through the censors on all sides, who have vested interests either in instability, war or maintenance of a myth.
He is chipping away at the block of "Israeli righteousness" splinter by splinter. It's possible that no sledgehammer of words will ever make a dent in that stone, because the foundations seem to be sunk quite firmly in the ground, and no matter how he hammers away, the stone seems to grow, the taboo against criticising anything remotely connected to the Jewish State and the driving forces behind it is so immense, that it seems unshakeable. The Western world prefers to look elsewhere but at Israel itself.
It is out of his spirit as a radical lover of life, disgusted by violence, but aware that resistance to an occupier and tormenter is not only a right, but it is a moral duty, that Gilad Atzmon denounces violence against innocent people, and reflects on the roots of that violence, hoping that one day soon, eyes are going to open and people will stop defending by rote violence just because the perpetrators are "the good guys like us, civilised Westerners".
That blind ignorance, the refusal to even look, a total lack of self-reflection and deep self-critique is what will ensure the continued tolerance - if not outright support - for a system that remains in place in order to oppress people and control them, because they get in the way of bigger plans. Atzmon's war is a war against ignorance, a cry to those who still have enough humanity to listen, that the destruction of other people's lives is NOT tolerable, for the simple reason that the powerful get away with it by having thoroughly brainwashed the public opinion to look the other way or justify evil. We have been made terrified of speaking out against what is wrong, because we also know that we might be the next victims of the proto-fascist retaliation that comes in a million different guises.
Gilad Atzmon gave back his IDF uniform some time ago, but that doesn't mean he has left the war. He is now serving the side of justice by showing us that the brainwashing CAN be reversed. He shows the Arab peoples that they are not alone, they will not be abandoned and people are going to support them more and more, even though it might not look that way right now. That sledgehammer he uses is just a laptop computer, and I am sure he knows that writing words is not going to be enough to stop the violence, but hopefully it can blow some minds wide open. Minds that have been sealed by a lifetime of propaganda.
That blind ignorance, the refusal to even look, a total lack of self-reflection and deep self-critique is what will ensure the continued tolerance - if not outright support - for a system that remains in place in order to oppress people and control them, because they get in the way of bigger plans. Atzmon's war is a war against ignorance, a cry to those who still have enough humanity to listen, that the destruction of other people's lives is NOT tolerable, for the simple reason that the powerful get away with it by having thoroughly brainwashed the public opinion to look the other way or justify evil. We have been made terrified of speaking out against what is wrong, because we also know that we might be the next victims of the proto-fascist retaliation that comes in a million different guises.
Gilad Atzmon gave back his IDF uniform some time ago, but that doesn't mean he has left the war. He is now serving the side of justice by showing us that the brainwashing CAN be reversed. He shows the Arab peoples that they are not alone, they will not be abandoned and people are going to support them more and more, even though it might not look that way right now. That sledgehammer he uses is just a laptop computer, and I am sure he knows that writing words is not going to be enough to stop the violence, but hopefully it can blow some minds wide open. Minds that have been sealed by a lifetime of propaganda.
Never Again
Gilad Atzmon
The photo at the left is not a pornographic image of a Rabbi giving oral pleasure to a newly born Jewish baby. It is actually Mohel Rabbi Yosef David Weisburg sucking blood from a baby’s penis while performing a circumcision.(The Jerusalem Post Magazine, Nov. 5, 1976, p. 14)[1]
Just six and a half decades ago, Jews were brutally spat out of Europe. As it happened, when the majority of European secular Jews were totally convinced that the condition of emancipation had finally matured into a comprehensive assimilation, the Nazi Judeocide was there to prove them wrong. Just two weeks ago, when the vast majority of the Israeli people were convinced that Peace was just about to prevail thanks to Sharon’s unilateral ‘peace initiative’, the Hamas and Hezbollah were there to prove them wrong.
And so it happened that Germany, which was nothing less than the promised land for Fritz Haber (the man who invented the WMD), Einstein (once a pacifist, later the man who convinced Roosevelt to allocate funds to the Manhattan Project), Buber (a German patriotic warmonger), Sholem, Benjamin, Adorno and many more, suddenly changed its spots. Within the short space of several years it transformed itself into the bitterest enemy the Jews have ever known. But Germany wasn’t an isolated case. As we all know it wasn’t Nazi Germany or the German people alone who actually exercised the destruction of European Jewry. The industrial homicide was indeed largely administrated by Nazi officers and operators, yet, most European nations willingly submitted their Jews to the Nazis[2]. Whether we like it or not, it was the Europeans who somehow collectively found themselves to be rather enthusiastic about transforming Europe into a ‘Jew-free Zone’.
