Pulling the Plug on Israel / Olmert Extremists' Aggression Unabated
Zionism, Irrelevant Within A Generation | 03.08.2006 23:00 | Lebanon War 2006 | Anti-militarism | World
Those not supporting calls for an immediate cease-fire must be made to pay a political price, to serve as a warning to those who come after the Zionist Extremists are stripped of power.
No Peace Without Justice, No Justice Without Truth
Pulling the Plug on Israel
By DAVID HIMMELSTEIN
Whether or not it has reached critical mass, there exists a heterogeneous agglomeration of Jewish people around the world-- e.g., moi--for whom the state of Israel has come to represent an 800-pound albatross that needs to be pried from our necks before it drags us over a cliff. A sense of urgency is propelled by the U.S.-sanctioned bloodletting in Lebanon and Gaza (which now seems to have been planned in advance) and the evident flimsiness of its official justification. With Israeli adventurism on the march, there are well founded fears concerning the general threat that country poses to the peace of the world.
And there is a paticularized danger which stirs a thick chunk of self-interest into the universalism of enlightened Jewish concern. In terms of the fabled Jewish-interest litmus, it is proving decidedly not "good for the Jews" when Israel gets away with murder. The spillover is ubiquitous. After all, we have it on no lesser authority than New York Times heavyweight Thomas Friedman that, in the early days of the American occupation of Iraq, American soldiers in Iraq were being referred to on the Iraqi street as "the Jews".
The worst-case scenario was laid out with characteristic bluntness by dissident Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in a Zmag interview:
"I believe what Israel is doing will destroy the Jewish people in the near or distant future as well. Even with 250 nuclear weapons and the support of the world,s only superpower." Supporting scenario has been sketched in by veteran peace activist Uri Avnery:
"What would happen for example if the United States sank ever deeper into the bloody swamp of Iraq, into an atmosphere of national calamity? When the search for a scapegoat is on, the Jewish neo-cons will stick out. . . .One should not exaggerate these dangers. At present they are hardly specks on the horizon. But I would advise the leaders of the Jewish institutions in the United States to exercise some self-restraint. Intoxication with power can easily lead to dangerous excesses."
Sadly, this advice has not been taken. As a result, it is neither surrealistic or irresponsibly alarmist to worry about a multi-continental outburst of anti-Semitism-- especially when fuel for a new firestorm is being splashed about by those representing themselves as the quintessential defenders of Jewish interests. This present concern should not be confounded with the perennial wolf-crying (the flip side of wolf-baiting) by apologists like the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman. The current unease is a spontaneous phenomenon-- rippling across a broad range of independently minded Jews, stoking a visceral need to express (even if only in the privacy of their own minds) emphatic disavowal of the self-proclaimed Jewish State.
The endgame denoted in the title of this piece, although a seemingly chimerical wet dream today, is a wish list with three main components.
1. In terms of immediate impact, the highest priority would be the withdrawal of lockstep United States support for Israel's provocative adventurism and its brutal stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank. Maximum U.S. pressure would be applied to hold Israel to its responsibilities under international law and force it to address the basic issues that have generated most of its problems.
2. Another high-impact development would be the voluntary drying up of the river of financial support Israel receives from its many supporters in North America. Obviously, such a stoppage would presuppose a prior psychological upheaval within and among those supporters-- indeed in all diaspora Zionists, i.e., those who believe that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people
3. Such a psychosocial earthquake would involve upending deeply entrenched and cherished beliefs that contribute to a sense of entitlement, such as that which comes to play when, at any point in his/her life, a North American Jew discovers his/her inner Zionist. He/She can draw on sacred and secular authorization to jet off to the homeland and get fast tracked to a swimming pool in a hillside villa--down below which the indigenous holdouts line up for water from the well.
Given Israel's present commanding hegemony of resources and discourse, such an upheaval may appear as unlikely as the "spiritual seizure" which a pessimistic George McGovern wished for on a long-ago Election Day. Nevertheless, there is abundant anecdotal evidence of increasing Jewish alienation. While Israel's life-disrupting separation wall goes forward on the ground, Israel itself is being walled off in independently minded Jewish minds and hearts around the world. (Even some of those who consider their metaphysical identity and destiny thoroughly intertwined with the nation of Israel are troubled by twitches in a vestigial generic-- not proprietary-- human sensitivity. However, the fundamentalist core will cling even more fervently to triumphalism, and carry on with the sanctimonious gong-ringing.)
Always seeking ways to "think outside the box", this writer sees advantage in recycling a pop-psych chestnut to offer non-Jews (not to mention Jews) a certain scope on the unspoken-for world Jewish community. The lens consists of Elsabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Interestingly, they were first labeled the five stages of receiving catastrophic news. Both terms are applicable here: decades of "catastrophic news" about Israel and its history have culminated (sometimes outside of conscious awareness) in widespread Jewish mourning and grieving for a lost Zio-innocence.
The most immediate catastrophic news is coming out of Lebanon, but a steady stream has emerged from Gaza and the West Bank during the four decades of Israeli occupation. Perhaps even more unsettling is the cloud of ethnic cleansing which increasingly hangs over the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. And any rewind winds up in the original traumatic "primal scene": early Zionist settlers' shocked discovery that Palestine was not, in fact, the "land without people" they'd been led to believe.
Many Jews have been shaken out of the denial stage by the substantive force of the bad news, but anger, bargaining ("I promise --.") and depression remain seductive lures. Getting to acceptance implies uncomfortable acknowledgements and adjustments. In the most optimistic of images, it will be a bumpy ride. But no alternative exists. And the hour is late.
There will be no peace in the Middle East without justice, and no justice without truth.
David Himmelstein is a writer and teacher in Montreal. Reachable at chebrexy (at) hotmail.com.
counterpunch.com/himmelstein08022006.html
US supplying Israel with NSA signals intelligence
www.rawstory.com/news/2006/US_supplying_Israel_with_NSA_signals_0803.htm
This makes the already criminal Bush/PNAC Regime accomplices in the Olmert Regime's War Crimes.
Cease Fire Now!
This video is dedicated to the children who have lost their lives because The US, UK and Israel have willingly stopped a ceasefire resulting in the deaths of many civilians in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14337.htm
Lebanese PM says 900 killed in Israeli offensive
english.people.com.cn/200608/03/eng20060803_289631.html
Israelis accused of 'human shields' tactic
By Lucy Williamson
BBC News, Gaza
The Israeli army has been accused of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in an operation in northern Gaza.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5212870.stm
Rights group slams Israel for bombing civilians
Reuters
Thursday, August 3, 2006; 4:56 AM
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel's military appears to have deliberately bombed civilians in Lebanon and some of its strikes constitute war crimes, U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080300161
Think back two years ago when the IDF was caught on videotape with Palestinian teenagers strapped to the bodies of their jeeps.
The costs of carrying on in Iraq and Lebanon
WASHINGTON — If you think there is an echo in the air when officials discuss the twin crises in Iraq and Lebanon, you are not hearing things. In both cases, the argument for carrying on the destructive current policy comes down to a claim that "we can't afford to let the other guy win."
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003170849_broder03.html
When the "other guy" is women and children, I can stand letting them live.
The irony is that the US and Israel are losing already. World opinion for both nations (and the UK) is dropping fast. Hate against the Israel/UA/UK "Axis" is on the rise. Our already over-stressed economy cannot sustain the war effort for very much longer on three fronts' let alone proposed new wars in Syria and Iran.
Pulling the Plug on Israel
By DAVID HIMMELSTEIN
Whether or not it has reached critical mass, there exists a heterogeneous agglomeration of Jewish people around the world-- e.g., moi--for whom the state of Israel has come to represent an 800-pound albatross that needs to be pried from our necks before it drags us over a cliff. A sense of urgency is propelled by the U.S.-sanctioned bloodletting in Lebanon and Gaza (which now seems to have been planned in advance) and the evident flimsiness of its official justification. With Israeli adventurism on the march, there are well founded fears concerning the general threat that country poses to the peace of the world.