Rather worryingly it is now evident that the Hebraic people failed to learn their lesson. In their attempt to erect a Jewish national home, namely Zion, they made every possible mistake. Rather than endorsing peaceful manners and loving their new neighbours, they have endorsed and exhibited the most brutal conduct possible. For almost six decades the Israeli army inflicts pain on Israel’s close neighbours in the name of the Jewish people. For almost six decades millions of Palestinians are living in refugee camps in atrocious conditions and the Jewish State does not permit them to come back. For almost six decades the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine are discriminated by the new colonialists.
However, one seems almost compelled to admit it, but it was indeed the devastating impressions of liberated death camps which transformed Zionism from being a very marginal Jewish nationalist racist fantasy into the voice of world Jewry. Yet, it was in 1948, just three years after liberation of Auschwitz when Zionism underwent the transformation from being a nationalist racist philosophy into a murderous reality. It was just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz when Zionists proved beyond doubt that they properly internalised the most devious Nazi tactics, philosophy and precepts. Already then in 1948 the Israeli legislators found themselves engaged in setting racist laws that were no different from Nuremburg Laws. Already then, in 1948, the IDF together with paramilitary groups were practicing some Nazi-like ethnic cleansing strategies. As we happen to learn, the Israeli ethnic cleansing agenda has never faded. Israelis, like their Zionist Elders, very much like their Asheknazi Rabbinical ancestors don’t really like to mix with Goyim. Contemporary Israel is a clear resurrection of the European Jewish ghetto. However, the Israeli ghetto is a vast improvement compared with the old east European Shtetl. In the Jewish State, it is the Goyim who are locked behind walls in places that seem to be no different from concentration camps.
In defence of the post-war Jewish inclination towards Zionism, one may suggest that considering the vast impression of the Holocaust, the collective move towards Zionism was rather reasonable. Being totally traumatised by the scale of hatred against them, Jews all over the world collectively agreed; ‘Never Again’. I know about it all just because I myself was raised on the ‘Never Again’ philosophy.
‘Never Again’ Jews would be led to the slaughter, I was taught year after year in an Israeli school located obviously on occupied Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem. ‘The new Jew’ i.e. Israeli, so they said, ‘would fight back’. And indeed we were ready to fight back. Moreover, we were keen to do so, in the name of the Jewish people, in the name of our history. We were launched to punish the Arabs for our unfulfilled future in lost Europe.
It took me many years to realise that the ‘Never Again’ that was initially portrayed as a moral argument, was actually non-ethical to the bone. It took me far too many years to realise that ‘within the Judeo-Centric universe, ‘Never Again’ means: ‘from now on, Never Again Jews go to the slaughter, instead, it is going to be the Jews who take others to the slaughter. Looking at Beirut and Gaza, this is indeed what Israel is all about: ‘a barbarian political system that is fuelled by others’ pain’.
While Emanuel Levinas, the post-war Jewish philosopher believed that after Auschwitz Jews would stand firmly at the forefront of any battle against inhumanity, discrimination, racism and other malaise of modern civilization, it seems that very much the opposite turns out to have happened. The Jewish State, with the support of their far too many Wolfowitzes and Dershowitzes, became the absolute embodiment of modern evil. Day by day we see the ‘strongest army in the Middle East’ squashing innocent civilians, whether in Gaza, Beirut or Jenin. The Israeli Army is blitzing civilian infrastructure of States that can never defend themselves. You may wonder why did the Israelis have to erase Beirut Airport? The answer is simple - just because they were capable of doing so. The Israelis are indeed thugs, but they are far from being ordinary ones. The Israelis are actually nothing but ‘self loving’ thugs. Very much like the stereotype Jewish mother, they are totally in love with their symptoms. They really have fun flattening their neighbouring countries. Seemingly they have never taken in the possibility that one day, sooner or later they will have to live in peace with all those one billion Arabs around them. Again, thugs always think in the ‘short term’.