And there is a paticularized danger which stirs a thick chunk of self-interest into the universalism of enlightened Jewish concern. In terms of the fabled Jewish-interest litmus, it is proving decidedly not "good for the Jews" when Israel gets away with murder. The spillover is ubiquitous. After all, we have it on no lesser authority than New York Times heavyweight Thomas Friedman that, in the early days of the American occupation of Iraq, American soldiers in Iraq were being referred to on the Iraqi street as "the Jews".
The worst-case scenario was laid out with characteristic bluntness by dissident Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in a Zmag interview:
"I believe what Israel is doing will destroy the Jewish people in the near or distant future as well. Even with 250 nuclear weapons and the support of the world,s only superpower." Supporting scenario has been sketched in by veteran peace activist Uri Avnery:
"What would happen for example if the United States sank ever deeper into the bloody swamp of Iraq, into an atmosphere of national calamity? When the search for a scapegoat is on, the Jewish neo-cons will stick out. . . .One should not exaggerate these dangers. At present they are hardly specks on the horizon. But I would advise the leaders of the Jewish institutions in the United States to exercise some self-restraint. Intoxication with power can easily lead to dangerous excesses."
Sadly, this advice has not been taken. As a result, it is neither surrealistic or irresponsibly alarmist to worry about a multi-continental outburst of anti-Semitism-- especially when fuel for a new firestorm is being splashed about by those representing themselves as the quintessential defenders of Jewish interests. This present concern should not be confounded with the perennial wolf-crying (the flip side of wolf-baiting) by apologists like the Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman. The current unease is a spontaneous phenomenon-- rippling across a broad range of independently minded Jews, stoking a visceral need to express (even if only in the privacy of their own minds) emphatic disavowal of the self-proclaimed Jewish State.
The endgame denoted in the title of this piece, although a seemingly chimerical wet dream today, is a wish list with three main components.
1. In terms of immediate impact, the highest priority would be the withdrawal of lockstep United States support for Israel's provocative adventurism and its brutal stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank. Maximum U.S. pressure would be applied to hold Israel to its responsibilities under international law and force it to address the basic issues that have generated most of its problems.
2. Another high-impact development would be the voluntary drying up of the river of financial support Israel receives from its many supporters in North America. Obviously, such a stoppage would presuppose a prior psychological upheaval within and among those supporters-- indeed in all diaspora Zionists, i.e., those who believe that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people
3. Such a psychosocial earthquake would involve upending deeply entrenched and cherished beliefs that contribute to a sense of entitlement, such as that which comes to play when, at any point in his/her life, a North American Jew discovers his/her inner Zionist. He/She can draw on sacred and secular authorization to jet off to the homeland and get fast tracked to a swimming pool in a hillside villa--down below which the indigenous holdouts line up for water from the well.
Given Israel's present commanding hegemony of resources and discourse, such an upheaval may appear as unlikely as the "spiritual seizure" which a pessimistic George McGovern wished for on a long-ago Election Day. Nevertheless, there is abundant anecdotal evidence of increasing Jewish alienation. While Israel's life-disrupting separation wall goes forward on the ground, Israel itself is being walled off in independently minded Jewish minds and hearts around the world. (Even some of those who consider their metaphysical identity and destiny thoroughly intertwined with the nation of Israel are troubled by twitches in a vestigial generic-- not proprietary-- human sensitivity. However, the fundamentalist core will cling even more fervently to triumphalism, and carry on with the sanctimonious gong-ringing.)
Always seeking ways to "think outside the box", this writer sees advantage in recycling a pop-psych chestnut to offer non-Jews (not to mention Jews) a certain scope on the unspoken-for world Jewish community. The lens consists of Elsabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Interestingly, they were first labeled the five stages of receiving catastrophic news. Both terms are applicable here: decades of "catastrophic news" about Israel and its history have culminated (sometimes outside of conscious awareness) in widespread Jewish mourning and grieving for a lost Zio-innocence.
The most immediate catastrophic news is coming out of Lebanon, but a steady stream has emerged from Gaza and the West Bank during the four decades of Israeli occupation. Perhaps even more unsettling is the cloud of ethnic cleansing which increasingly hangs over the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. And any rewind winds up in the original traumatic "primal scene": early Zionist settlers' shocked discovery that Palestine was not, in fact, the "land without people" they'd been led to believe.
Many Jews have been shaken out of the denial stage by the substantive force of the bad news, but anger, bargaining ("I promise --.") and depression remain seductive lures. Getting to acceptance implies uncomfortable acknowledgements and adjustments. In the most optimistic of images, it will be a bumpy ride. But no alternative exists. And the hour is late.
There will be no peace in the Middle East without justice, and no justice without truth.
David Himmelstein is a writer and teacher in Montreal. Reachable at chebrexy (at) hotmail.com.
counterpunch.com/himmelstein08022006.html
US supplying Israel with NSA signals intelligence
www.rawstory.com/news/2006/US_supplying_Israel_with_NSA_signals_0803.htm
This makes the already criminal Bush/PNAC Regime accomplices in the Olmert Regime's War Crimes.
Cease Fire Now!
This video is dedicated to the children who have lost their lives because The US, UK and Israel have willingly stopped a ceasefire resulting in the deaths of many civilians in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14337.htm
Lebanese PM says 900 killed in Israeli offensive
english.people.com.cn/200608/03/eng20060803_289631.html
Israelis accused of 'human shields' tactic
By Lucy Williamson
BBC News, Gaza
The Israeli army has been accused of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in an operation in northern Gaza.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5212870.stm
Rights group slams Israel for bombing civilians
Reuters
Thursday, August 3, 2006; 4:56 AM
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israel's military appears to have deliberately bombed civilians in Lebanon and some of its strikes constitute war crimes, U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080300161
Think back two years ago when the IDF was caught on videotape with Palestinian teenagers strapped to the bodies of their jeeps.
The costs of carrying on in Iraq and Lebanon
WASHINGTON — If you think there is an echo in the air when officials discuss the twin crises in Iraq and Lebanon, you are not hearing things. In both cases, the argument for carrying on the destructive current policy comes down to a claim that "we can't afford to let the other guy win."
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003170849_broder03.html
When the "other guy" is women and children, I can stand letting them live.
The irony is that the US and Israel are losing already. World opinion for both nations (and the UK) is dropping fast. Hate against the Israel/UA/UK "Axis" is on the rise. Our already over-stressed economy cannot sustain the war effort for very much longer on three fronts' let alone proposed new wars in Syria and Iran.
Zionism, Irrelevant Within A Generation
Comments
Hide the following comment
How do we stop a 'ceasefire' rewarding Israel, playing into the hands of Blair
04.08.2006 04:40
The irony is that the US and Israel are losing already. World opinion for both nations (and the UK) is dropping fast. Hate against the Israel/UA/UK "Axis" is on the rise. Our already over-stressed economy cannot sustain the war effort for very much longer on three fronts' let alone proposed new wars in Syria and Iran.
UNQUOTE
Hey guys, relax and do nothing, the bad guys are going to burn themselves out. Now there's a message I like, NOT!
Blair's strategy is to use these factors to DEMAND total war. Blair, and the neocons that he leads in the US, know that every moral rule that the US government and the US army is forced to follow (and yes, I know that this sounds like some kind of joke, given the atrocities already carried out by the US) restricts their ability to achieve total victory. However, the power of even the most depraved mass murdering monster of a leader, like Blair, comes from the support of the people, even when like now, that support is passive.
Therefore, like it or not, the people MUST be carried along. The people (you and me) have a moral 'inertia' that makes rapid major moral change near impossible.
You remember that cliche from the films- the one where someone is hurt, and the 'doc' has no proper tools or medicines to carry out the operation? At first, the patient does anything he can to avoid facing reality. Then comes that inevitable moment when he has to tell the doc to just get on with it, no matter how horrible or painful.
Blair wants us to see 'total war' as that operation. He wants us to be in so much pain, and so certain that all other solutions are missing, that WE demand the sharp healing knife of all out war.
In truth, Blair doesn't need to fool all of us. His waves of racist propaganda (found on this site as well, sometimes well disguised, sometimes not) are designed to mostly batter us down into a state of hopeless depression, with no willingness to focus on valid solutions.