I am left puzzled. Just six and a half decades ago Jews were kicked out of Europe. With the support of the United Nations the Israelites had a perfect chance to make the tragedy of their departure into a new peaceful start. They could easily look into their history and learn from their mistakes. Indeed very few did. One of them is Israel Shahak, another is Lenni Brenner. But as painful as it may sound, most Jewish secular institutes and scholars did quite the opposite. They made their past mistakes into their claim for fame. They made the newly-formed Jewish thug, the Israeli, into a cultural icon. In Israel, the thug culture made it into a norm. Time after time, Israelis have managed to vote in war criminals and mass murderers to be their prime ministers. Strangely enough, in the last election, when they were sure that peace was just about to prevail, they had voted a non-military prime minister. Yet as soon as the recent violent crisis erupted, Olmert and Peretz were very quick to use the ultimate military measures. They probably realise very well that arrogance, violence, brutality and barbarism is the Israeli raison d'être.
Sadly, we have to admit that Levinas’s prophecy was not forthcoming. Not only had Jews failed in collectively leading any recognised humanitarian cause, in the name of ‘Never Again’ global Zionism together with the Israeli lobby they are consciously pushing us all into WW3. This time in the name of a cultural clash.
History, Revisiting the Present
The Historian may suggest that knowledge of the past would help us to understand the present or even serve to safeguard the future. On the contrary, I would argue that any understanding of the past is in itself the direct product of the present discourse. In other words, it is our symbolic order currently in place that shapes our vision of any historical narrative. Practically speaking, it is the present carnage in Beirut and in Gaza inflicted by the Jewish State that will inevitably shape our take on Jewish history. The present Jewish State’s brutality will certainly lead towards the total collapse of the official Jewish historical narrative and its dominance in western discourse.
Though Simon Wiesenthal won’t agree, history isn’t merely a collection of some sporadic anecdotes i.e. historical facts, but rather a tale that links anecdotes into an intelligible narrative. Historical Narrative is a message that survives the present discourse and symbolic order. Considering the crude Israeli brutality, the Judeo-centric historical narrative in which Jews are the victims is doomed to collapse. At least dialectically, it is rather fascinating that the ‘Never Again’ attitude, happens to be a self destructive mechanism, a Judeo-centric, historically orientated precept that aims towards the end of Jewish History.
Without referring to the truth value in the Medieval tales of blood libel; without trying to suggest whether or not Jews made Matzos out of young gentile blood, the growing quantity of images of orchestrated murderous Israeli activity helps us to realise where such accusations may have come from. Without suggesting any historical narrative to do with WWII and the events leading to the destruction of European Jewry, it is the current Israeli murderous zeal against its next-door neighbours that may throw light onto the collective European tendency to brutally spit out the Jews. One may sit in front of the TV watching Beirut burning and say, “if indeed this is what these barbarians are doing to their neighbours, no wonder why no one wants them as a neighbour.”
It must be mentioned that Jewish collective blood-thirstiness isn’t exactly a Zionist invention. Amos Elon, the author of one of the largest compendiums of Jews in Germany, provides us with a very shocking chapter of Jewish patriotic warmongering to do with WWI. On the eve of the war, Chaim Weizmann, a prominent Zionist and later the first President of the Jewish State, admitted to the British Ambassador in Berlin saying “seemingly Jewish intellectuals were the most arrogant and belligerent of all Germans.”[3] Martin Buber, the iconic symbol of left Zionism and Jewish poetic peaceful pacifism, could not stop himself from celebration at the point of departure of the global slaughter. “Not in faith but in devotion is the divine revealed,” said he, the prophet of the Jewish cultural renaissance[4]. “For Buber,” says Amos Elon, “the war was a ‘sacred spring’ a wonderful purification through violence, he basked in the sheer moral beauty of it.” Yes this wasn’t Adolf Hitler but the adorable ‘Zio-pacifist’ Martin Buber. But Buber was far from being alone, during the first weeks of the war even Freud succumbed to the general euphoria: “He couldn’t wait to see German troops march triumphantly into Paris.”[5]
Probably the most famous practitioner of poetic hate-mongering was the Jew Ernest Lissauer with his “Hymn of Hate against England”:
“We shall hate you with a long lasting hate.