As Blair sets more and more nations alight, war, and the devastation of everything that people own in the target nations, starts to look commonplace. Images that once we only associated with the horrifying destruction of WW2 now iconically define the age we live in. Blair has made the concept of dropping a bomb costing tens of thousands from a plane costing tens of millions onto families whose only crime is being muslim seem as ordinary as making a cup of tea.
You see, it isn't that people learn to love Blair's acts of rape, torture and murder and more than the German people loved the same with Hitler. It is that Blair demands we ignore his methods, because he has made them so mundane and commonplace. Instead, Blair tells us to pretend that his means justify some vague 'ends' that we try to convince ourselves will actually see an end to all the current pain and suffering.
Blair wants us to do anything but fight him. Blair wants us to do anything but remove him. Blair wants us to do anything but put him on trial for every single one of the millions of Humans whose murder he is directly responsible for (yes, the number ***is*** into the millions, its just a pity most of you will not accept this fact until the number has risen into the tens of millions with Blair's coming genocide of Iran).
The article I am responding to calls for a 'ceasefire' and then has the cheek to pretend that Israel will suffer in such an event. After Hitler launched each successful new military campaign (pre-WW2) he just LOVED the ceasefire that followed. The victor rewarded (and planning the next atrocity), the victim told "tough".
Now do not misunderstand me. Blair and Israel should have their Holocaust of Gaza and Lebanon stopped, and stopped now. If this happens now, those involved will call it a 'ceasefire'. However, we cannot forget exactly why Blair has bought this Holocaust to the region, and what Blair intends to use it for.
Blair would be happy with any outcome that allows the US to attack Iran at last. Many schemes have been tried and failed, and many ideas persued to a dead-end. At the same time, muslims have been increasingly targetted, increasingly demonised, and increasingly made the victims of Blair's ever multipling atrocities.
At the least, the Lebanon Holocaust has allowed Blair to state, on a world stage, that any act by a muslim is justification enough for putting a whole nation of muslims to the sword. Crime and punishment Blair (or Hitler) style.
However, it seems clear that an Israel rewarding ceasefire was planned all along. Israel is not (and never has been) up to the next stage, war with Syria and Iran. Blair seems to be looking at his Kosovo campaign. Slap outrageous conditions on the Lebanese, and have them also fall on the Syrians. When these conditions cannot be met, demand that the WORLD (well the sick evil part that Blair commands) take action. Syria becomes Serbia. Now you can see where these Blair 'peacekeepers' come in.
Only problem with this plan is it seems a little slow for Blair. The ceasefire will allow Blair to eliminate all images of Israeli atrocities from the media (and Blair will command lots of programs about certain people suffering during WW2 to make the memory of them go away). The press will be able to massively increase their demonising of all muslim resistance groups. But even so, this strategy seems to give Iran too many opportunities to protect themselves.
I, and many people like me, are still awaiting something far more pointed. Another 911 type false flag to garner permission for the foul crimes that Blair's war against Iran will entail. The US people need something to rally behind, and no-one knows this better than Blair, who mentions 911 far more than even Bush does.
If we are not fighting to stop Blair's new wars, then the people in ALL the lands around Israel are living on borrowed time, for when Blair gets to start WW3 with his genocide of Iran, Israel will be liberated to apply their FINAL SOLUTION to far more muslims than just those living in the 'occupied territories'. There is no small or local solution to the problem of Blair. While he remains in power (and those of you that think any New Reich conference in the Autumn will remove him are stupid beyond belief), his rate of mass murder will just keep on accelerating.
I will say this about Blair. He follows the rules,and has never acted to hide what he is from those that would care to know. Blair is, however, allowed to make full use of the self-deluding nature of well conditioned sheep. Those that have swallowed the 'Blair is a puppet' propaganda that Blair's own people manufacture, for instance, adopt a belief completely devoid of any logic, but it works exactly because it is such a juvenile insult, and thus locks into the pre-adult thought patterns that psychologists well understand continue to exist in the adult mind.
Blair stands in front of the whole world next to the bumbling drunken coked-up moron of a US president, and declares that muslims are the enemy, and he is going to war with Syria and Iran, AND BLAIR IS A PUPPET? What the hell are you people on, and shouldn't you be offering some to Bush?
twilight