A hate that endures and will never abate
Hatred by sea and hatred by land
From those who wear crowns and those who work by their hand
Seventy million all as one man
United in love and united in woe
United in hatred of one single foe
England”
James W. Gerard, the American Ambassador in Berlin, reported in his memoirs that German Jews took pride of the ethnic origin of the above-cited sickening hate hymn. But the party didn’t last for very long. According to Elon, “the Anti-Semites were quick to turn the poem against Lissauer and the Jews. “Only Jews are capable of such hatred.” Whether this is indeed the case, isn’t for me to judge. Yet, there is something worrying about the rapid transition of some secular Jews into war-mongers (Wolfowitz, Dershowitz), mass murderers (Kissinger, Sharon), and war criminals (Haber, Olmert, and the Israeli society). This is very concerning because Rabbinical Judaism though being far from an ethical worldview is far from being violent, aggressive or even sadistic.
Seemingly, the Israeli, a secular Jew, has managed to kill God. He has managed to set a civil law rather than a civilised one but somehow he failed to defeat the Jewish tribal barbarian zeal. Like Buber, Freud, Deshowitz, Haber, Wolfowitz and Lissauer, the Israeli man loves war (as long as he wins), he is ‘united in hatred of one single foe’ - the Arabs.
The modern Israeli Jew is no doubt a modern man, he doesn’t follow the bible, he doesn’t practice Judaism, he dumped God long time ago but bizarrely enough, he still chops his male baby’s foreskin when this infant is just eight days old. The modern Israeli is circumcising his son, he mutilates his son’s young body following a primitive tribal blood ritual, he lets a rabbi (a Mohel) injure his new born baby and then he watches the very same rabbi to suck the blood from his newly born son’s penis. Evidently, the modern secular Jew may have managed to assimilate but failed in merging into humanity. He is still an active participant in an ancient tribal bloodsucking ritual.
I am not an anthropologist, I cannot determine whether it is exactly the bloodsucking culture that turned Buber, Haber, Sharon, Peretz, Wolfowitz and Kissinger into mass bloodsuckers. But I do know that in my road in London, there are no participants in any ancient blood rituals. Somehow, it feels very safe. I think to myself that it is rather possible that once we enforce or at least convince Israelis and modern Jews to stop celebrating their bizarre rituals they may learn to love their neighbours almost as much as they love themselves. By the time this happens the cultural clash between Jewishness and humanity may be resolved. It is crucial to take into consideration that our collective image of Hamas and Hezbollah as mass murderers and bloodthirsty fanatics is just a projection made by those who happen to be active participants in blood rituals. In Lacanian language the 'unconsciousness is the discourse of the other' . In the Israeli practice the murderous inclination the Zionists referring to Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and the Hamas is just a mirroring reflection of Zionist murderous tendecies that are far from being repressed anymore.
The above is far from being an adequate logical or an analytical argument. It is merely a desperate suggestion made by a man who grew up there, in Zion, amongst self loving thugs and bloodsucking Mohels. It is a call made by a man who is trying for many years to get to the bottom of the notion of hatred. It is a call made by a man that was dreaming of playing a concert in Lebanon, a country he visited as a soldier 22 years ago. A country that was flattened to dust but has spent the last two decades resurrecting itself. A country that had a dream, a country that is once again being wiped out by its next door neighbour.
[1]http://www.sexuallymutilatedchild.org/mohel.htm
"There are three stages required for the performance of a ritually correct circumcision in Jewish law: the removal of the foreskin; the tearing of the underlying membraene so as to expose the glans completely; and the sucking away of the blood, m'tsitsah." Roger V. Pavey. The Kindest Cut of All. Bognor Regis, W. Sussex: New Horizon. 1981. pp. 87-88.
[2] If this isn’t enough, as Hanna Arendt pointed out already in the 1960’s, the Jewish death toll wouldn’t have been as great if not for Zionist and local Jewish leaders actually collaborating with Hitler in such an extensive manner. Seemingly the Hebraic leaders didn’t learn their lesson, rather than endorsing peaceful thinking they have chosen brutal conduct. For almost six deacades the Israeli army inflicts pain on Israel's neighbours.
[3] Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All, Penguin Books 2004 pg 318
[4] ibid pg 319
[5] ibid pg 318
Author's note: While rabbinical Judaism refers to circumcision as a spiritual ritual filled with some deep religious spiritual meaning, the secular and assimilated Jews keep performing the blood ritual as a matter of maintenance of the tribal exclusive identity.
Labels: Atzmon
